Topic: Christmas

The hope born at Christmas does not erase, deny, or hide from the horror of a violent world, but meets us in the midst of it.

A Christmas Message from the leader of the Baptist World Alliance

Isaiah 35 declares joy and courage and gladness, for those stuck in the wilderness and dry lands.
Joy for the weak hands, the feeble knees and the fearful hearts.

What difference does it make for us and in the world that The Word became flesh and made its dwelling among us?

The childhood picture of Jesus’ development calls us to ensure that our relationship with God is our primary allegiance, our first responsibility and the foundation of our identity.

In the nativity we see the light of living grace, in all its vulnerability, shining into the darkness of the world’s violence and divisiveness.

If the message of Christmas is real, then our preparations for it need to be radically life-changing.

God reaches out to us through babies and elderly folks with a message of love and redemption that cuts through the theological justifications of empire and warmongering and calls us to peace.

The the birth of Jesus we see the beginning of a peace mission that is not based on force but on patience, forgiveness and presence.

The particularity of Jesus’s identity scandalises our tribal sensibilities, but our attempts to erase such details in favour of a more “universal” truth inevitably fail to convey the good news of God with us.

A sermon on John 1: 1-18 by Audrey Kateena

A modern paraphrase of a homily for the Feast of the Nativity by Ephraim the Syrian (306-373CE) taken from his second Christmas hymn.