95 104 Christmas Night - Christmas Morning

Well, it's good to see everybody here, the boys and girls and the adults as well. And it's getting very exciting, isn't it, because Christmas is getting very near. And I hope you've picked all your mistletoe and plucked your turkey and done all the other essentials that you need to do by now and got all your presents, because it really is too late, isn't it? But we're here just to relax and to enjoy what Christmas is really all about.

And we're going to think about the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ and what that means to us even 2,000 years after he came. And we're going to sing a carol number 20 on the sheets to start with, which is an old carol, but it talks about the joy that Jesus brings to the world and to our own lives, talks about the wonders of his love. And we'll just pray, and then we'll stand and sing number 20.

Let's pray. Dear Father, thank you for this wonderful time of Christmas with all of its own magic. Thank you that Christmas is real, that the Lord Jesus Christ came to this earth a long time ago now, but he did come, and he was born as all of us were born, as a baby.

We want to thank you that he came as your greatest gift of all to us, the most wonderful present any of us can ever receive. We thank you that he came to be born to be our Savior. And we pray that all of us will know what that means for us and know the joy of that this Christmas.

So please be with us over the next hour or so, all of those who take part, and we pray that you will help us to sing well and joyfully and to concentrate hard too. For Jesus' sake, amen. All right, let's stand and we'll sing Joy to the World.

Joy to the world, the Lord is come. Let earth receive her King. Let sin and heaven yield.

Joy to the world, the sounds come in joy. May we hear the sounding joy. He rules the world with truth and grace and truth.

The glories of His righteousness. Now I don't know what's going to happen next, but I hope Jenny, who's organized this service tonight, does. So she's going to come and tell us.

As this was a Carols by Candlelight service, I thought it would be good to have a theme of light. And so we've got an advent ring just here. Now, in the last few weeks at the Tab, we've actually been preparing ourselves in the morning service by having songs for Christmas.

And it's been a good series of us thinking and preparing our hearts for the Christmas time and the Christmas season. And I've certainly enjoyed these Sunday morning times when we've been preparing ourselves. In the Anglican Church, they do this by having an advent ring with four candles in the four weeks running up to Christmas.

And at our school, we have an advent ring. And on the last four Fridays of the term, we light an advent candle and then remind the children about its significance. So I thought it would be good to do that this evening, this afternoon.

So Alison and John are going to start it off. Thank you. The first candle reminds us of the prophets.

The great light. The people walking in darkness have seen a great light. On those living in the land of the shadow of death, a light has dawned.

For to us, a child is born. To us, a son is given. And the government will be on his shoulders.

And he will be called Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. The second candle reminds us of John the Baptist. And our reading is taken from John's Gospel, the first nine verses.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made.

Without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not overcome it.

There came a man who was sent from God. His name was John. He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all men might believe.

He himself was not the light. He came only as a witness to the light. The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world.

The third candle reminds us of Jesus, the Gospels, Jesus the light. Jesus said, I am the light of the world. He that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.

The fourth candle reminds us of the apostles. God is light. This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you.

God is light. In him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth.

But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his son, purifies us from all sin. When Jesus last looked out on the feast of Seder, When the snow lay round about, deep and crisp and even, Brightly shone the moon that night, though the cross was blue, When the poor man came in sight, gathering with the few. In the page I stand by me, if the Lord still telling, Younger peasant through his being, where and what he dwelling, Sigh, he lives a goodly case, underneath the mountain, Right against the forest fence, by St. Agnes' fountain.

Bring me flesh and bring me wine, bring me if I not hither, Thou and I will see him night, when we hear them thither. Page and monarch, forth they went, forth they went together, Through the gloomy twilight and the bitter weather. Sire, the night is darker now, and the wind more stronger, Fares my heart, I know not how, I can go no longer.

On my footsteps, by the page, tread thou in them boldly, Thou shalt find the winter's rage, frees thy bloodless foe only. In his house, a sceptre he trod, where the snow lay dented, It was in the very song, which the saints had written. Therefore, Christian men, be sure, wealth or rank possessing, He who now will bless the poor, shall yourselves find blessing.

