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Music
Silent night - arr. Iain Farrington
Iain Farrington

Poem: BC:AD – U.A. Fanthorpe
read by Zena Edwards

Introduction: Rev Lucy Winkett

Good morning on St Stephen’s Day, also known as Boxing Day. The day after Christmas Day when, as UA Fanthorpe’s poem has just reminded us, we ourselves, walked haphazard by starlight into the kingdom of heaven.

The child has been born; the angels have sung their song of peace, the mysterious visitors from the east are still on their way. But far from being ‘over’, the festival of Christmas has only just begun. 12 days ahead now on which to let it all sink in, take a moment to see what it all might mean.Ìý

Let us pray

God of glory, God of peace, guide our steps as we make our way through days that are not only festive but fearful this year. ÌýHelp us take account of the anxiety we feel without letting it overwhelm our joy that Christ is born in our hearts today. Amen.

Music
Hark! The Herald Angels Sing
Soul Sanctuary Gospel Choir
Â鶹ԼÅÄ recording

Lucy Winkett
Living and working as I do in the centre of the capital city, the atmosphere has been strange this Christmas.Ìý The lights are on, the decorations have been up but the streets, normally full of people, have had the atmosphere of an empty fun fair in winter. The music is playing to almost nobody, and the lights illuminate unoccupied pavements. There is a mismatch between what has been put up to attract the people, and the fact that for understandable reasons, the people have not come.

This scene – an empty city decorated for Christmas - is an evocative one and one that might help us say something important about the way we are celebrating this year. It’s becoming a common reflection that the experience of the covid 19 pandemic has not so much invented anything or created any new environment, but instead has accelerated changes that were already happening and revealed inequalities that were already there.

One of the things I have learned in this pandemic is that for some people every day is a lockdown day:Ìý from my congregation, particularly listening to the experience of people going through the asylum system for instance, unable to work, or afford to join in much of the usual social activity of society.Ìý Or for some older people, lockdown is a way of life if housing is precarious or the lift is broken, or if they feel intimidated by their neighbours.Ìý It was something that was part of our public conversations before the pandemic - that loneliness was at epidemic proportions in our society, but now this seems clearer than ever.

Into some of the bleakest reflections then about our society, come the Christmas lights, the sleigh bells, the tinsel and the music. But for some, perhaps for you, there is a mismatch not just this Christmas but most Christmasses, if the jollity of Christmas lights are being somehow strung up across life circumstances that feel as bleak as a grey stone-hard pavement.

But this is where the deepest hope is found in the message of Christmas. Because as fun as they are, the birth of Christ doesn’t need, didn’t feature, the glossy colours of a 21st century decoration.ÌýÌý And so the meaning is not affected if those decorations are not there or unseen. It’s perhaps one of the profoundest conclusions that Christians draw from the festival of Christmas, that God is with us. Wherever we are and however we’re doing: not far away, but near. Not remote, shouting instructions to us across some sort of cosmic divide, but close, intimate, fleshy, in the mess of it all.

Music
Go tell it on the mountain
Soul Sanctuary Gospel Choir
Â鶹ԼÅÄ recording

Lucy Winkett
Christmas is a festival of light: and on the day after Christmas Day, it’s a timely reflection to remember that there are different kinds of light. The whole association of light with goodness and bad with darkness has never made sense to me. Pervasive as it is in much spiritual imagery, in the Jewish and Christian traditions there is much more subtlety and richness than that. To God, the darkness and the light are both alike. The glory of God is revealed in what one poet has called a deep and dazzling darkness: the mustard seed of Jesus’s story grows in the dark, St Paul’s conversion happened over three days while he was in the dark, Lazarus heard his name called by Jesus in the dark. The dark is a creative place where the mystery of love and growth finds its home and meaning.Ìý

Music
Sarabande (Coventry Carol) from 'A Christmas Suite' - Alec Rowley
Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra
CD: Classics of British Light Music (ABC Classics)

Bible reading: Psalm 139.7-12
read by Mel Giedroyc

Lucy Winkett
Christmas is a festival of light in the midwinter, at a time when in the northern hemisphere at least we long for some warmth and illumination. But we do Christmas a disservice if we just focus on the light as a bringer of all that is good.

