1st Sunday of Christmas (Year A) – 28th December 2025 – St Mary Magdalene, Outwood – (Parish Eucharist)
Isaiah 63.7-9 | Matthew 2.13-18 | Hebrews 2.10-end
And a very Happy Christmas to you all…!
And that is where we are – Christmas! Hurrah!
No longer in Advent, not yet in “Epiphanytide”…. And certainly not in the seasons of St Valentine, Lent or Easter – despite what the shops would have you believe…!
Do you know what? My wife Marlene and I were in Marks and Spencer’s on Christmas Eve and there was a staff-member dismantling a Christmas tree. I said something insightful and helpful, along the lines of: “Oh is Christmas over then?” – to which he replied – “yes it is, we have to prepare for the sales….”.
I worked in retail when I was younger – and I am sure it was never quite so severe as it is now! Perhaps it’s my age!
For a lot of people, Christmas has many ‘moving parts’, a very long lead-time (what we call Advent) but a disappointingly brief shelf-life. The expectations are about memory, fun, tradition… and the making of more memorable fun traditions – for a short while!
OK I generalise, but you get the point…!
And, for all those households where a tree has been present since November, now is the time to consider just how soon is acceptable to remove it! Perhaps you have already!
It seems everyone is desperate to move on…. But to what?
Once we think “Christmas is over”…. What remains? What is left for us?
Do you and I sense the awe and wonder….? Will we hold on to it?
Does the believe of God Incarnate leave our conscious minds as we turn yet another page?
When contemplating this moment, with you today, I had thought about re-using something from previous years but, when I read them through, they were all relevant to ‘back-then’: timeless words of scripture inexpertly wrapped in my words of the day – to say something… of “then”.
You have turned up today – like shepherds and Magi – you have come… so, something new! Or is it? Most of humanity seeks wisdom, hopefulness and light. And you come here, to this house of God, in your lifelong search – for the face of God, meaning and perhaps comfort and belonging; this part of your disciple-life, in this season of joy! You deserve much more than me grappling with the divine, but thanks for turning up!
We are now a long, long way forward in time from the actual birth of Jesus. We retell the story and hope that it not only makes sense in these “modern times” but might somehow remain in the hearts and souls of those that hear it. We promote the Jesus-in-a-manger moment to children, alongside the buildup of awe and amazement at the very idea of Christmas – and all that it gifts us… and we wrap that up in ancient themes of mid-winter darkness, cold and snow… even when our climate has most likely changed forever beyond the greetings-card image…..
You don’t need me or anyone else to stand here telling you about how amazing God is – you can see that for yourselves – in each other, in the world around you and yes – in the mirror.
You don’t need telling that we can’t keep this to ourselves, but it needs revealing to others….
What we might need reminding of, every now and then, is how to hang on to that sense of awe and wonder that we love to see in children… We can do it too… but it’s a bit different and it takes some effort.
Awe is a response that takes us beyond ourselves, on the way to wisdom and trust. It is the foundation of faith, allowing us to see the infinite in the everyday and the eternal in the short-lived.
Awe comes before faith; it is what makes faith possible. To be worthy of faith, we need to be guided by awe and wonderment. If you lose your sense of awe, and let pride and disillusionment get in the way, the universe becomes just another place of transaction. Losing awe means missing out on so much.
It requires us to pause and look around… Think about Jesus in the manger, yes… but also about God wanting to sit with us and look at the world through our eyes; and then as we learn more, as faith builds, and we discover how much God loves us; the message of Jesus is heard: living this life requires us to love one another, as we are loved.
Often, and for so many people, such ideas are not possible; maybe this message hasn’t been heard or has been discarded. It is always up to us to help put that right, if we can. And we might do this through our time here, or in quiet prayer, time with neighbours and friends or strangers; reading, watching, feeling the world around us. The changes…. Our changes…transforming us!
Talking of reading…. Scripture passages around Christmas-time are mostly well known.
