As always we gathered together on New Year’s Day to start the year 2025 together. There was lots of food and lots of fellowship!

This morning, we looked at our identity as the body of Christ (see 1 Cor 12:12-31, Rom 12:4-8). We marvelled at the human body, with its 206 bones, 78 organs, 8,000 taste buds, 30 trillion cells and 60,000 miles of blood arteries, and reflected on how we are all uniquely, fearfully and wonderfully made. When it comes to the church, Christ’s body, we saw that diversity is essential to this organism. We are all members of one body but have different functions and gifts and talents, and how important it is for God’s mission in the world that we use these all. No one part is more important than another; Paul makes it clear that the less visible parts of the human body are just as important as the visible parts, and so it is with the church. (1 Cor 12:21-26) Diversity means different roles and responsibilities are needed, some according to our natural talents, all dependent on God’s grace.

So often, we resent diversity, expecting everyone to be like us, or we feel superior or inferior to others because we are always comparing ourselves to them. Paul warns against this (Rom 12:3), reminding us that ‘the only accurate way to understand ourselves is by what God is and by what he does for us, not by what we are and what we do for him.’ The diversity of the church is one of its greatest strengths. Just as our human body is strengthened by the different body parts working together in harmony to create a strong whole, so the church is strong when we work together under the headship of Christ.

The body is united, a whole, but unity does not mean uniformity. Our identity as the people of God can never be understood apart from God; He is the unifying factor in our corporate identity. Just as it has been discovered that the brain is the most important organ in the human body, housing the intellect, emotions, personality and consciousness and controlling all the body’s other organs, so we understand that Christ is the head of the body, the One in charge, the One guiding and leading us in every area of our lives. Without Him, we can do nothing. (John 15:5) As we enter a new year, we do so in the humble awareness that we need Christ to lead us and guide us every step of the way. The psalmist said, ‘Unless the Lord builds the house, the builders labour in vain.’ (Ps 127:1) In the same way, unless Christ is the head of the church, we labour in vain. We need His direction and His leading; we need His control. Thankfully, He remains the head, no matter what we may feel, and in being part of His body, we gain identity, unity and purpose.

This morning we gathered to sing carols, celebrate Christ’s birth and think about the raw ingredients of Christmas. For most of us, food and presents form an integral and essential part of the Christmas festivities, but the Christmas story is not simply about self-indulgence and saccharine sentimentality. When we cook, we must follow a recipe, using the right ingredients and the right proportions of ingredients; in the same way, we must get the balance right in following Christ and then we find the truths of the Bible relate to our everyday lives now, just as they did that first Christmas.

Often, there are unpalatable aspects to the Christmas story which we prefer to ignore, focussing on Nativity plays with sweet children, angels and miracles. But the Christmas story (found in Luke 1 & 2, Matthew 1 & 2, John 1 and Revelation 12, as well as in many prophetic announcements in the Old Testament) deals with shame and misunderstanding as it looks at the painful subject of childlessness and then pregnancy through the unbelievable story of the Holy Spirit conceiving a child in Mary. Shame, doubt, fear and scorn all feature in this story, just as they do in our lives, even if we are living faithfully before God.

Discomfort and inconvenience also feature in the story, with a Roman census meaning a long journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem and then the inconvenience of no guest room at the inn. Life doesn’t always go the way we planned. There are lonely, painful seasons in life. There are times when everything seems to fall apart, and we don’t understand why. Sometimes, other people seem to be in control of our lives, and like Caesar Augustus, governments and those in authority can have a detrimental effect on us. We live in a fallen world; we live amongst discomfort and inconvenience. The Christmas story isn’t all about perfection, despite our modern take on it. The faithful obedience to God and to the law seen in Mary and Joseph do not magically make all their problems disappear. In our lives too, disappointment and frustration may well feature frequently.

There is also baffling and incomprehensible suffering in the Christmas story, rarely featured in our Nativity plays. We like to focus on the miracle of a new star appearing to the Magi from the east (Matthew 2:2) and the procession of the wise men bringing gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh to Jesus. (Matt 2:11) We like to talk about the significance of the gifts: how gold represents the fact that Jesus is the king of kings, how frankincense prefigures his priestly role and how myrrh represents the anointing and suffering He will go through to bring us life. We do not like to dwell on the evil of Herod or why God allowed the Slaughter of the Innocents (Matt 2:17-18) We do not understand why God protected the Magi and Jesus but allowed innocent children to be killed. There is a constant struggle in life to trust in God’s goodness and sovereignty when life seems to contradict this.

One definition of reality is that it deals with what is true. The Christmas story is true. It involves the miraculous – God sending angels as His messengers, a baby conceived to a childless couple, a baby conceived by the Holy Spirit so as to be without the taint of sin, visitors coming from long distances to worship, prophetic words from Anna and Simeon which look ahead to the cross. That reminds us that God is still involved in the miraculous, still involved in doing what is humanly impossible, in our lives. But it is a story that does not minimise the difficulties and troubles of life and which does not ignore the pain and suffering we all feel. We can unwrap the Christmas story, taking off the wrapping and bows and ribbons, and still find truth within. Moreover, the new name given to us at Christmas to describe Jesus (‘Immanuel,’ ‘God with us’) reminds us that now we walk daily with our Saviour through the shame, misunderstanding, discomfort, inconvenience and incomprehensible suffering of life in a fallen world.

Today is the first day of Christmas, the end of Advent. Happy Christmas to all! What I find interesting in our current society is that this day is seen as an end, whereas historically (and in the Christian calendar, certainly) it is seen as a beginning.

Christmas seems to start earlier and earlier, not only in the shops (which obviously view this time as a commercial godsend), but also in our homes. Trees and decorations are put up in November in some areas, and so by Christmas Day, people are quite tired of the lights and mess, and many start dismantling them way before Twelfth Night (traditionally the decorations and tree come down at Epiphany, 6^th January.) Whilst it is entirely up to individuals when and how they celebrate the season, what we do need to remember is that Christmas is not an end. It comes relatively early in winter, and many suffer a real ‘down’ trend in mood as we face January and February, feeling that all the fun and festivity associated with the season are over, and now there is nothing to look forward to.

In truth, the fact that Jesus came to earth is a warming nugget of truth which lasts way beyond this week. His incarnation means that God is with us all the time. Immanuel with us warms every day and helps us through the bleak months of winter, when darkness seems to predominate. He is there in the sunshine and in the shadows, there to help us through every difficulty and trial as well as every celebration.

Whether you love celebrating each day of Christmas (as the song ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’ encourages us to) or are secretly relieved to pack everything back up into the loft and resume normal service as soon as possible, the presence of God with us is lasting. Let today be a beginning, a time when you pause daily to remember the wonderful truth that Jesus Christ (who is the same yesterday, today and forever) is with us now always.