Now, as we have some time in hand, let's use that well by singing another song, which was not scripted for this evening, another carol. It's number eight on your sheet. What child is this who laid to rest on Mary's lap is sleeping? A most important question, and even more important, is getting an answer that fits that particular question, getting it right.

We'll be talking about that in a moment or two. So, number eight on the sheet. Let's all enjoy singing, and let's sing with enthusiasm and also with meaning.

And as we do so, we'll take an offering for the work of God here and abroad as we stand and sing these three verses. Let's read together from the Word of God once more. And once again we're finding ourselves in the narratives that speak of the coming into the world of our Lord Jesus.

Luke's Gospel in chapter 2. So Joseph, verse 4, also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem, the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. He went there to register with Mary who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son.

She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger because there was no room for them in the inn. And then later on, the 16th verse, references to the shepherds. So, they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph and the baby who was lying in the manger.

When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child, and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them. But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart. You know, when we think about Christmas and the birth of our Lord Jesus, one of the things I think that strikes us as being significant and maybe beyond our ability to comprehend is that God should move into this world in the form of a little baby.

Now, I was speaking to some friends who gathered at our coffee house carol service last Thursday, and the thought had never occurred to me before, but I think it's worth unpacking and sharing this again. It really was just something spontaneous that came at the point of trying to explain to that company of people the reason behind Christmas. Why? This is the question that hit me.

Why, when God came into the world, did he come in the form of a baby at Bethlehem? You see, when God made man in the beginning, man didn't come into the world as a baby, did he? I mean, Adam, from what we gather from the record in Genesis 1 through to 3, was a fully-fledged man. He was born mature. Now, would it not have been possible for God to have allowed, if you like, some chariot to come from heaven and for his son to land in maybe the deserts of Judea? And then, like Elisha, suddenly to start to speak, because you know nothing of Elisha in the Old Testament before his public ministry.

And as Elisha was taken away on a chariot of fire, so maybe Jesus could have been brought into this world in exactly the same fashion. Why was he born as a baby? God could have done it in so many differing ways. On one occasion, many years ago, I was in Ahmedabad, which is a northern city in India.

It's an industrial city. It's not a very pleasant one. They have as much smog as they used to have in my native city of Sheffield.

I think I'd had the longest preaching list of appointments in any one Sunday that I've ever done. I had to preach ten times. And on the tenth occasion, I found myself in a slum, a sort of village just away from the town, but not so far away to be removed and to have its own name.

And as I walked back from that slum, across some waste ground, two or three miles actually of waste ground, I suddenly fell over. And I looked down at what I was falling on, and I saw it was a pig that was asleep. And alongside the pig was a child, also asleep.

Now, I'd read of poverty, but this was my first experience of poverty at such a gross level. Now, you can't see a little child like I saw him and come from the sort of background from which I emerge and not have immediate compassion towards that little Indian child who was really not much more than a baby. He shouldn't have been there.

Babies are fragile. Babies are vulnerable. Some years before that, I'd been preaching in a university.

And at this particular university, it was the University of Kent in Canterbury. I'd been taking a mission, and one of the things that I was arguing over against some of the students was this, or is this, that God is passionate. That means to say that God has feelings.

If you like, there's a sort of emotional, dare I use the expression, an emotional weakness within God. He can be touched. Now, you wouldn't know that in such measure without the story of Jesus being born as a little babe.

I mean, here we have God contracted to the most vulnerable member, not just of the human race, but of all the animals also who occupy this planet with us. I mean, you take the little calf when it's born, it's dropped from its mother. Within a matter of minutes, it's on its feet.

Take the young pony. Within just a short space of time, it's moving around. But not a little baby.

Mary cradles to her breast someone who is totally dependent upon her. Someone who is absolutely vulnerable. There is a frailty.

