christmas

Yes, It Could Be Christmas Every Day: Sermon Preached on 4th January 2026 (Second Sunday of Christmas)

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This panoramic view captures the serene beauty of Bethlehem's old city at twilight. The sky transitions into a deep, soft purple-blue dusk, casting a calm and ethereal glow over the historic landscape as evening settles in.In the foreground and across the scene, clusters of ancient limestone buildings and rooftops spread densely, their warm, weathered stone tones standing out against the cooling light. Scattered lights begin to sparkle from windows and streets below, adding gentle points of warmth.Rising prominently are several towers that punctuate the skyline: the distinctive bell tower of the Church of the Nativity, with its classic design and cross, stands out alongside slender minarets—such as the elegant one from the nearby Mosque of Omar—featuring intricate details and illuminated outlines against the twilight sky.The overall composition conveys a peaceful, timeless atmosphere, blending architectural forms of stone, domes, and vertical spires in a harmonious urban tapestry.

Preached at Christ Church, Worton and St Mary’s, Potterne

Readings – Ephesians 1. 3-14; John 1. 10-18

“The law was indeed given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.”

Has anyone brought you a present today? A bottle of wine, or a box of chocolates, perhaps? Some left-over mince pies? Or has anyone already today been given the gift of… eleven pipers piping?

Vibrant 1970s scene from Top of the Pops: Glam rock band Wizzard performs "I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday" against a fairy-tale castle backdrop with turrets and snowy atmosphere.Band members in colorful, theatrical costumes. Foreground: Musician with wild afro, blue jacket, yellow accents, red bow tie, dramatic makeup, playing saxophone or gesturing.Center: Roy Wood with long white beard and hair, hat, multi-colored military uniform in red, white, gold, epaulettes, like Santa-toy-soldier, singing or playing guitar.Background: Others in flamboyant attire with shiny fabrics, tassels, stripes; playing drums (two red kits), bass, saxophones. Drummer in red military jacket with white trim; elaborate headgear like tall hats, turbans.Image full of saturated colors, glitter, joyful chaos, capturing 1970s glam rock spirit and holiday fun.
Christmas isn’t over. It’s only just begun!

You see, today is the eleventh day of Christmas. Christmas isn’t over—not yet, anyway. That’s the point of that old song about the twelve days of Christmas. Tomorrow night is Twelfth Night, when the Christmas decorations traditionally come down. But for now we are definitely in the season of Christmas, and all our readings and hymns today reflect that.

Then on Tuesday the Epiphany comes—when the infant Christ was worshipped by the Wise Men, who were not Jews, therefore demonstrating that He has come to establish His Kingdom over the whole human race, and not just one group of people. That was the start of Christ’s earthly mission, begun when was still in the cot. Is that the end of Christmas? Well, what if I told you that it didn’t need to be? What if I told you it could be Christmas every day?

Now, I know what you’re thinking:

♪♫ Well, I wish it could be Christmas everyday ♫♪
♪♪ When the kids start singing and the band begins to play ♫♫

What a blessed relief it has been to go into supermarkets over the last couple of days without that blasting in your ears. It will be a whole ten months until we get assaulted by Slade and Mariah Carey every time we go to buy a packet of frozen peas – or nine-and-a-half at least. That sort of Christmas everyday would be pretty grim – eternal mince pies, mulled wine, and bigger meals at higher prices than you actually want, all accompanied by forced cheerfulness.

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Christmas Is Really for the Kids: Sermon Preached on Thursday 25th December 2025

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This panoramic view captures the serene beauty of Bethlehem's old city at twilight. The sky transitions into a deep, soft purple-blue dusk, casting a calm and ethereal glow over the historic landscape as evening settles in.In the foreground and across the scene, clusters of ancient limestone buildings and rooftops spread densely, their warm, weathered stone tones standing out against the cooling light. Scattered lights begin to sparkle from windows and streets below, adding gentle points of warmth.Rising prominently are several towers that punctuate the skyline: the distinctive bell tower of the Church of the Nativity, with its classic design and cross, stands out alongside slender minarets—such as the elegant one from the nearby Mosque of Omar—featuring intricate details and illuminated outlines against the twilight sky.The overall composition conveys a peaceful, timeless atmosphere, blending architectural forms of stone, domes, and vertical spires in a harmonious urban tapestry.

