St Margaret's Church Prestwich

Rev Helen preached this sermon on Christmas Day. Here it is for you again:

He shall come from a young woman and she shall call him Emmanuel, The word became flesh and made his dwelling among us!

The royal priest, the person who would come to bring humanity back on track, the one who brought hope, hope for a better future, he was a gift from God to show them a better world and to make things better for them. The Kingdom of God is near, repent and believe in the good news. He’s going to do some amazing things that little baby, hard to believe sometimes when you see him in the crib. He came to a troubled place and what did he bring with him? Hope a hope that things would be better and that is what we remember from that first Christmas all those years ago. All came with an intervention from God, in the shape of a little baby boy.

This reminds me a bit of one of my favourite Christmas Film (we’ll honestly one of my favourite films ever) and that is ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’, so let’s look at both stories together, humour me. If you’ve never seen it’s a wonderful life, I’ll give a brief overview. The story centres round a man who’s name is George Bailey, he’s running the family business, which is building houses and finance, with his uncle. Not the life he expected but he was making the best of what he had been given. Anyway after some absentmindedness from his Uncle and dirty dealings of the films villain ‘Mr Potter’ Georges business is missing $8,000, which is about $130,000 today. George can’t do anything and he feels like he has nothing left goes to a bridge and is going to jump but he stopped by an angel named Clarence who is sent to show George he’s precious and loved he by showing him what the world would have been like if he’d never been born and it wouldn’t have been good, George didn’t realise how many lives he had touched without realising it. At the end even though he is disgraced and probably going to prison George races up the main street, yelling Merry Christmas, just happy to be alive and finally see’s how loved he is when the town comes together and donates the missing money and more.

It’s beautiful story but how does it resonate today, during this age and of that story of that first Christmas and the coming of the Christ child. Well I think there’s that desperation of those who were waiting for that first Christmas, our ancestors in the faith who for generations and generations had lived on a promise waiting for God’s intervention in the world. The Word of God that has always been there waiting for the right moment. They went through some trials and tribulations while they waited, slavery in Egypt, years in the wilderness and displacement during the Babylonian and Persian invasions, then the Roman occupation during the period of Jesus Birth. God promised intervention and that it would come when it was most needed, the answer to the prayer, hope in troubled times, the word waited and listened. In the film when George Bailey is at his lowest he is in a pub and he prays to God for…well see what you think, he says I’m not a praying man but if you’re up there and you can hear me…show me the way. He’s asking for and waiting for a miracle, and that miracle, hoping it would come and it did as an angel.

The was the baby boy who was born 2000 years ago, he was sent by God, he was the word of God and he would go onto do and say some amazing things, so much so that there are still people living their lives by those things, not bad really is it? Just as Clarence came to save George so did Jesus come for all those who had waited for a long time for him. The celebrations that followed the intervention, the angels singing in the heavens, the shepherds racing to see him, the wise men who would travel for years to see this child. This child brough hope, his coming didn’t over throw the empire or bring about immediate change but he brough hope, which is what George has hope, nothing else might have change but he’s glad to be alive as he cries out to Clarence on the bridge where they first met after he see’s the dreadful world without him I don’t care what happens to me…I want to live again…please God let me live again. That intervention to make a change, when God came to earth in the form of a child. A child who would bring hope to a broken world and we still remember when we celebrate his birth.

One more thing to take away from this and I think it is something that is worth remembering during these trying day of cost of living crisis, wars, illness and some other the other disturbing things on the news. It’s this, how many lives have you touched or influenced without realising it? How much of a darker place would this world be if you were never born? Clarence says to George Strange isn’t it? Each man’s life touches so many other lives. When he isn’t around he leaves an awful hole doesn’t he. Something else that was shown at that first Christmas, I think it’s fair to say that we can be our own worst enemies not seeing how brilliant we all are but the incarnation reminds us how precious and loved we are and the gap that would be left if we weren’t there. God loved humanity so much and didn’t want them to fail anymore so came to show the way and be with us. Imagine if you got to do what George did, see what the world would be like without you, I’m sure it would be much worse off.

So as we remember the first Christmas all those years ago, the hope and joy in the gift of a child, God’s intervention to make a better future for those who follow the way. We show that love by keep telling this story of God’s love for the world and everyone in it. The keeping of that promise for a better world and even if we might have a difficult future and never really know what’s ahead but knowing we are precious and we are loved by God really shows there is nothing that we can’t not face. Now I’m not going to race up the aisle shouting it so I’ll just say it from here. Merry Christmas, the word is flesh and came to be with us. Amen