There is a sense in which the Christmas story evokes not only the emotion and the feeling of a woman, but also a man. For what father does not feel for the vulnerability of his child, as what mother does not feel for the weakness of the child which came from her womb? What you find in Bethlehem, cradled in Mary's arms, is God made vulnerable. In other words, a vein is tapped in our understanding of God that we might not have known apart from Bethlehem.

We come to a realisation that God understands weakness because he allowed his son to be born as a weakly dependent little child. And when Jesus does become a fully fledged man, he never forgets to have compassion on those who are weak, on those who are needy. So you've got the concept of Mary holding in her arms the vulnerability of God.

Kids have a wonderful way of wrecking nativity stories, don't they? I mean, most teachers here, and we've got a complement of teachers, a large number of teachers within our TAB family, they could doubtless give you instances where a nativity play has almost broken apart, it seems. Because, well, a little spontaneous interjection on the part of one of the kids has just about ruined everything. I mean, there was this teacher, and she'd been highlighting to her class that the birth of Jesus was so special.

He was born of a virgin. And these kids were doing the nativity play, and she wanted it to be semi-spontaneous. So you've got this little group of children acting the part, and one of them takes up the infant toy, the doll, and looks at it and says, hasn't he got Joseph's eyes? The fact of the matter is that the Lord Jesus was born in this world uniquely.

He had no human father. He's born of a virgin to preserve his sinlessness. And as he's cradled in the arms of his mother, he demonstrates that God dares to become weak and vulnerable for the likes of you and me.

There was a man who found himself on the embankment in London. Boys and girls, the embankment in London is a place where sometimes you find, particularly late at night, folk who don't have any food, and their clothing is poor, and you get marvellous organisations like the Salvation Army and the London City Mission, and they open their soup kitchen at night, and they feed and help these people. We've got a similar sort of thing here in Worthing now, it's called our night shelter.

Well, sometimes people find themselves like this, they actually started off very well in life, and then things went bad, and their circumstances deteriorated. And there was one man, and his name was Francis, Francis Thompson. In one sense he was a very gifted man, a very sensitive man.

He was a poet. But he spiralled downwards, socially he dropped lore and lore, and he found himself on the embankment in London. But he was still a very great poet.

And he started to write some more poetry. And in his despair, he thought back to the days when he was just a little boy, and he thought about Jesus as a little boy. And he started, as though he were back as an infant himself, to question Jesus.

Listen to what he had to say. Little Jesus, wast thou shy, once and just so small as I? And what did it feel like to be out of heaven, and just like me? Didst thou sometimes think of there, and ask where all the angels were? I should think that I would cry, for my house all made of sky. I would look about the air, and wonder where my angels were.

And at waking, t'would distress me, not an angel there to dress me. Hadst thou ever any toys, like us little girls and boys? And didst thou play in heaven with all the angels that were not too tall? With stars for marbles did the things play? Can you see me through their wings? Didst thou kneel at night to pray, and didst thou join thy hands this way? And did they tire sometimes being young, and make the prayer seem very long? And dost thou like it best that we should join our hands to pray to thee? I used to think before I knew, the prayer not said unless we do. And did thy mother at the night, kiss thee in full the clothing right? And didst thou feel quite good in bed, kissed and sweet, and thy prayers said? Thou canst not have forgotten all that it feels like to be small.

And thou knowest I cannot pray to thee in my father's way. When thou wast so little, say, couldst thou talk thy father's way? So a little child come down, and hear a child's tongue like thine own. Take me by the hand and walk, and listen to my baby talk.

To thy father show my prayer, he will look, thou art so fair. And say, O father, I thy son bring the prayer of a little one. And he will smile, that children's tongue has not changed since thou wast young.

You see boys and girls and men and women. Martin Luther or whoever wrote To When a Manger got it wrong. They said the cattle are lowing, the baby awakes.

But little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes. Who said that Jesus didn't cry? He was vulnerable, weak. Just like you and me.

Do you think the first time the cow went moo, he didn't bawl his head off? Do you think Mary never had to change his nappies? He was in swaddling clothes. He stained them at times. In fact a little while after his birth, there was blood on his nappy.

