Christmas Day
Service Date:
25 December, 2007
God's present for us
Has anyone got a present they’d like to show us?
We’ve spent all Advent focussing on this tree: putting it up, taking it down to go into the church, putting it back up here again, decorating it, putting our young people’s skills and enthusiasm into making it bright with suns, moons and stars, leaves, flowers and fruit. We can be proud of what we have made of our tree. But now it’s time to go into reverse. Now it is time to look on our tree again and see what present God has given us.
We have been walking through Advent with the prophet Isaiah of Jerusalem, who has been telling us about God’s promises to come. But what does Isaiah tell us this morning? He speaks of promises fulfilled. The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light. A child has been born for us, full of wisdom, full of power, full of protection, full of peace, and all these gifts for us. This child, like every child, is full of promise and hope. This child, like no other child, is God with us, God sharing our human life, God the ultimate Christmas present.
So I invite the children here to see what you can see hanging on the Christmas tree that wasn’t there last week, to take it down and to share it out with the rest of us. But just for the moment, if you can bear it, I’d like to ask you not to unwrap these presents [gold-covered chocolate coins] but to hold onto them for a little later on in the service. And now, for the last time, let’s sing our Advent song, Get ready.
Has anyone got a present they’d like to show us?
We’ve spent all Advent focussing on this tree: putting it up, taking it down to go into the church, putting it back up here again, decorating it, putting our young people’s skills and enthusiasm into making it bright with suns, moons and stars, leaves, flowers and fruit. We can be proud of what we have made of our tree. But now it’s time to go into reverse. Now it is time to look on our tree again and see what present God has given us.
We have been walking through Advent with the prophet Isaiah of Jerusalem, who has been telling us about God’s promises to come. But what does Isaiah tell us this morning? He speaks of promises fulfilled. The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light. A child has been born for us, full of wisdom, full of power, full of protection, full of peace, and all these gifts for us. This child, like every child, is full of promise and hope. This child, like no other child, is God with us, God sharing our human life, God the ultimate Christmas present.
So I invite the children here to see what you can see hanging on the Christmas tree that wasn’t there last week, to take it down and to share it out with the rest of us. But just for the moment, if you can bear it, I’d like to ask you not to unwrap these presents [gold-covered chocolate coins] but to hold onto them for a little later on in the service. And now, for the last time, let’s sing our Advent song, Get ready.
Hymns:
R&S 145 was
written by Phillips Brooks, an outstanding preacher in his day, following (it
is said) a tour of Jesus is coming;
Get ready, get ready;
he is coming soon.
1. All you lights in the heavens,
sun and moon and stars:
2. Roots and stumps and branches,
sprout with leaves of green:
3. Dried-up desert places,
blossom into flower:
4. People all, get ready,
bear your fruit for God:
5. Now our waiting’s over:
This is Christmas Day!
He’s with us, he’s with us;
Make Jesus welcome!
He’s with us, he’s with us;
God has come to stay.
R&S 151 was written, words and tune, by Michael Perry for an end-of-term student concert in
R&S 159 is the oldest of our hymns this morning, coming from Charles Wesley, though it has been altered from its 1739 original. The tune Mendelssohn is adapted from the second movement of Mendelssohn’s Festgesang for men’s voices and brass ensemble, written for and first performed at the Gutenberg Festival in
Sermon:
Luke 2:1-20Has everyone still got their chocolate coins? Not eaten them already? Well done! Now I’d like you to look at them more carefully. On one side there’s a picture of some sort of plant. Can anyone guess what it is? [
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to argue that chocolate is God - not really. But Divine chocolate is fairly traded, so the people who work on the cocoa plantations which grew the cocoa in these coins have good working conditions, clean water and access to health care – a life which doesn’t sound too different from the way Isaiah promised God’s kingdom would be. And maybe there are more links. These coins aren’t exactly what they look like at first glance. If you tried to pay them in at a bank, or to give them to the bus driver, you’d not get far. They’re not what you expect. And people must have been a bit surprised, too, when God’s promised leader finally turned out to be a baby, too young to do anything except leak at both ends. OK, babies grow up, but let’s face it, unless you were one of the shepherds the angels visited, would this baby born in a manger look like world leader material to you?
When Jesus grew up, he went on confusing people. If he was a Jewish teacher, what was he doing talking with women, and taxmen, and even Romans? But if he was a trouble-maker who broke all the Jewish rules, why were people hanging on his words? How come God was healing people through him? And what on earth were his friends on about when they said they’d seen and talked to him after he was put to death?
Still today Jesus is the Christmas present we weren’t expecting. Not the sort people give to show how rich and generous they are. Not the sort we accept politely, but we don’t really want it. Not the sort that we give to say to someone, Thank you, you’ve been really nice to me this year. Not even a fair exchange – I’ll give you wine if you give me perfume. Jesus is a totally free gift from God. But he does have strings attached: for once we start to unwrap this present, the way we look at our world starts to change. We start wondering whether it’s really fair that most of the children who work on cocoa plantations can’t afford to eat chocolate, and what we can do about it. We start wondering whether it’s true that life is about getting as much money and as much fun as we can. We start wondering whether Christmas is about a sweet little baby who never cries, or about good news for people at the bottom of the heap or the end of their tether: the good news that God loves us enough to join us in the mess we’re in and do something about it.
If we do choose to take the Christ-child from the manger, unwrap the swaddling clothes and follow the man he grew up to be, through good times and bad times, through danger and death and new life beyond, we can become part of the story of how God’s promises to Isaiah come true. So on this Christmas morning, take this Divine chocolate, eat it, enjoy God’s present of Jesus now, and look for more to come as his story unfolds.
