{"id":3570,"date":"2019-12-25T19:03:58","date_gmt":"2019-12-25T19:03:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pattinghamchurch.org.uk\/web\/?page_id=3570"},"modified":"2019-12-25T19:03:58","modified_gmt":"2019-12-25T19:03:58","slug":"sermon-24th-december-2019","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.pattinghamchurch.org.uk\/web\/information\/sermons\/sermon-24th-december-2019\/","title":{"rendered":"Sermon – 24th December 2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Sermons index<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Christmas Eve \u2013 \u201cMidnight\u201d Communion <\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\n

Tuesday 24th December 2019 <\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Christmas Eve \u2013 \u201cMidnight\u201d Communion
\nIsaiah 52. 7-10
\nJohn 1.1-14<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Revd Preb Maureen Hobbs<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n
\"Maureen<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

\nTell me the old, old story….\nI guess most of us come here tonight wanting and willing that old,\nold story to fall again on our ears. But how can we make it take root\nin our hearts and minds? How can we let it guide and influence us\nthrough the coming year ahead?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n2020 \u2013 it is a significant\nnumber signifying perfect clarity of vision… But how many of us can\nclaim that as we approach the New Year and a new decade that we can\nsee very clearly at all what the year will hold in store for us?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nSo we take refuge in the Old,\nOld Story and the hope and promise of glory that it holds out to us \u2013\njust as Mary and Joseph hold out their precious new born son to the\nvisitors that come flocking to the stable. First the Shepherds of\ncourse \u2013 and I imagine some of the other visitors were those\nstaying in the guest room upstairs. Because \u2013 shock horror \u2013 it\nmay not have been \u2018an inn\u2019 at all! The word used merely suggests\nthe guest room of a family home or compound. It was probably that of\nJoseph\u2019s distant family in Bethlehem \u2013 but other relatives were\nalready in possession of the guest or upper room \u2013 the sort of room\nwhere some 33 or so years later that Baby boy would gather with his\nfriends to celebrate a final meal together the night of his arrest\nand trial. But all that is far in the future for now and our 2020\nvision does not allow us to peer that far ahead just yet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nNo, we are too consumed by the\nfamiliar story of the stable with the Ox and Ass and Sheep helping to\nprotect and warm the Holy Family and we know that soon those\nshepherds will come knocking on the door with teatowels on their\nheads and a stuffed lamb under their arm \u2013 because that is how we\nhave viewed the Nativity all our lives isn\u2019t it? We know it all so\nwell that we really do not have to listen any longer and our eyes\ncannot see beyond the expected, the obvious the old.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nPoor Christmas and Poor Jesus\n\u2013 to be so easily made into nothing but gifts under the tree and\nstuffed turkeys.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nBut let\u2019s pause a moment to\nremember that even on that first Christmas, there was an old, old\nstory that Mary and Joseph and every other faithful Jew would have\nknown… Inside out and backwards because they too had been listening\nto it for millennia. The story that God valued his chosen people and\nhis created world so much, that he would \u2013 one day \u2013 send his\nanointed one, his Messiah, his Christ, to be their Saviour. It must\nhave been a hard story to hear \u2013 a hard promise to believe when\nthey knew the shame and despair of being a subject people. Their\nlittle land of Israel stood at the crossroads of many powerful Middle\nEastern countries and Empires. They had been continually overrun by\ntheir neighbours \u2013 whether from the East, the North, the South and\nnow the Romans had come out of the West. Imposing their own puppet\nruler. Asking or rather demanding taxes and tribute. Trying to make\nthem adopt an alien way of worship and flouting all their purity\nrules around food. Even at this time insisting on conducting a census\nof the people \u2013 (so that they might be taxed more efficiently)\nEmpires depend on having an effective bureaucracy to make it all\nwork.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nBut believe that little family\ndid. Believe in God\u2019s message \u2013 a clear and simple one: that\nGodself is unchanging, unbound by time, and that all the hopes,\ndreams, vision and purposes of God \u2013 beyond time, above time,\nbefore time \u2013 all is held together in God, and would be met in that\nlittle town of Bethlehem, two thousand and twenty or so years ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nThe message of Christmas is in\nits core that God speaks the world into existence and that, in\nspeaking, breathing, loving, creating, the world itself in all its\nfullness \u2013 from creation to created \u2013 is designed to respond to\nGod, to lean towards him, to praise, sing dance, recite, make things,\ncelebrate who God is \u2013 and God- is-love. And this is the message\nthat has been repeated and must go on being repeated and reframed\nover and over again \u2013 For surely eventually we will get it!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nGod\u2019s final Word made flesh,\nGod\u2019s heir, God\u2019s co-creating, exact likeness, only Son, is here.\nHERE HE IS! Can you feel him in your heart?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nSo an old story it may be, but\nit matters that we hear in a whole new way that this truth changes\neverything. This truth that Jesus is light and life; that in him God\nis showing us that God is for all the earth and is all about\npresence, with-ness, and his very being is about love. And this is\nthe old story that prophets have declared to us since the beginning\nof time, whether through Isaiah\u2019s messenger of peace, to John\u2019s\nwitness to the light. Christmas is a time of remembering that \u2013\nhowever dark the world may seem, a son is born who will shine his\nlight into every corner, nook and cranny until his light blazes\nforth! Glory to God!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nAmen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Christmas Eve \u2013 \u201cMidnight\u201d Communion Tuesday 24th December 2019 Christmas Eve \u2013 \u201cMidnight\u201d Communion Isaiah 52. 7-10 John 1.1-14 Revd Preb Maureen Hobbs Tell me the old, old story…. I guess most of us come here tonight wanting and willing that old, old story to fall again on our ears. But how can we make … <\/p>\n

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