Christmas Day 2025

Christmas Day 25.12.24

We’ve made it! Christmas day 2024. And what a year it has been. It seems to me that every year the ups and downs get more up and more down. Today of course we celebrate that Jesus came to earth, to walk amongst us, to give us hope and to die and rise again, nailing our sins to the cross so that we might be reconciled to God through Him. Despite the ups and downs there is one constant which remains, Jesus is and will forever be sovereign overall.

The alternate gospel reading for this morning is John 1:1-14 and he writes, “The light shines in the darkness, and darkness did not overcome it.” Jesus the light of the world shines brightly today as he has done throughout time. A light to guide us when the world around us is dark.

John was sent to testify to this light, we saw on 4th Sunday of Advent, last week, that even in the womb John recognised the divinity and majesty of Jesus. He leapt for joy within the womb. He fulfilled what Gabriel told Zachariah about John being filled with the Holy Spirit, even in the womb. John’s job was a simple one, proclaim that the Messiah is near. John’s gospel tells us that John the Baptist “came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him.”

The good news of Jesus Christ is that while the world which was His did not recognise or welcome Him, “to all those who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God.”

John’s prologue is a very useful way to frame the Christmas story because it does not distance the birth of Christ from the reason for His coming. Jesus did not step in our world just so we could sing away in a manger. He came to reconcile humanity back to God. He came on a rescue mission. Paul tells us in Titus that Jesus saves us not because of any work of righteousness we could ever do, but rather according to his mercy, through the water of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit.

The story of Christ’s birth and the preparation that goes into it mirrors the story of his return which is yet to happen. We are now the characters enacting the story preparing the way of the return of the king.

God speaks through the prophet Isaiah, “Go through the gates, prepare the way for the people; build up the highway, clear it of stones… The Lord has proclaimed to the end of the earth: Say to daughter Zion, See, your salvation comes; his reward is with him, and his recompense before him. They shall be called, The Holy People, The Redeemed of the Lord.”

As John was tasked to go out and proclaim repentance for sins and immediacy of the Messiah’s arrival. We too are called to go out into the world and call it to repentance and to know that Jesus is on His way. The hour is near when the Lord will return. Never has our salvation been so close as at this moment right now.

We who are justified through our faith in Jesus, redeemed and called Children of the most high have been given the greatest gift of all.

How many of us this morning opened a present and couldn’t wait to tell someone about it? And yet, how many of us this morning told someone about that saviour of the world who brings total and complete freedom?

While the free speech we as Christians enjoy in the west is coming under ever increasing attack, we still have the freedom to proclaim as John did the message of the gospel.

Yet in parts of the world that freedom is not there. In Syria this week a Christmas tree was burned to the ground. A country where being a Christian is not a safe thing. Yet thousands of Christians of all ages have taken to the streets to protest and make their voices heard. They are literally putting their faith into action.

For many this time of year is all about the presents under the tree, or the turkey or copious amounts of Chocolate. And while there is nothing inherently wrong in that of itself. We have a responsibility as Children of God to remind the world the reason for the season.

Jesus came to earth to fulfil the old covenant and to establish the new. To wipe away the sacrifices which could measure up and to become the one sufficient sacrifice for Sin. He did not come to be coo’d at in his crib, but rather to radically change the world.

It’s this life changing good news each of us carries with us. It’s the greatest gift in the world to know that we rest safe in the saviour’s arms, one definitely worth sharing this Christmas!

Amen.