What’s the story (Morning Glory)
Preacher: Revd Dr Donald MacEwan, University Chaplain
Readings: Exodus 1:22-2:10; Luke 1:26-38; Luke 2:1-18; Matthew 2:1-12
We are a story-telling species. We told them round the fire; we tell them to children; we read them under the covers; we watch them enacted on the stage, on screen, sung by a rock’n’roll star; we overhear snatches of them on Market Street. We are captivated by stories. This happened, so she did that, which brought about the other, which led to disaster, and yet, somehow, knowledge came, and a new beginning. Even jokes are a kind of story. The ten best jokes of 2024 were just announced. There’s more than one joke about brit-pop legends Oasis in the list, surely because after 15 years of not speaking, brothers Liam and Noel Gallagher have decided to tour again, returning to a life of cigarettes and alcohol. At number 5: Who is Santa’s favourite member of Oasis? It has to be Noel. Or number 7: Why aren’t there more jokes about receiving Oasis tickets for Christmas. Most people won’t get them.
Were you disappointed after tickets sold out in ten hours or will you be in Manchester, London, Cardiff, Dublin, or Murrayfield in Edinburgh on 8th or 9th of August next year, singing?
My soul slides away
But “Don’t look back in anger”
I heard you say…
Oasis’ second album was called (What’s the story) Morning Glory? What’s the story tonight? I was reminded how wonderful the Christmas story is when I visited the University’s Nursery on Thursday, surrounded in the Story Corner by 14 dolphins, as the class is called, to tell the nativity story. Things were going fine until the kids corrected me – apparently I’d forgotten to mention the two mice in the stable, as well as the camel’s name. She’s called Alice, of course. And possibly has five humps. I’m sure other classes are also as well-versed in getting the story right, especially those mathematicians who, on Friday the 13th of December, will be settling down in the Sports Hall at 9.30 am to a two hour exam MT3503 Complex Analysis. A week later on the 20th, they leave all complexity behind for MT3502 Real Analysis. By the 27th of December, if I had taken those two exams, I think I’d be ready for PN3101 Psychoanalysis. (Okay I made the last one up.)
Sometimes, grown-ups (but never children) overlook the story in the Christmas story. We turn the tale into a philosophical enquiry – How does the incarnation help humanity live forever? But the Bible-story is not a set of propositions, or an argument, counter-argument and provisional conclusion. Nor is the tale akin to a tweet on X, not even on its religious platform, Xmas (!), in which all doubt about the miraculous birth is swiftly dispatched as lefty, Guardian-reading, wokeism.
Nor is the scriptural story a rule-book, or even instructions. Can you imagine if Ikea offered instructions for the making of a Saviour with a few easy-to-assemble pieces and a single allen key? I fear there would always be a strangely shaped piece, an elbow perhaps, left over.
Instead of argument, statement or rules, the heart of God’s relationship with creation is told to a story-telling species, as a story. And it is so well told. Perhaps that’s why so many people have crammed into Holy Trinity tonight. Though did you hear why Donald Trump chose not to come here tonight? Fake pews.
Some of the carols we have sung are the traditional carol which tells the story in song – God rest you merry, gentlemen, and The first Nowell are like that, and also The angel Gabriel from heaven came, but this adds some of the most beautiful words of any carol:
his wings as drifted snow, his eyes as flame.
And St Salvator’s Chapel Choir sang the story of the Christmas truce in 1914 between opposing soldiers in the trenches.
You may know that I am doing a Masters in Creative Writing in the University, learning how to write fiction. Yes, I too have stressed about deadlines, obsessed about word counts, and gone to the pub to celebrate surviving a presentation. I haven’t yet thrown any shapes at the Union after my fourth Pablo – maybe I’m waiting for the Brit-pop Bop. Anyway, this year, in re-reading these gospel passages, I saw afresh how brilliantly they have been written.
We see this in the story of Gabriel’s visit to Mary. We are given all the facts we need right at the start to help us know who is involved, and when and where the action happens. Then we have an incident to set off the plot: the angel’s greeting. There is dialogue but also a hint of Mary’s interiority – she was much perplexed, we are told. The story develops with Gabriel’s message, but – and all stories need a but, a snag, an obstacle – there’s a problem: Mary says, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” Then she finds a way through the difficulty with a hint of magic in Gabriel’s response, before the conclusion – Mary says, “let it be with me according to your word – I gotta roll with it.”