The Christmas season lasts 12 days because it gives us time to contemplate life as holy as it really is, not any kind of shallow or glib cheerfulness that’s so alienating for people for whom its just not like that this year.

The singer Leonard Cohen knows what that’s like, whose voice is sometimes described as depressing, but not to my ears. Leonard Cohen’s deeply spiritual writing lets us know that light gets in through the cracks of life; when we’re far from perfect but know that we can shine anyway.

Music
Anthem - Leonard Cohen
Leonard Cohen
CD: Leonard Cohen - The Complete Studio Anthems Collection (Sony Music)

Lucy Winkett
Today, as the Christmas carol describes it, is the ‘Feast of Stephen’. A dose of reality straight after the wonder of the stable, the Feast of Stephen marks the self sacrifice of one of the early followers of Jesus, who as a deacon, dedicated his life to serving others.

Bible reading: Acts 6 and 7
read by Mel Giedroyc

Music
Good King Wenceslas
CD: Christmas Carols II - Sally DeFord Music

Lucy Winkett
That we mark the feast of Stephen today right after the birth of Jesus is one of the ways Christian faith is saved from floating off into a spiritual realm that is not anchored in life as it’s lived.Ìý If we’ve been fortunate enough to have had a Christmas Day with good food and company, then Boxing Day or St Stephen’s Day can feel a bit of an anti climax. The boxes of boxing day come from a time when servants were given the day off after cooking for the celebrations of their masters, and given a box of treats to take home to their own families. But in the story of Stephen the deacon and his faithfulness even to the end, we encounter the meaning of Christmas afresh. Not that we’re all called to be martyrs, but something much more accessible than that:Ìý that we are asked to fulfil our deepest human vocation by learning to serve God by putting other people’s needs before our own.Ìý We’re asked to love our neighbour as ourselves. That’s it; it’s as simple and difficult as that. ÌýStephen was one of the first in the New Testament, along with Phoebe, to be made a sort of official in the early Christian communities.Ìý They were appointed deacons.Ìý And that just means that they were set aside to serve others.Ìý They served at meal times and helped to distribute alms to all who were poor.Ìý Stephen is one of those unsung heroes who just gets on with it: our local communities and societies are enriched hugely by people who do that, running sports clubs or lunch clubs, after school activities or dementia cafes.Ìý People who help knit us together, give us somewhere to be, help us eat together or make friends, build community and give a helping hand to someone else who needs it today.Ìý Day one of Christmas: and we discover that it’s quite a simple meaning: Ìýit’s about living a life that puts others needs before our own.

Music
And He Shall Purify
Soul Sanctuary Gospel Choir
Private recording

Lucy Winkett
Perhaps it’s because I was born at this time of year, but I’ve never found the kind of wintry grey light of December and January depressing, although many others do.Ìý There’s a kind of flatness about the light at this time of year that I find restful and comforting.Ìý It’s all part of the variety of God’s creation, a rest somehow from the glamour and attention given to gorgeous sunsets or high noon.ÌýÌý The poet Emily Dickinson finds meaning too in the certain slant of light of a winter afternoon that in her words can bring a sort of heavenly hurt….

Music
WInter from 'The Four Seasons' - Vivaldi
Itzhak Perlman and London Symphony Orchestra
CD: Vivaldi Four Seasons Warner Classics)

Poem: A certain slant of light - Emily Dickinson
read by Zena Edwards

Lucy Winkett
The presence of God in the world and in a human life is often described with reference to light. But it matters what kind of light. We human beings can make mistakes about this. We’re often to easily impressed by light that draws attention only to itself. The light that signals God’s presence, by contrast, doesn’t draw your eye only to itself, but it illuminates, reveals, bathes.Ìý It is not a brash searchlight sort of harshness that thoughtlessly exposes our tendernesses to the intrusive gaze of others either.Ìý The light of Christ’s presence in the world, celebrated at Christmas, Ìýis recognised by its generosity, beauty and capacity to help us understand and appreciate more deeply what it is to be alive, to be surrounded by gifts freely given and unearned.Ìý And in the light of that knowledge, give of ourselves in return.

