This Christmas I’d like to ask you to spare a thought for
the poor clergyperson.
Yes, I know, I have such a terribly hard life and your
heart bleeds for me.
It’s not my meagre stipend I want to complain about.
Nor is it the fact that for 11 months of the year I have
to put up with so-called jokes about my only working one day a week.
You know the old line about the Vicar?
Invisible 6 days a week and incomprehensible the 7th.
Then for about a month people have been saying “Your busy
time coming up, Vicar!”
Well, yes, one of my busy times.
But I do want to share with you the challenge of
Christmas preaching.
Every year, I need at least 4 new Christmas sermons –
some of them with gimmicks for the kids - and yet the message of Christmas hasn’t
changed much.
Some Vicars get around this problem by changing jobs
every 5 years, of course.
If the Vicar works really hard for the first 5 years, he’s
got all his sermons prepared and he can keep moving, and go half time for the
next 25 years.
The static Vicar, however, will need about 120 different
Christmas sermons throughout his career.
Because of course you can all remember exactly what I’ve
said for the last couple of years, so there’s no chance of re-using any of the
2011 stuff.
So what is the Vicar to say about Christmas year in year
out?
What is the unchanging but never out of date message of
Christmas?
What can we say that is as fresh and engaging today as it
was that first Christmas night in Bethlehem 2 Millennia ago?
Let me give you 3 headings:
(1)
The
Christmas story is a relatively simple and well-known story – though it’s got
its surprises
The story of a boy, a girl and a baby
In some ways a typical story
But an extraordinary one
And one with some surprises that we sometimes overlook
e.g. scandal, poverty, refugee, the reality of the stable
(2)
The
Christmas story is a wonderful, inexhaustible, inexpressible mystery
The Christmas story is the
story of the love of Almighty God for a sinful world
It shows us the lengths to
which God will go for you and me
It is the story of God come to
earth in person
God on a rescue mission
God come in the flesh
The incarnation
God contracted to a span
The maker in the manger
The creator in the cradle
(3)
The
Christmas story is the best news in the world ever
People sometimes think that
Christianity is boring, untrue and irrelevant.
But there could be nothing
more interesting, exciting, true, relevant and life-changing than the brilliant
news of Christmas.
This story can be your story.
It can make all the difference
to you and your family this Christmas and for ever.
If there’s any chance that
this is true, there is nothing more important and urgent.
This is at least worth
investigating.
So, I’m glad to be able to say
something to you about Christmas again this year.
Thank you for listening.
And God-willing, I hope to
preach another 119 similar but different sermons to you.
A very merry Christmas to you
all.
Amen.
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