As we prepare to celebrate the birth of Jesus, the Cathedral becomes a place brimming with expectation.
In our new blog series, our Dean and residentiary canons share their own thoughts on what Advent, Christmas and Epiphany mean to them - moments of hope, music, and meaning that shape the life of the Cathedral.
Here, our Dean, The Very Reverend Dr Edward Dowler, reflects on the significance of Christmas Day, the Nativity story and its enduring appeal.
One of the things that people very regularly tell me and other clergy at this time of year is that ‘you must be very busy’.
And here at Chichester Cathedral, we are indeed busy throughout each December with a large number of carol services and similar events. It could all become somewhat repetitive – if I’m honest it sometimes does. And yet this particular story of the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem manages to bear multiple retellings each year in countless carol services, nativity plays, crib scenes and so on? What is it that proves so enduringly attractive even in a society that is often referred to as ‘post-Christian’? I’d like to suggest two things.
First of all I think the Christmas story is attractive because it’s so inclusive. That word is one that may perhaps be over-used. But none the less, the story of Jesus’s birth is an ultimately inclusive one.
There’s a wonderful painting by Botticelli entitled The Mystical Nativity (1500). It shows the very lowly crib scene with Jesus, Mary and Joseph in a stable. All around them are angels, some of them dancing for joy above the stable; some helping people to look in at the crib; others embracing human beings at the bottom of the picture. And there are animals, the ox and the donkey who, unlike the angels, cannot dance or give voice to articulate praise, but who none the less give their own kind of steady and silent witness. The point made is that all levels of being from angels to human beings to animals are in it together to celebrate Christ’s birth.
There’s a place in the scene for all of us: whoever we are, drawn by the power of the Christ child who brings us all together.
The Dean of Chichester, The Very Reverend Dr Edward Dowler
Similarly, in the Christmas story in the Bible there are people of all ages. They range from the baby Jesus lying in a manger to the elderly couple Simeon and Anna who greet him at his presentation in the temple. They include rich and poor: humble shepherds coming from neighbouring fields, but also wise men in exotic robes bearing sumptuous gifts. People come from near and far: close neighbours and foreign visitors. In a fragmented and broken world, all are united in one single space as earth is united with heaven: God’s realm with our own. There’s a place in the scene for all of us: whoever we are, drawn by the power of the Christ child who brings us all together.
Secondly, I think the Christmas story has an enduring appeal because it is about a world that is re-enchanted.
Go back 500 years and further, to the medieval period. It often gets slated as a time that was backward and obtuse but that is so simplistic. For our medieval forbears had a much stronger sense than we do now that the world is enchanted. For them, when you looked around, for example at the sky, or a landscape or the face of another human being, you can see in it a wonderful sign of God which points to God and is lit up with God’s radiance.
More modern philosophers have talked about the things we experience from day to day as ‘brute facts’ that just are there. But the Christmas story challenges that whole way of looking at the world. It’s an enchanted story in which there are no brute fact. Different features continually point beyond themselves: the star points the way to Jesus; the night sky lights up with angels; the manger where Jesus is laid becomes a source of light and power. The gifts that the wise men bring disclose deeper meanings. Everything is with grace, significance, enchantment. Everything points to God – the source of all the wonder of the universe.
May we receive these gifts again at Christmas. In this inclusive story with all of its different characters, may we find our own place. And may we become more alive to the enchantment of all that is around us, and that leads us towards God not just at Christmas, but in every moment.