God Made Man Songs of Praise

2,000 years ago, a star led wise men on a journey

to bring gifts to a baby, born in a stable.

This was no ordinary birth.

And this was no ordinary child.

God had become one of us.

Tonight, Julian Rhind-Tutt reads how the word became flesh

from John's Gospel.

And to sing us towards Christmas,

we have seasonal hymns from our congregation in Cheltenham

plus performances by Mary-Jess,

Libera,

and Only Men Aloud.

At this time of year, the shops of Cheltenham's elegant Regency parades

glitter enticingly, in preparation for the festival of present-giving.

But let's take time to celebrate another gift of Christmas -

the most extraordinary gift of all -

God's coming to Earth to share our humanity.

We remember this as we set out Nativity scenes,

open Advent calendars

and, at this darkest time of the year, light candles,

to symbolise Jesus, the light of the world, coming among us.

Here in Cheltenham, our congregation has gathered in All Saints' Church

to sing praises, in preparation for the advent of the Christ child.

God taking on mortal form

is what theologians call "the Incarnation".

Maybe we need theologians to help make sense of an idea so amazing.

I do find the Incarnation as the idea that God, who made everything,

who's the first mover of the universe, brought Creation into existence.

God enters space, time and history in the form of a human being,

and that person was Jesus Christ.

The Incarnation takes the word "God",

which means a thousand things to a thousand people

and stops the word "God" being a concept and puts a face on it.

So that, when people look on Jesus, they see the nature,

the person, the passions of God.

And they don't have to speculate any longer.

# Still, still, still

# Let all the Earth be still

# For Mary in her arms enfolding

# Hope of all the world is holding

# Still, still, still

# Let all the Earth be still

# Light, light, light

# Let all the Earth be light

# The holy star, its news ablazing

# Sign of hope for nations raising

# Light, light, light

# Let all the Earth be light

# Sleep, holy Jesus, sleep

# Sleep

# Sleep. #

CHILDREN SING: # We will rock him, rock him, rock him

# We will rock him, rock him, rock him... #

We tend to see Christmas through the eyes of children,

and people say it's a time for the children.

And we do Nativity plays,

and imagine that the shepherds were ten and that Joseph was seven.

Actually, if you look at the story, it's old people.

It includes wise men from Iraq-Iran region

who are wise because they're old.

Wisdom in the ancient world

was something that came with years

rather than with a PhD.

and the shepherds would be older men.

In this story, which is the centre of the Christian Gospel,

God entrusts those who are on the periphery or who others might think

are past it, with a responsibility to let a new thing happen.

It's great news for old people.

One older person who was open to new possibilities was Norman Kember.

In 2005, aged 74 and enjoying a comfortable retirement,

he volunteered to go

to one of the most dangerous places on Earth - Baghdad.

Feeling frustrated by the failure of protests to stop the war,

he went there with a Christian Peacemaker Team.

One of the reasons was to prove that, at 74, I wasn't quite past it.

I had some other reasons. I wanted to meet Iraqi people.

I wanted to see how Christian Peacemaker teams worked.

I'm a great fan of Dietrich Bonhoeffer,

who talked about the cost of discipleship

and, if following Jesus doesn't involve some costs,

there's something wrong with it.

Pat, was this not a time where you were hoping that

he might actually have slowed down, and spent a bit more time at home?

I wouldn't like to expect him to do nothing,

because it wouldn't be him.

I accept that he had ideas, he wanted to do things,

and he wanted to go to Iraq.

I understood why he wanted to go.

I couldn't have stopped him, if I'd wanted to.

While Norman was in Iraq,

he was kidnapped and held hostage for three-and-a-half months.

I remember being deeply upset when I realised

I wasn't going to be home for Christmas,

but, once one accepted that, that was it.

We sang carols to our captors, the three of us,

and they brought as a Christmas cake, of all things.

So that we celebrated Christmas in a very strange fashion.

To what extent have your faith, your beliefs,

your principles altered, as you've got older?

I think, as a young man, I would be a much more narrow-minded,

zealous Christian than I am now, because you haven't met other people.

You have had no experience of other faiths.

I would like to quote a missionary friend of ours, who said

that the older he got, the less he believed,

but that which he did believe, he believed more deeply.

The Christmas-card images we conjure up of Jesus' birth

taking place in a snowy landscape, often come from the carols we sing,

even though snow in Bethlehem is pretty rare.

Christina Rossetti's Christmas poem,

so vividly evoking a wintry scene, was set to music in 1906,

and became one of our best-loved carols.

The tune's called "Cranham"

and its composer, Gustav Holst,

was born here in Cheltenham, in this very house.

This is his piano, the one he composed The Planets on.

The whole house is a museum now, devoted to his music and his life.

It's not far from All Saints' Church

where his father, Adolph von Holst, was organist.

So the young Gustav began his musical career in the choir there.

Holst's famous contribution to Christmas music, of course,

is his tune to "In The Bleak Midwinter".

