“Christmas is coming,
the goose is getting fat,
please put a penny in the old man’s hat.
If you haven’t got a penny, a ha’penny will do,
if you haven’t got a ha’penny, then God bless you.”
Yes, in case you didn’t already know, Christmas is now under two weeks’ away.
How’s your preparation going? And what about your spiritual preparation? This
week we hear about St John the Baptist again. People are coming to him for advice;
they want definite answers about what they have to do, and they perhaps either think
that there must be something they’ve missed, or they just want to be sure that they
haven’t failed to notice something rather important.
First, the crowds. What are they asked to do? A tunic was an undergarment.
“Whoever has two tunics is to share with him who has none”. Put it in the modern
day: if you have two shirts, give the second one to someone who doesn’t have one.
I’m sure everyone here has more than one set of clothes. But, John says, if you have
just what you are wearing now, and a spare pair, give the spare pair away to someone
who has nothing. Another way we could put it is: no-one is exempt from helping
the poor, except those who are poor and needy themselves. And we’re talking about
genuine poverty. There’s a Lancastrian priest I know who occasionally likes to put
on a bit of an act and say, “Eeee, when are were growin’ up we ‘ad real poverty –
northern poverty!” and then he goes into a big exaggeration of how bad it was
supposed to have been. In my last parish in North Staffordshire, one parishioner told
me similarly that people today think they are poor in this country, but when she was
a child, truthfully, things were a lot worse. In some families, not every child would
have a pair of shoes, so they would take it in turns wearing the shoes to go to
school. Someone else, this time also from Lancashire, once told me that when he
was growing up and going to dances, his shoes were so worn out they had holes in
them, which he used to cover with pieces of cardboard. When he was dancing, he
would make sure his feet didn’t go too high in the air so no-one would see.
“Christmas is coming,
the goose is getting fat,
please put a penny in the old man’s hat.
If you haven’t got a penny, a ha’penny will do,
if you haven’t got a ha’penny, then God bless you.”
No, I haven’t finished yet. We all need to help the poor and those who are struggling
in different ways, even if we don’t have too much ourselves. But what if we do?
Next up to see John are the tax collectors. They’ve got a bob or two. How?
Because they charge too much, and pocket the extra. Sometimes they would tax
people around forty percent of their income. But if you’re a higher-rate taxpayer in
this country, well ... did not Sir Humphrey once say in an episode of either Yes
Minister! or Yes, Prime Minister! that the treasury does not work out how much
money it needs, and then calculate how much to tax people. Instead it works out
how much tax it can get away with, and then decides what to spend the money on.
The point for us, though, looking at ourselves rather than pointing the finger at
others, is to do with honesty and avoiding abuse of position, and making up for the
wrong we may have done. The tax collector Zacchaeus admitted to the Lord that he
had been over-taxing people, and said that he would pay them back four times the
amount. We are not obliged to be that generous, but certainly we should do our part
to make up for wrong words, damaged or stolen property, or if we have lied and
ruined people’s reputation.
“Soldiers also asked him, ‘And we, what shall we do?’” This time, he warns them
against what is sometimes a vice of the clergy: love of money, and nice things. In
Walt Disney’s Robin Hood, King John decides to tax the poor to feed the rich, or, as
he puts it himself, “Rob the poor to feed the rich”, squeezing them of every last drop
of money he can, and there’s a scene where he rejoices in the nice pot of money he
has acquired, as well as his power as king. Avarice is one of the seven deadly sins,
closing our hearts to others, turning us from the spiritual to the material. Are we
ever guilty of that?
So, Advent’s not over yet – there’s still time to go to confession before Christmas
Day. And it’s also a time to think about, and not just think about, but also do our bit
to help, those in need:
“Christmas is coming,
the goose is getting fat,
please put a penny in the old man’s hat.
If you haven’t got a penny, a ha’penny will do,
if you haven’t got a ha’penny, then God bless you.”
Curious about exploring things further? If you would like to ask further questions about the topics raised in these homilies (or maybe think it wasn’t explained too well!), please feel free to e-mail Fr Michael at stjoseph.thame@rcaob.org.uk