Preached at St Peter’s, Poulshot and St Mary’s, Potterne

Readings – Isaiah 52:7-10; Luke 2.1-14

“Then an angel of the Lord stood before them… and they were terrified.”

Paul Gauguin's 1896 oil painting Te Tamari no Atua (The Child/Son of God) reimagines the Christian Nativity in a Tahitian setting. In the foreground, a serene Tahitian woman—representing Mary—lies exhausted on a low bed, her body mostly bare except for a deep blue pareo (sarong) decorated with golden patterns, draped loosely over her lower body. She rests on her back with arms outstretched, a glowing yellow halo encircling her head, eyes closed, and face tilted upward in peaceful repose. Beside the bed sits a dark-skinned female figure in a white garment, possibly an attendant or angel, gazing down while cradling a small, swaddled infant (the Christ child). In the background, within a dimly lit interior supported by a large red wooden post, another Tahitian woman in blue stands near a cow and other animals, evoking the stable. The scene is filled with rich, stylized colors—deep greens, vibrant blues, warm yellows, and earthy reds—blending Polynesian motifs, patterned fabrics, and symbolic elements like the halo and animals. The title is inscribed at the bottom. This exoticized fusion of Christian iconography and Tahitian culture creates a dreamlike, spiritual atmosphere.
Te tamari no atua (Polynesian for ‘The Son of God’) or ‘The Birth’, Paul Gaugin, 1896. Hangs in the Pinakothek, Munich.

Christmas is really for the kids. The animals and the baby in swaddling clothes in the stable, and the angels with their cotton wool wings singing sweetly in the night, and the shepherds with their robes, and lots of dressing up. And Santa flying through the Bethlehem sky and the reindeer singing along with the angels as they passed.

(Actually, I made that last bit up – we all know that Santa, whose real name is St Nicholas, didn’t start his work delivering presents to children until about three hundred years after the first Christmas, because it was only then that there were enough children who believed that Jesus Christ was God.)

But that’s really what Christmas is about, isn’t it? A cute story with lots of pretty elements, and Cadbury’s selection boxes, and lots of turkey, and kids getting toys from Santa and having fun. Or maybe it’s something more profound than that?

Of course Christmas is for kids. The presents from Santa and nativity plays and selection boxes are for kids, and the real story of Christmas is very definitely for kids. But it’s also for adults too. For if Christmas is just for kids, then once we get past the age of 12 or so we can stop taking it seriously, and once Boxing Day comes, we can put it away and not think about it for another year, like the tinsel and the baubles for the tree that spend all year being stored in the attic.

But if Christmas is true – if the baby Jesus really was God-made-human, then this is the most important event in history, and the most important story of our lives. And it’s a story that is a lot more gritty than we tend to remember it from school nativity plays—less Disney, more like Happy Valley or perhaps an ancient equivalent of The Wire.  

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Only Human: Sermon Preached on 24th December 2025 (Midnight Mass)

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This panoramic view captures the serene beauty of Bethlehem's old city at twilight. The sky transitions into a deep, soft purple-blue dusk, casting a calm and ethereal glow over the historic landscape as evening settles in.In the foreground and across the scene, clusters of ancient limestone buildings and rooftops spread densely, their warm, weathered stone tones standing out against the cooling light. Scattered lights begin to sparkle from windows and streets below, adding gentle points of warmth.Rising prominently are several towers that punctuate the skyline: the distinctive bell tower of the Church of the Nativity, with its classic design and cross, stands out alongside slender minarets—such as the elegant one from the nearby Mosque of Omar—featuring intricate details and illuminated outlines against the twilight sky.The overall composition conveys a peaceful, timeless atmosphere, blending architectural forms of stone, domes, and vertical spires in a harmonious urban tapestry.

