A Sermon preached at Midnight Mass 2012
Our English word “play” seems to be linked to the Middle Dutch pleien,
meaning to dance, to leap for joy, to rejoice. The Latin word ludo, I play,
presents itself in fool’s clothing, in our word ludicrous, which means
pertaining to play, frivolous, witty, laughably absurd. This midnight
celebration is of an event that is manifestly ludicrous. It is a joke. The
prophet Isaiah desired God to rend the heavens and come down and
playfully God did just that; not in the splendour, the awesome majesty
that the prophet desired, but by opening the heavens to angelic
messengers and by being born in the most humble circumstances. This
event lends itself to play, playfulness and plays. The modern nativity
play, in school or church, remains a delight, a gloss upon the Christmas
story in which we find tinselled and winged angels robed in white,
shepherds still in tea towels, though dressing gowns seem out of fashion,
innkeeper, innkeeper’s wife, innkeeper’s boy, and, condensing the
liturgical cycle, kings and pages and thundering Herod, and the chief
priests and scribes of the people, and pretty much anyone else you can
think of, and a few that you wouldn’t have. A play, in the sense of a
drama, may also be something witty and absurd. We suspend our
disbelief to enter into the drama.
Christmas plays found their place in the medieval liturgy, being called
Officium Pastorum, the Shepherd’s Office. The preparations were few.
A crib behind the altar, covered by a curtain. An image of the Virgin.
Vestments did for costumes. Five canons representing the shepherds
advance through the dark nave towards the great west door of the choir
screen. A choir boy in similitudinem angeli is perched in excelso, on the
choir screen, and sings to them of good tidings. Others in voltis ecclesiae
take up the chant, Gloria in excelsis. They advance through the choir,
singing a joyful hymn, heading for the crib. Two clerics, perhaps in
minor orders, quasi obstetrices, representing the midwives, intercept
them asking who they are seeking in a sung dialogue which expands into
a hymn, in which the shepherds adore the Christ-child.
I don’t suppose you recall there being any midwives in Luke’s account of
the birth. They appear in the so-called Protevangelium of James when
Joseph goes to find “a midwife of the Hebrews in the country of
Bethlehem” and it is these midwives who confirm Mary’s virginity. They
are found again in the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew in which one Zelomi
believes, and the Other, Salome, does not and tests Mary’s virginity; the
hand that touches the Virgin withers but is healed by touching the
swaddling cloth. These apocryphal books, known to medieval scholars,
contributed to popular religion and to art but not to theology, not to the
doctrine of God incarnate. There is a playfulness in these stories, an
imaginative introduction of characters representing belief and unbelief,
wisdom and foolishness. And Zelomi/Salome are in a way one person
representing our two approaches to questions of belief, our desire for faith
and our incredulity.
Play, real play, is something we undertake without necessity. Countless
children will play later this morning with dolls and cars and Lego, and
will probably also play on electronic devices. “Play with” is almost
certainly to be preferred to “play on”! Play is full of meaning, and may
have its own rules that differ from the usual rules of life; those who play
together must follow these rules if the game is to be meaningful, but play
is not work. It produces nothing of necessity. There is a strand of play
throughout scripture, divine play. It is not a strong thread, but it is there
especially in the wisdom literature, in the proverbs and wise sayings.
Wisdom plays before God and Wisdom is a manifestation of God.
Play is not a uniquely human characteristic — you need only watch the
squirrels playing in the churchyard — but it is a particular feature of
childhood. Another of the infancy narratives has Jesus as a child walking
on water on a rainy day and also shaping clay into sparrows and having
them fly around. That delightful poet Francis Thompson addressing
Little Jesus asks him:
Hadst thou ever any toys,
Like us little girls and boys?
And dist Thou play in Heaven with all
The angels that were not too tall,
With stars for marbles? Did the things
Play Can you see me? through their wings?
It is ludicrous. We have so much to worry about. Jobs, pensions, illness,
benefit cuts, Europe, bankers, child abuse, gun crime, rain and floods.
The angels tell us that there can be peace and good will. The child Jesus,
at his mother’s breast, invites us to return to the freshness of childhood, to
a time when everything was possible. The child Jesus encourages in us
the loss of self that is found in playing. The child Jesus urges us to sing,
to process, to dance, to laugh and smile, and to greet one another joyfully.
It is ludicrous, laughably absurd, that we should based anything at all on
the birth of a baby so long ago and in such odd circumstances but again
and again its very absurdity touches us. How can this be God? And yet it
is.