Thursday 25th December – Christmas Day

25-12-2025, christmas day, Isaiah 52:7-10, pastor adrian kitson, Still Seeking

How beautiful on the mountains
are the feet of those who bring good news,
who proclaim peace,
who bring good tidings,
who proclaim salvation,
who say to Zion,
‘Your God reigns!’
⁸Listen! Your watchmen lift up their voices;
together they shout for joy.
When the Lord returns to Zion,
they will see it with their own eyes.
⁹Burst into songs of joy together,
you ruins of Jerusalem,
for the Lord has comforted his people,
he has redeemed Jerusalem.
¹⁰The Lord will lay bare his holy arm
in the sight of all the nations,
and all the ends of the earth will see
the salvation of our God.

I’ve come down from the ‘mountains’ of Keyneton this morning. I hope you will judge my feet to be beautiful! Not because they are but because of God’s good news I carry this Christmas day is beautiful for your very soul.

I proclaim his peace, his rescue, his relief, his hope to you as we Christian all over the world marvel at God in the manger.

For a man locked in a cold sparse Nazi prison cell in the winter of 1943 and 1944, this God in the manger was his only hope. This Christmas child was everything because he had nothing else and so, that baby became large, light, life itself. That baby of who Isaiah speaks; this God of promise now here in our body became sheer joy.

Joy to the world! Anyone for whom this sound is foreign, or who hears in it nothing but weak enthusiasm, has not yet really heard the gospel. For the sake of humankind, Jesus Christ became a human being in a stable in Bethlehem: Rejoice, O Church! For sinners, Jesus Christ became a companion of tax collectors and prostitutes; Rejoice O Church! For the condemned, Jesus Christ was condemned to the cross on Golgotha; Rejoice O Church! For all of us, Jesus Christ was resurrection to life; Rejoice O Church! … All over the world today people are asking: What is the path to joy? The church of Christ answers loudly: Jesus is our joy! (1Peter 1:7-9. Joy to the world! (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, God is in the manger, Christmas Day)

Is this God in the manger your joy? Is he your hope? Or, has the trimmings and trappings of this fairly affluent life (by world standards) dimmed his light a bit – has his hope been misplaces under all the other gifts under the tree – hard to find, last one picked, a little underwhelming in comparison….?

Isaiah calls; Bonhoeffer pleads – “Can you hear it today?” – not just a sentimental enthusiastic rendition of Joy to the Word – but the gospel – God in the manger- which means there is light is our human darkness, hope in our human despair, love in our human fears, reconciliation in our human hatred? That is how we sing ‘Joy to the world’.

It is so easy to just settle for the weak enthusiasm rather that push deeper into who this little guy in the shed is and what he brings so you get to the joy of the boy.

Our whole culture has built another story and sings other songs that are nothing to do with this God in the manger.

The Church, at least in the West, has built the story into a shape that can easily morph into missing the good news that this baby is for our real-life issues, our real-life struggles and questions and sorrows and pains.

But God was in that manger – straw, labour, blood, strips of cloth, worry, fear, darkness, livestock, earth, voices, hands….. So, not what ‘God’ is supposed to be. God is meant to be far beyond, unknowable, un-findable except by the holy few. God is meant to make life easy. God is meant to help us achieve our goals and keep us ahead of the pack. God is meant to keep up his end of the deal as we do the right thing and be the right person….. This Christian is one big deal; one big transaction, isn’t it?

Well, not a lot of deals going on in that shed that night. Just humans basking in the wonder of this unexpected new unheard of but long promised miracle could ever be.

We cannot approach the manger of the Christ in the same way we approach the cradle of another child. Rather, when we go to this manger, something happens, and we cannot leave it again unless we have been judges or redeemed. (God is in the Manger, Dierich Bonhoeffer)

When you ponder the possibility that the God of the universe in all power and mystery and might enters our human space in such a non-descript manner, he is either the judge or not, the Saviour or not.

God is all out calling you to be all in!

But isn’t this pastoral exaggeration of a pretty and pious legend?

[No.] It is not just a way of speaking. For that’s just it: it is God himself, the Lord and Creator of all things, who is so small here, who is hidden here in the corner, who enters into the plainness of the world, who meets us in the helplessness and defencelessness of a child, and wants to be with us. And he does this not out of playfulness or sport, because we find it touching, but in order to show us where he is and who he is, and in order from this [human] place to judge and devalue and dethrone all human ambition (Bonhoeffer, God is in the Manger, Christmas Day).

Does this Jesus move you from a touching family tradition to judge, devaluing and dethroning all your ambition to be the lord of your own life?

Now we are getting close to what it is for God to be in that manger.

If you allow it, this child carrying a new government of grace on his shoulders will do his devaluing and dethroning work so he can show you what a throne of a King of grace looks like in your day.

When I am dethrones and he is king, hope opens up like a stream watering the desert, like people singing for joy as they pick over the rubble of their destitute city, like all the doubters and enemies of faith in this Jesus having to finally see and admit that he was here all along and the people of faith were true and sure all along.

That is what those gospel writers are saying. From those words of Isaiah rushing around their heads, they are saying that this is that God is saving us right here. The God of all justice and the same God of all love now here in a way that we can hear and see and touch and pick up in our arms.

No pastoral exaggeration of a pretty and pious legend here today!

This is truth telling, mystery sharing, wonder at the audacity of our God – to enter our sphere in full to save us in full and deliver every promise in full then and now.

Friend, don’t leave this manger scene today the same. Let hope open up your dry soul. Let this God cast his mystery of grace over you. Let him run his rule of right judgement over you so he can bring you to new life, new hope for whatever Christmas 2025 looks like for you.

And then, with the memory of those little infant feet in your hands, go to it:

Use your beautiful feet…

How beautiful on the mountains
    are the feet of those who bring good news,
who proclaim peace,
    who bring good tidings,
    who proclaim salvation,
who say to Zion,
    ‘Your God reigns!’