Ken Howcroft. “Are we ready? For God’s love to be placed into our hands like a tiny, helpless baby?”. It was not somewhere far away, or in palaces, or in government buildings that God’s son was born. It was in the lives of ordinary people like Mary and Joseph who were finding life hard, who were being pushed around by forces beyond their control. But the power of God is the power of love. So God’s love was put into human hands as a tiny, defenceless baby. Because that is what God is like. And because God is like that he is likely to place himself not just into Mary’s hands but into ours as well. What we therefore celebrate at Christmas is not just something that happened all those years ago, but something that can in a sense happen to us now. The question is, when it is our time to hold the baby, will we be ready? Because “The Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth”. [John 1:14]. So let us welcome this extraordinary God into our ordinary lives in this troubled world. Amen.
This is the English text of a sermon for Christmas Eve preached at Ponte Sant’Angelo at a joint service of the English-language congregation at Ponte Sant’Angelo Methodist Church Rome and the Italian-language congregation at Chiesa Metodista Via XX Settembre. A version of the sermon in Italian was made available at the service for those who spoke Italian. The readings were Isaiah 9:2-7 and Luke 2:1-14
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