Family Gathering – Christmas

Oxford,

18 December 1975

...I thought that I have spared you a sermon this morning, and that you should be grateful for this and now Tatiana Savelievna is a sort of prompting me to say something... A parish meeting of the sort we are having now is really the gathering of a family; and at this time of the year in the context of Christmas coming, particularly in terms of Western festivities one feels that a family gathering is something so intimate, so warm and so lovely. And yet, in the same context of Christmas, of the Incarnation of the Son of God, Christmas seems to be so far from a lovely gathering... Can you imagine what happened on that night? The Mother of God was travelling to Bethleem, with Joseph and expecting Her Child to be born soon, almost immediately. And all around there were families, gathered in their homes. They were warm, they were cosy, they were happy to be together, they were happy that there were no intruders; and of a sudden someone knocks at the door, and they look out; there is a drought; and outside in the darkness there are two strangers who ask for hospitality. And the door slammed in their face because a family is gathered, because it is comfortable, warm to be together, because strangers are superfluous. And the two continue their way; and knock at one door after the other, and again and again the door opens to be slammed in their face... When we think of this, doesn't it dive us a n o t h e r impression of the loveliness and of the dangers of this family gathering? How e x c l u s i v e it can be, how much rejection of the stranger there can be in the joy of a gathered family?! I (?) happen on Christmas day; it is not every beggar who ring a bell is welcome in the name of Christ, it is not anyone coming from the cold outside who is received with open arms by a family gathered (a)round the Christmas tree, round a dinner table; there was a time when Christians when they gathered left at the head of the table an empty place with a bread for Christ to come as He did come on the evening of His Resurrection. And if He had not come as He had done in the Upper Room, this bread was shared... Is there an empty place at our table? But if someone had come – a traveller, a tramp, a stranger – he was taken to the place of Christ; he was seated in the seat of Christ; he was an icon of Christ, he was treated as such... Now, when we have a family gathering – a Christmas dinner, a Christmas tree – is there an empty space for a n у о n e to come? I know of a man, quite disreputable in other ways, with whom we spoke of that years ago; he was a very rough, hard man. But this story of Christ's Nativity impressed him so much, that homelessness of God when He becomes man impressed him so much that a few days later, when Christmas came, he went around and collected all the tramps he could find in the street. And he gave them together with his wife one whole day of warmth and of food. To whom of us has it ever occurred? And if instead of speaking (?) of our families we think of our parish – how often the happier our family, our parish family, the more close it is, the more closed it is also... How often a parochial family which has grown to feel at one, the members of which feel happy with one another, become more and more (entrenched?) and unwelcoming (?); how often the one that comes from outside who has not yet been introduced into the inner circle is a s t r a n g e r, a superfluous, that s h o u l d n ' t be there... If he has courage enough to stay, he may gradually be accepted, but the cost to him is very great... So, in these days when Christmas is near, when we have this sense of joy that we a r e a family, that we are close to one another, that each of us has got a face, each of us has got a n a m e, each of us is k n o w n – let us look round and see who around us has n о face, no name – and ask ourselves, whether he should not have a place in our midst, whether we are the only people for whom he has no face and no name? Whether we are not the very people because of Christ's homelessness, because of what we have s e e n on that night in the cosy, warm and happy families of Bethleem – was (this) not for us to be capable of opening hearts, minds and our own society of people who love one another – to the strangers...