Christmas Day 2019 Sermon

Christmas Day 2019 Readiness

Most days of our lives nothing much happens. It is just the same old routine.

Just the occasional day something extraordinary things happen, good or bad,

In the Christmas story we have a series of extraordinary events, all good.

We are familiar with these stories and might therefore be a little de-sensitized as to how extraordinary they were:

Annunciation. Just imagine. To receive an angel – that alone would overwhelm us. But then such a message. You will have a son and He will be the Saviour of the world. Just like that.

Then St Joseph and his dreams. To have a dream of such clarity and so much against normal reality. A child without a human father. He believes it even if he does not understand it.

Then the shepherds: on an ordinary night in their ordinary fields – a host of angels appear and again the message.

For improbability on one hand and the depth of the message on the other, nothing can equal these events.

When God chooses to make Himself known, creation stands still.

It may still take time for the full truth to come out. Great revelations from God are usually to just one or a few people; and only later does the story emerge (eg Lourdes, Fatima)..

The lessons for us are 1)that we should never declare there is nothing happening. A seed becomes a tree, but we cannot wait around to see it happening. Yet we see the tree.

We take confidence in God's ability to finish what He has started.

2) God can fulfil His plans more easily if He can find people who are willing to believe Him.

Imagine if He waited a thousand years for the right person and that person refuses. There probably have been many such people who could have helped things along but missed their calling (eg Judas, or the Rich Young Man).

If we believe in God and His power, we will not want to stand in His way.

3) We believe in God's power to transform reality, which may appear to be stuck at its present level.

Who can stop a storm with a word or bring forth a man from his grave, who has been dead four days?

We say, impossible, or highly improbably. God does it.

On all the days when there is no obvious miracle, it is not as though God is sleeping. He is just letting time run its course until the next dramatic intervention.

We serve Him on those days as well. We are in readiness for whatever God tells us or otherwise makes known. We will obey instantly whatever He commands, ordinary or extraordinary.

We cannot force these special moments to come, but we can recognize them when they do come, and be in the right frame of mind to react.

We can also be active in seeking His will. By calling down His blessings on the world,  we believe we can bring Salvation at an accelerated rate. This is really what all intercessory prayer is doing.

God wants to have us working with Him and being responsive at all times; not to be totally surprised every time He does something.

We live in a world where miracles still happen, and they will happen more often if more people would come to believe it.

We thank God today for doing so much for us, with such patience, and ask for the grace to assist rather than impede the full realization of His will.

Happy Christmas!