Christmas Service

Christmas Day Worship
Please note:

This script cannot exactly reflect the transmission, as it was prepared before the service was broadcast. It may include editorial notes prepared by the producer, and minor spelling and other errors that were corrected before the radio broadcast.

It may contain gaps to be filled in at the time so that prayers may reflect the needs of the world, and changes may also be made at the last minute for timing reasons, or to reflect current events.

MUSIC: O come all ye faithful (ALL brass quintet)

JOHN BELL: Good morning, and a very Happy Christmas to you all. I hope that this will be a good day for you, a memorable day and a joyful day in which we are all affected and infected by God’s Christmas spirit. Today thank God, the shopping is over; some presents are opened, some are still wrapped, and many of us will be anticipating, maybe even smelling, food special to this day. But for a short while we pause to remember the reason for our celebration and the person at the heart of it.
NICK BUNDOCK/CONG: Responses into collect

The people who walked in darkness
have seen a great light.

For to us a child is born
to us a Son is given.

His name will be called
Wonderful counsellor, mighty God
the everlasting Father,
the Prince of Peace.

Glory to God in the highest
and peace to his people on earth.

Lord Jesus Christ,
your birth at Bethlehem
draws us to kneel in wonder at heaven touching earth:
accept our heartfelt praise
as we worship you,
our Saviour and our eternal God.
Amen.

JOHN BELL: I want to begin by being slightly disillusioning. Because I don’t know if we can really celebrate Christmas unless we allow ourselves to be as disillusioned as those who witnessed the first Christmas.
It seems to me that at this time of year there are three stories going around:
One story is about how Christmas is a time for consuming. We know this story. We have been besieged with it since the beginning of November when the frenzy began with shops trying to maximize sales in the face of an expected downturn in revenue. This story is about deciding how many of the twenty things your ten-year old wants is going to appear in his or her stocking. It’s about buying more food than is required just in case we run out.
It’s about using a credit card less cautiously than any other time of the year. It’s about hoping that the Christmas meal will be as happy as the television adverts presume it should be.
A second story is about Christmas being a time for children. This story is about nativity plays in which the performers are dressed in their mother’s nightie (for angels) and their father’s dressing gown (for wise men). It’s about little donkeys and a silent town called Bethlehem. It’s about snow - lots of it - and robins and a little Lord Jesus who doesn’t cry when he wakens, and a star above the stable and shepherds bringing a lamb, and everybody gathering round the manger and singing. Most of us know this story because many of us remember doing it.
Then there is a third story. It has no donkey in it, no snow, no robins, no lamb no star (at least not initially) and no silence. It’s a story about a young woman who was almost a single parent mother when the man who was her fiancé tried to end their engagement. It’s about a noisy city with people in overcrowded hotels, warm weather and a makeshift maternity unit in a back street. It’s about the risky birth of an ordinary child because…
…because if it were any other way. If it was a highly publicised birth of a celebrity baby; if people queued in the streets to get a glimpse of the boy; if flags were waved and trumpets blared, today we would be remembering a pampered hero of history, instead of the one who made the world and who chose - out of love - to slip in among us, incognito.

GILL NEWMAN: John 1:1-14
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.
There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.
He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.
And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.

MUSIC: Before the world began choir/flute

JOHN BELL: I hope that there are people listening today who don't normally go to church, and may not even believe in God. I say that because what we celebrate today is not primarily a religious event. God doesn't turn up in a church or a temple. Jesus is not born in a safe religious environment. From the moment of birth he is exposed to the world, not the Jewish world or the Christian world, but what we call the cosmos.
He becomes part of the fabric of the universe; he becomes flesh of our flesh and bone of our bone. And if some should say - this is totally illogical, then...then...that's the right thing to say. It is totally illogical. God is not rational. We are not dealing with reason. We are dealing with the mystery of love.

MUSIC: Of the Father’s heart begotten choir/all

JOHN BELL: One of my earliest memories of Christmas is from when I would be no more than four. The church I went to had great Christmas parties, to which Santa Claus always came, and the boys often got wooden toys which a man in the congregation made and painted every year.
But before the presents there were games and songs. One of them began:
When I was a lady, a lady a lady,
When I was a lady, a lady was I
It was this way and that way and this way and that way

