Christmas Day 2023 Sermon

Christmas Day 2023 The kindness of God

Zachary notes the loving-kindness of the heart of our God, who visits us like the dawn from on high (Lk 1, 78).

God is generous; He has loving-kindness towards us. It is His generous loving nature that motivates Him to create whomever and whatever He does create. He did not need anything extra as to His own existence; He is all-sufficient, and cannot suffer pain.

But it is in the nature of love to offer itself to others. Love implies the need for a beloved. God had His own community of love in the Three Persons of the Trinity, but wanted to go further, to include human beings.

This is what God was looking for. He did not need us, but He takes pleasure in seeing us receive what He is giving. So He gives us a chance to do that.

We hear of something being the ‘chance of a lifetime’. Well, we have it here – the chance to base our lives around the will of God, to experience a share of the perfection of life found in God Himself.

God makes this possible by creating us, and all else that is needed.

To enable a more loving response from us, God gives us free will. It is a great privilege but it can be used wrongly.

And if it is used wrongly there will be all sorts of trouble, as we have seen in our time and in all ages of human history.

Will God abandon us because we have been so ungrateful? No, He has another card to play. He brings into operation another dimension of love, and that is Mercy.

Mercy is when Love gives itself even when not returned, even when brazenly rejected.

Today at Christmas especially we express our own sense of wonder at God's goodness.

We are moved to gratitude for His goodness, and shame for our lack of appreciation up to this point; not to mention the ongoing ingratitude of much of the world.

Christmas is part celebration of what we have achieved, and part prayer for what is still lacking.

God initiates, we respond.  The more we respond, the more the love of God can take hold in our world and its fortunes.

A world which truly seeks God would have many blessings presently unattainable.

Love enables more love.

This Love or Mercy will move sinners to repentance. They will see their sins in a new light and be ashamed of them; and they will have sufficient desire to renew their lives.

We can think of Jesus in the Crib, an apparently small presence, but all of God's infinity was concentrated at that moment – one place and one time; and those who could discern His presence and what it promised were filled with joy and hope.

We come along much later but we can benefit from Christ’s coming as much as those who were there that night.

We have been attempting to capture that scene ever since, and especially on this day of the year – to be as humble and focused as were those gathered around the Christ-child.

Many have lost belief in God's coming among us; they see the suffering but not the relief that comes with it.

One thing we can say: if more would obey more relief would be evident.

We can also say that God's plans take time, as He is working on such a grand scale, seeking to save every person on earth.

We must be patient if we want to see better days. Meanwhile we give God the chance to work His plans in us and through us, and we do as we sing to each other: O come let us adore Him.