I believe some of you have some bells – bells to recognise and welcome the Christ child on this Christmas morning. If you’ve got some bells, can you give them a shake now, so we know you’re there? Thank you. Now you bell-bearers have an important job today – to keep us all awake to the possibility of Christ among us today. So, every time in the next few minutes that I say the word ‘bell’ or ‘bells’ or ‘baby’ I want you to shake your bells. Let’s give that a test run – one of the most easily recognised symbols of Christmas is bells. Well done. Now some of the rest of you listening, may be thinking that all this ringing of bells is going to be rather disruptive of your peaceful contemplation. And you’d be right. Bells are disruptive in general. They have been used throughout human history to alert us that something is happening – for good or ill...
bells
Bells have been rung to mark everything from birth to death - coronations, weddings, wars and emergencies, alarms and excursions of every kind; to say nothing of the ringing of sanctuary bells in some Christian traditions at the moment of consecration of the eucharist. Bells keep us alert to possibilities. No one seeking a quiet life buys even a door bell, leave alone an alarm clock. But my goodness bells are helpful when we need to be alert to the most important things. Bells point us to disruption – but also to delight and to the presence of the divine. Not unlike babies, so as we think about baby Jesus today it is helpful to have some bells. For bells alert us to all that is disruptive, delightful and divine about the Christ child. Disruptive, delightful, divine – let’s think a little about each of these – and let these bells ringing out awaken us from the stupor of too much, towards the wonder of this holy moment here and now.
babies
No matter the circumstances, there are few things in peacetime life more disruptive than the arrival of a baby. Those of us with children and grandchildren have no doubt quietly smiled to ourselves when listening to the pre-birth plans of those expecting their first baby – the attempts with preparation and pre-reading to control what will be uncontrollable. Yet it is very natural to humans to try and control things. Indeed, bells have been used precisely to control – to measure time and determine how our hours are spent. These days many schools seem to play music to mark the end of lessons in a less jarring way than a bell, but the effect is much the same. One way of being is brought to an abrupt end and we are obliged to encounter something new. It was much the same in the time of Jesus. Roman imperial rule was all about ordering the potentially uncontrollable. Our text tells us today that ‘All went to be registered’ – this is about human attempts at ordering; at resisting unexpected disruption precisely by creating disruptions of our own – in this case movements of people that enable them to be counted and catalogued. And no doubt in some places when it was done someone would have signalled its completion by ringing a bell.
disrupting place
Now we don’t know if this census actually occurred in the way described – probably not; most likely this is a literary device by the author of the Gospel to get the baby Jesus born in the theologically correct place, in Bethlehem the seat of David and literally the ‘place of bread’. What we do know is that the place is important to the writer – or rather the lack of a proper place. There ‘was no place for them’ – the reverse of a ‘place for everything and everything in its place’ – the Christ child, the baby Jesus, belongs to all places and none; this baby disrupts the order of things. Previously it was believed that God could only be encountered in particular places and through particular people – in the temple; through the high priest. But the Christmas story disrupts all that – here is God instead in a feeding trough being fed by a woman whose very giving birth made her ritually unclean – as the Levitical instructions dictate ‘she shall not touch any holy thing’ – yet she touches, caresses, cleans, feeds the holy baby. There is a total disruption of place and the understood order of things – a disruption that makes a place for each and every one of us. And that’s good news.
delight
So let the bells clang and alert us that something great is going on. Or rather – let’s step up from the mundanity of bells to the whole host of heaven, angels in all their glory proclaiming more loudly than any bell that this baby is special. Let’s find some disruptive non-binary characters – angels who do not fit – neither human nor divine; let’s pick the disreputable unclean shepherds to herald the divine and in the midst of all this disruption let us find delight.
Now delight’s an unpredictable thing. I wonder what would bring you unexpected delight today? For delight breaks through our old, tired habits and our attempts to control things. Delight takes us past even our legitimate longings for peace, for flourishing, for the end of violence and fear. Delight and its twin sister joy is the spontaneous response of our hearts to that which is beyond our planning or control. It is the smile that floods our being when we see a newborn baby or acknowledge the chiming of joyful bells that point us beyond ourselves and our own concerns to a larger reality.
acclamation
The poet Mary Oliver has it spot on when she writes, ‘every day I see or hear something that more or less kills me with delight, that leaves me like a needle in the haystack of light. It was what I was born for – to look, to listen, to lose myself inside this soft world – to instruct myself over and over in joy, and acclamation. ‘Acclamation’ – like the ringing of bells on this Christmas morning -delight invites expression. And so today – no matter what else is going on across our troubled lives and world – we express our delight in the baby Jesus, in the ringing of bells and the singing of songs. For in the depths of our hearts we know that our delight in God is a response to God’s delight in us – a delight not determined by our actions but by our very being in the image of our creator. We do not earn God’s delight. Rather it is grace and gift woven through every strand of creation to make it holy, Word made flesh. And so, we ring our bells to acknowledge the divine among us, God with us.