Preached at Holy Cross, Seend

Readings – Isaiah 9. 2, 6-7; John 1. 1-14

“the Word became flesh and lived among us”      

On a rainy night, outside the rundown Dave's City Motel, a weary middle-aged man with a beard stands under glowing neon signs. Wearing a fur-lined parka and baseball cap, he holds an old payphone receiver to his ear with one hand and a folded newspaper in the other. Heavy rain streaks across the entire scene. Right beside him, a young Black girl in a hooded sweatshirt reading "Elizabeth High School" sits confidently astride a faded pink coin-operated mechanical pony (marked "Out of Order"). She grips a small plastic bag and looks straight ahead with quiet determination. The motel window blazes with eclectic neon beer signs including "Good News," "Starr," a large green "BEVER" with starburst, and cigarette advertisements. A "No Vacancy" sign glows nearby, while wet newspapers and a sprouting weed near the curb add to the moody, nostalgic, slightly gritty atmosphere.
Jose y Maria, Everett Patterson, 2014.

“I’m only human.” It’s a phrase we usually offer by way of an apology—as if being human was something inadequate or second rate. Humans aren’t perfect. What torments us is that somehow we think we’re supposed be perfect, so when we can’t manage to be the perfect people we think we should be, we think we’ve failed.

We’re supposed to be good at our jobs, to run a perfect home, to be a cheerful friend and companion while also being capable of giving frank and realistic advice if needed, a wonderful spouse or partner, an absolutely perfect parent, to give regularly to charity, to feel deeply for a range of worthy causes and always say the right things about them, to never hit the credit card too heavily, never drink more than 14 units of alcohol per week, never smoke, and have a clean driving licence and a Body Mass Index below 25 – or, if we’re Black or Asian, a Body Mass Index below 23.

Of course we don’t manage to achieve all that. We’re only human. Although there are always Instagram influencers and people in the lifestyle magazines who claim to manage it all, and tell us we all could too if only we tried hard enough. Maybe they’re not human—better than human?—superhuman?

We’re so negative about the idea of being human – but being human was good enough for God. That’s what that strange mystical passage from St John’s Gospel that I read a moment ago is saying. I freely admit that it is strange stuff, and I don’t see that as a problem. After all, if God is real, then any human attempt to describe God must strain the limits of human language. The passage writes of two beings, the Word, and God who created the universe. The Word, it says, was God, every bit as much as the creator of the universe—somehow these two beings while being distinct, were one. The Word was with God before time began. And then the Word became flesh—God became human. That is the unique and distinctive point of the Christian faith

Now, we have much in common with Jews, something I think we all know, and we also have quite a lot in common with Muslims, something that is quite difficult to say with being latched on to as a Culture War point by one side or another. But it is a simple statement of fact. Like Muslims and Jews, we believe that there is a God, one God, who created the universe. This is very different from what atheists believe about the universe, or Buddhists, or Hindus. And like Muslims and Jews we believe that God will judge us at the end of our lives for what we have done on this Earth: which is a pretty scary prospect; we’d better hope that God judges us with more mercy than the lifestyle magazines and the folks on social media.

But one belief that separates Christians dramatically from Jews and Muslims is that we believe God actually became human. He did so in the person of Jesus Christ. If Jesus Christ was truly God, then God got the cold and blew His nose, went to the toilet, told jokes, ate breakfast, and was so fond of eating and drinking with the wrong company that his enemies called him a glutton and a drunkard. If this festival we celebrate tonight is true, then God got so exhausted by the crowds who mobbed Him like a modern celebrity that He fled to the hills for peace, and God was perceived as such a threat by powerful men that they had Him executed. That’s very different from what Jews believe, and very different from what Muslims believe.

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The End of the World: Sermon Preached on 24th December 2023 (Midnight Mass)

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A painting of Our Lady in a stable with the Baby Jesus in her arms; watched by St Joseph and the angels, who have halos, and shepherds and animals, who don't.

