Christmas Day/Christmas Eve Year C

Christmas Day/Christmas Eve

Isaiah 52.7–10
Hebrews 1.1–4
John 1.1–14

What difference would it make if the Christmas story were not true? If God had not come to be born, live and die as a human being? Today’s readings shout out that the Christmas story is the key to what the world is all about, from beginning to end.

Hebrews tells us that the incarnation is the climax of God’s continuous, creative, communicating love. God’s love, Hebrews says, is always ‘son-shaped’. Through God the Son, the world comes into being; through God the Son it is sustained in being; and God the Son will bring it to fulfilment when he, the ‘heir’, rounds everything up. All the other ways in which God has chosen to communicate with the world he made and loves are interpreted by this great event that we celebrate at Christmas. The incarnation tells us that that is what we are here for – to be drawn into dialogue with God, hearing his word and responding to it...