The Bible, especially in the accounts of the Christmas story, makes this kind of light visible by talking about angels. Never described in detail, but there as a presence that is inexplicable, that is bright, that is somehow beautifully glorious; a presence that touches our hearts.Ìý

Angels live in a light that lies beyond the horizon of what we can understand or apprehend. We hear whispers of them, see glimmers of them, smell the faint reminiscence of them in the incense of the Church for instance, but as soon as we try to describe them they are gone. Like a version of the children’s game ‘Grandmother’s Footsteps’, it seems that they move when we are not looking, when our back is turned, and when we turn round or look hard, they’ve already melted into the landscape.

There’s something radiant about angels, Ìýwhether we are hearing their song or sitting with them in silence. Their light is not noisy or distracting: it’s calm and illuminating, but no less luminous for it…

Music
Silent Night (feat. Tracey Jane Campbell)Ìý
Soul Sanctuary Gospel Choir
CD: Silent Night - Soul Sanctuary Gospel Choir

Prayers
Eternal God. The darkness and the light are both alike to you. Hear our prayers for the world we live in this Christmas.

We give thanks for the gift of Christ to the world.Ìý We rejoice in the love that the good news of this birth brings to a waiting world.

On this St Stephen’s Day, let us pray

For all people carrying fear and anxiety as the pandemic continues this winter.
For all who are in another intensive period of work in the NHS, in care homes, in social care, in shops and public transport.
For all who across the world long for the vaccine to come to their town.
For all whose lives are in perpetual lockdown, confined by poverty or fear, illness or isolation.
For all decision makers, business leaders, local and national politicians
For ourselves, that we will ask for whatever we need.
God of mercy and light. Hear our prayers.

The Lord's Prayer

Music
Jesus Oh What A WonderfulÌýChild (Mariah Carey)
Soul Sanctuary Gospel Choir
Private recording

Bible reading: Matthew 5.14-16
read by Mel Giedroyc

Lucy Winkett
You are the light of the world. The miracle of the Christmas season that begins today is that it’s in the ordinary stories of my life and your life, and the self-sacrificial love of people like Stephen that light shines in a sometimes bleak, anxious and self-centred culture. ÌýThere is a spark of God within you that can ignite the love you know you are capable of, and want to find a way to express.Ìý And this spark is one that can light up the universe with nothing less than love, always love. Forever love.

Christmas is not over, it continues today and for 12 days.Ìý And so, as this really hard year ends and another uncertain year begins,Ìý we’re asked to look for the light of Christmas and listen for the song of the angels who sang at that holy birth.

And that music, sung in eternity by the angels who sing still of the dream that peace will cover the earth, is the kind of music that at once reaches in and grasps your heart. The kind of thunderous, gentle melodies that leave you struggling to breathe because somehow this birth, this music, has revealed the truth about love, and beauty, loss and restoration.

Music sung at the birth of Christ, in the light of the sacrifice of Stephen, Ìýthat brings upon you the rush of choking relief that there is, despite our paralysing anxiety, a living and a life beyond the silence of the grave.Ìý

Music
Christmas Music on Piano
The Piano Guys
CD: Christmas Music - Relaxing Instrumental Christmas Music

Reading: Family Dinner - Zena Edwards
read by Zena Edwards

Blessing: Lucy Winkett
May the God of grace and glory light the spark of love in your hearts. And the blessing of God who created, redeemed and inspired you from the beginning, be with you this Christmas season and for ever. Amen.