Diocese of Down & Dromore

Christmas Sermon 2010 by The Rt Revd Harold Miller, Bishop of Down and Dromore.

Three Values of Christmas

Recently, I heard someone who was a bit of an expert on church growth being asked the question: If you were to go to a new church, what would you do first? The answer he gave was so unexpected that it has etched itself firmly in my mind: 'I would spend the first eighteen months teaching values'. I though it was a great answer, because in truth everything we do, all our vision and strategies, and indeed our ordinary everyday living, emerges out of the values which are important to us and provide a basis for our actions. And Christmas is one of the times when those values are seen most clearly.

But it struck me, on a deeper level, that the very Incarnation - the coming of Jesus Christ into the world on that first Christmas Day - doesn’t come from nowhere. It is the centre of God’s plan for humanity and indeed for the whole of creation, and the incarnation itself emerges literally from Godly values. So, my Christmas sermon this year can be entitled Three Values of Christmas.

Value 1: It is worth giving up everything for the sake of what is most important.

Do you get what I mean? People who live transforming and transformative lives often implicitly grasp this Christ-like value. It is illustrated brilliantly by Christ himself in the parable of the pearl of great price. There are times when things which are perfectly good in themselves can deflect us from accomplishing the very best.

    ‘Have this mind among yourselves’, says Paul in Philippians 2,

    ‘which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form

    of God, did not count equality with God something to be grasped,

    but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being

    born in the likeness of men...’

Or in 2 Corinthians 8:9:

    ‘For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ that, though

    he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you, by

    his poverty, might become rich.’

The Incarnation means that our Lord Jesus Christ willingly chose to give up all that was rightly his - the glory, splendour and security of heaven, for the one thing which was most important of all: the salvation of the world.

And that value: of preparedness to give up what is rightly ours for the sake of others, is to be a key value of Christ-ians, who follow Jesus Christ as both Saviour and Example. Christlike lives, lives lived in the imitation of Christ, are lives which are focussed, clear and prepared to lay aside secondary things to fulfil the heart and plan of a loving Heavenly Father for his Kingdom.

Value 2: It is good to be planted in the midst of the dirt.

A seed grows most effectively when it is well and truly planted in the dirt. Light shines most brightly when it is in the darkest of darkness.

Many of us have been to Carol Services over the past couple of weeks, and we will have heard again the story of our Redemption in a series of bible readings. The last of those readings is nearly always John 1:1-14. It is the climactic reading, and in some churches the congregation stands for what we often call the ‘Christmas Gospel’. If that reading is the climax of the revelation of the incarnation, then its last verse is the climax of the climax. It reads:

    ‘And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us,

    and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only-

    begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.’

That verse illustrates the Christmas value. Immanuel is planted in the midst of the dirt. God is among us in all the messiness of humanity. The Word does not just become human (though that is true); the Word does not just become ‘one of us’ (though that is also true), the Word becomes that awful word ‘flesh’, with all its implications of temptation, frailty, mortality and pain but (Thanks be to God) without sin, and God made him who knew no sin to be sin for us -the wonder of the Gospel! So, this Christmas season, Immanuel comes among us not in a pretend way, but planted firmly in the midst of the issues of our lives and all the muck and dirt of our humanity. And that is where the glory of God is seen in all its beauty and splendour, ‘full of grace and truth’.

I had the great privilege last month of visiting Cambodia with Tearfund. I saw there, as I sometimes see here, Christians, the Church, up to their eyes in the muck of the society in which they are living. In that case, the ‘muck’ of child trafficking. To see a child who had been sold for $300 rescued and cared for; to see a child who had been injected with polio so that he would be deformed and get more money begging, now in a safe and loving environment, because of the Christlike incarnational love of believers was a humbling and glorious experience: ‘the glory, as of the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth’. ‘Christ in us, the hope of glory’. It is good to be planted in the midst of the dirt: it is the essence of the Stable in Bethlehem.

Value 3: Every human being is of inestimable and eternal worth.

Christ has taken on himself our human nature, so that our human nature may be redeemed. There is a wonderful Christmas collect which puts this idea very powerfully, and feels for a moment as though it is on the edge of heresy. The words at its heart are these:

    Grant that, as he (Jesus Christ), came to share our humanity,

    So we may share in the life of his divinity…

Not that we become divine, but rather that we can, by the grace of God and the salvation of Jesus Christ, share in the life which is divine. God’s life! By Jesus coming down to earth, we can be raised up to heaven. It’s there again in the Christmas Gospel:

    But to all who received him, who believed in his name, to

    them gave he the right to become (wonder of wonders)

    children of God, who were born, not of blood, nor of the

    will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God…

What greater worth can be placed on a human life than the inestimable value of our humanity being taken on by God himself, and what greater destiny can there be than being drawn into the life of God? That means that every single human being is made in God’s image, and every single human being is of inestimable worth. That is God’s valuation, and it should also be ours. From the most fragile little baby to the most wizzened centogenarian. And that means you and me. No matter what we’ve done, no matter where we’ve been; no matter what we’ve been told about ourselves, or even told to ourselves. First and foremost, we are of inestimable value to God, and that is the message of Christmas Day.

The values of Christmas:

-It is worth giving up everything for the sake of what is most important.

-It is good to be planted in the midst of the dirt.

-Every human being is of inestimable and eternal worth.

The values which brought Jesus to Bethlehem- and eventually to Calvary.

The values by which his body, the Church is called to live.

The values which will transform individuals, and can transform you this Christmas.

Thanks be to God.

And eighteen months of teaching of values like those would make any Church grow!