Christmas Reflection with Canon Robin Gibbons

Gill - Animals All

25th December 2023

The themes and festivals associated with Christmas are wonderful, there is no doubt about that, nor their continual capacity to renew that childhood wonder in our rather sober adult souls. Despite what might have happened to me or the world during the year, I feel (as I hope you do) a sense of growing wonder as Christmas comes, and believe that through Christ, even the terrible problems of Gaza and other places can suddenly be fitted into prayers, thoughts and constructive projects of hope, no matter how dark it seems. Maybe that's what this Christmas brings to me as its special gift, a truth I forget, that in Christ evil and sin have really been vanquished and will never prevail, though alas the God who dwells with us, has to allow the consequences of what we do to take place, our faith is no fairy tale, but the real story of love slowly, imperceptibly, down the long ages of history, finding its way into all corners of this earth.

This Christmas as well as the humanitarian disasters in the Holy Land and elsewhere, I have been reflecting on the importance of our commitment to the wider world, our ecology, environment and other living creatures. You are I are in desperate need of waking up, of facing our own human arrogance, that for too long has equated God's blessings with a carte blanche to do as we please with anything not human. This is wrong, it is certainly not what the Scriptures mean when humanity is given stewardship of the earth, we are not lords, masters, rulers of creation, but the servants of the Most high tasked with making this earth a better place, and much as the Holy One remembers each sparrow even though they may in our sight be less than us, nevertheless the remembrance of God is about loving them and the absolute value of their lives : 'Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten by God'. (Lk 12:6)

This brings me to the nativity images themselves. We are aware, how much depends on each of us, that the messages of salvation of the birth of God-made-human, first came to the outsiders, those robber shepherds, the priest-magi from Persia and further afield, the event caused death by Herod of the innocents and the exile of the Holy Family, but before all of these around the story are the animals, those sheep in the fields that heard the angels song of friendship, the deep and ancient tradition of the ox and ass that Isaiah tells us know their maker before anybody else. Here is the deep humility and childhood wonder of this event laid bare, and we ignore it at our peril, for all creation rejoices in the coming of the King, and all creation will be with Him in glory. The animals all, do not sin, have no guile, they are as they are, and trust ( alas for them) those who tame them for their own purposes. It is no surprise that some of the ancient carols place the animals at the crib before us all, and that is right, the littlest of the little ones need that warmth and love of the saviour as well. After all as one of the earliest carols ( 5th c Egyptian) puts it , it is hope, joy that comes from God to us all : '"Light shone from above… to us the word of faith, and he heralded us the song of the angels, Glory to God in the highest, to God our Saviour, hallelujah."

I end with a translation of one of our oldest carols, the 12th c French Animals Carol, called 'The Friendly Animals' and leave you to go with them to the Christ Child, and there recapture your promise to love and cherish all that he loves. May you all be richly blessed with a peace that the world cannot give this holy season.

Jesus our brother, strong and good,

Was humbly born in a stable rude,

And the friendly beasts around Him stood,

Jesus our brother, strong and good.

"I," said the donkey, shaggy and brown,

"I carried His mother up hill and down

I carried her safely to Bethlehem town;

I," said the donkey, shaggy and brown.

"I," said the cow all white and red,

"I gave Him my manger for His bed,

I gave Him my hay to pillow His head;

"I," said the cow, all white and red.

"I, said the sheep with curly horn,

"I gave Him my wool for His blanket warm,

He wore my coat on Christmas morn;

"I," said the sheep, with curly horn.

"I," said the dove, from the rafters high,

"Cooed Him to sleep that He should not cry.

We cooed Him to sleep, my mate and I;

"I," said the dove, from the rafters high.

And every beast, by some good spell,

In the stable dark was glad to tell

Of the gift he gave Immanuel;

The gift he gave Immanuel.