….and what we would do - boys and girls - was pretend we were ladies and curtsey to each other. Verse two was, ‘When I was a gentleman.’ Then we had to doff our hats to one another.
Subsequent verses had us pretend to be nursemaids, farmers, gorillas even.
We loved that game. Because children love make-believe - being that which they are not, acting in a way which is not perceived as normal.
It strikes me that this affection for doing the unusual thing which is clearly in children is also in the heart of God. Because one way of looking at Christmas is to see it as the time when God plays a great game of ‘ What if’…in the course of which people who know little of God get blessed,
and those who think they know everything about God get distressed.
God says to himself,
‘What if I don’t arrive on earth in a chariot of fire accompanied by a phalanx of angels?
….What if I just get born as a baby?
‘What if I don’t become the son of a famous family?.. .What if I end up as the child of an insignificant couple who almost divorce before they get married?
‘What if I don’t make my birthplace the state building during a major religious festival where everyone is singing hymns?…..What if I end up in the outhouse of a tuppeny ha’penny b & b in a backwater where people are moaning about the tax they have to pay
‘What if I don’t give my first audience to the highest politicians in the land, the captains of industry, the landed gentry?…What if the first people to see me are country labourers?…and maybe some old men from a suspected country like Iran?
‘What if I don’t grow up in a secure home…. What if I become a refugee within a year or so of my birth?’
But the difference between God and children which still can shock us is that God doesn’t just play at make believe. He makes the unbelievable happen.

JOHN BELL: Mirabile dictu sung by The Daily Service Singers

MUSIC Mirabile dictu (choir, bells, piano)

NICK BUNDOCK Prayer
Welcome all wonders in one sight!
Eternity shut in a span.
Summer in winter, day in night,
heaven in earth and God in man.

Great little one whose all-embracing birth
Brings earth to heaven, stoops heaven to earth.

Lord Jesus Christ,
your birth draws us to kneel in wonder:
accept our heartfelt praise
as we worship you,
our saviour and our God.
Amen.

JOHN BELL Where I grew up, we didn’t talk much about Mary. Being Protestants we thought she was a Catholic.
Such thoughts as we did have about her were inevitably wide of the mark. We believed that she was always somewhere between 14 and 18, even when her son was 30. We imagined that blue was her favourite colour, and that when she was eight months pregnant she was quite happy to swing her leg over a donkey while it stumbled through a rocky landscape.
And as for her nature… oh she was quiet, meek, mild, wouldn’t say boo to a goose, would never raise her voice in anger or scream or shout out when she was in labour, never contradict her husband and be constantly praying.
Of course, there’s nothing in the Bible to substantiate that such a docile creature was the mother of Our Lord, just as there’s nothing in the Bible to say that as a baby Jesus never cried. It’s amazing how the lyrics of carols and the drawings on Christmas cards can distract us from the truth.
The truth is that Mary was a risk taker. She said Yes to God. And people who say yes to God are never in for an easy ride. God never promises a risk-free future. God invites us to participate in an interesting future with no guarantees.
It is only in recent years, that archaeologists and sociologists have helped us discover exactly how different 1st century Palestine was from 21st century Britain, at least as far as giving birth to a child is concerned. When Jesus was born, one in three children died at birth and one in four women died in the process of giving birth. There were no epidurals, no safe caesarian sections.
It is into this world that God comes, a world of risk, not of security, and Mary agrees to let that happen. So while we rightly sing of her delight when Jesus was born, we might also remember the dread that would be hers, as it still is with women all over the world when the birthing day draws near.
HANNAH COMBE:
What is this seed which God has planted,
unasked, uncompromised, unseen?
Unknown to everyone but angels
this gift has been.
And who am I to be the mother,
to give my womb at heaven’s behest,
to let my body be the hospice
and God the guest?
Oh what a risk in such a nation,
in such a place, at such a time,
to come to people in transition
and yet in prime.
What if the baby I embody
should enter life deformed or strange,
unable to be seen as normal,
to thrive or change?
What if the world, for spite, ignores him,
and friends keep back and parents scorn,
and every fear of every woman
in me is born?
Still, I will want and love and hold him,
his cry attend, his smile applaud.
I’ll mother him as any mortal,
and just like God.
(from Cloth for the Cradle, © 1999 WGRG, Iona Community)

JOHN BELL We need to think of Mary as more than meek. We need to think of her as a risk-taker and also a prophet. We can deduce that from a very sturdy poem which is attributed to her. It is commonly called the Magnificat. It is a manifesto of how God intends to disrupt a decadent status quo, and turn the tables on privilege and presumption in order that every child and every woman and every man is valued. Mary doesn’t mince her words. God is for real, not just for appearances.

