Readings and Sermon Sunday 22 December 2024

2/January/2025

Dear Friends, 11 Today in the town of David a Saviour has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord. With just a few days to go now until the great celebration of Christmas we hear again the message from the angel to the shepherds on the hillside: the good news of great joy for everyone, that ‘a saviour has been born to you, he is Christ the Lord.’ Of all the things that God could have sent us that first Christmas, this particular gift came as a big surprise, even though people might well have been expecting it! Many hundreds of years before, the prophets had told everyone of God’s promised messiah-king, who would come to his people and set them free. The king’s arrival would be marked through the birth of a baby, in the words of Isaiah, ‘to us a child is born, to us a son in given.’