Presentation Church Christmas Day 2022

I have a bicycle across the road at number 13. It has two hubs which get the power from my legs to the wheels and speed me up New England Road. With Anne I’m also helped by two hubs that empower our neighbourhood - Bentswood Hub where I help with digital access and Presentation Church where we drop in on Mondays and were blessed by last week’s festive meal. We’re a giving church at Presentation and as such we’re receiving more interest and commitment from the neighbourhood.

‘Give and it will be given to you’.  Luke 6 verse 38 is the Christian one liner.  It’s easier said than done but when it's done the Holy Spirit flows. Through Sally, Michael, Geraldine and the team love ripples out from here making a difference in Bentswood to many who live alone, sometimes hungry, sometimes cold. 

‘Give and it will be given to you’ summarises our Christmas Gospel. ‘God came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God’ (John 1:11-12) God, who made us, gave to us his Son, Jesus, and through this sacrifice is receiving new children, those gathering here this morning ‘given power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God. And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory’ alleluia!

Everyone in Church this morning has been born naturally ‘of blood… the will of the flesh… the will of man’ but if we have made Christ the hub of our life there is within us an empowerment to love from beyond our natural life, the life of the Holy Spirit flowing from our baptism which we seek to see renewed within us this morning in Christmas Communion. As today’s Collect prayed: ‘grant that we, who have been born again and made your children by adoption and grace, may daily be renewed by your Holy Spirit’.

‘Give and it will be given to you’. God who gave us life at Christmas offers us his life and when we accept that life into our hearts we are made a gift back to him. We are made to be his children, part of the never ending fellowship we call the communion of saints which, when time ends at Christ’s return, will be presented to God who will then be made everything to everyone. 

If my bicycle has two hubs and Bentswood has two hubs in its drop in centre and Presentation Church, so does my soul. One here (my mind) and the other here (my heart). To get these hubs to work together the mind must lower 15 inches into the heart where God lives. Every human being carries something of God. Not every human being knows of the 15 inch journey Christmas invites so we can receive power to become children of God and run better on both hubs, mind and heart. 

It is these two powers of mind and heart that together lift us to God and into living for others and for ourselves in the best way through the empowerment of the Holy Spirit.

‘Give and it will be given to you’ Becoming a Christian is no surrender of the mind though sadly the behaviour of some believers might encourage that perception. With a past career in Chemistry I am aware of many convergences between science and religion such as belief in the cosmos having a beginning. Mind comes before matter in Christianity. The world traces back to the Big Bang in science. The difference is in the second creation celebrated at Christmas necessitated by the folly of human minds and the disastrous consequences of sin. ‘The Word became flesh and lived among us’. The Son of God became the Son of Man so children of men could become children of God.  The Baby bound in the Crib foreshadows God’s binding upon the Cross to break the bonds of sin and open the life of the Holy Spirit to all believers. In giving his life the Son of God is able to receive you and I into that deathless fellowship if we choose to enter it.

We have a mission at Presentation. Our mission, though, our giving out of love, will be ineffective unless it comes as an overflow from what is being cultivated within and among us. The Christmas Feast is a reminder to keep ourselves at that 15 inch missionary movement from our heads to our hearts where God is. Many of us here welcome Jesus week by week in word and sacrament.  How are we savouring that gift in our daily prayer?  In our discipline of bible reading, reading the lives of the saints, self-examination and confession or generous service as individuals to those in need?

Where people are meeting deep down with Christ his life, his joy takes hold of them so all they say and do gets permeated by that life and joy, energising them like a hub, getting their lives more on the move as they pedal away at being Christians. Our minds and hearts are set to work together within the wider working of the Holy Spirit pouring love across the world starting where we are in Haywards Heath and its surrounds. God’s kingdom come, God’s will be done here - through us!

Christmas Day eucharist at Presentation, Haywards Heath 2021

I haven’t opened all my Christmas presents yet but I know there’s at least one gift card. That will give me a choice of what book to buy for my Kindle.

Christmas Day is about choice, about the choices of God no less.

Choosing a gift card for someone may seem unimaginative but it is also affirming. It's a choice leaving them with choice and avoids choices that end under the bed with those unwanted Christmas presents!

Which brings me to the choices of God flowing from the birth of his Son.

Here’s a one line summary of Christmas: The Son of God became Son of Man so children of men can be made children of God.

Let’s say that : The Son of God became Son of Man so children of men can be made children of God.

Let’s try some actions: The Son of God (hands pointing to heaven) became Son of Man (hands pointing to the ground) so children of men (hands on heart) can be made children of God (hands point up diagonally)

Once again!

The choice of God to come close to us can bring us close to God and do so for ever.

His choice today is not just of Mary and Joseph and Bethlehem but of eighty generations of faithful Christians dedicated to God’s praise and service among whom we might wish to be counted. As we heard in the Gospel: ‘to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God’ (John 1:12).

To receive Christ and believe in him gives you entry into what St. Paul describes as ‘the glorious liberty of the children of God’ (Romans 8:21). The gift of Christmas Communion renews that freedom, liberating our ensnared humanity into glorious freedom as we enter again and again through the Blessed Sacrament into what God has chosen for us despite our dull sight of this.

The choices of God are a mystery.

That you and I should be at Christ’s Mass this morning is a mystery. Most of Haywards Heath is not attending to Christmas in the full sense that we are.

Do you ever reflect on the mystery of the choices of God, that you and I seem chosen to be worshipping Christians from an unbelieving circle? 

That this is linked to God’s choice reassures us we are no better from those in our acquaintance who do not worship. Like yeast in the loaf or catalysts in a chemical process you and I are used by God to effect a wider purpose. Just as Israel was chosen by God to be a blessing to all nations, we are chosen on behalf of others to bring the needs of our circle, our town and our world in prayer to God. 

When I was a baby they called me ‘the dreamer’. I had an apparent capacity to day dream. In later life this sometimes brought unfavourable attention from my teachers. I see that capacity to look heavenwards in retrospect as indicating God’s choice of me. One repeated dream I had as a teenager was of gathering others to look up with me in worship, to concelebrate, if you like, the wonders of the Lord. So here I am, a priest, though that high calling, of which I am unworthy with my sins and failings, is less to bless me than bring others into blessing. 

I would encourage each one of us in Church this morning to look back and see the evidence for the choice of God upon your life. That evidence of God’s choice and leading of you always outweighs the evidence of your unworthiness.

The Son of God became Son of Man today so you in your unworthiness could be made God’s child and part of God’s family. Jesus came to Bethlehem and died in Jerusalem, as St. John writes later in his Gospel ‘to gather together the scattered children of God’ (John 11:52). That gathering continues and Presentation Church is part of it. We are gathered this morning by the choices of God to build unity he desires in this sinful, fragmented world. 

We reflect on Christmas Day upon the humility of God shown in his Son Jesus Christ. The child wrapped in swaddling bands for us was later constrained by suffering when he said, ‘Not my will, but thy will be done… I don’t want things to be about me - I want them to be about you, Father, your plans and purposes for my life. I want your will to be done’.

The Son of God became Son of Man so children of men could enter his obedience as children of God. We rejoice at this today and its implications for each one of us who own God as our Father, that, whatever our circumstances, we live in that dignity.

As St. Peter invites: ‘Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time’ (1 Peter 5:6). Lord, that is what we seek to do today, to humble ourselves and be completely open to hearing from you. We want to do what pleases you. Make your will known. Help us to see that clearly and to act upon it so we can continue to marvel at the choices of God which exceed our imagining!