Or jump forward nine months to the birth of the child, artfully told again by Luke. Luke is a historian who again gives historical names – Augustus, Quirinius; and time – the census registration; and place – from Nazareth in Galilee to Bethlehem in Judea. This masterful story then moves from the general to the specific: Joseph and Mary, whose time to deliver her child had come, brought to a climax in this extraordinary, deliberately scriptural-sounding sentence, by Luke – and listen for the killer last clause:
And she gave birth to her first-born son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them at the inn.
The son of God, born with the animals, the world too busy to make room. A story put beautifully into a single painting by Antonio Travi, on the cover of the order of service.
Luke, of course, knew other scriptural stories of babies whose birth was precarious, whose life hung by a thread. The Principal told the tale of Moses, cast on the Nile, and rescued from Pharaoh by the compassion and ingenuity of women, his mother, his sister, and Pharaoh’s daughter.
Or think of the visit of the Magi, according to Matthew. Some people think all stories are quest-narratives – this one certainly is. These star-gazers come from half a world away across the bare and empty reaches of the desert, following a star until it stops over Bethlehem. They know that under it is the object of their quest: a boy born a king. The star for them has become a sign of celebration, a champagne supernova, and they open their treasure-chests giving, of course three gifts. There is a rule of three in every quest-narrative. The Magi are changed by the encounter, and return to their own country, but by another road. It’s how all the greatest stories end: the central characters recognisably similar, but significantly changed.
Luke and Matthew are brilliant story-tellers. They are economical; depict real characters with all-too-human emotions; they have people like us perplexed by the strange; they make us care; and they show, don’t tell. It is for us to interpret these stories, to understand them in our place and time, to sense again their significance for our lives and planet.
Well, 2000 years on, how fares our story-telling species? Some might say we are struggling to discern which stories to follow and which to resist. Easy stories drive out complicated ones. And there are some deceptively simple tales which have dominated the past year. There is the story of the onward progress of technology, profit and power, undermining so many attempts to support a liveable planet.
There is the story of how ancient history declares that this land is our land and no-one else’s, with the accompanying story of the evil of our enemies.
There is the story of our life’s purpose – to achieve, to succeed, to be better than ever, better than our neighbour, to feel supersonic.
At their root, these stories of progress, power and purpose are versions of the same basic plot – life is a competition, in which there is winning, and everything else is a failure.
I hear that story when I encounter students and staff in my office, when they have come to realise they can no longer live up to that impossible expectation. Exhausted of the fear of failure, worn out by days and nights in the library, burnt out by the attempt to be a wonderful friend and perfect lover, they become disillusioned with their self, and everyone else too. But in spending time together talking things over, reflecting on life, maybe I or another chaplain can help them forgive their old self, so they don’t look back in anger. And then we can explore a different narrative, one of acceptance, of recognising that life is really about collaboration, companionship and community rather than competition. Instead of “I’m free to be whatever I choose”, maybe we can all sing “Stand by me.”
What’s the story? According to Ben Marcus, Professor at Columbia, there are only two kinds of story – a person went on a journey and a stranger came to town. Well, maybe they’re both the story tonight. God goes on a journey, breathing the story of the world into being. Instead of Let there be light, he could have said, Once upon a time… Then, recognising our human story was going haywire, he continues the journey into a new story, breaking down the fourth wall, replacing it, definitely, maybe, with a wonderwall, where divine and human meet in a single, fragile, story-telling kid called Jesus. This is the stranger come to town: an angel to a girl, shepherds to a stable, Magi following a star, God in human flesh. God entered creation’s story not to edit it, polish it, and make it publishable. Rather, God entered our story as a character, vulnerable to the accidents of plot, and the motivations of others. Someone we can call on to be here now with us.
We know that peace didn’t completely break out that night. They know that all too well in the Palestinian town of Bethlehem tonight, and in Khartoum, Haifa, Kharkiv and Khan Younis as well. They know it wherever simple stories have elbowed out the complicated, the overlapping, the mixed-up stories of real history. It’s thrillers in charge, perhaps horror stories. Idealists in Christmas sermons sound like we are offering romantasy. But I don’t think so: there’s love which isn’t romantic, nor a fantasy. It’s the love infused in every tale we’ve heard and sung tonight. We have caught a glimpse of what could be, of how our stories could come right, our characters gain understanding, our obstacles overcome, our quests satisfied, our endings happy. It takes a literary theorist Terry Eagleton to really understand what the gospel story says – God has ordered the human narrative to a good end.
What’s the story? Well, I fear that if I submitted this sermon to Turnitin I’d be guilty of Academic Misconduct. Yes, I have smuggled in about a dozen Oasis song-titles into this talk. Just be glad I didn’t sing them all.
But what’s the real story? No risk of plagiarism here. Surely, the real story is that the fears of the darkest of nights will give way, by the grace of God, to morning glory.
Marry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
END