Gloucester
The earth has grown old with its burden of care
But at Christmas it always is young,
The heart of the jewel burns lustrous and fair,
And its soul full of music breaks forth on the air,
When the song of the Angels is sung.
It is coming, old earth, it is coming tonight,
On the snowflakes with cover thy sod,
The feet of the Christ child fall gently and white,
And the voice of the Christ child tells you with delight
That mankind are the children of God.
On the sad and the lonely, the wretched and poor,
That voice of the Christ child shall fall;
And to every blind wanderer opens the door
Of a hope which he dared not to dream of before,
With a sunshine of welcome for all.
The feet of the humblest may walk in the field
Where the feet of the holiest have trod,
This, this is the marvel of mortals revealed,
When the silvery trumpets of Christmas have pealed
That mankind are the children of God.
The purpose of our service today is not to broadcast knowledge about Christmas, but rather to acknowledge that Christmas is essentially something we feel in the deepest well of our emotions. It has been said that Christmas is the time of year when we get rid of the feelings of guilt which have been created throughout the year by our dominant attitude or selfishness. It has been said, also with some truth, that Christmas is but the continuing pagan festival of Winter Solstice and that the religious elements associated with the birth of Jesus of Nazareth are but superficial touches added to a very primitive structure. It has been said also, with more poetry than literal truth that Christmas is the day when “God broke into history”. Countless other little theories have been conceived and broadcast. Yet none of these theories ever speaks clearly enough or profoundly enough to explain why it is we are so deeply moved to joy, hope, and a spirit of neighborliness and charity to others at this time of year we call Christmas.
Our Christmas would not have the same content of feeling if it had not been for our religious forefathers, the Hebrews and their belief that someday mankind would be redeemed by the hand of God in the form of a Savior who would vanquish the forces of evil. The early Hebrew scriptures are laced with prophecies of such a hope. The prophet Isaiah, who lived many centuries before the birth of Jesus, expressed for all time the hope that man's destiny is not one to be dominated forever by selfish desires, low ambitions, thoughtless as well as deliberate acts of cruelty and inhumanity to others.
XL/3: “The voice of one that crieth, Prepare ye in the wilderness the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.”
XL/5 The glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together. For the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.
LX 1,3,5: Arise, shine! For thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee; and nations shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising. They shall bring gold and frankincense and shall proclaim the praises of the Lord.”
LII;7 “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace, that bringeth good tidings of good, that publisheth salvation, that saith unto Zion, Thy God Reigneth.”
The legendary history of the birth stories of Jesus were tailored to fit these ancient hopes. Yet no such legends could have been creatd, we could not feel the glow within us which reminds us of Christmas that “mankind are the children of God,” if there had not been a person such as Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus of Nazareth not only grew in wisdom and stature, but he lived in consecration to a way of life which he believed in above all else. He saw, as perhaps none of us see, that unless the spirit of love and brotherhood dominates the earth, all our science and all our industry will be but fuses which will sooner or later be set off at some zero hour and destroy man's dreams for milleniums to come. He believed enough in a way of life that declared “love is the answer” to die for it, even as he had lived.
The light of Christmas shines into our clouded hearts to remind us that this feeling of love is unconquerable even by death. The everlasting light of Christmas stirs us with the inward knowledge that ways of hate, retaliation and disregard for even the least of these our brethren will surely bring us to a pit of degradation in which it will be unclean to live and stupid to hope. We hope that there will come a time when “Peace on earth, good will toward men” will not only be the song of angels but will be the song and practice of mankind everywhere.
The hope of Israel and the life of Jesus are not the only contributions that have made our Christmas. Each century has contributed in its own language of poetry, devotion, and music in the attempt to express the depth of feeling which stirs us so joyfully and yet so tragically each year when Christmas comes into our view.
Our Christmas message this year is one that will be expressed in song and poem. Our responsive reading was that incredibly beautiful poem that appears in the early part of the gospel according to Luke. This was a contribution of the latter part of the first or the early part of the second century after the birth of Jesus. From the ages of faith, the 13th to 15th centuries has some of the music that is to be sung. From our own century, the 20th, has come the theme for our worship. We cannot understand our theme without feeling something of the majesty of the man who inspired our theme.