HANNAH COMBE: Luke 1:46-55
And Mary said,
‘My soul magnifies the Lord,
and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour,
for he has looked with favour on the lowliness of his servant.
Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed;
for the Mighty One has done great things for me,
and holy is his name.
His mercy is for those who fear him
from generation to generation.
He has shown strength with his arm;
he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich away empty.
He has helped his servant Israel,
in remembrance of his mercy,
according to the promise he made to our ancestors,
to Abraham and to his descendants for ever.’

MUSIC O Sarah she was ninety (choir)
JOHN BELL That was the song of a buoyant Mary not mumbling a lullaby but smiling as she holds in her arms the one who is both flesh of our flesh and the heir to the kingdom of heaven. It’s time we all sung in celebration of how even unto us a boy is born.

MUSIC Unto us a boy is born
JOHN BELL I remember being in a church in Glasgow 15 years ago when adults in the congregation - all of them having left school aged 14 and none of them ever having tramped the boards, did an Advent play. There were no costumes. They just stood in their places and read.
One of the readers was an ex taxi driver and recovering alcoholic in his 70s. He was called Ron and he had a big bulbous beery nose. It got to the part in the play when the narrator said,
Then to a girl called Mary God sent an angel called Gabriel.
Old Ron stood up in the middle of the church and said, ‘ I am that angel!’ You could see the jaws of children dropping. He didn’t look like the school nativity play angels in their mother’s nighties. No. But never having seen an angel, who was to say that Old Ron didn’t best represent the fact that at Christmas God calls older people to be the midwives of the new thing that God wants done.
I think of all the misconceptions about Christmas that need to be challenged is that it is only ‘a time for the kids.’ This presumption has the twin effect of infantilizing adults regarding a festival which is also for them; and it moves the focus of Christmas from the redemption of the world to entertainment for the kindergarten.
There are no children who have any more than a passive part in the Christmas story. Jesus is a new-born baby and his cousin John is 6 months older than him. And they are in their nappies not their rompers.
Rather than a story which children do for adults, this is a story adults should do for children, because most people in the story are old. Joseph is commonly presumed to be older than Mary, and doesn’t seem to be around when Jesus begins his ministry at the age of 30. The shepherds would long since have gone through puberty if they were looking after sheep at night in the face of wild animals or thieves. The wise men wouldn’t be wise unless they were old, because in these days wisdom was seen as a fruit of experience, rather than the awarding of a Ph.D when you are in your early twenties.
And almost as bookends to the story we have a pensioner couple, Zechariah and Elizabeth who begin it all as parents of John the Baptist, and two single senior citizens - Simeon and Anna who attest that the baby is indeed God come among us.
Let’s listen to the calling of older men to see the Christ child and then we’ll hear from an apprentice shepherd who might or might not have been there.

JEZ CLARKE: Luke 2:8-20
In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, ‘Do not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, who is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.’ And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying,
‘Glory to God in the highest heaven,
and on earth peace among those whom he favours!’
When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, ‘Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.’ So they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger. When they saw this, they made known what had been told them about this child; and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them. But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart. The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.
JOE BRADLEY: The Shepherd
JOHN BELL?: At the time of Jesus' birth,
shepherding was not the romantic profession
it is often presumed to be.
It meant staying awake at night
to ward off wolves or thieves.
It also meant being unable
to attend every religious service,
if there wasn’t someone else who could stand in for you to look after the sheep.

It’s therefore interesting
that the first people to hear of God's great gift
were those who would not always be in church. And to imagine what might have happened when one young shepherd had to account for his absence from one Bethlehem hillside.

JOE BRADLEY: It's kind of difficult to explain, Mr Cohen…
and I can well understand why you're angry ...
I mean to say…
I would be angry too if I were in your position.

I know I've only been working with you for a week.
But I can assure you
it's not the kind of thing I do often.
I always stay on the job.

But what I said is perfectly true…
you can ask Larry or Samuel…
admittedly, it does seem a bit incredible...

I mean there were noises in the sky…
musical noises, and we did go to the village...
just the three of us, and…
and there was a baby…
a boy…
and we weren’t drunk…
just a bit emotional.

OK… that doesn’t explain where the sheep got to.
And I know it’s highly unusual
for Goldberg the butcher to be selling lamb
at bargain prices.

But, Mr Cohen, there are some things in life more important than sheep…

No, I don’t want to go into the priesthood,
I want to be a shepherd.
But shepherds can believe in God too, can’t they?

(from Cloth for the Cradle, © 1999 WGRG, Iona Community)
MUSIC My Lord has come (Will Todd) choir

NICK BUNDOCK Prayer
O God the Son, highest and holiest,
who humbled yourself to share our birth and our death:
bring us with the shepherds
to kneel before your holy cradle,
that we may come to sing with your angels
your glorious praises in heaven;
where with the Father and the Holy Spirit you live and reign,
God, world without end.
Amen.

