MIDNIGHT MASS
24 December 2018, 11.30pm
www.ssaviours.org
I’m sure you didn’t come to Midnight Mass tonight expecting to hear the word ‘hyper-arousal’ Not least in the sermon. But before you get too excited, I ought to point out that it is the technical term for what we might otherwise call our inbuilt instinct of fight-or-flight. Hyper-arousal is that physiological and biological response in humans and other animals to acute stress and danger; the natural need for us to escape those things which have the potential to harm us.
It's been a crucial feature in our evolutionary survival in aeons past, and its there in each of us – even tonight. Sitting there. It’s part of who we are. I experienced it just a little earlier today actually – when I made a foolhardy trip to a local supermarket at lunchtime. It was as much as I could do to not turn around and run screaming through the car park, but we needed limes for the gin so my mission was of the greatest importance so I bravely stuck with it!
Silly or serious, I’m sure we can all think of situations, when we have had to weigh up the choice of fight or flight. And the things we have subsequently escaped from.
‘Escaping from….’ is a common theme in our human experience, whether physically or psychologically. We can easily list the experience of millions who have been through disasters of one kind of another, whether in the natural world or through inhuman action of others. Tonight, for the people of Indonesia their very real escape is from the Tsunami following the eruption of Krakatau – and who knows how many invisible yet powerful tsunamis are faced by those of us gathered here….those things which scare us, threaten to overwhelm us and make us want to run.
When the need to escape works purely on a psychological level it is harder to spot. Those of us of a certain age can remember watching TV on Boxing Day and every other advertisement being for Thomas Cook or some other travel agent offering the promise of sun, instead of miserable grey skies; and we all knew when the DFS sale started!! And actually when you think about it a lot of what we watch on TV, especially over the Christmas period, is about escape – whether it’s The Wizard of Oz, Watership Down or even The Sound of Music! (I haven’t noticed when it’s on, but it will be there in the schedule somewhere!)
Of course our collective human experience proves that each and every one of us has the potential to use almost anything as a means of escape from the realities we want to avoid: whether its drugs, sex, alcohol, food, excluding others, or religion. Ironically, we might also add Christmas to that list. We all want the recipe for ‘a perfect Christmas’ that has all the trimmings of turkey, tinsel and goodwill without the usual cocktail of tension, overspending and overindulgence. But if Christmas does become just another escape, that’s profoundly ironic because in reality Christmas is the exact opposite.
Whereas our natural instinct is often to escape or flee, God’s response is to meet the faults, fears and frailties of our human experience head on. Christmas is the supreme reminder that God doesn’t chose flight – but FIGHT. And the even greater irony is that he does so in the weak vulnerability of the child of Bethlehem. The message of the angel to Mary and to the shepherds is ‘Fear not!’ in other words ‘no, do not run away’.
We are here this evening – in fact the only reason this church is here and that the Christian faith exists at all - because of the promise of Emmanuel….the incredible and overwhelming truth that when every part of us wants to run away and hide, when every fibre and every instinct pushes us to flee and disappear - God moves in the completely opposite direction and comes to stand beside us. God enters human life in the child Jesus, and faces all the things we would flee from, so that we might face them too.
So there you have it. Hyper-arousal. Flight or fight.
In a moment we are going to stand and say the Creed. For some of you there will be things in it you maybe don’t believe – or don’t understand - or have not really thought about. Well don’t worry about any of that tonight. Just be conscious that you are standing. Standing firm and standing tall. And that because of Christmas, because God comes into the mess and tangle of human life in Jesus, you are not standing alone. Fear not. Do not run away. God is with you.
And later in the service, at communion – please come forward to receive the bread and wine or a blessing. Even if you’ve never done so before, or haven’t for a very long time.
Fear not. Do not run away. What ever you face, and whatever you fear….God is with you.
Amen.