Christmas Sermon 2022

I don’t know how your Christmas shopping went this year, but as usual Christmas seems to have just arrived out of nowhere! In hope of some inspiration, I went online and found myself on a page (boredpanda.com) which had ideas for the worse gifts ever!!

Here are a few examples which I hope don’t make you cringe too much!

1. A gift card to a lingerie store from my grandma. The worse part was she made my 19-year-old brother go in and buy it. As he told it, the conversation went something like this: Cashier – ‘Shopping for your girlfriend?’ Brother – ‘No, my sister, well my grandma…’ Awkward silence!

2. A wooden pop out play set from my aunt, recommended age was 2-4 years, I was 14!

3. One year my aunt sent me a New York Yankees Baby onesie. I don’t have kids and I don’t watch baseball!

4. I got a Spam Calendar. 12 months of pictures of Spam! I was a 12-year-old girl who didn’t know what to do with my face when I opened it!

5. My great grandma gave me a Christmas ornament with the name Eric on it. My name is Morgan.

This list and more got me inspired so tonight I bring you 5 awful Christmas gifts and 1 great one! On your way into church the gifts have been handed out randomly. If you have one, now is the time to open them and let me know what you got! So, who got the first one?

1. Pet Rock 2. Animal Socks. 3. Car Trivia Book

4. A Turkey Hat 5. A Christmas Cleaning Scrub

I hope you’ll enjoy using those gifts ? I think there should be one more gift out there: A NUTSHELL

I’m guessing you’ll be wondering what you can even do with a nutshell and what it’s all about??!! Well, even though you won’t think it, the nutshell is a great gift because the message of Christmas can be put in a nutshell ?

OK it’s a bit corny but let’s watch this video by Dan Severs which explains what I mean.

(Play ‘Christmas in a nutshell’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXgH8ZIz9jQ )

On that first Christmas Day, God gave the world the greatest Christmas present of all. The gift of His son Jesus Christ and that gift came into our lives and lived among us. He understands pain and when we rejoice, he rejoices with us.

I wonder how we will feel about that wonderful gift this year. A year which may have tested us, a year where we may have lost friends and family, a year where we’ve possibly suffered pain and anguish.

Will we receive him still? Or will we read his words and see them as being irrelevant today?

So many people think being a Christian is a boring life but that is far from the truth. So many people think that Jesus IS the awful gift…and sadly they really miss the point of this season. The point that God loves us completely unconditionally (We only need to believe to receive that gift) and that we should love others, as he loves us (which enables us to share his love in our communities)

“But to as many as received him, he gave them the right to become sons of God, to those who believe in his Name, he gave the right to become children of God- children not born of natural descent nor of human decision but born of God.” (Jn 1:12) Amen.