JOHN BELL There is an old Celtic poem which I love to read on Christmas day. No one knows who composed it. It was handed down from mother to daughter, father to son across many centuries, and was eventually put into print and translated over a hundred years ago.
[READER] This is the time of the great nativity,
Born is the son of Mary the Virgin;
The soles of God’s feet have touched the earth,
The Son of glory come down from on high.
Heaven and earth glowed to him
All hail! Let there be joy.

JOHN BELL I love that.
I love the image of God’s feet touching the earth.
I love the thought of heaven and earth glowing in welcome for Jesus.
I love it because the Christian faith celebrates that God did not simply make the earth and observe it from afar. This faith does not look on the world as a mass of sinful matter and even more sinful humanity with which no self-respecting deity would do business. The Christian faith does not proclaim a heaven afterwards as compensation
JOHN BELL: for those who have honourably survived this vale of tears. It affirms the potential in the here and now.
When God comes to earth in Jesus, everything lights up in in welcome because all is embraced by a love bigger than we can imagine, and all things are up for redemption.
It is not to the church that Jesus comes so that Christians might feel good; it is to those who don’t believe religion is for them that Jesus comes to declare that they are wanted.
It is not to bless good causes that Jesus comes; it is to indicate that money, trade, ecology, political power are as much legitimate interests of heaven as choir stalls and candlesticks.
It is not to make patronising noises to children and old folk that Jesus comes; it is to sit among those who are sick, demented, deluded, depressed that Jesus comes to share their pain.
It is not to endorse cultures of success and superiority Jesus comes, it is to enter into solidarity with the victims of earth’s powerbrokers that Jesus appears because God is never neutral in the face of injustice.
It is not to condemn those who are burdened with guilt and inadequacy that Jesus comes; it is to confirm that love and hope and forgiveness can transform us.
JOHN BELL: We are not just looking at a baby in a manger today. We are looking at the incarnation of justice and joy meant for you, meant for me, meant for ever.

MUSIC: Cloth for the cradle (keyboard, bells, flute)
John L Bell (born 1949) and Graham Maule (born 1958)
© 1987, 1997 WGRG, Iona Community, 4th floor, Savoy House, 140 Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow G2
JOHN BELL/NICK BUNDOCK Let us pray...

MUSIC: Prayer with Veni, veni chant

SPEECH On this holy day when there was no room for your Son in the inn.
Protect with your love those who have no home
and all who live in poverty… We pray for all those who work with the homeless and dispossessed, particularly in these cold winter months…
Holy God
Hear our prayer

CHOIR Veni, veni

SPEECH On this holy day Mary, in the pain of labour, brought your son to birth…
Hold in your hand all those who are in pain, distress or who are sick this day… We pray particularly for those known to us who are suffering today...
Holy God
Hear our prayer

CHOIR Veni, veni

SPEECH On this holy day the angels sang, ‘Peace to God’s people on earth…’
Strengthen those who work for peace and justice… We pray for harmony where there is war and love where there is hate… We pray for peace in the Middle East and for an end to the violence in Syria.
Holy God
Hear our prayer

CHOIR Veni, veni

SPEECH On this holy day shepherds in the field heard good tidings of joy. Give us grace to preach the Gospel of Christ’s redemption…Help us to take our place in God’s big story, to do good, to challenge evil, to share all we have been given and to use aright both our wealth and the time that remains to us for the glory of God.
Holy God
Hear our prayer

NICK BUNDOCK And now rejoicing in the presence of God here among us,
as our Saviour taught us, so we pray:

Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
Forgive us our sins
as we forgive those who sin against us.
Lead us not into temptation
but deliver us from evil.
For the kingdom, the power,
and the glory are yours
now and for ever.
Amen.

MUSIC Good Christians all rejoice (all) 2’10
John M Neale (1818-1866)
JOHN BELL Closing responses - blessing
God sent his angels from glory to bring to shepherds
the good news of Jesus’ birth.
Amen. We thank you, Lord.

You have heard his story,
the story of God’s own Son.
Amen. We thank you, Lord.

May he fill you with joy
to bring this good news to others today.
Amen. We thank you, Lord.
NICK BUNDOCK And may Christ, who by his incarnation gathered into one
things earthly and heavenly,
fill you with peace and goodwill
and make you partakers of the divine nature;
and the blessing of God Almighty,
The Father, The Son, and the Holy Spirit,
be among you and remain with you always.
Amen.

MUSIC We wish you a merry Christmas