Christmas Day 2024
Luke 2:1-20
St Barbara’s; 25.12.2024
Rev Jeremy Bevan
So it’s Christmas Day, and the long wait is over. And I wonder if you’ve got any presents left to open when you get home later? Well, I’m going to need help opening some more presents in just a moment. [Walter to choose volunteers; explanation of what people are volunteering for: to come up to the front, open a numbered present, show everyone, place it in the basket behind me, and sit down]
Christmas tends to be about giving and receiving presents, doesn’t it? It’s also about the presence (same-sounding word, different spelling) of God with us in Jesus. But why did Jesus come among us? To tell that story, we have to start way back, long before Jesus’s birth, with what God the creator of everything is like.
Who’s got present one? [Bar of Galaxy chocolate] God made the galaxy we live in, and our universe, 90 billion light years across. But why should God bother with us in this one galaxy among a hundred billion of them? Why? Because God cares for us. A thoughtful person wrote a poem 3000 years ago, one of our psalms, that said God’s care is as vast as that universe. God loves us (that writer said) with steadfast, enduring love, and in loving us, wants us to love the same way, to live the very best we can for God…
Whos’ got present two? [Sours] Tere’s a problem, ten, in us trying to live the very best lives we can for God. Things are not as they should be. There’s war where there should be peace, hatred instead of love, judgment and condemnation, not compassion. There’s poverty, loneliness and sadness. In far-off places, and in our own lives too. So God hatched a plan, to make this sour world sweet.
Who’s got present three? [Kinder Surprise] God’s plan to make our sour world sweet is something God puts into practice in surprising ways. By being born as that most vulnerable of creatures, a human baby. Not in a palace either, where you might expect someone important to be born. Born instead to Mary, as we heard in our reading, in a guest room next to where Joseph’s relatives kept their cows, and maybe goats and sheep. Smelly. Unhygienic. Dirty. And born not in the important city of Jerusalem, but in insignificant little Bethlehem, the least of Judah’s towns. This is God saying “Here I am, identifying with you 100%. No matter how ordinary your life feels, you are special to me”.
Who’s got present four? [Kinder Joy] So the news of Jesus’s birth was happy news to a group of ordinary people who were used to being told they don’t matter: those shepherds we also heard about in our reading, out in the hills, looking after their flocks. To these excluded, downtrodden people God’s messenger, an angel, comes. And tells them, “You, yes you, matter to God. God has come with good news for you. Check it out: go down into Bethlehem, and see, cradled in an animal feeding trough, the one who will turn the world upside-down.” And that’s just what they did. God brings happiness by lifting up the lowly.
Whos’ got present five? [Starburst] God who made the galaxies also used a burst of starlight to announce the birth of Jesus to a group of wise men. And because they somehow knew he would become God’s wise ruler, these hope-filled travellers went on a very long journey to find him, guided by that star, and gave him gifts fit for a king. The message of God with us, coming to guide our lives if we’re willing to let that happen, was starting to spread.
Who’s got present six? [Allsorts] The Christmas story isn’t just a children’s story, something our scientific age can and should put behind it. Living life in the light of what the Bible tells us God is like has made sense to all sorts of people at all sorts of times in all sorts of places through history. No-one is excluded.
Who’s got present seven? [Celebrations] All of that, all that we’ve heard about, is (I think) cause for celebration, isn’t it? Celebration because God so loved the world that he sent Jesus, not to condemn the world, but to renew it and revitalise it, to raise and recall us to the dignity that the divine spark inside us longs for. To provide light for us to see the way ahead more clearly, to live lives that please God. To bring us the opportunity of life in all its fulness, ad restore us to the wholeness God always intended for us.
Thank you, everyone. So that’s the story of Christmas in 4000 calories. Now that’s far more than one person needs, even on Christmas Day, so here’s what we’re going to do, so everyone gets to celebrate. We’re going to take what’s in the baskets and share it out among us. So before you go from here, please take something from the baskets to enjoy later today. Thank you.
