Christmas Eve Sermon preached by The Reverend Charles Royden
Christmas Eve 2018
One of the great problems at Christmas is buying people presents. What gifts to buy ?
One of the must have presents this year is Alexa.
I don’t have an Alexa so I asked a friend to help me out and ask their Alexa a question.
Confidently I suggested we ask the following
‘Alexa which is the best church in Bedford?’
The answer came back and it was disappointing. No not St Mark’s Church!
Apparently you will do well at Bunyan Meeting and the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
So no Alexa for me thank you very much
There is always a difficulty trying to think what to give to our family and friends and of course it all started of course because of those Magi, bearing gifts. we don’t know much about them, they were star gazing astrologers from Persia, for all we know there might have been three because there were three gifts, there might have been more, they might have all been men, they may have been women. All that we know id that these strange foreigners with their astrology were welcomed into the place where the baby Jesus was born. From the moment of his birth Jesus people were welcomed to Jesus and it didn’t matter whether you were rich or poor, sick, employed or unemployed, what kind of religious faith you had. All were welcomed and Jesus had time for people that others ignored, beggars on the side of the road, children, widows, none were insignificant, each one a child of God and Jesus had time for them.
One of the most important things which the Magi gave to Jesus was not the gold, or the frankincense of the myrrh, important thought they were as symbols of who Jesus was.
Both they and the Shepherds gave something which we find more and more in short supply these days. They gave to Jesus of their time.
I don’t know if you have experienced this but increasingly I find that even when I am with people, there are not actually present. They are not really giving me their time they are often somewhere else, usually on social media.
· So thank you for taking time to be here with us tonight for this special service.
· Thank you to our band who have also given their time tom come and play for us
It is good to make quality time for one another, it is a really important gift which needs attention.
Time for our partners, our family’ loved ones and each other in our community.
The shepherds and the Magi make time to hurry to see the baby Jesus. I am sure that they all had important things which they should have been doing. But they made time and in so doing they discovered God’s greatest gift us in the baby Jesus, God made man.
It was into a very hostile and troubled world that God gave himself to be born, to show how much he really cared for us and to offer us a way to live with him that transform human life.
That same God still cares and offers to be with us today if we will spend time with him.
This Christmas may each one of us treasure the time we can spend with one another.
And in the midst of the chaos and great joy of Christmas may we never forget to make time to thank God for his indescribable gift.