Diocese of Chichester

Some people think of Roman fashion as chic beyond words, the envy of the world. But we have evidence from Darlington in County Durham, where it’s jolly cold in winter, that 3^rd century Roman soldiers wore thick woolly socks with their sandals, to keep their feet warm.And there’s a letter from a proud mum in Gaul to her son in the army, saying, ‘I do hope you got those nice woolly socks I sent you for your birthday’.How embarrassing!

These very human details come to mind when I hear the words read just now from the prophet Isaiah: ‘For all the boots of the tramping warriors and all the garments rolled in blood shall be burned as fuel for the fire’.

It’s a strange statement that no doubt has its origin in the conventions of warfare that belong to an age long before the birth of Jesus Christ. It speaks to us about how warriors have tramped their way across the history of the human race, and do so still today, leaving behind the scars of death and destruction, sowing the seeds of hatred and revenge.

And no small part of the tragedy of those who wear the boots and shed the blood is that they also have a personal story to tell: the story of a mum that loves them and fears for them; the story of a wife and child of their own; the story of education interrupted, peace of mind traumatised, friendships lost for ever.The politics of hatred is as damaging to its conscripted perpetrators as it is to their victims.

The warriors of oppression march from the Old Testament onto the pages of St Luke’s gospel.They are the Roman legions that occupy first century Palestine when Augustus is Emperor.They impose savage government on a proud and headstrong people, and in doing so they unintentionally fulfil the prophetic language and meditations in the Old Testament, especially in Isaiah.

Isaiah is not a fortune teller.He does not read palms or tea leaves.But he does observe human nature and he locates it in the fragile and mysterious context of how we use and misuse the freewill that God has given to us, on trust.

Isaiah observes that God acts in ways we cannot predict, surprising us with bewildering excess. We hope to be happy: God promises us perfection.We fear getting old and dying: God promises us divine life, being like God. We wonder what God is like: he takes flesh in order to show us his love, to show us himself.

What Isaiah observes is that God uses simple and profound human experiences that are familiar to us, in order to show us something beyond our comprehension.

‘A child has been born for us,’ says Isaiah. This is something indefinable known to any parent or grandparent: the astonishment of new life in the vulnerable beauty of a tiny child.Here is a moment in which we can glimpse something miraculous, something that in the Christian tradition we call the image of God.It’s the guarantee of uniqueness and dignity in every human person.

This is the kind of experience that God will use to show us himself.It is astonishing, excessive, incomprehensible.It is, says Isaiah, like the day of Midian.

Do you remember the story of the day of Midian?Do you remember Gideon, the best army commander of his day?Do you remember how he bartered with God: ‘Give me a sign, and I’ll do what you tell me’? He got the sign, and God told him to reduce his army, the boots of warriors, from a hundred and thirty-two thousand to 300.Gideon did that, and the Midian army fled when the trumpets of God were sounded.It was astonishing, indefinable, excessive.And the lesson in that story is this: the authority of God in the reign of the Prince of Peace is not established by the march of warriors: it is the astonishing, indefinable, excessive work of divine love.

The human race, rich and poor alike, is not redeemed by government policy, economic power, or the progress of technology. These things do not guarantee peace: indeed they are often the instruments of war and misery. No, we are redeemed by the astonishing, excessive, and indefinable law of divine love that works transformatively within human relationships.This law consumes evil, hatred, and self-interest, just as purifying fire consumes garments rolled in blood.In our human nature Jesus Christ, God made man, re-sets our damaging patterns of behaviour and invites us into a different way of being fully ourselves.

God is born as a vulnerable child, like us, into the endless cycle of hatred and revenge so that he can say to us, ‘Here is love in exchange for fear; here is forgiveness in exchange for anger; here is my life in exchange for your death’.

And how will you respond?Well, back to the woolly socks.We have a tradition that on this night we hang up a woolly sock, a stocking, in the expectation that it will be filled with gifts the next morning.

Across the world tonight, expectations are deep and urgent.They include the longing for peace with justice; the demand for tolerance and religious freedom; the sobbing hearts of the bereaved and the despair of the homeless, the refugee and the asylum seeker; the bewilderment of youthfulness brimming with desire for life and dissatisfied with the online substitute.And just as important are the expectations of the people we love, our family, our friends and neighbours.

Into this deep pocket of longing God gives us the eternal gift of himself, in his Son, Jesus Christ.He can sustain in you the vision of your best self, the vision of a world redeemed, the vision of heaven regained.God’s gift of himself is also the gift of a new song, music that encompasses the span of every emotion and lifts our hearts to heaven, so that in harmony with the mighty army of angels, we can overwhelm the discordant noise of trampling warriors to proclaim, ‘Glory to God in the highest, and peace to his people on earth’.