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Fourth Sunday in Advent
20th December 2009

"Sealed with a Kiss"

Eight years ago, Malcolm and I attended our first Infant Nativity as parents at Aidan's School. He was then just four and a half and he was cast as a Lantern. I have often regretted the fact that I did not take a photograph of him in his lantern costume.

The show was a lively musical and concerned a robin who went all the way to Bethlehem to sing to baby Jesus. Along the way, he fell into company with various creatures who went with him, and it ended with a rousing song about them all singing in their different way: barking, mooing, bleating and so on in which everyone joined in. I remember watching Aidan singing - like all the infants - rather loud but with absolute enthusiasm, his little head bobbing up and down with the high notes.

There were many more school shows to come, but the Robin's Singalong Christmas holds a special place in my memories. It all seemed to come together so well: music, singing, acting, costumes, atmosphere and lights.

Aidan has now grown older and it is only in hindsight that I recognise the significance of the memories of that Nativity and other events when he was small, and understand something of how the passing of time is so manifest in our early years of life and less significant when change is less obvious. I may have no photograph or footage of that Nativity, but it is firmly fixed among the pictures in my mind, and I sometimes find myself humming the big song. Come on everyone, come along, join in with my Christmas song, sing it for the baby born today.

As we honour the Mother of Jesus today, we should remember that for her too, and her husband Joseph, there would have been memories of the significant stages of his life; it wasn't all anticipation of the cross. And there is a marvellous verse in the Gospel of Luke which says how, when she observed how the shepherds worshipped the child she "treasured all these things, and pondered them in her heart".

What we remember at this time of year is that Jesus really was born of a woman and into a family. A young women, probably a very young woman, called to carry in her own body the growing incarnate son of God. In my favourite carol, In the Bleak Midwinter, Christina Rosetti writes:

"Angels and Archangels might have gathered there;
cherubim and seraphim thronged the air,
but his mother only, in her maiden bliss,
worshipped the beloved with a kiss".

That simple gesture of devotion, commitment, the sealing of the bond between mother and child is so vital a step into parenthood - parenthood that can often be complex and challenging, but must always be loving and committed and sometimes of course, is not.

Today (at St. Paul's) we will welcome a child whose parents are bringing him for Baptism. This is a very special moment in his life and something his parents and Godparents will remember. This is the time when a child who has been kissed and embraced by his mother and father and the wider family is brought to God to receive as it were his kiss, the mark of the cross in oil, the bathing with water. We pray that this child will have a long and happy life with many blessings; we cannot prevent the fact that there will be sadness and sufferings too. But this too is a moment to treasure, a moment that helps us in the long process of defining amid the chaos of life who we are, what we believe, where we stand and how we matter.

There can be no doubt that Mary's son grew up to change the world, albeit only by yielding himself to its cruelty and evil in order to triumph over them. But it all began with a young woman, her acceptance of God's child and her sealing of that promise and commitment, with a kiss.

Amen

© PCC St Martin's and St Paul's Canterbury 2008 - 2009