The Second Sunday of Christmas Year C

The Second Sunday of Christmas

Jeremiah 31.7–14
Ephesians 1.3–14
John 1.10–18

What is grace? Both John and Ephesians have the word more than once. It’s a word that we use quite frequently in Christian circles. Most meetings I go to, you know when they’ve ended because someone says the Grace. We say Grace before meals. But what does it mean? Its Christian use seems very divorced from the everyday use of the word – we know what a graceful dancer is, or what it is to have a few weeks of grace in which to finish a piece of work. The latter seems to be a bit closer to the Christian understanding of grace, but all of today’s passages suggest that the loveliness, the sense of ‘rightness’, in the former use of the word ‘grace’ needs to come into it, too...