Sermon given at Matins on Christmas Day 2011

25th December 2011 at 11:00 am

The Reverend Andrew Tremlett, Canon of Westminster and Rector of St Margaret's

What a year 2011 has been!

Standing in the pulpit this time last year, the Abbey was in the afterglow of the historic Papal Visit, the first time the Bishop of Rome had ever been to Westminster, visiting both the Palace and the Abbey. The news had recently been announced that there was to be a Royal Wedding, and great excitement ensued. The Abbey precincts were alive with the sound of cameras snapping happily to get ‘that’ picture. We were also beginning to look forward to 2011 as the year of the King James Bible, about which I preached at this service a year ago.

Politically, we were entering a new era. The first coalition for many decades, the Conservative – Liberal partnership was still in its early days, and the partners were dancing around the issues, like newly-weds not wanting to give offence. There was even talk of the end of the economic turmoil, which had engulfed the world since 2008, being in sight.

How very different things seem just a year on.

A year ago last week, a young fruit seller by the name of Mohamed Bouazizi, died.

Or more accurately, he took his own life. "On that day Mohamed left home to go and sell his goods as usual," said his sister Samya. "But when he put them on sale, three inspectors from the council asked him for bribes. Mohamed refused to pay. They seized his goods and put them in their car. They tried to grab his scales but Mohamed refused to give them up, so they beat him," Something snapped inside the 26-year-old grocer. He went to the governor's office to ask for his goods back; the governor would not see him.

In his despair and outrage, Bouazizi then took his own life.

This was quite literally the spark which lit the fire that raged across the Middle East in 2011 and has become known as the Arab Spring. Riots and demonstrations ensued in his home Country Tunisia.

In the succeeding months, not only has the Tunisian President Ben Ali disappeared, but also Mubarak of Egypt, Gadaafi of Libya, the House of Assad is challenged in Syria. An astonishing wind of change has swept through the Middle East bringing in turn denial, resistance, repression and resignation by government after government.

And like a contagion, “uncertainty” has, for different reasons, spread across the globe. Uncertainty about the ability of European governments in the first place to manage their financial affairs, and then in time uncertainty as to whether they are fit to govern at all. The extraordinary sight of whole governments being replaced by unelected, though technocratically able, ministers to solve what is without doubt the single most pressing crisis of leadership since the Second World War.

Our own nation has not been immune, with summer riots on the streets of London, Manchester and Birmingham. And while the public may feel that there are better economic times ahead, we do well to remember that we are still spending some £400 million each day servicing our deficit, and that we are only 18 months into a five-year austerity programme to wean us off an unsustainable dependency on debt.

Nor has the Church of England emerged from this year with honour and plaudits. After the joyfully understated Royal Wedding, which put the Abbey centre-stage both nationally and globally in April, the debacle surrounding the Tented Protesters outside St Paul’s Cathedral has seen an opportunity to engage with some of the key issues of our time slip through our fingers.

Centrally the issue of fairness – Is it fair that those in our financial markets responsible for taking on toxic debt have not been held accountable? Is it fair that a very few are paid ‘telephone number’ salaries when the country at large is suffering? Instead, like a once-talented football team, we, the Church of England, has managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory and made ourselves the subject of endless headlines.

And in the midst of all that uncertainty came an acronym which has struck a chord and challenged all Christians to sit up and take notice. WWJD – What Would Jesus Do?

Imported from the United States and plastered around the Occupy London tents, WWJD is at once both simplistic and simple.

Those of us who relish the complexity of issues will no doubt dismiss ‘What Would Jesus Do?’ as a simplistic reduction of the issues to sound-bites, quick and easy solutions which on reflection do not stand up to scrutiny. The clarity of the phrase makes us uncomfortable not least because some of the responses might include harsh words about people like ourselves.

But isn’t there a place for simple, honest answers to difficult questions? Are we not right to be suspicious when the apparently obvious is for some reason rather too difficult. On the issue of Fairness, isn’t there a case for a return to the sort of Philanthropy evident in the 19th Century? On the Church, would Jesus have been with the money-lenders who paid for the restoration of St Paul’s, or would he have pitched his own tent?

The honest truth is that we live in a time of particular uncertainty and, like all human beings, we look for an answer, a solution, something familiar, something that will make everything “alright”. In part, this is why many of us long for the familiarity of the King James Bible, a nostalgia for when things were ‘in order’, despite the fact that the translation was borne out of a deep division within the Church.

But if we are looking for a reassuring figure, a comforter to make things “alright”, we should never look to Jesus. It was never so with him.

Joseph wished to do ‘the right thing’, to put Mary away privily, but the angel had other ideas.

The Magi expected a king in a palace and found a babe lying in the stable.

The Palm Sunday crowds expected a conquering hero and instead got a fool riding on a donkey’s back.

The disciples expected a Messianic Lord and found a servant who washed their feet.

The Romans expected the certainty of death to put an end to his rebellious nonsense, instead they got the shock of their lives on Easter morning.

And if it was never so with Jesus, it can never be so with his friends, you and me.

Then Joseph being raised from sleep did as the angel of the Lord had bidden him, and took unto him his wife: And knew her not till she had brought forth her firstborn son: and he called his name JESUS.