Because when he went to Jerusalem, they performed a little cut on his body. And he shed blood. A tradition that the Jews have for their male children even to this day.

Do you think he didn't cry when that happened? Of course he did. Because Jesus was a little child like you and like I have been. Jesus' men and women knew what it was to be vulnerable.

Because unless he had come the way that he did, then he could never have identified with your weakness. You see here's this little slip of a girl, Mary, only about eighteen years of age or thereabouts, so tradition suggests. And I see no reason to disbelieve that tradition has got it right.

When she cradles Jesus in her arms, and the shepherds come and they worship, and they tell her what they have heard, she remembers all that they say. She ponders these things in her heart. You see it's quite extraordinary.

I mean when you were born, boys and girls or men and women, when you were born, did shepherds come down from Cisbury Ring? Did you find that from the European economic community some zones from Zurich, gnomes from Zurich came and brought the equivalent of gold, frankincense, myrrh or stocks and shares? You see, the birth of Jesus was so natural at one level and yet so unusual at another level. And if I can coin the word, it's the naturalness of Jesus that attracts us to Him. But it's the unusual nature of His birth and what happened when He was born that caused us to realize that He's more than just an ordinary child.

What child is this that laid to rest on Mary's lap is sleeping? This, this is Christ the King. He who built the starry skies, now within the manger lies. God, becoming as weak and as dependent as that little boy that I referred to in India.

Looked after by His mum, and Joseph is stood in place of a human father to the day when he started out on his own public ministry. He taught and lived and eventually died so that you and I might benefit from His pure life and the death which was a payment for our sins. And three days later, as unusual, as unique as His birth, He's raised from the dead.

And this Jesus, born as a babe in Bethlehem, demonstrates Himself to be the mighty Son of God, able to cope with death and sin. Hey men and women, this is not just a story for the kids. Oh yes, there's a lot about Christmas that revolves around children and we thank God for that.

But I won't let you leave this place with the idea that you came to a romantically lit candlelight service and you heard one or two things from boys and girls and you relegate it to that. But this is more important than anything else in your life. Who is this child? He's none other than God's Son.

God's sending a present to you. It's said of Christmas that Christmas is a time when you want people to forget your past and to remember your present. Think it through, it's quite clever.

This is a time when we want God to forget our past, the things that we have done that are wrong, and remember His present, His gift to us in the form of Jesus Christ as our Savior. Have you embraced Him? Have you made Him your Lord? Have you made Him your Master? Let's sing a song again, shall we? Another carol. One you hardly need the sheet because it's probably the most well-known one.

22. O come, all ye faithful, joyful and triumphant, O come ye, O come ye to Bethlehem. The first O come, let us adore Him.

The ladies will sing. The second O come, let us adore Him. The men will sing.

And then we'll all come in on the last line of the verse. 22. O come, all ye faithful, joyful and triumphant, O come, let us adore Him.

The first O come, let us adore Him. The men will sing. And then we'll all come in on the last line of the verse.

22. O come, all ye faithful, joyful and triumphant, The ladies will sing. The men will sing.

And then we'll all come in on the last line of the verse. O come, all ye faithful, joyful and triumphant, O come, let us adore Him. The first O come, let us adore Him.

And then we'll all come in on the last line of the verse. O come, all ye faithful, joyful and triumphant, O come, let us adore Him. The men will sing.

And then we'll all come in on the last line of the verse. We thank you that it is true to say that there is a sort of weakness within God in terms of an emotional sensitivity towards the needs of people like ourselves. We thank you that you became flesh and dwelt amongst us.

And you appreciate something of the problems and the pressures of life. Lord, there are some people here so desperately need to be ministered to personally this Christmas. Grant them all their need, we pray.

And grant us all the Christmas blessing. We offer to you our thanks for all that you have done for us in Christ Jesus the Lord. We thank you that the babe who lay in Mary's arms is none other than Christ, the Son of the living God.

Amen. Good night. God bless you.

Thank you for coming.