Service for Christmas Day 2021, conducted by Mr Geoffrey Webber

Servicing the Bald Hills and nearby Communities

Service for Christmas Day 2021, conducted by Mr Geoffrey Webber

Welcome: –

Liturgy for Christmas Day:   –

Narrator: Today we light the Christ candle.

[Light the candle of Hope, the candle of Peace, the candle of Joy, the candle of Love and then the Christ candle.]

  A reading from Isaiah 11: 1 – 3, 5 & 10:

“A new King will arise from among David’s descendants.  The Spirit of the Lord will give him wisdom, and the knowledge and skill to rule his people.  He will know the Lord’s will and honour Him, and find pleasure in obeying Him.  He will not judge by appearance or hearsay.  He will rule his people with justice and integrity.  A day is coming when the new King from the royal line of David will be a symbol to the Nations.  They will gather in his royal city and give him honour.”

  A reading from Romans 15: 10 – 12:

“As Scripture says, ‘Rejoice, Gentiles, with God’s People’  (Deuteronomy 32: 34) 

And again, ‘Praise the Lord, all Gentiles, praise Him, all peoples.”  (Psalm 117: 1) 

And, again, Isaiah says, ‘A descendant of Jesse will appear, he will come to rule the Gentiles, and they will put their hope in him.’”  (Isaiah 11: 10) 

  The Prophet Isaiah reveals many things about a new King who will come.  He will be born as a descendant of King David.  He will be blessed by God and be endowed with the wisdom, the knowledge and the skill to rule his People with integrity and justice.  Unlike many of the Kings of the People of God of the past, this King will honour God, he will obey God, and he will discern the Will of God for His People.  There is the expectant hope and joy that through the reign of this King will come the peace of God.  It is because of God’s love for His People that he would gift this King to them.

  But there is more, for, in a time when Nations were ruled by their own Kings, Isaiah foretells of a time when all Nations will submit themselves to the rule of this King, and give him honour.  It was the Apostle Paul who explained to the Church in Rome that this King is none other than Jesus Christ, born as a descendant of David in David’s Town, Bethlehem.  Jesus Christ is the King endowed with the wisdom, the knowledge and the skill to rule his People with integrity and justice.  Jesus Christ is the King who truly honours God, who takes pleasure in obeying God, and who willingly enabled God’s work of Salvation for the World to be accomplished.  It is to Jesus Christ, God’s chosen and glorious King, to whom all peoples, Jew and Gentile, will give honour and in whom they put their hope for their future.

God did not use a silvery box or paper green or red,

God laid His Christmas gift to me within a manger bed.

We sing the Hymn “The North Wind”  TiS322  Five Australia Christmas Carols p6 & 7

[there is a brief introduction]

Verse 1 of 2

The north wind is tossing the leaves,

The red dust is over the town,

The sparrows are under the eaves

And the grass in the paddock is brown,

As we lift up our voices and sing

To the Christ-child, the Heavenly King.

Verse 2 of 2

The tree-ferns in green gullies sway,

The cool stream flows silently by,

The joy-bells are greeting the day,

And the chimes are adrift in the sky,

As we lift up our voices and sing

To the Christ-child, the Heavenly king.

John Wheeler

Prayer of Praise and Confession

(from Invocations and Benedictions by John Drescher p153, Opening Prayers ICEL Collects p10 to 14, Prayers for the Seasons of God’s People Year C by David Hostetter p24, A Year of Prayer by John MacArthur p93)  

  We praise you, Lord God Almighty, for you have revealed yourself to us in the incarnation of your Son, who lived among us, who shared our struggles and who won the victory over sin and death.  In Christ’s birth and life we see your grace and truth.  In Christ’s death we see your love.  In Christ’s resurrection we see your acceptance of his sacrifice, and the assurance of our acceptance into your family, now and in the time after Time.

  We rejoice in the birth of Jesus who embodies both the good shepherd and the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the World.  We are astonished that you would choose to become personally involved in the sin and suffering of the World.  We are thankful for the obedience of Jesus to be born as your Messiah, your promised Saviour and King, an obedience that lead all the way to the cross on Golgotha and to the cold tomb.

