Every year we have this wonderful opportunity to focus on the Christmas story. The community is filled with carols, there is plenty mention of the angels, we have the three wise me from the East, sometimes referred to as Kings….and there is baby Jesus the centre of the story, who is regularly depicted as being born in a manger….
Have you ever stopped and considered the significance of baby Jesus for your life and the lives of others? (pause)
If you think about it, it is quite remarkable.
As John chapter 1 reminds us…. God has become flesh…and that is why at times he is often referred to as Immanuel…which means God is here with us!!
In other words, God has come down to earth, down to our level, down to our broken and messy world…
Even though He is the creator of the world, the almighty God, he does not avoid us, he comes to show us that He loves us, that He cares for us, that He is going to make it possible for us not to be stuck in this messy and broken world forever….
This is really what Christmas is about…. God comes to us!!
This is the true gift of Christmas…. we don’t have to do the right things, say the right things, even have the right understandings for God to come to us….in Jesus he comes to us!!
And He comes to us not to tell us off, not to say how messed up we are or how wrong we have got things….but to do something we can not do….to pay the full price for what we have done wrong or haven’t done right, for how selfish at times we have, for all those times we have neglected loving Him and others!! None of these things are a problem for God…. He doesn’t like them, but they don’t stop Him loving me, you and everyone else….
As 1 John 4:10 reminds us
This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.
So as we celebrate Christmas lets celebrate the real gift of Christmas, that God has come to earth for us….and in Jesus we not only received the gift of having our sins forgiven, but we are also receiving a life to live now and a loving life to look forward to where sin, death, pain and suffering will not exist..
And so, as we focus on Jesus, we discover the real God, a caring, forgiving and loving God. Amen
