It's just gone midnight so it is now Christmas Day in the UK. So right now many children around the world are either too excited to sleep or too tired from excitement to stay away awake - but either way they wait in anticipation of a day when they hope all their dreams, conjured up over the past weeks and months, will come true in a wonderfully magical day.
But there was a first Christmas Day. And on the eve of that day it could not be said that the world was waiting with any degree of excitement. But what they were about to receive was worth more than all the Christmas gifts exchanged since that day.
In some ways the first and the current Christmas day stand in stark contrast with each other. But on the other hand it could be said we have a lot in common with the world back then. Like the Bethlemhem townsfolk over 2000 years ago so many of us will go to sleep this Christmas Eve with no thought of Jesus. The magnitude of the fulfillment of the Old Testament promise in Christ, God Incarnate will not enter our heads.
As we heard in Church at the Carol Service the Wise Men did not come the simply bring presents to Jesus - and they certainly didn't do so just because God wanted to start a new holiday season, or come up with something to boost the local economy during those hard winter months! The Wise Men and the Shepherds came to worship Jesus - funny how we tend to gloss over that bit and focus on the gifts!
How long will it be until we truely celebrate Christmas? See you at church in the morning?
1 comment:
Great sermon! We should book you for next year's carol service!
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