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Christmas Eve
[caption id="attachment_308237" align="alignnone" width="1500"]
The Nativity depicted in the South Stall Woodwork of Saint Thomas Church[/caption]
Eternal God, who made this most holy night to shine with the brightness of thy one true light: bring us, who have known the revelation of that light on earth, to see the radiance of thy heavenly glory; through Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.
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Christmas Eve
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A Sermon by
The Rev. Canon Carl Turner
✛
The "X-Factor" of Christmas
In London there is a very famous department store founded in 1707 with Royal connections called Fortnum and Mason. Each year, a friend loans me their Christmas Catalogue and asks me if I want anything shipped over. I opened this year’s catalogue and was pleased to see the introduction that seemed quite religious:
“At Fortnum, and Mason, we believe great things can happen when we come together. Take the first ever Christmas celebration for example: a virgin, three kings, camels, cows, a carpenter. All on one guest list. People are talking about it some two thousand years later.”
“Wait a minute,” I thought, “there’s something missing…the child Jesus!”
When I was a little younger, I remember the rector of the church where I was a chorister put up a great big sign outside of the Church. It read – Put Christ back into Xmas. He preached about it and reminded us that ‘X’ is used for an unknown digit in algebra. You remember – those very cryptic equations that used letters instead of numbers: x = a squared, minus 7? Finding out the meaning of X was kind of like solving a puzzle.
But, the X of Xmas is not a puzzle – the X is not unknown – in fact, it is the absolute opposite of that, for it is God making himself known in the most powerful way he could to human being, by becoming human. The X is Jesus Christ who, as St Paul wrote in his letter to the Colossians, – the image of the invisible God (Colossians 1:15).
In Jesus we see God. In Jesus we can come close to God because he came close to us. And because he came close to us, he brought all of humanity together within the reach of his loving embrace on the cross.
The Fortnum and Mason Catalogue goes on to say something quite beautiful: “The possibilities are massive when you have a cast of many. Different personalities, backgrounds and cultures bring different ideas, skills and knowledge – diversity is what makes us brilliant.”
Yes, diversity makes us brilliant – it is part of being human – but it is the presence of Jesus Christ that allows that brilliance to reflect the glory of God, for we are all made in his image.
We live in an age when many who celebrate Christmas do not know the story of the one whose birth they are celebrating; we, who call ourselves Christians, bear his name; we are part of the X that is Christmas and we pray that our lives will make a difference in our world so that Christ will recognize us when he comes again.
Listen to words from the third letter of John:
“The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.” (3 John 1b-2)
