Sermon for Christmas, 25th Dec 2025

Welcome sisters and brothers and LOVE be with you. Take my lips O God and speak through them, take our minds O God and think through them, take our hearts O God and love through them this day. <Amen>

“And the Word became flesh and lived among us …” (John 1:14)

Did God take leave of his senses? If God is the almighty creator of the universe, what would possess Him to to be born as a helpless baby, to put himself in a position of complete dependence on human parents, to make himself vulnerable to all the pain and suffering of life on earth?

What on earth would be the point of it? What sort of God decides to do something like that?

Yet … this is exactly what the Christmas story is all about; it’s God becoming one of us, God sharing our human life, God experiencing all the things that we experience.

In Christian theology this is the ‘incarnation’ – God taking on himself our human flesh … but again - - - why would God choose to become voluntarily human? Surely, much better to stay safely divine!

Let me suggest three things that this Christmas story tells us about what sort of God would do this:

The sort of God who believes in the power of love and not the power of force.

There are a lot of people in the Christmas story who believe in the power of force. There’s the Roman emperor, Caesar Augustus (forceful enough to tax and count an entire Empire), King Herod (forceful enough to send out death squads to kill innocent children).

Yet today, 2025 years later, the only reason we remember Caesar Augustus and Herod the Great is because of the birth of a baby in Bethlehem during their reign.

Jesus spent his life teaching the truth and reaching out in love to everyone He met. He didn’t concentrate on the powerful and the rich in an attempt to influence the movers and shakers of society; rather, he hung out with lepers and tax collectors, blue-collar workers and prostitutes, and everywhere He went He brought transformation into people’s lives.

Jesus touched them, and they had the sense that they had been touched by God. It wasn’t the power of force; it was the power of love – God’s love.
2. The sort of God who thinks you make a difference by coming close, to love, not by standing far away and yelling instructions.

Religious history is full of stories of gods who give their wisdom at long distance – gods who aren’t crazy enough to get close to, and love, this dangerous human race, but always stay safely far away, in some remote place, and send their messengers to give us their instructions.

The Christian story of love is not that sort of story.

In the prologue to his Gospel, St. John calls Jesus ‘The Word’; he says, ‘And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory’ (John 1:14) – or, as American clergyman and author, Eugene Peterson, paraphrases it, ‘The Word became a human being and moved into our neighbourhood’.

God loves us SO much; ‘What if God was one of us?’ Well, He was. He is!

3. The sort of God who actually shows us what a loving human life is meant to be.

We have all heard the common saying: ‘I’m only human’; usually we use it as an excuse for the times we mess up, the times we fall short of what we know we should be. It’s as if we’re claiming that being human is an excuse for getting it wrong!

Of course, you and I have never seen a human being who wasn’t flawed in some way. I am flawed. You are flawed. Humanity is flawed.

Yet, Jesus came and lived the sort of life that God dreamed for us humans when He created us in the first place.

He told us that the two great commandments – the ones everything else depends on – that we love God with all our heart, and we love our neighbour as ourselves.

Then Jesus came among us and lived that out in his daily life.

To learn to follow Jesus is to learn to be truly human, the way God intended human life to be lived.

Human life is not about who has the most possessions, or who is the most popular, or who can force the most people to do what they want.

Human life is about LOVING relationships - with God, and with our neighbours.Get that wrong, and we’ve missed the whole point.

Get it right, and we’ve grasped the reason we were created in the first place. <PAUSE>

So no – God did not “lose the plot” when He decided to become one of us. There was a deeply meaningful message and method in God’s decision.

God is love, through and through, and everything that He did was consistent with that love.

The Christ-child comes in love, not in force.

The Christ-child comes close to us, to show us the way of love and to give us the help we need, rather than standing at a safe distance and barking orders at us.

The Christ-child comes to show us how to live … I mean REALLY … LIVE.

The Christ-child comes to help those who can’t help themselves.

The Christ-child comes to save us from sin, evil, and death and to lead us into freedom and joy and goodness and love.

What sort of God would do such a thing? A God who loves us more than we ever can begin to imagine.

The Christmas story assures us of that love, so let’s thank God today for the great love He showed by coming among us as one of us, and let’s trust and follow him day by day and so enjoy that love forever.

The Christ child HAS come and to God be the glory.

Let us pray:

“Lord Jesus, You are the eternal Word, the Light of the world, and the God who came near in love. Shine in our darkness. Live in our hearts. Make us children of Your grace. And may Your love and glory be seen in us — full of grace and truth. Amen.”

I runga e te Ingoa o te Atua, te Matua, te Tama me te Wairua Tapu. <AMINE>