Penny Jones, for Pitt Street Uniting, Christmas Day 2025
Bells have been rung to mark everything from birth to death - coronations, weddings, wars and emergencies, alarms and excursions of every kind; to say nothing of the ringing of sanctuary bells in some Christian traditions at the moment of consecration of the eucharist. Bells keep us alert to possibilities. No one seeking a quiet life buys even a door bell, leave alone an alarm clock. But my goodness bells are helpful when we need to be alert to the most important things. Bells point us to disruption – but also to delight and to the presence of the divine. Not unlike babies, so as we think about baby Jesus today it is helpful to have some bells. For bells alert us to all that is disruptive, delightful and divine about the Christ child. Disruptive, delightful, divine – let’s think a little about each of these – and let these bells ringing out awaken us from the stupor of too much, towards the wonder of this holy moment here and now.
babies
No matter the circumstances, there are few things in peacetime life more disruptive than the arrival of a baby. Those of us with children and grandchildren have no doubt quietly smiled to ourselves when listening to the pre-birth plans of those expecting their first baby – the attempts with preparation and pre-reading to control what will be uncontrollable. Yet it is very natural to humans to try and control things. Indeed, bells have been used precisely to control – to measure time and determine how our hours are spent. These days many schools seem to play music to mark the end of lessons in a less jarring way than a bell, but the effect is much the same. One way of being is brought to an abrupt end and we are obliged to encounter something new. It was much the same in the time of Jesus. Roman imperial rule was all about ordering the potentially uncontrollable. Our text tells us today that ‘All went to be registered’ – this is about human attempts at ordering; at resisting unexpected disruption precisely by creating disruptions of our own – in this case movements of people that enable them to be counted and catalogued. And no doubt in some places when it was done someone would have signalled its completion by ringing a bell.
disrupting place
Now we don’t know if this census actually occurred in the way described – probably not; most likely this is a literary device by the author of the Gospel to get the baby Jesus born in the theologically correct place, in Bethlehem the seat of David and literally the ‘place of bread’. What we do know is that the place is important to the writer – or rather the lack of a proper place. There ‘was no place for them’ – the reverse of a ‘place for everything and everything in its place’ – the Christ child, the baby Jesus, belongs to all places and none; this baby disrupts the order of things. Previously it was believed that God could only be encountered in particular places and through particular people – in the temple; through the high priest. But the Christmas story disrupts all that – here is God instead in a feeding trough being fed by a woman whose very giving birth made her ritually unclean – as the Levitical instructions dictate ‘she shall not touch any holy thing’ – yet she touches, caresses, cleans, feeds the holy baby. There is a total disruption of place and the understood order of things – a disruption that makes a place for each and every one of us. And that’s good news.
delight
So let the bells clang and alert us that something great is going on. Or rather – let’s step up from the mundanity of bells to the whole host of heaven, angels in all their glory proclaiming more loudly than any bell that this baby is special. Let’s find some disruptive non-binary characters – angels who do not fit – neither human nor divine; let’s pick the disreputable unclean shepherds to herald the divine and in the midst of all this disruption let us find delight.
Now delight’s an unpredictable thing. I wonder what would bring you unexpected delight today? For delight breaks through our old, tired habits and our attempts to control things. Delight takes us past even our legitimate longings for peace, for flourishing, for the end of violence and fear. Delight and its twin sister joy is the spontaneous response of our hearts to that which is beyond our planning or control. It is the smile that floods our being when we see a newborn baby or acknowledge the chiming of joyful bells that point us beyond ourselves and our own concerns to a larger reality.
acclamation
The poet Mary Oliver has it spot on when she writes, ‘every day I see or hear something that more or less kills me with delight, that leaves me like a needle in the haystack of light. It was what I was born for – to look, to listen, to lose myself inside this soft world – to instruct myself over and over in joy, and acclamation. ‘Acclamation’ – like the ringing of bells on this Christmas morning -delight invites expression. And so today – no matter what else is going on across our troubled lives and world – we express our delight in the baby Jesus, in the ringing of bells and the singing of songs. For in the depths of our hearts we know that our delight in God is a response to God’s delight in us – a delight not determined by our actions but by our very being in the image of our creator. We do not earn God’s delight. Rather it is grace and gift woven through every strand of creation to make it holy, Word made flesh. And so, we ring our bells to acknowledge the divine among us, God with us.
Penny Jones, for Pitt Street Uniting, Christmas Day 2025
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