Preached at St Mary’s, Potterne

Readings – Isaiah 9. 2-4, 6-7; John 1. 1-14

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”         

How would you react if a vicar, at Midnight Mass, in a medieval church, in a rather traditional village in the depths of Deep England, started preaching about the End of the World? Would you wonder if he had been teleported in from the American Bible Belt? Or perhaps, on hearing a certain accent, wonder if he was a friend of another Ulster preacher, whom some of you may remember, the man who liked to say “no” a lot?

A painting of Our Lady in a stable with the Baby Jesus in her arms; watched by St Joseph and the angels, who have halos, and shepherds and animals, who don't.
The Nativity by Giotto (1311-20), in the Basilica of St Francis, Assisi.

In fact, in the churches I go to I never hear anyone preaching on the end of the world. They’re far too moderate and sensible for that sort of thing. But lately, I’ve heard people talking about the end of the world on Radio 4 and in the pages of The Times.

That nice Matthew Syed, who won an Olympic medal in ping-pong, and makes those interesting radio programmes about quirky bits of modern history, had a column in The Times the other week saying our advancing technology meant that we might cause our own extinction. Then last Tuesday, when I was driving, Radio 4’s PM programme – not normally known for fire and brimstone sermons – had an interview with Geoffrey Hinton, the man often called “the godfather of artificial intelligence”, warning of the risks that AI might pose to human existence within the next 5-20 years. And all that’s before we talk about climate change, or nuclear war.

The world might be entering a very dark era.

So far, so cheerful!

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Saviour in a Manger: Sermon Preached on 25th December 2022 (Christmas Day)

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Readings – Isaiah 52.7-10; Luke 2.1-20

“…to you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, who is the Messiah, the Lord.”

Luke’s Gospel, from which we hear the Christmas story this morning, is the familiar and cosy Christmas Gospel. At first sight anyway. It is from here that we get all those elements that we like to see our kids or grandkids act out at their nativity plays – the angels, the shepherds, the baby in the manger. As we hear it so often, we can be inclined to snooze off when we hear it in church, and even more inclined to snooze off when we get a sermon about it when we actually want to get to our Christmas lunch. We can be tempted to dismiss it as a soppy fairy-story: great for kids to have a bit of fun with, but not something that self-respecting adults should take too seriously.

The Angels Appearing to the Shepherds, William Blake (1809).

Let me implore you to pay it a bit more attention on this Christmas morning, because when one explores this story a little, it holds a few surprises. For starters, it is set in a realistic and indeed rather gritty world. It is a world not as different from our own as we might expect. We see a cold and indifferent state bureaucracy; underperforming private services where the customer certainly is not king; and people working at vital jobs too poor to put a decent roof over their heads. All this was taking place in what was the mightiest empire the world had ever seen up; it is as if we were discovering the same conditions in Edwardian England, or in today’s California – which is, of course, we could well do.

So, St Luke gives his story of the birth of Jesus a true-to-life setting in the economy section of the Roman Empire. Oh, sure, the angels singing in the sky are otherworldly and mystical and strange (we’ll come back to them) – but they appear in a context that could be a setting for a film directed by Ken Loach. You know, Cathy Come Home, Kes, Daniel Blake, and then the historical one set in the Roman Empire about the unmarried mother giving birth in a stable.

Unmarried mother? Yes, our Gospel reading this morning is very clear about that; Joseph was only “engaged” to Mary. They hadn’t actually tied the knot yet, even after the archangel Gabriel, the visit to Elizabeth, the strange circumstances of John the Baptist’s birth, and all that. Let me be clear, this isn’t one of those moments like where the bishop denies the Resurrection on Easter Day or says God is just a metaphor for goodness: the biblical text is very clear that Mary was an unmarried mother.

All that is important context for the news that the angels give to the shepherds about the baby. They claim it is the Christ, the Messiah, the great leader long heralded in prophecy who was going to forcibly boot the Romans out of the Holy Land and then set up an enlightened and godly state where justice and peace would reign.

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Good Enough As We Are: Sermon Preached on 24th December 2022 (Midnight Mass)

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Preached at St Mary’s, Potterne

Readings – Isaiah 9: 2, 6–7; John 1: 1-14     

“For a child has been born for us … authority rests upon his shoulders.” 

