Sermon at St. Mary’s Church, West Dean - Christmas Day Morning Communion – Sunday 25 December 2025 (Adapted from Sermon 209)
Isaiah 9:2-7; Titus 2:11-14; Luke 2:1-20
May I speak in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit and may the
words which I speak be a blessing to all who hear them. Amen.
“Are
you all prepared for today’s celebration? Turkey in the oven, potatoes and
brussels pealed, presents opened already or under the tree waiting to be
unwrapped? Prosecco in the fridge chilling?
Do you know what films you will be watching after the King’s Speech or
games you will be playing?”
That is
how I started my Christmas Day sermon last year and the year before that when I
led the service at Farley and it is a great honour and privilege to be with you
here at West Dean on this very special day. It really doesn’t seem a year since
last Christmas Day – and how the world seems to have changed, and not for the
better, over the last twelve months and I feel that, more than ever, there is a
great need for the Christian message of Good News to be broadcast, not least
within our own country.
Christmas
is a time of great joy, expectancy and celebration. Yet, all too often, we lose
ourselves in the preparations and miss the sacredness of the season. Why does
it matter? Because it’s this holiday on which we honour the birth of our
Saviour. It’s this time of year when people are open to the things of God. And
it’s precisely this season when Christians most often lose sight of what’s
available to them in Christ Jesus.
We are all
people created in God’s image. We have access to his presence and his promises.
So why all the strain and stress? Dare we ask ourselves what honestly matters
most to us this Christmas?
Advent is
a period of waiting and preparation – and now, today, is the day of on which
all those preparations come to fruition and after today we enter that period of
Epiphany which is a time available to us for some rest and reflection.
God invites us to push away the clutter, turn down the noise and offer
him the sacred space in our lives so that the King of Glory may enter, take up
residence and radically change us from the inside out. We can race through our
holiday season more stressed than blessed or we can slow down, ponder
the reality of Christ within us, and respond to his miraculous work.
At that first Christmas, God sent Jesus into the world as a Man, to be
God himself incarnate to dwell among us and after His resurrection and
ascension, Jesus went on to leave the Holy Spirit in each and every one of us
willing to accept and acknowledge Him. To truly live within us.
In fact, it is good to remember that God sent Jesus into the world for
all Human Kind not just the chosen. We should all work together as a Team not
divided by greed, envy, conflict, poverty, race, creed, colour or any of the
other many things which separate us.
The one great message or result of Christmas, the coming of Christ, is
that it is meant to banish one word from our language, “them”. There should no
longer be “them and us” anymore. To
illustrate this, I would just like to share the following with you to reflect
upon over this next week:
The twentieth-century English
mystic Caryll Houselander (1901–1954) describes how an ordinary underground
train journey in London transformed into a powerful vision of Christ dwelling
in all people:
“I was in an underground
train, a crowded train in which all sorts of people jostled together, sitting
and strap-hanging—workers of every description going home at the end of the
day. Quite suddenly I saw with my mind, but as vividly as a wonderful picture,
Christ in them all. But I saw more than that; not only was Christ in every one
of them, living in them, dying in them, rejoicing in them, sorrowing in
them—but because He was in them, and because they were here, the whole world
was here too … all those people who had lived in the past, and all those yet to
come.
Houselander’s vision of the
intimate presence of Christ in each person continued as she walked along the
city streets:
I came out into the street and
walked for a long time in the crowds. It was the same here, on every side, in
every passer-by, everywhere—Christ….
I saw too the reverence that
everyone must have for a sinner; instead of condoning [their] sin, which is in
reality [their] utmost sorrow, one must comfort Christ who is suffering in
[them]. And this reverence must be paid even to those sinners whose souls seem
to be dead, because it is Christ, who is the life of the soul, who is dead in
them; they are His tombs, and Christ in the tomb is potentially the risen
Christ….
Christ is everywhere; in Him
every kind of life has a meaning and has an influence on every other kind of
life…. Realization of our oneness in Christ is the only cure for human
loneliness. For me, too, it is the only ultimate meaning of life, the only thing
that gives meaning and purpose to every life.
After a few days the “vision”
faded. People looked the same again, there was no longer the same shock of
insight for me each time I was face to face with another human being. Christ
was hidden again; indeed, through the years to come I would have to seek for
Him, and usually I would find Him in others—and still more in myself—only
through a deliberate and blind act of faith.”
This
Christmas and New Year we see the world in chaos and the potential escalation
of many local conflicts in the Middle East, Eastern Europe and South America
into a major war. We daily read in our newspapers, hear on our radios and see
on our screens, the inhumanity of Humanity. We hear and view the dreadful news
coming from Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Ukraine, Venezuela, even now Australia and
many other parts of the world and the triumph of brutal and tyrannical leaders.
The king
of the universe is not a tyrannical leader. He’s the saviour of the world.
Although we hear the Christmas story every year, again and again, it isn’t old
news. It’s good news. It’s now news!
Salvation isn’t just an addendum to the end of our life and Christmas isn’t
just a quaint little story with shepherds and wise men coming to a stable in
Bethlehem. When Jesus was born, God’s kingdom came to earth! so we ought to
celebrate with joy. Jesus came, and he’s
coming again. Let us worship the king of glory, with hymns, carols and prayers,
but also, let
us also worship him by the kindly and empathic way we speak and act towards
others over this Christmas period. For
many, too, Christmas is a difficult time especially for those recently
bereaved, and, this year, there seem to be more deletions from my Christmas
card list – a time to reflect, perhaps, on our own mortality too.
When we
set out to be a serious follower of Christ, we’ll often find a thousand excuses
to tend to temporary things as though they’re the most important things in the
world. But eternal rewards come from eternal priorities. We need to think
higher, see deeper. Repeatedly, Jesus urged people to open their eyes and see
the coming kingdom. See the story God is writing on the earth through us
because of Jesus. Our current season is packed with eternal possibilities to do
so.
We can and should change our focus, determine our pace, adjust our
priorities and this could be our most life-giving Christmas yet. Whether we
already walk intimately with Jesus or see him more like a distant relative, we
can be assured, as illustrated in Caryll Houselander’s vision that he’s very
near and that he came to redeem every aspect of who we are. That was the
greatest gift ever given at Christmas – the birth of Jesus Christ, God
Incarnated, in that humble stable in the Holy Land. Let there be no more “them and us” but just
“us”.
Now that is really something to celebrate and reflect upon over these
coming days.
Have a great day, enjoy being with family and friends over this
holiday period, and yes do eat, drink and be merry in celebration but do use
this time also to tell somebody about the true meaning of Christmas and the
wonderful good news which is there for everyone and is the real reason for our
celebrations.
A very Happy and Blessed Christmas to you all.
Susie Larson (who inspired this sermon through a daily devotional
piece written by her) is a bestselling author, speaker and host of Susie Larson
Live. She is the author of more than 20 books and devotionals, and her Daily
Blessings reach over half a million people each week on social media. She and
her husband, Kevin, have three children, a growing bunch of grandchildren and a
pit bull named Memphis.
Amen MFB/229/23122025
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