Isaiah recounts the gracious deeds of the Lord, as a saving grace to the people. Not just as memory, but in real and physical presence in their daily lives.
If you have a moment, check-out today’s bit from the Letter to the Hebrews – it’s all about Jesus being for us – of how God works – living AS us to stand FOR us….
Mathew tells of Joseph and another dream. Travel onwards and avoid Herod’s perverse wrath at all costs. Find a place of safety. And so they do. For many today, the desperate need to ‘move on’ and find someplace safe to live is all too real, beyond the concept of prophecy and dreams.
The darkness we know, is usually less about Winter, and more about human-made suffering.
Children are slain, along with their families, every day. We look on, usually from the safe place of news-consumption, and our sadness rises and then ebbs away… it’s different when things are personal. It’s actually really hard, repeatedly witnessing far-away disaster and misery and not feeling hopeless and helpless ourselves. Where is the awe and wonder in that?
And as for those we place in positions of authority – or the ones that claim it as “a right”…
Herod had a desperate greed for power. He made a choice to kill all the children. Power and control at any cost. Such appalling human behaviours still prevail now in fragile, ego-centric leaders. Like I say, Christmas scripture is often known, but not always an easy read.
And we see echoes every day. Families arriving on our shores, fleeing war or persecution, considered problems to be managed rather than people to be protected. Children who have already passed through danger find themselves living with uncertainty, suspicion, and prolonged waiting. Migrant life is dangerous, filled with false hopes and inevitable condemnation.
The Holy Family became refugees – not because something went wrong, but because God chose to enter the world of their reality, at that time.
God entrusted God to us – to humanity – as intimate, closeness – as incarnation to all Creation – in the form of Jesus. God trusts us with that. The Creator of all there has ever been, trust us….
Before Jesus – humanity’s track record of recognising God’s loving grace was rather poor, and we haven’t shown terrifically good results since, to be fair!
And yet… isn’t such trust worthy of our awe and wonder, every single day?
If we are to be transformed in God’s radical, loving grace, shouldn’t we notice this on each waking, and take a moment to reframe our entire lives to acknowledge this and give thanks? Well…. That sounds like a lovely idea, prayer, is it?… but …. really? Every day? Surely that’s what Sunday is for? Hmmm – gratitude is not just for Sundays!
I referred earlier to what feels like the early ending of Christmas, when the visible, physical trappings are removed, to make way for something else, or simply because the season is judged “over” – move along now. Nothing more to see here.
Yet, everything does have its season: the return to work, a new school term, New Year resolutions, the slow longing for spring. Life does moves on — it always has, and always will.
The question for us as disciples is not whether life moves on, but what we carry with us as it does. How will we hold on to awe and wonder – not as sentiment, but as truth? How will the Incarnation of God in fragile flesh remain alive in us tomorrow, and the day after?
Personally, I wouldn’t echo the song “I Wish it Could be Christmas Everyday.” Life isn’t meant to stand still. Christmas means different things to different people, and rightly so. But I do hope that each day we might learn again to see the world as God has chosen to enter it. That we might recognise Christ not only in the manger, but in the face of one another. That we might live as the people we try to be – faithfully and trusting.
I don’t know what this next year will bring for any of us. I want to live with an awareness of God’s Spirit at work – in creation, in suffering, in kindness, in courage. Transformation happens when we can look honestly at the world as it is — the stark misery of some alongside the gilded ease of others — and still dare to see the Christ in our sisters and brothers.
With awe. With wonder. And with responsibility. Transformation is for life — not just for Christmas.
And Christmas — God with us, God among us, God within us — does not end. It begins again each day.
I wish you all a blessed Christmas, New Year and Epiphany, and beyond….
God be with you. Amen.
Image: SB ‘Sunrise over Wakefield 171225’ (I am not often up early enough to see this. Awe indeed…!)
“I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday” (1973) Wood, R. / Wizzard