Phillips Brooks was a world-famous preacher and Episcopal Bishop. He loved the Episcopal church and it would be unthinkable to disassociate him in any way from his beloved faith. Yet, Phillips Brooks was a Universalist too. No one who could write the lines of the poem which I read at the beginning could feel other than someday, somehow, men were going to recognize their basic unity as children of one great God, brothers in an illimitable universe:
“The feet of the humble may walk in the field
Where the feet of the holiest have trod,
This, this is the marvel of mortals revealed,
When the silvery trumpets of Christmas have pealed,
That mankind are the children of God.”
It has been well said that there are three memorials to the memory of Phillips Brooks: Many of us have known these memorials. First there is Trinity Church standing in splendor in Copley Square in Boston. Erected during the time when Phillips Brooks was rector, it is an ever-present symbol of the broad character of his ministry and his contribution to the life of Boston. (P) Standing beside the Church is the second memorial to this giant among American religious leaders. It is the heroic statue of the Bishop molded in the preacher's stance. Beside the statue of Brooks there is another statue, an image of Jesus, symbol of the way that the life of Jesus dominated the life of Brooks.
Probably each of you has recalled knowingly or unknowingly the third memorial to Phillips Brooks many times during the past days.
When Phillips Brooks was thirty years old he spent a year traveling in Europe and the Near East. During Christmas week in 1865 in a letter home (LYRIC RELIGION Smith P. 298) Brooks wrote “after an early dinner, we took our horses and rode to Bethlehem. It was only about two hours when we came to the town, situated on the Eastern ridge of a range of hills, surrounded by its terraced gardens. Before dark, we rode out of town to the field where they say the shepherds saw the star. It is a fenced piece of ground with a cave in it, in which, strangely enough, they put the shepherds. The story is absurd, but somewhere in those fields we rode through the shepherds must have been. As we passed, the shepherds were still 'keeping their watch over their flocks,' or 'leading them home to fold.'”
Phillips Brooks must have been deeply moved as the thought about the birth of Jesus when he toured the hills of Bethlehem that Christmas night in 1865. Perhaps the emotion he felt was one of the main influences in fixing within him the determination to live for others in the spirit of Jesus. Perhaps that night helped fix his purpose so that years later in a service memorializing his death, Rabbi Gustav Gottlieb could say, “He was not bishop of his church only, but he was my bishop also by divine calling and consecration.” And Lyman Abbott, himself a famous religious leader could say: “We have been wondering, Is there any God? And we have been reaching out in nature to find evidence of him. And suddenly there appears before us the divine shining in one great illuminated nature, one that is full of God; and while we were looking in his eyes and he was looking into ours, then did God come again; then did we realize that God is; then did we feel that God speaks to the heart of man through the heart of man.”
There were many other influences on the life of Phillips Brooks in addition to those hours in Bethlehem. But we do know that two years after his journey to the country of Jesus' birth, Phillips Brooks wrote the carol that is now the beloved possession of men everywhere: “O Little Town of Bethlehem.”
Inspired by this carol of our time, which demonstrates that even after more than 1900 years of the Christian Era men can still respond from their inward being by the memory of the birth of a baby, we preach you a sermon in song:
The Birth of Jesus
(from a sermon by John Wycliff, 14th century)
Joseph went with Mary, that was his wife, into “Bedlehem”. They broughten an oxe and an asse with them, as men say, for this reason – Mary was great with child. Therefore she rode upon an asse; the oxe they brought for to sell, for Jews haten begging.
And Bedlehem was filled of men before they camen to the town; and so they hadden no harbor, but dwelten in a common stable, and these two beesties with them, till time came to use them.
And it fell while they were there, our lady bore her child, the which was her firste child, for him she bor and no other. And she wrapt Christe with clothis and putte him in the cratike, for she had no better place to put him in all the house.
And so, as men singen and trowen, Christ lai before an oxe and an asse. And the breath of these two beesties kept him hoot in this cold tyme.
And so men say that Christ was born at the myddil of this night, for the myddil person in the trinite loved myddil in many things.
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