Special Item

WHERE IS GOD?
CHRISTMAS 2007

It's nearly Christmas and Mum is at her wits' end. Thomas aged 10 and Robert aged 8  have been terrorising the neighbourhood  for months. They are in line for ASBOs. If anything goes missing, any car scratched any garden vandalised, any window broken, well yes,. It's probably Robert and Thomas. One day Mum hears that there's a new Minister  at the Chapel down the road who has a way with difficult kids. She rings him up and explains: “ I know it's Christmas but could you possibly have a word with my lads. They're driving the whole neighbourhood round the bend.” “Right” says the minister, “Send them along separately and I'll sort them out.”

So Robert goes round to the Manse in the morning and gets a warm welcome and a coke. After a bit of awkward small talk the Minister leans forward and says very quietly. “Robert, where is God?”
Robert looks at him with his mouth open but says nothing. The minister tries again, “Robert, tell me, where is God?” Robert looks guilty and terrified. This is worse than the Police Sergeant. The Minister becomes impatient and points his finger at the boy and says even more loudly, “Robert where is God?” Robert can stand it no more. He jumps up, rushes out of the Manse and runs home to find Thomas. “Hell, Tom,” he pants, “We're in dead trouble. God's gone missing and they think we done it.”

Well, yes. But Where is God? That must be a question in the back the mind of any thoughtful person in 2008. But not perhaps one we want to be asked on Christmas morning. After all, Christmas for many people is the season of Make Believe or Let's Pretend. Jack and the Beanstalk, Cinderella, all those jolly pantos when we pretend that the Panto Dame is a woman - even if she has to shave twice a day, and the Principal Boy is a macho lad - even if he has improbably slender ankles and an 18” waist and more besides. And there's Father Christmas and angel choirs and turbaned Kings looming on camels out of the darkness to leave fabulous gifts  in a cowshed. Let's pretend. Let's close the door on our tragic world on December 23rd and not open it onto a bleak New Year until Jan 2nd. Just for one week let's light the candles and draw the curtains to shut out the night. Let's pretend God's in his Heaven and all's well with the world.
But it isn't is it? The world is in a more perilous state than it has been for 60 years. The immediate and longer future looks bleak –  financial meltdown, terrorism, poverty, disease, global warming. The lurking question for all of us is just that: Where is God?
I take it that you have  come here to this Eucharist on Christmas morning because you believe, or  half believe, or once did believe, that surrounding us in this vast universe is a Mystery we call God. This sense of a Divine Presence has haunted the human race for the whole of recorded history. For some people faith is a clear conviction, unclouded by doubt, as palpable as Mozart or Bach to a musician. The great Swiss psychologist Carl Jung was once asked if he believed in God. “No”, he replied. “I don't believe, I know.”
But for most of us it's not that clear. I am caught between two impossibilities. The world is such a dark and cruel place that it's impossible to believe in a benign Creator. But the world is such an ecstatic place, so shot through with hints of transcendent beauty and love that it's impossible not to believe in a Creator Spirit. Belsen or Mozart ? Who has the final word?
Believing is not pretending. Believing is betting your life on something and living out your belief. Like many of you – but not all of you I guess – I have bet my life on one particular answer to the question, Where is God? The God who made this vast universe, 13,000 million years of time and an abyss of space too deep for our imagination – this transcendent God has embedded himself in our human history; in our human race on this little planet earth; in Jesus of Nazareth 2000 years ago.  The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us -This Creator God has found a narrow doorway into his own world through the womb of a peasant girl in Palestine and changed the course of human history by transforming human lives. That is what the Christian Church believes – a faith you will have chance to affirm for yourself - if you wish to-  in a few minutes.                                                                    
For this transforming Spirit is a living Presence here in this crowded church on this Christmas morning. Just listen to the silence for a moment and sense The Presence.  The Risen Christ offers each one of us a transforming love which can not only change our hearts but also change our world. Yes, even change this dark bleak world. For what our world needs more than anything is not just a change of regimes, or a change of currencies, or a change of political policies. Like us it needs a change of hearts. The real miracle in Cinderella would not be the magic of the fairy Godmother who can turn a pumpkin and some mice into a coach and four. The real miracle would be a change of heart in the ugly sisters and their horrid mother. That's beyond any fairy godmother. But not beyond God.
For that is what Christmas is really about. The offer of a change of heart.  I wish all Christian people had the same resolute personal commitment to Jesus Christ that is shown by so many Muslims to the Koran..  Whatever happens to them or their enemies, they know he is on their side; they know God cannot be defeated  because he is all-powerful. But our faith is not in sheer power. It is in a transforming love which can subvert all human power; a love that can walk open eyed into the darkness knowing that this love is unconquerable. That is what the Resurrection of Jesus proclaims. However dark the world God's love is unconquerable. In the end he is always on our side. God with us. Immanuel. Here and now. In the bread and wine and in one another. Here in this moment in this place.
Julian of Norwich once wrote,
“Christ's love enfolds you as your flesh enfolds your bones. Christ's love enfolds you as your skin enfolds your flesh. Christ's love enfolds you as the air enfolds your body, breathes in your breathing and stirs in your heart.”
H is love is enfolding every one of you. That is what Bethlehem has made possible for all of us.
If we are to tackle global warming our world needs a change of heart. If we are to do something about poverty we need a change of heart. Yes. You and I need a change of heart. That's how God will rescue his world. If we will let him.
How does he do it ? Well like this. Some young friends of ours had a baby last year. We are astonished and delighted to see how that little scrap of humanity has changed her parents. As they said themselves, “The little wretch has turned our lives upside down.” They are wonderfully transformed. Gentler, kinder, less driven, much more human. What would you do I wonder if you went home and found a baby on your doorstep with a note pinned to it.
Please look after me.
 Look a bit closer and you'll see it's signed. With love from God. No wonder the angels sang at Bethlehem. That's where God is.