All age Christmas eucharist address 2012

Please could we have the children up front to the choir stalls, especially those with a present to show.

While they’re on the way let’s try a joke or two at the expense of our trumpeter.

How do you know you’ve got a trumpet player at your door?

The doorbell shrieks!

How do you get a trumpet player to play softly? 

Take away his instrument.

Why did the chicken cross the road?

To get away from the trumpet players.

Well, we’re no chickens - we really appreciate you Lawrence!

So, welcome young people. Let’s light our Christmas candle from one of the Advent candles.

Sunday Club member to light candle.

Christmas is here and it’s time to be thankful for Jesus.

All the gifts we’ve been given this morning are given to honour the greatest Gift from the greatest Giver!

So what gifts have we been given?

Time for children to share.

Please take your seats in the choir stalls for the rest of the talk.

Now I need a strong volunteer – Daisy!

It’s Christmas morning and your gifts have arrived.

Let’s have Santa’s elf.

I want you to have this and this and this

The server comes and loads the volunteer with presents.

So how lucky you are to have all of those presents.

Now. Here’s a present worth all of those presents put together and I want you to have it. I really want you to have it. The only thing is - you’ll only get it if you catch it because I’m going to throw it to you.

One, two, three – here you are…

Throw special present which has the Cross of Jesus in it. Daisy drops her other presents and catches it.

Would you like to open your present?

A Cross

If you want the most important thing in the world you need empty hands.

God can’t get to us unless we’re available to him.

Sometimes things happen in life that make us drop everything so we can catch one of God’s surprises.

This last year St Giles got a grant of £50,000 from the Verity Waterlow Trust. We had to drop everything and raise the extra £20,000 and lo and behold that’s almost completed. God-willing we’ll be thanking him over the 19^th -20^th January weekend for a hall with a new feel, a new glorious view and a new usefulness to the village. We still need to land the £5000 beyond our contingency caused by unexpectedly having to lay on 3 phase electricity to the Martindale.

The Christmas story would be no story if the Blessed Virgin Mary, Saint Joseph, the shepherds and wise men hadn’t dropped everything to receive the immense gift of God coming among us. Neither would the Martindale story have come about if Marion Lott and her team had been otherwise preoccupied

How many things might I have done with profit this year but didn’t do because I was wrongly preoccupied?

Here’s an image of preoccupation I’m not a million miles from.

Adrian walks round church with their blackberry and I tap him on the shoulder.

The great thing about living in a village is we’ve got people around us we know who tap us on the shoulder at times. We’re drawn out of the mini-world world of the family and the mega-world of the internet into the flesh and blood world of the 2000 folk who live here.

Horsted Keynes is a world full of God’s surprises if only we had hands to grasp them. I’m not just thinking of the beauty around us but the inner beauty we glimpse in souls.  

I was visiting a very gracious elderly couple hard pressed by health problems that were grinding them down. Meanwhile another villager phoned me with an offer to help support folk under pressure. In one of God’s surprises the couple who were stressed said they’d much welcome a visit from this man and so it came to pass bringing encouragement all round.

People ready to be of service and people needing help are all around in the village and we need to be open to God’s surprises in bringing them together. With this in mind the Church Council has some sort of street warden scheme in mind we want the village on board with. This would serve, among other things, those put on the sharp end by the recession and bring support to them.

Do not be afraid; for see - I am bringing you good news of great joy

In the joy of this morning you will have many preoccupations in your life – regrets, fears and anxieties – but the good news of God and his love is once again presented to you to make you a better instrument of his love in the world.

God can’t get to you, though, unless you’re available to him.

As the act of receiving Christmas Communion outwardly demonstrates, to gain the most important thing in the world you need to empty and lift your hands to receive what he has for you.

Let’s reflect now as the organ plays.