The international situation is darkening with a series of protracted and frightening wars, while domestically people are setting their hearts against God. Religiously-minded people see that abandonment of God as a direct cause of the obvious collapse in standards in public life, especially among political leaders. I am not referring to the present day, but to the time when our Old Testament reading was written by Isaiah, around two-thousand seven hundred years ago.

In the midst of this darkness, Isaiah wrote down a vision of a brighter future.  In it, a child is born who will have authority to lead people from darkness into light. He will establish peace and justice, and even be known as “Mighty God”.

Hundreds of years later, about the same distance in time as separates us from knights in armour and feudal lords, the vision still inspired many people to keep hope in difficult times. Some of them had been followers of a wandering preacher called Jesus, whose life was so extraordinary and so surrounded by miracles and the seemingly impossible that they reached the conclusion he was the Son of God. As they reflected on the sacred writings of the Jewish faith which they all devoutly held, this was one of the pieces they thought had foretold Jesus all along.

Our Gospel reading was also a product of those followers, as they wrote down their own reflections on what they had experienced through Jesus. Its first sentence is particularly famous – “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Famous it might be, but it can be a little difficult to unpack. So let me try to explain. The Word is God – God who made the universe, God who was there in the very beginning, God who existed when the Big Bang went bang, God who made the Big Bang go bang. But the Word was also apparently with God in the beginning. So we have two beings in the beginning, who make the Big Bang go bang – God and the Word; but the Word is also God. It’s very odd, isn’t it?

Virgin and Child with Canon Joris van der Paele by Jan van Eyck (1436)

Now here’s another strange phrase from our Gospel reading – “the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.” You might have noticed that I knelt when I read that phrase. That’s because it expresses the thing that is so unique about the Christian faith – not only that there is a God, but also that God holds us human beings in such high esteem that He actually became one of us, took on human flesh Himself, to open the way to eternal life for us.

And it’s not just the fact that God became a human being that is amazing, but how He did it, the sort of human being He became. For there couldn’t be more of a contrast between Jesus’ supernatural beginnings and his earthly beginnings. Jesus was with the creator of the universe when it all started, and indeed was Himself the creator of the universe, grand concepts that seem to be full of paradox and which aren’t really understandable in human language. At the same time, Jesus became one of us in the womb of a woman, who gave birth to Him in poverty in a stable, as physically weak as any other baby, and absolutely vulnerable and dependent like any other baby. The maker of the universe and the baby in the stall are one and the same: both are the baby who was prophesied by Isaiah all those centuries before.

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Loving One’s Enemies: Sermon Preached at St John’s, Devizes, Sunday 26th December 2021 (St Stephen’s Day)

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Readings – Acts 7: 51–60 , Matthew 10: 17–22

Then he knelt down and cried out in a loud voice, ‘Lord, do not hold this sin against them.’

Some of you will have heard the news that Archbishop Desmond Tutu died earlier this morning at the age of 90. Most of us would agree that Desmond was the greatest saint produced by Anglicanism in our lifetimes. It is appropriate that he died on the feast of Stephen, because both declared Christ’s teachings of non-retaliation most powerfully in their lives.

Non-retaliation isn’t the passive acceptance of being persecuted or discriminated against. Instead that it accepts that injustice can never be undone on its own terms. We know that there is both darkness and light in each of us. We know that once we say that the end justifies any means, then the line between victim and victimiser starts to become dangerously blurred.

But both Saint Stephen and Desmond Tutu went beyond merely refusing to be silenced in the face of oppression, and in doing so, lived out one of the most challenging and most rewarding of Christ’s teachings. Let me explain. Many of Christ’s moral teachings were the same as those of other great teachers and philosophers of the ancient world. Some form of the golden rule, to do to others as you would have them do unto you, is seen in the teachings of Buddha, and Zoroaster, and Greek philosophy.

An image of the painting entitled The Stoning of Stephen (ca. 1603-4) by Adam Elsheimer. Now in the Scottish National Gallery.
The Stoning of Stephen (ca. 1603-4) by Adam Elsheimer. Now in the Scottish National Gallery.

