Once again.

I had considered skipping Christmas this year because it presents what has proved to be pretty much false hope. And yet we drag it out every year. And yet, there is certainly much beauty in its music and imagery. And yet, without it, events might have been even worse. Besides, without Christmas and its coincidental Santa Claus, would my parents have ever spent the princely sum of $24, if I remember correctly, to give me a chemistry set?

So, I am up before -6:30, well before sunrise, to listen to BBC World Service broadcast Eric Milner-White's Festival of Lessons and Carols. It is a singularly poignant celebration this year, the centennial of the end of the war to end wars. Milner-White had just been released from the Army. Small wars smoulder around the globe this morning as I sit in my cozy home amidst the firs, the stock market is teetering, the US is 'led' by an idiot who is casting aside all ties to sanity, and Russia, having survived communism, has a new Czar who seems to be seeking an empire.  I am reminded of the first Christmas of the Great War. The troops had been told that they would be home by Christmas. But they were not home, they were freezing in trenches trenches dug into northern France. The troops, not yet adjusted to total war, am insanity such as the world had never before seen, and certainly not expecting to spend nearly four more years in the mud and the blood, stopped shooting each other for a day, and sang carols, played a bit of football, smoke cigarettes together. Their commanders responded with court-marshals and threats of executions. There would be a small attempt at such a truce in 1915, but by 1916 the armies of Christian Europe had pretty much given up on the rule of the Prince of Peace.

Much of the current world turmoil, especially the immigration and Brexit turmoils in Great Britain, can be traced to events and decisions made during that war and the treaty negotiations that followed. None of these of course will be mentioned in Chapel of King's College this Christmas Eve. The words spoken and the songs sung will recognize strife and turmoil of course. But they will also remind us that such things are timeless, as of course are hope, and joy. That joy and hope remain timeless is perhaps the biggest failure of Christianity.

Having sung o come, o come,  Emmanuel for four weeks, making joyful noises about God with us, we will pack Emmanuel away for another year, the baby Jesus joining God in Heaven where he belongs so that we may get on with the affairs of Caesar. We will join with Herod in the continual slaughter of the innocents.

What is remarkable about the story of the birth of Jesus is that it is meek and lowly. Gods are supposed to strike people dead with lightning bolts, to make war with invincible hammers, to fly through the air in war chariots. God the son is the son of man. God the son is born to a poor woman in a country province of the empire. And his kingdom, if there is to be one, depends not on the work of gods but on the work of women and men who do not seek power.

Many times have I recited the boastful words of the creeds, 'he shall come again in great glory, and judge the quick and the dead.'. it being so wonderfully convenient that we have sent him into heaven to sit at the right hand of the father. But the truth is that I don't await his coming in glory, the second coming, because the first has been  such a fizzle. Great music, magnificent buildings, wonderful art, yes. But peace, not so much.

I am, however, a fool. I don't expect the first coming to take effect. But I hold onto a silly hope that it could be a possibility. So once again, I wake early on the morning of 24 December 'to go even unto Bethlehem and see this thing which is come to pass . . . .'  Hope springs eternal in the human heart, because the human heart is a very slow learner.