Response

I'm addicted. Some watch their soaps, some can’t stop shopping (I personally can’t start), some worship at Old Trafford, but I'm hooked on Hugh Laurie in the American medical drama House. When I unwrap my presents on Christmas Day I'm really hoping that my devoted family, colluding with me in my addiction, will have put the final Season 8 under the tree, and that will then become my holiday devotional; bliss. In the meantime I watch old episodes, including one recently in which a man simply couldn't respond to anything – to the words of his son, the touch of his wife, no response, no reaction, nothing, until the very last minute of the episode. At the end his recovery began, but up until that point he was simply an observer.

Magi travel around the word and prostrate themselves, Mary magnifies the Lord in song, the Shepherds tell everyone, the Angels glorify, Herod murders children, Simeon prophesies salvation for humanity and pain for Mary, Anna gives thanks, and the Little Donkey dances. OK the donkey is not in all editions of the New Testament, maybe in A Shrek Christmas (NIV), but if he was there he’d have done something. That’s the point really – there aren't any observers. Actually at one point Luke tells us that Mary ponders the events of the last 24 hours in her heart, but pondering is not passivity, and as she has just given birth and been invaded by shepherds she’s allowed a break.

The Christian claim that the light of all humanity was born in Bethlehem 2000 years ago is not an invitation to simple observation or passivity. The birth of Christ demands engagement and a response; sometimes it’s a rejection. Perhaps you might argue that our national obsession with Christmas Day is an indication that we’re responding really rather well, it’s certainly fun, and I love it – except the party hats from crackers which never fit on my head. But the question that bugs me a little is ‘what are we actually responding to at the moment?’

The season of Advent emerged in the sixth century as a time of fasting and preparation so that when the Mass of Christ arrived our innermost beings would be on the right page, so that our response would be awe, not world-weariness; on earth as it is in heaven. Join us in Morning Prayer at the Abbey at 9am each weekday of Advent if this is going to help deepen your response this Christmas. Or pick up the sheet at the back of the Abbey if you’d like to pray at work or as you park the car at Cribbs Causeway (whose strap-line incidentally is currently The Joy of Shopping.)

Handel responded with his Messiah, J.S. Bach wrote his Christmas Oratorio. Something needs to be born in us.