One of my many memories of Christmases past is from 1968. It was hearing the astronaut and commander of Apollo 8, Colonel Frank Borman, reading the opening words of the book of Genesis as his spacecraft and its three-man crew orbited the Moon and he looked down on this “good earth”. This was the precursor of the first Moon landing some seven months later. It was a very special moment at a very special time, and in the optimistic 1960s it promised a new age for the human race, a fulfilment for our spirit of exploration and a new way of looking at our one earth, our only home. Could we finally learn to live in peace? Could the technological skills that got us to the Moon propel us further, leaving behind the divisions of the past? So we hoped, perhaps!
It may not look that way now, but who knows how people in two-thousand years will look back on that moment? Maybe they will see it more positively than we do in our more cynical and disillusioned times; as a true time of hope. And times of hope are few, it often seems. We should treasure them even if we struggle to see the benefit in our darkened world, when 1960s optimism seems hopelessly naïve. And so another time of hope must have seemed two thousand years ago, when a baby was born in the turbulent and troublesome Roman client kingdom of Judaea.
The two Nativity stories in the New Testament give accounts that clothe this human birth in signs and wonders. To tell the truth we know little about the birth of Jesus that could really be called history as we would understand it. Later, Christians would see and feel the power and hope that was inherent in the birth of Jesus, and so, in the manner of the ancient world, they collected and created stories that gave his birth the setting and significance they felt it deserved. Although, for all its angels and travelling kings, it remains at heart a simple, human story, as the reality must have been.
One part of the Christmas story does have an echo in the story of Apollo 8, and that relates to a sign in the heavens. The star of Bethlehem, whatever it actually was, was taken to announce a special birth, the birth of one who would bring hope to people who lived in darkness, a Messiah, a liberator, a king. Not just another earthly ruler, but someone with a divine mission to change human life in radical ways, to set us on a new and better course. Did it? Or was it another false hope, as apparently illusory as the hope some saw in Apollo 8? Be it in star or spacecraft, did we once – or twice – see real hope in the heavens? Or do we see real hope on earth now, where all the old sins and errors of humankind are still with us, only amplified by the bewildering expansion of ways to do harm?
So do we see real hope for humankind at Christmas? Does the birth of Jesus change anything for us? Traditional theology has it that God was made man in the birth of Jesus, but the Divine has always been there in humanity – as creative power, as life-giving breath, as reasoning mind. And within humanity there is also the Divine potential to love: to love this “good earth” and its myriad creatures, and to love each other as neighbours in our one humanity. But love needs to be awakened, and this is what Jesus saw his mission to be: to awaken the love that lies within us, the love that awakens love. Hope doesn’t lie in philosophical theories, political ideologies or rigid religious creeds, any more than it does in new technologies. Hope lies in the simple human impulse to live in peace and goodwill with other people. It lies in asking “How can I be human to the best of my ability?” And Jesus tells us how.
Hope lies in awakening the Divine potential, the impulse to love, the Kingdom of God, within ourselves. At Christmas we celebrate the birth of a man whose life and teaching help us to do that, if only we will listen and take heed. Did the birth of Jesus change anything? It certainly did inasmuch as those who follow his Way have changed it with their love, and as we can if we follow it too.
(CMR161225)
Ipswich Unitarian Meeting House 