Happy Christmas!

 

It’s great to be here this evening to celebrate Christmas! Whatever December has looked like for you, whether it has been really busy, really quiet, full of carol services and or parties, shopping or trying to get work done by the end of the year, trying to calm excited children, or perhaps spending time reflecting on Christmases of the past with whatever memories you have of them, we’ve reached Christmas. 

Through December the church calendar follows the season of Advent when we wait and look forward to the celebration of Jesus’ birth and all that event meant and means. But now the waiting is over and into whatever is going on around us, Jesus is born… 

We’ve just heard a very famous Christmas reading from the Gospel according to John (1:1-14) – it begins, “In the beginning was the Word and the word was with God and the word was God…” but in a modern adaptation of the Bible, it says rather more plainly, “The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighbourhood…”

God is in our neighbourhood – God is here now… and that is what we celebrate at Christmas. That event of 2000 years ago when Jesus was born changed history… The reading goes on to talk about the light shining in the darkness – the light is Jesus, the darkness is the problems of the world… 

Into our neighbourhood and into our lives Jesus has stepped and from that time 2000 years ago, nothing will ever be the same. 

There is an Italian legend about a woman named Befana who lived along the dusty road that led to Bethlehem. She was a great housekeeper and liked to keep everything really clean. One night there was a knock at the door and she opened it to find three kings in search of a baby, a really special baby, a baby born to be the greatest of all kings. 

They asked if they could rest for a time with her and as they spoke they invited her to join them on their journey. And she said she’d love to do, but she had to get the house tidy once they left…  

She said she’d think about it though and they told her that all she needed to do was follow the bright star… 

She worked all night and finally, near dawn, she put on her heavy cloak. She took a little straw doll she wanted to give to the baby and left her house. But the sky had clouded over and she couldn’t see the star anymore and then it began to rain and her little doll was ruined. 

Finally, she gave up and went home. “I’m a foolish old woman,” she said to herself. “I missed my chance to worship this newborn king. Perhaps I will find him someday.” And the legend is that each year she sets out with a bag of toys, leaving some at every house where there is a child, hoping that one of them might be the Child she missed.

Tonight, we have that invitation not to miss the child born to change the world and not to miss the man he became. The reading we heard from the letter to the Hebrews (1:1-4) says that God, for many years, spoke to people through prophets, who were people who told others about God’s plans and thoughts, but now people just have to look at Jesus…  Into the world he came and he asks us to invite him into our lives… 

Last week I had a newsletter from St George’s College in Jerusalem. It’s a College which offers lots of study tours to people throughout the world, usually from way outside Jerusalem. Obviously things have been dreadful there for more than a year now. Students have stopped coming and the College and the whole region have been thrown into an uncomfortable time of suffering… 

It would be easy to look at the situation there and wonder what’s going on. It would be easy to look at things and wonder where God is in it all… 

But 2000 years ago, Jesus was born for a time just like now – he was born into a troubled region with oppressive rulers. He was born without the gift of lots of money or power. He was born as one of us…. Yet, that letter to the Hebrews reminds us, ‘He is the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being and he sustains all things by his powerful word.’ 

The College newsletter said how easy it would be to worry about the future as well as now, and to bemoan the dreadful conditions that people were enduring. The lack of the big Christmas celebration in Bethlehem is a reminder that there doesn’t seem to be too much to celebrate there this year…, but there is much to celebrate!! 

If we think of the world as containing so much darkness then we think of Jesus as the light – and one certainty is that light will always penetrate darkness! There is no darkness that can ever conceal a shining light.

And that is why, in Jerusalem there will be people celebrating this year. That is why, in Bethlehem, there will be people celebrating this year. It is why, as we recognise that Jesus has moved into our neighbourhood, we are invited to celebrate… 

We are invited to celebrate whether life currently feels great or not. We’re invited to celebrate whoever we are, whatever our background, whatever we’ve done today or will do tomorrow, we are invited to celebrate because Jesus was born for us… 

Into a world that needed light, God came in the form of Jesus. Cared for by Mary and Joseph, recognised by others as they took Jesus as a baby into the Temple; growing to offer people an invitation to follow him and to see how he lived. 

And people followed and they watched him perform miracles, they watched him overturn the tables of corrupt people, they watched him stand up to people who hated him and still he told people to love their neighbour, love their neighbour whoever the neighbour might be. And he didn’t just say it – he lived it…. 

He lived it even to the cross, but death couldn’t hold him – Jesus was, and is, life. The light that came into the darkness and shines brightly… 

I told that Italian legend earlier of the lady who didn’t immediately accept the invitation to travel to see the newborn baby. She waited until she was ready. She let things get in the way, things that seemed sensible at the time, but it cost her the chance to see Jesus… 

I don’t know what they might be for you, but we all have distractions… maybe it’s busyness of work, maybe it’s a hectic social life, perhaps it’s the commitments of family or perhaps it’s something we’re worried about. Maybe for some it’s the desire to ask every question and get an answer but that isn’t faith… 

These are all valid distractions, but there’s something more important than our distractions, and that is Jesus… 

I hope that your December has been good and that your Christmas will be great too, but  we still have that invitation to see Jesus – the light shining into whatever our situation may be… We have that invitation to see Jesus who has moved into our neighbourhood and invites us to ask him into our lives. 

May you find the joy of Christmas is yours, just as you find the peace and the love of Jesus as yours, and may you know always, the hope that he brings to me and to you and to everyone. AMEN