Speaking at our Christmas Eve Masses our Rector Canon Mark Soady reflects that the world is in a mess, but it was to a world in a mess that Jesus came.
Fr Mark at the Crib in St Peter’s Square in Rome
A précis of Fr Mark’s Sermon:
Earlier today at our Christingle Services we acted out the creation of the first Christmas Crib by St Francis of Assisi. We did this because it is 800 years since the first of his followers know as Friars came to England.
St Francis had himself given up his beautifully tailored clothes and life in a large mansion, for rags and the simpler life. He wanted to show that Jesus came in to the world in the simplest of ways. Mary give birth in an out house and laid the Son of God in an animals food tray.
Christmas is many people’s favourite season because at its heart it has a little baby.  Christmas is a season of pretty things of all kinds, from bobbles on Christmas Trees, to full shop windows or Christmas lights.
Yet the reality of that first Christmas was very different , it was messy, very messy.  Mary and Joseph were just an ordinary couple living in a small village in Galilee, suddenly their lives were thrown in to disruption be the announcement that Mary was expecting a baby out of wedlock;and that she had to travel, in her pregnant state, for two days on the back of a donkey so they could complete the census ordered by their Roman masters. When things seemed as if they could not get any worse, they did. Being unable to find any where to stay in Bethlehem she had to give birth in the dark and damp conditions of an animal shed.
So here in this story, if we dig down deep enough, we will find  discrimination, homelessness, pain and oppression. God in the person Jesus choose to come as one of us  – and that included all the complications of human life.
 For many this Christmas will be one of sadness. Some others  will have spent money they have not got, because of peer pressure, to be part of the pretty things of Christmas. We must remember them, and remember that Jesus Christ, whose birthday we celebrate came so that we all would have LOVE and have it in abundance.