There is one teaching of Christ that was absolutely unique, however. It is the most revolutionary of Christ’s teachings and the one which is hardest to follow; I certainly don’t manage to put it into practice very often. That is his command to love our enemies. Remember, that the command is not, absolutely not, as the lives of both Stephen and Desmond show us, to acquiesce in the evil that our enemies do to us – but to love them, to love them enough to recognise their humanity. To love them enough to recognise that we may be the only agents God has to rescue them from the darkness that consumes them. To love our enemies is to understand that our response to their persecution may be what brings out the image of God that is stamped in each of them and enables them to turn from evil.

It is a wonderful teaching. Let me reiterate, I’m not pretending it’s easy to live out in practice. But Desmond Tutu’s life and Stephen’s show us that in the saints of the church, we have examples to follow of how to respond to persecution not in its own terms, but in refusing the twin dangers of both acquiescence and of hate.

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Angels: Sermon Preached at St John’s, Devizes, Saturday 25th December 2021 (Christmas Morning)

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And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God

Most of us probably know all the people who were mentioned in the Gospel reading a moment ago, when the Rector stood in front of the altar and read from the big blue book. There are the angels; and there are the shepherds; and there is the Holy Family of Mary, Joseph, and the Baby Jesus. Let me say a little bit about each of them to help you think about what Christmas means and how you can ask God for help in your life.

An image of The Mystical Nativity, by Sandro Botticelli (1500-1), which now hangs in The National Gallery, London.
The Mystical Nativity, by Sandro Botticelli (1500-1). Now hangs in The National Gallery, London.

Let’s start with the angels. Some people laugh at the idea there are angels. But there is more going on in the world than is obvious from our senses, and many people who aren’t even sure if they believe in God do believe in angels. This is a bit odd, as angels are God’s messengers. If you believe in angels, you should believe in God. Trust your guardian angel to look after you; they will be with you to protect you for your whole life. Just try your best to stay out of trouble and not give the angel too much work!

If you find it hard to pray to God, you can ask your Guardian Angel to pray for you, and to teach you how to pray for yourself.

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“The Word was Made Flesh”: Sermon Preached at Midnight Mass in St George’s, Belfast, on Thursday 24 December 2020

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Readings – Hebrews 1:1-4, John 1:1-14

And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.

May I speak in the name of God, who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

The Incarnation by Murillo, c. 1677

Our epistle reading at this Midnight Mass, the beginning of the Letter to the Hebrews, states that God “has spoken to us by a Son.” These days, we might joke that God should speak to us in a collection of social media memes or a Zoom call. After all, that’s the way everybody else communicates these days.

The joke is fair enough, but it also misses the point. The people of 1st Century Palestine may not have been able to log on to Zoom to take part in a heavenly videoconference, but they could and did expect God to communicate in all sorts of ways that didn’t involve anything connected with this rather odd claim that God “has spoken to us by a son”.

Receiving enlightenment and instruction from divine visions is a repeated theme in both the Old and New Testaments. Peter and Paul are both recorded as receiving direct instruction through visions. But the Father didn’t send the divine Word to people in visions, although presumably he could have done – instead He sent the Word directly, in the person of Jesus Christ.

Ancient Near Eastern cultures were quite comfortable with the idea of divine messengers; indeed the word ‘angel’ comes directly from the Greek work for “messenger” and the Old Testament claims to record angelic appearances from as early as patriarchal times. The angel Gabriel announced to Mary that she was pregnant with Jesus. But while angels announced that Jesus was about to come into the world, they don’t seem to have been able to do the work that God required Jesus to do.

God didn’t dictate a series of writings to Jesus, nor to His followers, at least not directly. That was a way that God had communicated with His chosen people in Palestine in the past, when he gave the tablets of stone containing the Ten Commandments to Moses on Mount Horeb. God continues to communicate with His people today through the series of writings we call the Bible, but Jesus wasn’t their author, nor were they handed down from on high, but instead were the product of centuries of laborious debate by the Church. But the only record we have of Jesus writing is with his finger, in the dirt on the ground, at the time when a woman was brought to Him to be stoned for adultery.

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