Homily for Christmas Night 2025 Year A

 

Christmas Night – Year A - 2025

Isaiah 52:7-10

How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of the messenger who announces peace, who brings good news, who announces salvation, who says to Zion, ‘Your God reigns.’

Listen! Your sentinels lift up their voices, together they sing for joy;
for in plain sight they see the return of the Lord to Zion.
Break forth together into singing, you ruins of Jerusalem;
for the Lord has comforted his people, he has redeemed Jerusalem.
The Lord has bared his holy arm before the eyes of all the nations;
and all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God.

 

John 1:1-14

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.

He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.

And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.

What has come into being in him was life, and that life was the light of all people.

May I speak…

I wonder when you last encountered something that was too good to be true?

I’m a bit of a sucker for applications on my phone or computer that promise to organise my life, helping me to remember tasks that I would otherwise forget, structuring my diary, flagging up important emails, even helping me to build healthy habits when it comes to keeping my home clean and tidy, or eating a healthy diet.

If you’ve ever visited the vicarage, you’ll know at a glance that these apps have not worked. They either made false promises in their advertising, or just weren’t created for vicars, or perhaps they work for everyone else, except for me. They are, generally, too good to be true.

But sometimes, very occasionally, there are things that are both good and true, and we aren’t quite sure what to do with ourselves. The blossoming feelings of a first love, the quality of cakes at the church café, the first fireside cuppa of winter, a family walk on a frosty boxing day morning, the moment when a new child enters a family, a heartfelt reconciliation with a long lost relative or friend. All things which are good, and which are true, but where, with the exception of cake, we have the potential to mess things up by what a therapist would call ‘self-sabotage’ and what in church we usually call ‘sin’. Failing to accept what is good and true, because we’re focussed on ourselves, our own insecurities, our history, and what could go wrong.

The Christmas story is one that breaks through our ‘too good to be true’ insecurity. It is true, but it isn’t all good. If we really pay attention to it, it has moments that are chaotic and painful and awkward, but it marks a moment where God looked at the world in it’s chaos, and war, and pain, not dissimilar to the world we live in today. And God chose to embrace it, not just with a hug from above, or some divine messenger, but by stepping into our human race, as the most vulnerable human creature there is, a baby. Born not to wealthy politicians or royalty, but to a Jewish teenager called Mary and her carpenter husband, Joseph, in a rough animal shelter, 80 odd miles from home, during a season of political turmoil and roman occupation.

On Monday evening we had a family carol service in Frampton, and I asked the children why they thought God chose to come as a baby. And they said this: Jesus wanted to experience what it was like to be us, before he started working as a grown-up to help us.

And there is so much truth in what they said. God wanted to know what it is to be human, God wanted to walk in the uncertainty of our human race. And so Jesus was born, and grew up, and he was good, and true, and pure, and those whom he had come to help thought he was too good to be true, particularly the religious ones, and they tried to catch him out, and they rejected him. And if we’re honest with ourselves, I think we can recognise that we’ve done the same. We’ve heard this story countless times, perhaps every Christmas since we were a child, we’ve allowed ourselves an annual glimmer of hope, and at some point we’ve closed our open hearts back up, just in case we’re disappointed, because we don’t want to be vulnerable, even with someone who is entirely good.

John’s gospel, which we’ve just heard, calls Jesus the ‘word’, because the first thing we hear in the bible is God speaking ‘let there be light’. For most of human history before the first century AD, God had been a bodiless voice, speaking through other people, or burning trees, or lightning struck altars. On this holy night, we celebrate God moving from talking to us to walking with us, the word of God becoming flesh, choosing to live our lives.

God is your first love and mine, not because you have always loved God, but because God loves you, always has, and always will. That love is unconditional, unlike any other relationship, because Jesus has already walked through the unpredictable bits, and ugly bits, and wobbly bits, and painful bits, for us. 

If you’re not a Bridget Jones fan, you’ll have to forgive me, but there’s a scene in the movie where Mark Darcy proclaims his love for Bridget, just as she is. And her friends surround her and say ‘what even your wobbly bits’?

We all have our wobbles, our worries, our sin, our double questioning, our insecurities, but God is close to each one of us nonetheless. So this Christmas, as we celebrate the birth of the Christ child, as we rejoice in God’s choice to know what it feels like to be human, know that you are loved, just as you are. Know that you are welcome in this place, in this strange and often disfunctional family that we call church, and at this table. Know that God will never give up on you.

Amen.