Author: Kerry

The Church puts theology before story, in setting these readings from Hebrews and John for this morning. In part, it is assumed that we know the story line. The issue is, do we know by faith its meaning and power?

You know, on our birthdays we receive gifts, but on Jesus’ birthday everyone else gets gifts. That seems most fitting to me, for Christ came into the world not to receive, but to give.

The Incarnation is God’s great owning of us. We disowned him long ago and still do, but he owns us, claims us as his own, comes to claim us in our flesh and blood. We are adopted by God in Christ, claimed as his own children in and through Jesus Christ.

It is about receiving and believing Jesus. Jesus was born that we might be born again, born a human child that we might be reborn the children of God.

I want to say loud and clear two things: 1. It is all about the gifts; 2. It’s all about what you get.

Today we celebrate not only that Christ is born for us, and that we are born again in him, but that he may be born in us. And we may well pray, “O holy child of Bethlehem, be born in us today,” that he may evermore dwell in us.

There were shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. To them the angel comes. To them, first of all, the news that God himself has come to search for the lost sheep is given…

Now, everyone knows that Christmas is the celebration of the birth of Jesus. Everyone knows that Jesus was born of Mary in Bethlehem. But what the Angel tells us and the Shepherds is news, Good News, Gospel. “Unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, who is Christ the Lord.”

God, the Creator of the Universe, put skin on, our flesh and blood, assumed our full human nature and lived among us. God did not just dress up like one of us for a day, he became human and lived and suffered and died as one of us, for all of us.