Jesus is the Word – what God has to say – who reveals true humanity and illuminates our path to becoming fully and truly human.
An Open Table where Love knows no borders
An Open Table where Love knows no borders
Sermons on Christmas (Page 2)
In Joseph we see an impressive example of someone with the integrity and courage to embrace God’s new directions despite considerable personal cost.
Jesus Christ is the coming one who will fulfill the hopes and yearnings of the world, but we will imperil our faith and hope if we keep trying to set the agendas for him.
In Christ, God is made manifest to the world as King, Light and Lover.
We grow into the likeness of Christ as we model ourselves on him, and he is a model of growth rather than a model of static perfection.
God becomes human and brings into himself (reconciles to himself) in Jesus the full range of human emotional experience.
God has become flesh so that we might know God and realise our own destiny in God in the world.
To grow up well, children need to be anchored to a broad community with shared values, which nevertheless allows for individual differences.
We are welcoming a baby born into occupied territories to a fiercely holy young woman, and we are recognising in that baby the hope of liberation.
The Christmas story includes a message of God’s solidarity with and care for children and families who live in fear and who flee to seek refuge. We corrupt the message if we make it about our children and not all children.
The Christ child is the light who enlightens the world and as his love takes root in our hearts and lives, it causes us to light up the darkness.
In the birth of the baby we see the presence of God in smallness and obscurity, enabling us to see that small beginnings are no obstacle to big visions of the reign of justice and peace and freedom.
If the message of Christmas is real, then our preparations for it need to be radically life-changing.
Let us keep the festival by standing confidently, and affirming our faith in the God who takes flesh among us, today!
After the big event of Christmas, it is faithfulness in our everyday living that produces growth and godliness.
In the nativity we see the light of living grace, in all its vulnerability, shining into the darkness of the world’s violence and divisiveness.
In the face of monumental devastation and suffering, God speaks a word, and the word becomes flesh.
A modern paraphrase of a homily for the Feast of the Nativity by Ephraim the Syrian (306-373CE) taken from his second Christmas hymn.
A modern paraphrase of the Nativity Sermon of St John Chrysostom, first Preached in Antioch in 386AD
A modern paraphrase of a homily for the Feast of the Nativity by St Leo the Great.