The Angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them and they were terrified. 


First of all a very warm welcome to welcome to St Mary’s – welcome if you come every week, welcome if you only come from time to time and welcome if it’s your first time here. Whoever you are we welcome you. And let me start by encouraging you to take our leaflet home with you when you go. 

So here we are on Christmas eve.. and the question I always want to ask – “What is it you want to get out of tonight’s service? - a bit of tradition? A Christmassy atmosphere? A few familiar carols? Perhaps you’ve come to worship God? Or perhaps you’ve come to pray for someone or for something? Perhaps you remember how it used to be …

And what about me? What do I want to get out of tonight’s service? Well, I want the Angel of the Lord to come – and stand before us and for the glory of the Lord to shine around us – not much! Above all tonight I want us, I want you to be moved, to be touched by something or someone mysterious, something spiritual, something of God … 

Last Monday I did a carol service in Jules a local nursing home for people with serious mental confusion. Everything was planned and set up, but when I got there the one thing that was missing was a candle – it wouldn’t have mattered normally – you don’t need candles to pray – but we particularly wanted a candle for that service to go with a prayer about Jesus being the light of the world. So what could we do?

Well, we asked around, and a man called Peter pulled a very simple white candle out of his bag. Peter was sleeping rough in Battersea Park – actually he lives a long way away but he’d come all the way to London to see an old aunt or relative or friend who was in the nursing home –he couldn’t afford a place to sleep at London prices, so he was sleeping in the park. Now if you remember, it’s been very very cold – icy, foggy, damp- horrible. As he huddled himself up into a ball in a small shelter, he prayed “I wish I had a candle – just to give me a bit of light and warmth” – not much to ask, - and if you ask me not much warmth on a cold winter’s night. And just then a Polish man came by – he too was homeless and he too would be sleeping in the park that cold winter night – nothing unusual about that. He came over to Peter, he opened his bag, and he took out a box of simple white household candles and gave peter two of them. “Merry Christmas” he said – in broken English and then disappeared. 

A simple coincidence? Homeless people sharing something simple? A prayer answered? An angel? A messenger from God? Make your own mind up – perhaps it was all those things, for Peter it was a prayer answered without any doubt, and the polish homeless man was an angel – even if he was also a normal human being in the light of day!!

And so we used Peter’s rather special candle for our service - but which bit made the candle holy, I wondered, as I walked away? Did using it for our worship make an ordinary candle special – or did his special candle make our worship holy - I leave you to make your own mind up about that one too! It all depends on how you look at it.

The Angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them

But then a lot of life depends on how you look at it. Some shepherds saw angels in the sky singing “Glory to God” but perhaps there were other shepherds in the Bethlehem fields that night who just heard a loud noise which kept them awake and bothered the sheep. The wise men saw a star in the sky – perhaps other men – who were clever, but less wise - just saw the same old constellations – if they ever bothered to look at them at all. 

A couple of days ago the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Roman Catholic Cardinal of Westminster went on a simple pilgrimage to Bethlehem. I’m lucky enough to have been to Bethlehem many times (– and the communion wine we will be using tonight has come from Bethlehem. )
And in Bethlehem, tourists come and tourists go – through the checkpoints, down to the coach park, up the street to Manger Square – into the church of the Nativity for a quick look round at the spot where Jesus was born, and then back out again onto the coach and back to the hotel. 

But I have been on pilgrimage, and pilgrims see more – pilgrims don’t just visit the sites, they allow the sites to visit them …. They don’t just keep Christmas, they allow Christmas to keep them. They don’t just see a baby born in a stable, they allow a baby born in a stable to see them.

And so, tonight, this Christmas eve, what are you? A tourist through life, or a pilgrim? Do you just see life, live it, experience it – or do you allow life to go deeper into your soul and touch you, move you. 

Is life just work and play – business and pleasure – slog and gratification? Or do you allow yourselves to be touched by emotions, or spirituality, or even by God. And where does that happen? Where does God break into your life? What stories, when you hear them, What people when you read about them, What events when you see them, make you cry, or laugh, or smile or even hurt deep inside? Where is it that you allow life to live in you rather than just living through life? Where is it in your world that you become a pilgrim?

And tonight, If you were a shepherd watching over your flock by night, would you be able to see Christmas angels in the sky and hear their message of good news, or would you just roll over, pour yourself another cup of coffee and curse the sheep?

Can you see angels when they shout out in front of you and cry “Gloria? 

The Rev'd Paul Kennington