# In the bleak midwinter

# Frosty wind made moan

# Earth stood hard as iron

# Water like a stone

# Snow had fallen, snow, snow,

# Snow on snow

# In the bleak midwinter

# Long ago

# Our God, heaven cannot hold him

# Nor earth sustain

# Heav'n and earth shall flee away

# When he comes to reign

# In the bleak midwinter

# A stable place sufficed

# The Lord God Almighty

# Jesus Christ

# What can I give him

# Poor as I am?

# If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb

# If I were a Wise Man, I would do my part

# Yet what I can, I give him

# Give my heart. #

God's decision to share in our very fragile humanity

is one of the great mysteries of the Christian faith.

It's beautifully expressed in the prologue to John's Gospel,

read now by Julian Rhind-Tutt.

In the beginning was the Word.

And the Word was with God.

And the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.

All things came into being through him.

And without him, not one thing came into being.

What has come into being in him was life.

And the life was the light of all people.

The light shines in the darkness,

and the darkness did not overcome it.

God's coming to illuminate the darkness

is celebrated in our next hymn, by Charles Wesley.

In it, he explores how, in Jesus,

God's personality is embodied in a human life.

I don't think that Mary would have felt

all through her pregnancy

that it would be a perfect outcome.

Partly because she'd be aware that one in four women died

giving birth to a child,

and that one in three children died at the point of birth.

There's no guarantee,

and God enters a risky world in order that that might be indicative

of how much God loves the world. But it's not a special entrance

with a special person who's guaranteed to have a painless birth.

But Mary has to deal with all the anxieties

that any pregnant woman would have.

Suzie Ford faced more anxiety than most of us could imagine.

She was diagnosed with leukaemia when she was 23 weeks pregnant,

and was faced with the possibility of losing not only her baby,

but her life.

When I was in hospital,

I had to have two lots of chemotherapy

before my little boy was due to be born.

And that was very, very hard.

Every moment that the chemotherapy would drip through the tube,

I was just willing it not to hurt my child.

And I got to the point where I almost couldn't cope with that pressure.

And I was at a loss of what I could do to save him.

And a chaplain came into the room one day, and he held my hand

and said to me, "You aren't to deal with this problem.

"What you've got to do is trust in God, give your child to him,

"and let him cope with this.

"He is there to love and look after you both.

"And you have got to cope with what you're going through,

"and now give your child to God."

And that helped.

That made me able to deal with what was happening to me,

and it took the worry from me.

And I feel in some way that Mary gave her trust to God,

and she was able to say, "I trust in you, I'm going to go ahead

"and I'm going to take on everything that you've given me."

I hope that Joe understands that Christmastime means

that there's something very special happening.

He's only very little,

and the excitement of presents is overwhelming.

But he does know that it's a very special time,

not only for our family, but also that it's the birth of Jesus.

There's another astonishing thing.

As the Gospel of John explains, as far as our relationship with God

or the Word is concerned, it's not a one-way street.

To all who received him,

who believed in his name,

he gave power to become children of God,

who were born not of blood or of the will of the flesh

or of the will of man, but of God.

And the Word became flesh and lived among us,

and we have seen his glory,

the glory as of a father's only son,

full of grace and truth.

What does it mean that the Word became flesh?

That word "Word"

is translated from the Greek word "logos",

and that word "logos" has a very powerful meaning.

The meaning is... It's referring to the spiritual metaphysical reality

that brought the universe into existence, the creator...

Whether we call that God or ultimate reality,

logos refers to that unmoved first mover, the creator of the universe.

When we hear that the Word became flesh...

..I don't think that we can ever understand the immensity of that.

I don't know any way of speaking about the Incarnation

except that it is to do with the incredible risk that God takes

because God loves the cosmos, the world and its people.

Christians believe the love and mercy shown by God

to the whole universe shone out the night Christ was born.

That's the story of the song O Holy Night.

# O holy night!

# The stars are brightly shining

# It is the night of our dear saviour's birth

# Long lay the world in sin and error pining

# Till he appeared and the soul felt its worth

# A thrill of hope the weary world rejoices

# For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn

# Christ is the Lord

# For ever we shall praise him

# His power and glory

# His glory

# Ever more proclaim

# His power and glory

# Ever more proclaim

# O holy night

# O holy night

# O holy night

# Holy

# Night! #

Come, Lord Jesus,

into the lives of the poor bringing hope,

into the lives of the powerful bringing judgment

into the lives of the weary bringing rest,

into the lives of the wise bringing restlessness.

And into our lives and longings, wherever our estate,

come, Lord Jesus.

The weeks leading up to Christmas can be a lonely time,

a dark time for many.

Worth remembering then

that the message of Christmas is that we are all God's children,

and we're loved.

Next week, Aled steps back in time,

into the world of Charles Dickens. For the 200th anniversary of his birth,

his great-great-grandson explains the writer's passion for practical Christianity.

And there will be lots of Dickensian Christmas carols.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

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