ADDRESS AT THE MIDNIGHT EUCHARIST 2024
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Readings: Isaiah 9: 2-7 and Luke 2: 1-20
There is something very special, almost magical, about this annual occasion, which many people and churches have come to know as ‘Midnight Mass’ even if they wouldn’t normally use the term ‘Mass’ at any other time. I can remember the excitement of being allowed to attend for the first time when I was perhaps 13 or 14, and sang in a church choir in Hampshire. Since then, I believe I have only missed three or four in over 55 years. The wonder of this holy night has never left me.
A growing number of churches no longer hold this late-night celebration, either because it is considered too much for an elderly congregation, or because numbers wouldn’t justify it, or because there has been some history of trouble or disturbance as pubs turn out and the merry seek the hospitality of another building with lights on and doors open. A good many churches hold their ‘Midnight’ much earlier in the evening to encourage people to come out who wouldn’t otherwise. When I was in SE London I managed to officiate at two Midnight services on the same Christmas Eve. You’ll understand that one of them was much earlier in the evening.
There has been a growing trend for Easter Vigil services, where people may be baptised late in the evening, ready to welcome Easter morning and new life as confirmed disciples. But for me, the Easter event was a morning surprise – Mary Magdalen going to Jesus tomb ‘just as the dawn broke’, to discover that he had risen. Whereas, at Christmas, it was to shepherds watching their flocks by night to whom angels appeared.
The mystery of Christmas Eve also enthused Thomas Hardy, who wrote his poem ‘The Oxen’ in 1915 (included below). So there was this belief that cattle fell to their knees at the midnight hour to honour the Christ child born in the manger. Ox and ass feature in many Christmas carols, and school nativity plays. Actually, neither ox or ass are mentioned in the NT accounts of the birth of Jesus; but we imagine that if Jesus was born in a stable or some kind of outhouse, then animals would have been present. And imaginative biblical scholars pointed to a verse in Isaiah chapter 1: “The ox knows its owner, and the donkey its master’s crib.”
You would have thought nativity plays would become a little more sophisticated these days, but this doesn’t seem to be so. In fact, they may be little changed since John of Assisi, the son of a silk merchant, put on the first in the Italian hill town of Greccio in 1223. We know him, of course, as St. Francis of Assisi. That year, Francis encouraged the townspeople to bring their animals to a stable for Midnight Mass. Thus he encouraged a new form of devotion. Thomas of Celano, the first biographer of Francis, said that after Francis had been to the Holy Land, he had wanted to ‘bring to life the memory of that babe born in Bethlehem, to see as much as possible with my own bodily eyes, the discomfort of his infant needs; how he lay in a manger, and how, with an ox and ass standing by, he was laid upon a bed of hay.” The biographer went on to relate how those who witnessed that first Nativity scene at Greccio in 1223 were filled with a ‘new and indescribable joy.’ The priest then celebrated the Mass over the manger, linking their remembrance of Christ’s future sacrifice and his rise in glory to the humbling simplicity of his birth. Yes, the King of Kings came into this world small, poor and defenceless; in need of love, like all of us.
Of course, many people give not a second thought to the significance of Christ coming into the world, as one of us, to lead a life holy and obedient to his Father, which resulted in the giving of his life, and to rise again – all to save us from ourselves and to make us beloved children of God.
As we get older, we can easily lose our sense of wonder. Tiredness, cynicism, and a realisation that life is difficult and complex and sometimes precarious; these drive away the simple joys of youth. And yet each year, thousands will be re-touched by nativity plays or carol services or by the Christmas spirit of peace and goodwill to men, or by some deeper feeling that they can’t really articulate.
In Hardy’s poem, the writer, or whoever we imagine is thinking about that Christmas night scene, says ‘So fair a fancy few would weave in these years!” In other words, people might have been silly enough at one time to believe that animals would kneel at midnight in honour of the Christ child, but not now! Nevertheless, if someone said ‘Come, see the oxen kneel….I should go with him in the gloom, Hoping it might be so.’
Hoping it might be so. What brings so many people out to take part in religious ceremonies at this time of year? Maybe partially a hard-to-explain impulse to recapture that childish sense of wonder; or to leave their daily worries aside by joining a simple ritual and taking part in something much bigger than themselves. But also, I suspect, that they are pleased to think that there is some deeper reason for our existence, some creative power of love who has brought us here and sustains us, somehow embodied in this tiny child who needs love and care.
“The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has never overcome it” – St. John wrote in the great prologue to his gospel. A bit like Christmas itself; nobody has been able to stop it and the spirit it generates. Even in the trenches of the First World War there was the famous Christmas truce. Even in war-torn Ukraine and in the confusions of Syria, and, yes, probably in Gaza too, in the besieged church of the Holy Family, Christians will be celebrating this night. And just by doing that, they ensure that the light will still shine in the darkness, and that the Christmas story goes on.
And is it true? This is something each one has to decide for themselves. And I’m not talking about whether there really was an ox and an ass and a stable or that animals bow down at 12 o’clock on Christmas night. It is the much bigger question of belief in Christ and what we do about it that every one has to discern for themselves and decide what impact that is going to have on their lives. Now you don’t make a thing true by just wishing it were so, but by serious enquiry and observation; trying out the reality: in our case, considering the very existence of this world and who sustains it, and asking who this person Jesus really was, where did his authority and his teaching come from; how have millions followed him in over two thousand years through this dedicated yet flawed body of people we collectively know as ‘the Church?’ If we are serious in our search we will seek him in prayer and worship in churches like this, in our homes or in the wider world.
I often come back to the closing lines of Sir John Betjeman’s famous Christmas poem:
And is it true? Is it true, This most tremendous tale of all,
A Baby in an ox’s stall?
The Maker of the stars and sea/ Become a child on earth for me?
And is it true? For if it is …
No love that in a family dwells; no carolling in frosty air, nor all the steeple-shaking bells
Can with this single truth compare – That God was Man in Palestine, and lives today in Bread and Wine.
THE OXEN – by Thomas Hardy
Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock.
‘Now they are all on their knees,’
An elder said as we sat in a flock,
By the embers in hearthside ease.
We pictured the meek mild creatures where
They dwelt in their strawy pen,
Nor did it occur to one of us there
To doubt they were kneeling then.
So fair a fancy few would weave
In these years! Yet, I feel,
If someone said on Christmas Eve,
‘Come; see the oxen kneel
‘In the lonely barton by yonder coomb
Our childhood used to know.’
I should go with him in the gloom, Hoping it might be so.