  We praise you for the glad tidings of peace given to a troubled and turmoiled World.  You have revealed to all the World the light that no darkness can extinguish, you have revealed the radiance of your glory to all who celebrate the coming of the Word who became flesh and lived among us.  We praise you for your steadfast love for Humanity, in that, in your own time and to fulfill your Will and Purpose, you kept your promise to draw all people to yourself and to embrace them as your own, you have kept your promise to reconcile all people to yourself and to each other, you have kept your promise to renew and enrich the lives of those who humbly accept your call to repentance.

  We confess that we often we are hesitant to submit to your Will for our lives.  We confess to a stubbornness of mind and spirit that avoids obedience to your Word.  We confess to a lack of hunger for right living or for purity of thought and speech and deed.  Forgive us we pray.

  Teach us to rely on your Word to instruct us and to give us wisdom.  Teach us to rely on your promise to uphold us in our trials and difficulties.  Clothe us in gentleness and patience as we interact with those around us.  May we seek to find in you the source of our strength to live each day in your service.  May we seek to find in you the unity to live together as members of your family, as you share the unity of Father, Son and Spirit.  May we seek to abide in Christ and to draw life and vitality as do the branches on a vine.  May we acknowledge with deep gratitude the blessings that you bestow and the privilege of being in an intimate relationship with you.  For this we pray, to your honour and glory.  Amen.

We sing the Hymn “Away in a Manger”  TiS318 

[there is a brief introduction]

Anonymous

We sing the Hymn “Infant Holy, infant lowly”  TiS292  AHB225 

Polish Carol

Translated by Edith Reed

Story 

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Message

This story puts a nice slant onto the familiar birth narrative, and it makes for delightful reading.  But it raises the question as to whether that is all that there is to Christmas Day?  Is Christmas Day just a time of hearing, again, how there was no room in the Bethlehem Inn for our weary travellers, Joseph and Mary, and how, at this late hour of the day and being in some distress, for Mary must have been experiencing the first signs that she was about to give birth to her first-born, they were offered a place of shelter in an animal shelter somewhere in the town.  We know no details of the birth, presumably the local mid-wife was there to assist Mary.  We know no details of how long they needed to remain in the shelter before they were about to move into a house, presumably a house belonging to Joseph’s extended family. 

  We don’t know how many animal shelters there were in Bethlehem, but we do know that the shepherds managed to find the right one.  We know that their visit caused quite a commotion among the nearby residents, for we read that “All who heard (about the appearance of the choir of angels and of the news about which they sang) were amazed at what the shepherds said.”  (Luke 2: 18)  We know that the shepherds returned in high spirits to their duties of minding their sheep, “singing praises to God for all they had heard and seen”.  (Luke 2: 20)  We don’t know for how long they may have continued to tell and retell the amazing events of that evening, or if they continued to visit Joseph, Mary and the baby Jesus afterwards.

  Luke’s narrative stops with the shepherds returning to their flocks on the nearby hills.  Does that mean that the narrative of the Incarnation of Jesus also stops at this point?  I don’t think narrative stops there but that it is only the beginning of a much larger and longer narrative.

  Last week, we recalled Moses recording the words of God explaining to the People of Israel His reason for setting them free from slavery in Egypt and for leading them to their promised homeland in Canaan:

“Remember that the LORD your God is the only God and that He is faithful.  He will keep His covenant and show His constant love to a thousand generations of those who love Him and obey His commands.”  (Deuteronomy 7: 9) 

  We noted from this verse that God acts out of love, but because He seeks to be in a relationship with those who He loves, He is seeking a response from those with whom He interacts, from those to whom He has demonstrated His love.

  We noted that David writes that God is seeking a change in the heart of a person.  David writes of his response to God from his experiencing the love and mercy of God:

“I will follow the instructions of God that you have laid out in His Law.

I will abide by the teaching of God as a way of life.

My desire is to do God’s will.”  (Psalm 40: 7 & 8) 

  Such behaviour is the indication of a person’s faithful response to God’s faithful love.

