Christmas Day 2011 Sermon

Christmas Day 2011

In the lead-up to Christmas we say that we are awaiting the birth of Christ; soon He will be born.

Yet we know very well that He already has been born, and that was a long time ago. So why do we act as though His birth is something in the future, to be looked forward to?

He has been born in the past but we still have to come to terms with it, to unravel the mystery.

So by going back ritually to His birth we hope to take this event more to our hearts, to assimilate it - an incredible fact, but true anyway.

It is a stranger fact still, perhaps, that He has come yet we do not see the effects. His birth is ignored. He came to heal the world of sin - which is essentially ignoring God; but when He came the world ignored Him; in other words, continued to sin - and still does, at a great rate.

So we have to go back and back until we get this right. We put ourselves in the position of the people of Israel who longed for the Messiah to come; of the shepherds who in their humility and simplicity hoped for better times. Of the wise men who recognized a good thing when they saw it.

We are child-like enough to believe that there can be a change in the human heart, the way that people live.

Christmas is for children, they say. Well we are like children in our sense of wonder and hoping for better things to come.

We can see all the brutality and falsehood in the world, but we are still able to hope and look to heaven and say: Father, You can save us.

The Israelites waited for the Messiah. We are doing the same thing in many ways. Though He has come it is largely as though He has not. Our prayer is not that He come to the world but that the world take Him seriously.

It starts with us. By reliving His birth, we are opening our hearts and minds wider, to understand our need of the Saviour, to recover that sense of wanting, longing, desiring passionately the coming of God.

Many would shrug their shoulders, and say, So what? What difference does it make? And looking at the world they are, in a way, right. But the reason it has not made a difference is that people have been shrugging their shoulders for 2000 years!

We have to believe that change is possible, and then persevere in that belief until the change happens.

So we say: Come Lord, not for the second time, but for the first time, so we can finally get on the right footing to receive You.

People observe that it is sad that children grow up and lose the magic of Christmas. It is never as exciting for an adult.

But adults can still get excited, not because we want to rush to the Christmas tree and open our gifts, but excited in hope that Maybe this year the world will respond as never before to the birth of Christ.

This is the gift we really hold out for. It is better than any material object we might have hoped to receive. It is harder to achieve, but yet we cannot fail to hope knowing the power and goodness of the One who has come among us. And knowing further that the only barrier to this result is indifference on our part.

It has not happened - this does not mean He has failed; nor does it mean - it is not possible. It just means His offer has not been taken up.

We can do our part by desiring, hoping and accepting all that Our Saviour has brought to us. Our joy is not yet in the fulfilment but in the anticipation, knowing that it is coming closer.