Salvation comes to us at Christmas.  The complete is born under the partial - life under death.  Once more we celebrate the coming of the one who is light and life to us:  Immanuel, which means “God is with us”!  This is a season of light and joy, of happiness and family, of heavy hearts, which manage a song and sad eyes, which manage a smile.  This is a strange time; I would call it “A New Time”!

         The great festivals of the Christian Year, Christmas and Resurrection, both signal new times for God's people and for God's creation.  With Resurrection we celebrate new life, the victory of life over death, of light over darkness, of good over evil.  Yet, we also celebrate new life at Christmas.  It is the new life found in a helpless baby, new life that comes to us in weakness.  The resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, the great pivotal event in the history of creation is victory of power, of God's presence.  The new life, which comes at Christmas, is a victory of weakness over power.

         That divinity should come to humanity in the baby seems incredible; that life should come to death; that light should come to darkness all in the form of a baby, one weak and helpless and dependent, is a great mystery.  How Mary must have wondered at all that went on. Mary must have been struck by the awesomeness of it all!  But that is what Christmas is all about: wonder and awe and mystery.

         There is something here in this mysterious moment, something to learn and something to remember.  God does not always act, as we would have God act.  God moves in mysterious ways, and in that moving great wonders are performed.

         Can we get behind the familiar story, the stable, the manger, the shepherds and the wise men?  So often at Christmas we are moved by the simple event, moved even though we have heard the story so many times before.  Children, especially small children, move us.  They are weak, helpless and dependent.  We hear the old, old story and we are moved.  Yet there is more here, something cosmic about this birth; something which shakes the very foundations of the world, just as in the Resurrection there is also a shaking of the foundations.  This birth is more than just another birth, more than even a miraculous birth.  In this birth we have a new time, the beginning of a new eon in the history of the world - the beginning of a new age.

         Can we move beyond the simply sentimental to the earth-shaking fact that the Eternal Word became flesh?  God came to earth to be, live and have fellowship with humanity.  This is what Christmas is all about; this is what the birth is all about; the shepherds and the angels, Mary and Joseph.  Christmas is more than a heart-warming story; it is strong medicine.  Here is a mystery: that divinity should come to humanity; that life should come to death; that light should overcome darkness, and the darkness does not overcome it.  This is the miracle of Christmas, the miracle we celebrate, the miracle, which gives meaning and purpose to people and nations, to our lives, to the life of our church, and in and to the life of the world.

         So what can we do?  How can we grasp this mystery?  We can be still, opening our hearts and minds to the power of the holy.  Christmas is a new time, for in the midst of the old, God comes with new life.  In the midst of the cold and the dark, in the midst of death and destruction, God comes and brings light and warmth, health and healing.

         In the freshness of new birth, in the warmth of new life, in the joy of the heavenly chorus, the old order passes away and the new is born.  Before God has dealt with God's people through prophets, but now in the fullness of time God has come in Jesus, born of woman, born under the law, to bring wholeness and healing, light and love to one and all that believe.  And so we celebrate new life this Christmas as we have done so many times before.  We celebrate new life born in weakness and poverty, new life that is the hope of the world.  It is “A New Time”!

         Perhaps in this “New Time” Jesus will come again: in this moment, later today, in the next few weeks or years.

PRAYER:  Almighty God, as we wait for Jesus’ final coming, do not let us grow weary.  Do not let injustice go unchecked.  Do not let good be despised.  Renew not only our energies; renew the working out of your promises among us, on behalf of all creation.  This we pray, this we hope, this we await, in the name of the Coming One, Jesus the Christ.  Amen.