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“God made His light shine in our hearts, to being us the knowledge of His glory shining in the face of Jesus”  2 Corinthians 4: 6 

  In his second letter to the Church in Corinth, Paul gave this illustration :

“God made His light shine in our hearts, to being us the knowledge of His glory shining in the face of Jesus”  2 Corinthians 4: 6 

  At Creation, God made the Light to shine, to disperse the darkness of the chaos that then existed and to initiate His creative involvement in the World.  John talks of the birth of Jesus as the coming of the Light to shine in the darkness of a sinful World.  (John 1: 5 & 9)  Paul uses the same imagery to tell us that the coming of Jesus tells us of God’s continuing creative and redemptive involvement in the World.  Through Jesus God is seeking to “penetrate the darkness of the sinful human heart”.  (Ronald Tasker in 2 Corinthians p72) 

  God has always sought to relate to a person on a level that involves the greatest intimacy and sincerity.  Thus we read of a person responding to God ‘with their heart’.

  In Psalm 51: 17, the writer talks of coming before God with “a humble and repentant heart”.

  Jeremiah records God’s earnest hope that the faithless and sinful People of Israel would, one day realise their error and “will return to (Him) with all their heart”.  (Jeremiah 24: 7) 

  Jesus reminded his listeners of the need to “love the Lord (our) God with our whole heart”.  (Matthew 22: 37, Deuteronomy 6: 5) 

  Elsewhere Jesus speaks of “how happy are those who are pure in heart for they shall see God”  (Matthew 5: 8)  , or as the Psalmist writes, “those who are pure in act and in thought”  (Psalm 24: 3 & 4) 

  Peter encourages us “to have reverence for Christ in our hearts and to honour him as Lord”.  (1 Peter 3: 15) 

  We are encouraged to:

“obey God with all of our heart”  (Romans 6: 17)  ,

“trust God with all of our heart”  (Proverbs 3: 5)  , and

“serve God with all of our heart”  (1 Chronicles 28: 9)  .

  Alan Catchpoole writes that Christianity is often identified with “a traditional life-style or a system of moral values or a cultural practice or a philosophy of life”.  He writes that often an understanding of Christianity is “limited to a complex of theological doctrines or formulations or teachings”.  It is none of these things, he writes, for at the centre of Christianity is a person, Jesus Christ himself.  It is Jesus, the person, whom each individual must accept or reject.  For the Christian, the reality of their faith is their personal relationship with their Lord and Saviour.  (Alan Catchpoole in The Wisdom that founded the Earth p123) 

  The shepherds rejoiced at the good news given to them of God’s involvement in the World.  All who saw the infant Jesus rejoiced at the sight of God’s promised King and Saviour.  How will you respond to the good news that we hear in the narrative of the birth of Jesus, the Son of God?  Jesus has ensured that there is room for everyone.

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“What can I give Christ?  Give him my heart!”

  I will finish with these words from a poem by Christina Rossetti.

“Heaven cannot hold him”

                                                       Christina Rossetti

What can I give (Christ), poor as I am?

If I were a shepherd I’d bring a lamb,

If I were a Wise Man I’d do my part,

Yet what can I give him?  Give him my heart!

  (The Reader’s Digest book of Christmas p93 & 94) 

We sing the hymn Hymn “Thou didst leave thy throne”  AHB206  MHB150

Emily Elliott

Prayer

“A Prayer for Christmas Morning”

                                                                  Henry Van Dyke

  The Day of joy returns, Father in Heaven, and crowns another year with peace and goodwill.  Help us rightly to remember the birth of Jesus, that we may share in the song of the angels, the gladness of the shepherds, and the worship of the Magi.  Close the door of hate and open the door of love all over the World.  Let kindness come with every gift and food desires with every greeting.  Deliver us from evil, by the blessing that Jesus Christ brings, and teach us to be merry with clean hearts.  May the Christmas morning make us happy to be your children, and the Christmas evening bring us to our bed with grateful thoughts, forgiven and forgiving.  To your honour and glory.  Amen.

We sing the Hymn “Hark, the Herald Angels sing”  TiS303 

[there is a short introduction]

Charles Wesley

We sing the Hymn “Good Christians all rejoice”  TiS313 

John Neale

Benediction    

And may the blessing of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, rest upon you and remain with you always.  Amen.

Benediction Song

“Rejoice and be Merry”  Carols for Choirs 1 number 32

(only the one verse is needed – there is a short introduction)

Rejoice and be merry in songs and in mirth!

O praise our Redeemer, all mortals on Earth!

For this is the birthday of Jesus our King,

Who brought us salvation, his praises we’ll sing.

Traditional English Carol