Bible Reading: John 1:1-14.

In the beginning the Word already existed; the Word was with God, and the Word was God. From the very beginning the Word was with God. Through him God made all things; not one thing in all creation was made without him. The Word was the source of life, and this life brought light to people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has never put it out.

God sent his messenger, a man named John, who came to tell people about the light, so that all should hear the message and believe. He himself was not the light; he came to tell about the light. This was the real light – the light that comes into the world and shines on all people.

The Word was in the world, and God made the world through him, yet the world did not recognize him. He came to his own country, but his own people did not receive him. Some, however, did receive him and believed in him; to them he gave the right to become God’s children. They did not become his children by natural means, that is, by being born as the children of a human father; God himself was their Father.

The Word became a human being and lived among us, full of grace and truth. And we saw his glory, his glory as the Father’s only Son.

Message.

Neither the dragging of wild horses nor the offer of a million pounds would induce me to go camping. The mere thoughts of cooking breakfast on a barbecue, splashing my face with cold water first thing in the morning, or trudging across a dark damp field in the middle of the night to get to the toilet, fill me with absolute horror. I’m well aware that there are folk here who revel in the open-air life, but I’m not one of them. I’m too fond of my creature comforts!

Of course, the first thing you must do when you arrive at your chosen site is put up your tent (unless you’ve opted for luxury “glamping” and have paid someone else to do it). When I was a child this involved stiff canvas, heavy wooden tentpoles, scratchy guy ropes, pegs, a mallet and a mystery called “brailings”. I understand that plastic materials, fitted groundsheets and light tentpoles strung together with bungee elastic have made the task easier these days, but it must still be a bit of a challenge if the wind is howling or the rain is tipping down.

You might well think that camping has nothing to do with Christmas – for isn’t it something that people usually do in the balmy days of summer? However I want to tell you tonight that the idea of camping is in fact central to the Christmas story – as much as the manger, the angels and the shepherds and definitely more so than Mary’s donkey or the grumpy innkeeper who are figments of our creative imagination.

“Hang on a minute”, you might say, “Jesus wasn’t born in a tent but in a stable, we all know that”. Well, I might want to have a discussion with you about the precise meaning of a Greek word in Luke’s Gospel and the exact location of our Lord’s birth. But, yes, I’d agree that Mary did not give birth in a field and under canvas; that’s abundantly clear. The Holy Family was definitely indoors when Jesus was born.

So why am I rambling on about camping? The reason is to be found in that well-known passage from John’s Gospel: “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us”. Now I know we may struggle a bit with the first part of that verse – why is Jesus called the Word? There’s a sermon in that but it’s not tonight’s, except to say that Jesus, in both his speaking and living, declared what God was like to everyone with whom he came in contact. No; it’s the second part of the verse I want to think about: the Word “dwelt among us”. At first sight this seems so obvious, if perhaps incredible: God came down to earth and lived along us as a human being. But listen to the literal translation of this verse: “God pitched his tent among us”. Here is a God who came, not to a Palace, a Castle or a Temple,– but to a campsite. Wow!

Back in November the Home Secretary Suella Braverman (remember her?) revealed her plan to crack down on rough sleepers’ tents which, she claimed, are a nuisance in our high streets and lead to a rise in antisocial behaviour. She also proposed a new offence, which could have led to charities being fined if they gave tents to homeless people. Braverman defended her ideas on social media, saying: “The British people are compassionate. We will always support those who are genuinely homeless. But we cannot allow our streets to be taken over by rows of tents occupied by people, many of them from abroad, living on the streets as a lifestyle choice”. Those final words rightly sparked outrage and helped to pave the way for Braverman’s downfall.

Dare I suggest that, for Jesus, pitching a tent among us actually was a lifestyle choice, made jointly with his Father? For he had no need to come to earth, he could have sat comfortably in heaven and said, “We created those humans. But they have been so disobedient and stupid: they’re wrecking the world we made and they don’t deserve our pity. We’ll just leave them to their own evil devices”. But, according to the Bible, that isn’t what happened; not at all. No, God had a rescue plan – a plan which involved his own Son coming to earth – not just to live among us and teach us about God (which would be amazing enough), but to die so that, in some mysterious way, things could change for the better. As a hymn says, “Jesus the Saviour … joyfully came … with the helpless and hopeless to dwell, sharing their sorrow and shame: seeking the lost, saving, redeeming at measureless cost”.

I must soon finish; but we can’t talk about Jesus coming to pitch his tent among us and not think of the many people in our world who, not by choice but through circumstances beyond their control, will be sleeping in makeshift accommodation tonight. Here are some of them.

– In October an official from the Israeli Defence Ministry said that the war with Hamas would not cease until Gaza had been “turned into a city of tents”. A report I saw on ITN news last week showed that this is literally becoming true.

– In Central Africa, in a conflict we hear little about, tens of thousands of people have fled the conflict in Sudan and crossed the border into Chad. Tented encampments have sprung up – but can Chad, a desperately poor country itself, support these refugees?

– Since last February’s devastating earthquake in southern Turkey, which killed thousands and caused huge devastation, many refugees from the war in Syria have been living in makeshift tents. This is an unhygienic environment; scorpions, insects and rats have appeared and the threat of disease is ever-present.

– More than 40,000 survivors of another earthquake which took place about six weeks ago in Nepal, have had to live in tents in freezing temperatures. Nearly 40 of them have died, including a woman who gave birth two days after the earthquake struck. 

– Last summer our own Government bought marquees, intending to put them on old military bases and move up to 2,000 asylum seekers out of hotels. I don’t know if this actually happened, but temporary marquees were set up last year at the Manston processing centre in Kent, with Home Office employees reporting that people slept on mats in overcrowded conditions and without access to fresh air.

– And Indonesia has its own “small boats” crisis with 1,500 Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar arriving just last month. They have not been made welcome; protesters on Sabang island removed tents set up as temporary shelters and threatened to push their boats back to sea.

I don’t know if Jesus ever slept in a tent – he certainly never went camping in the modern sense! But he did “pitch his tent among us and identifies with the tent people: the displaced, the homeless, the asylum seekers, the needy – of whom there are far too many in our world. His heart melts when he sees their plight, and so should ours. But Jesus does more than that: he identifies with every human being, whatever their situation, wherever they live – which means that he identifies with us. A modern paraphrase of this verse says that Jesus has “moved into our neighbourhood”.

God has reached out to us, God has done the most amazing thing in sending us his Son, God knows ours hopes and fears, our joys and pains, because he’s experienced them, physically, himself. Christmas marks the start of that experience: thirty-three years of life, death and even resurrection were to follow. Let us celebrate and worship our tent-pitching God tonight.