Sermon for the First Sunday of Christmas, 28th December 2025, at Holy Nativity Church, Penarth
Isaiah 63.7-9
Hebrews 2.10-end
Matthew 2.13-end
Lessons: https://tinyurl.com/yrwdhazj
One of the nice things that happen here is that when we say morning prayers at 9 o’clock most mornings at All Saints, Jimmy and I often pause and talk about what we’ve just been reading in the Bible. Some of these little excursions lead us down very interesting paths. Last week we were beginning to talk about Anselm’s Ontological Argument for the existence of God.
I said that perhaps I could work our thoughts into this sermon today; but in the nicest and gentlest possible way, Jimmy steered me away from that idea, because he said that everyone will be a bit sleepy after so much fun over Christmas and really all that is needed is a simple homily to assure everyone of God’s love and care for us through his son Jesus Christ.
Well obviously I’m a bit sad not to be able to bring ontology into it, but I have to admit that Jimmy may have a point. We need something more straightforward this morning; so the message is indeed that God shows his love for us, because he sent his only son Jesus Christ to take upon himself the burden of our sin and to show us the way to eternal life.
That’s basically what we say when we say the Creed. The joy, for Christians like us, is that we are celebrating the birth of a baby who was Emmanuel, God with us. God in human form, simultaneously human and divine.
Our lessons today from the Bible give you various angles on that basic position. The prophecy in Isaiah celebrating all the gracious deeds of the Lord, all the things that he has done for his chosen people, the people of Israel, ‘according to the abundance of his steadfast love’, because he said, ‘Surely they are my people, children who will not deal falsely’.
That is looking forward to the coming of the Messiah, who would be the saviour of the chosen people, if in no other way because the Jews at the time of Jesus were ruled by the Romans as part of the Roman Empire. One thing that they believed the Messiah would do would be to make them independent again.
But as the letter to the Hebrews makes plain, this Messiah would suffer alongside the people whom he came to save. Unless he suffered in the same way they did, he couldn’t really be their Messiah, their saviour:
‘Since, therefore, the children share flesh and blood, he himself likewise shared the same things, so that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil,…’ [Hebrews 2:14-15]
And then we had the story in Matthew of Jesus’ escape from the wrath of Herod and Herod’s ‘massacre of the innocents’, as it is called, which is a story which is not found in any of the other gospels, but is in Matthew’s maybe because Matthew thought that something had happened which was very similar to what had happened to Moses in his infancy – if you remember, the story of the baby in the bulrushes, because Pharaoh wanted to kill all the firstborn sons of the Hebrews, the story in Exodus [Ex. 1] in the Old Testament. Perhaps Matthew wanted to write Jesus up in the way he did in order to show that Jesus too was very special, in that he was in the same line as Moses.
All those bits of our Bible passages are aimed at illustrating how Jesus was at the same time human and divine; he was described as the son of God. It’s very difficult literally to understand that, and even in the earliest times some of the early Christian fathers found it difficult to reconcile the idea that Jesus was God but at the same time that he was the son of God.
But one thing that we can say for sure is that all these passages would have made very good sense to you if you were a Jewish person living in the first century, brought up on prophecies of the coming of the Messiah.
But let’s fast forward to today. How much of what we’ve been reading about really makes sense to us today? In one sense we can say we are on the same page as the early Christians. We can say, in the words of the Nicene creed, which dates back to the fourth century, ‘We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth…’ but arguably that’s the only bit that we are reasonably sure of. If we believe in God, we do believe in the creator, the maker of heaven and earth.
We do believe in Jesus, in the sense that it’s not controversial that he is a historical figure. But apart from that, there’s very little that we can say about him that is historical, in the sense that what we know about the Battle of Hastings is historical.
Somebody has pointed out that although he lived for about 33 years, the gospels give us details of at most about 40 days of Jesus’ life. Nevertheless, within that very short time, Jesus said and did things which have changed the world and which continue to influence what we say and do, 2500 years later.
We just don’t know how to explain the big miracles, the Virgin Birth, or the Resurrection, or the miracles which Jesus did in healing people and even in one case, Lazarus, bringing someone back to life after they were dead.
So is it just a very beautiful fairytale? You know, pretty much on a level with the beautiful crib services on Christmas Eve; really, stories for the children, but not something that the grown-ups take much notice of. And yet – there are still millions and millions of people throughout the world – and the numbers are growing very steadily, faster than in any other religion – who don’t think that it is just a fairy story.
I heard a really good sermon once, given by an Oxford philosophy professor (1), in which he didn’t go into abstruse detail like the Ontological Problem, but rather he just simply asked, ‘What if it’s true?’
‘What if it’s true?’ A really good illustration of that move from just thinking about God and Jesus in the abstract, as some kind of mythical, theoretical thing, to being able to say that the story of Jesus shows that God not only exists but that he actually takes an interest in us, cares for us, is this.
This is what happened to John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist Church, on May 24, 1738. This is what he wrote about it in his journal.
‘In the evening I went very unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate Street, where one was reading Luther’s Preface to the Epistle to the Romans. About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation; and an assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.’(2)
His faith changed from being an intellectual exercise to an experience in his heart and soul. He knew without a doubt that he was loved by God and saved through the grace of Jesus Christ.
What if it’s true, indeed? I hope that we will all be able to experience something like what John Wesley experienced, because if the message ‘clicks’, our lives will be changed.
So do take this thought home with you.
Think and pray, what if? What if it is true? Then, as St Paul said,
‘Behold, I shew you a mystery: we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed.’ [1 Cor.15:51-52]
Notes
(1) Prof. Brian Leftow, now William P. Alston Chair And Distinguished Professor of the Philosophy of Religion at Rutgers University, formerly Nolloth Professor of the Philosophy of the Christian Religion at Oriel College, Oxford.
(2) John Wesley’s Journal Entry 24 May 1738, accessed at https://tinyurl.com/38fj843s on 27th Dec 2025
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