Keep Your Own House in Order: A Christmas Sermon That Looked Away

Christmas sermons are not accidental. They are chosen moments.

They are among the most public, symbolic, and carefully curated words the Church of England speaks all year—spoken into spaces shared by regular worshippers and once-a-year carol-service attendees; by survivors, clergy, professionals, journalists, and a public already attuned to questions of trust and accountability.

That is why what is not said matters as much as what is said.

After years of catastrophic safeguarding failures—investigations, near-misses, unresolved cases, survivor testimony, “independent” reviews, and apologies that have not delivered accountability—the Church has nevertheless repositioned itself as a confident moral voice on immigration, unity, and compassion.

To be clear: these are not trivial causes.

Human suffering matters wherever it occurs. Always.

But moral authority is not proven by the causes you choose. It is exposed by the ones you avoid.

Timing matters. And order matters.

When an institution that has not faced the consequences of its own wrongdoing pivots loudly to judging the world beyond itself, the posture is not prophetic—it is tactical.

This was evident in Sarah Mullally’s Christmas Day sermon. The address was polished and outward-facing, carefully framed to reassure. It spoke fluently of welcome, unity, compassion, and social responsibility—but it stopped short of naming reality.

No safeguarding failures.

No survivors.

No confession equal to the history of harm enabled, denied, and delayed.

The message was clear: this will not be spoken of here.

If Christmas—the feast of truth entering the world—is not the moment to tell the truth, then the silence is not pastoral. It is deliberate. It is public amnesia dressed in liturgy.

Do not misunderstand me: there is nothing wrong with compassion at Christmas. What is wrong is postponing truth in its name. If care requires reality to wait, it is not care at all. Christmas is not comfort; it is truth arriving without permission. The Incarnation does not delay reality. It embodies it.

When the Church uses Christmas to speak of moral failure “out there” while refusing to name failures in-house, it is not offering hope. It is granting itself absolution without confession, forgiveness without repentance, and peace without justice.

The season becomes moral cover—warmth instead of reckoning, candles instead of clarity, hope without truth.

The sermon sounds holy.

It feels evasive.

Survivors feel it. Clergy hear it. Most see through it.

They hear the absence where experience should be named. They hear compassion preached that will never reach them. They hear unity veiled in avoidance—the sense that now is not the time, that there will always be a better season to talk about harm.

But there is no better season than Christmas. If God can enter human brokenness, the Church can name its own.

Liturgy cannot carry what truth is denied. Music, ritual, and moral language cannot substitute for accountability. When confession is abstract and repentance generic, worship becomes aesthetic rather than transformative.

This is how trust erodes—not through hostility, but through selective silence.

Not because the Church speaks about the world, but because it refuses to speak honestly about itself.

There is a moral rule so basic it barely needs stating: keep your own house in order first.

Leadership does not begin with commentary on society. It begins with responsibility for those already entrusted to your care.

Authority does not flow from eloquence. It flows from truth-telling.

Apologies without repair are not humility.

Repentance without consequence is not repentance.

Unity that depends on silence is not reconciliation.

Silence does not erase history.

Avoidance does not heal harm.

Reassurance does not replace accountability.

Until failures are named with the same clarity and courage as global injustices, every Christmas sermon will carry an unspoken tension—between light proclaimed and truth withheld.

Christmas is about light shining in darkness.

But light that refuses to illuminate certain rooms is not light at all.

It is mood lighting.

And we all see it.

~ Michelle Burns

Writing this blog takes time, care, and a lot of tea. If it’s been helpful to you, you’re very welcome to buy me a cuppa as a small way of supporting it. No pressure at all – I’m just glad you’re here - Michelle