Homily for All-Age service on Advent 4, 2011

Old High St Stephen's, Inverness
Sunday 18 December 2011: Year B, The Fourth Sunday of Advent

All-Age Service Homily

Texts: Isaiah 9.2-7
Luke 2.1-20

In the name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen.

For a long time, some people have been predicting that we will soon have robots to help us live our lives. The science fiction fans have long predicted that we will have robots around the house to do the hoovering, tidy up after us, and help in the kitchen. A couple of years ago I saw a report from Japan, that suggested that in future robots might be used in old people's homes.

They are developing robots which look human- they have eyes, skin, and hair, and faces and mouths which move. Japan's population is set to fall rapidly in the coming decades, with fewer and fewer people of working age. The solution, therefore, might be to replace care workers with robots to look after elderly Japanese. The robot on the news report looked like an attractive Japanese young lady. It (or should I say 'she'?) looked very convincing from a distance- much better, say, than a shop window dummy- but still not quite human.

I suspect that even if the technology advances to the extent where it becomes really hard to distinguish between a robot and a human, we would most of us have qualms about leaving our aged parents in an old folks home where robots took the place of nurses. However convincing, we would know that the robots are not actually human. The human brain is the most complex thing in the universe, and the mind which inhabits it is without parallel in creation, as far as we know. The human is very, very special. Humans cannot so easily be replaced.
 
At Christmas, we hear a very human story- about a man, and his wife, and a baby born in difficult circumstances. The angels tell the shepherds that this child's birth will bring great joy: he is their saviour. And this takes us to the heart of what Christmas is all about for Christians.
 
You see, religion is part of our human attempts to make sense of life. So over the centuries, people have had visions of angels, and created holy books. They have sought meaning in rituals and meaningful stories. They have sat at the feet of wise men, prophets, sages, those whose words seemed full of wisdom. They have worshipped at shrines and holy places, built amazing buildings for worship and created wonderful art to decorate them. And they have honoured their gods by trying to live their lives by the moral codes and wisdom which their faith has developed over centuries. Christians have done this too- it is a universal human phenomenon- the search for knowledge of God.
 
Of course, God is at the centre of Christian experience. But God can be remote, or lost in the trappings of the best-intentioned religious doctrines or practices. But what is unique, I think about the God of the Bible is this God is a God is a God who is in some way like us. In the beginning, each of us was created in God's image, says the first book of the Hebrew Bible, Genesis. And then in the Christian Scriptures, the New Testament, we hear of God being created like us. With the birth of the child of Bethlehem, God puts on human flesh.
 
I think there is great wisdom and much to learn from philosophies of life and religions beyond Christianity. But everything else seems to me to lack a certain something. Like a care home nurse who is actually a robot, everything else, except the Christian story, seems to me to lack real life, human life. For there is something which moves me, in a way I can hardly put into words, about the idea that God should be born at Bethlehem, that God should put his life and fate in the hands of Joseph and Mary in a back street in Bethlehem. I am stirred by the notion that the Creator of the Universe should have lived as an asylum seeker child in Egypt. I am astounded by the idea that the source of all wisdom should choose twelve ordinary men to teach, and a few ordinary women to witness his resurrection from the dead. I am perplexed by the idea that when Pontius Pilate put Christ on trail and asked him, 'Are you the king of the Jews?' he got the answer 'My kingdom is not of this world', because Pilate had asked the one who is the king of all the solar systems and galaxies in the universe.

Other ways have wisdom truth and beauty, too, and I respect them for that. But compared to the Christian story, it's as if they are like that Japanese robot- there is something vital missing For the other gods seem to me to be not quite human. But for me, Christmas brings the human into the divine.
 
Ascription of Praise
Glory to God in highest heaven,
and on earth peace to all in whom God delights!
Amen.

Luke 2.14 (alt)

Biblical references from the Good News Bible
© 2011 Peter W Nimmo