Christmas Eve Service

alvaparishchurch
3 days ago
9 min read

Christmas Eve Service

24/12/25

Call to Worship

The light has come. The word is spoken. The promise is fulfilled.

May we let the light shine within us,

May we let the word sing through us,

May we let the promise grow in our lives,

as we worship on this holy night.

Hymn 324: Angels from the realms of glory

Reading Luke 2: 1-7

Collection: Alva Academy Assisted Support Unit and Red Cross

Hymn 322: Good Christians now rejoice

Have you ever had the experience that you are doing one thing, then everything changes without warning?

You then have to deal with something you never expected to deal with.

Leah Story c/w Herod story. Feeling safe then caravan from the east appears and threatens his security he has fought and sacrificed his life for.

Reading: Matthew 2: 1-15

Prayer

Hymn 304: O little town of Bethlehem

Sermon

Hymn 306: O come all ye faithful

Benediction

Prayer

God of hope and peace, of love and joy,

The night is here, as Advent expectation becomes Christmas celebration,

and we come to worship, to join in this moment of wonder.

We come to hear the old story once more,

of a mother and father leaving their home,

of a search for a place to rest,

of angel choirs and hillside shepherds,

and a child born in humble beginnings, a child who revealed to us the love of God in all its glory.

Today we ask to be Your other children,

seeking connection once more with all those who have made this story part of their lives,

part of their understanding of how the world works at its best,

part of their rejoicing that this story can also be our story,

that their hope can be our hope, their peace our peace, their love our love.

In a time when hope seems distant,

when fear of other and fear of ‘them’ traps people into lesser ways of being,

we open the door to God’s invitation,

to see the world afresh, to see the world through the eyes of this new born child,

eyes full of amazement, taking everything in, learning and growing,

and seeing in each other signs of God’s creativity.

When we have diminished your desire for wonder,

show us forgiveness, and nurture us back to more caring ways of thinking.

When we have been lulled into divisive ways of thinking,

denying others, pretending your grace is ours alone,

then shake us awake and forgive us,

that we might better represent the love of this day in our lives.

Amen.

Sermon

Roseanna, my wife, and I live in a tied house, it comes with the job.

We have lived in that house for nearly 30 years, brought up our children in that house.

But it hasn’t just been a house, it has been a home.

We have had wonderful celebrations in that house, we have faced such lows in that house.

And to be honest for most of the time we have felt that the house that we live in just happens to be the house that we live in.

But recently we have been thinking of when I retire.

And when I retire I am no longer allowed to live in that house.

And so Roseanna and I have to find a new house to live in.

And I thought that that would be easy.

Because we are just looking for a new house to live in.

I forgot two things....

The first is that men and women shop differently.

Let’s say I am looking for a new pair of trousers.

I go into the Stirling and go into the first shop that sells trousers.

I look at a few trousers.

I see a pair of trousers that might fit.

I try them on; then I buy them.

That’s it.

Roseanna goes in to buy a dress.

We go round every shop in Stirling that has a dress and looks at them all.

Then she goes into accessory shops to see if she could get a handbag for that dress.

Doesn’t see one but does see a scarf that would go with another dress that she thought she saw but she can’t remember which shop that was.

So she buys that scarf.

Then we wander round the shops again to find the second dress, the one that goes with the scarf.

But when she sees the dress and puts the scarf beside it is doesn’t go the way she thought, but she does see a bag that is really good so she gets that.

But now she can’t remember where she saw the first dress that she wanted.

So we wander round all the shops again.

When we get to that shop she decides that the dress doesn’t go with the scarf or the bag.

Maybe we should go to Falkirk, or Glasgow and see what dresses they have?

Men have a ‘That will do,’ attitude.

Women have a ‘It has to be right,’ attitude.

And when we are looking for a house those two don’t mix well.

The difference was shown when we saw this house above a library.

Really going cheap, had three bedrooms.

Needed a wee bit of work done to it but we would have a year to do it up so that was a goer as far as I was concerned.

But then Roseanna got her eyes on it.

And suddenly I realised that we had RED LINES, and we do not cross the RED LINES.

Except that at the start I couldn’t see any RED LINES. I didn’t know what RED LINES looked like.

I hadn’t needed any RED LINES in the past. I lived in manses that came with the job. You just put up with them.

Whereas Roseanna had lived in other houses, houses where you had the choice to say, ‘No. I don’t want to live in that house because...’

Like this house...

‘See those holes in the walls and ceilings. Is there any chance that they could be asbestos?’

‘We haven’t done the tests but the price reflects the possibility of having to remove stuff that might be there.’

I hadn’t noticed that.

‘See that door there. Where does it go.’

‘I don’t know.’

So we try the door and it goes straight into the public library.

The only problem is that there is no lock on the door at all, and it means that anyone in the public library can just walk into our house.’

I hadn’t noticed that.

Suddenly I was aware that there were red lines, things that we shouldn’t put up with.

And finding a new home suddenly became harder.

Like the house that has the Astroturf garden, which sounded great...no maintenance, no cutting the grass every two weeks... until we went to look at the garden and the estate agent warned us that you couldn't walk on it in the summer as it retained so much heat that it could melt the rubber off your shoes...RED LINE.

Or another house where was the guy told us that the week before he had tripped down the stairs (the steps were half the size of my feet) and nearly gone through the wall at the bottom of the stairs...RED LINE.

Or the family that had started to put an en suite in the bedroom but trying to cram it into the built in cupboard and giving up halfway through with half a toilet and a detached sink hanging from the wall...RED LINE.

The house that the ceilings that were so low that Roseanna could touch them without tiptoeing...RED LINE.

The spare bedroom that was so small that you couldn't get a single bed in and half the room was taken up by a boiler which may or may not have been in use...RED LINE.

The house with a two roomed hut at the back of the garden that looked great. But the step up to the door was about three feet. As I wondered how that happened I realised that they once had decking that led to the door, decking that had rotted away. And when I looked at the bottom of the shed walls noticed that it was riddled with rot as well and it would take about four skips to remove the shed and all the garden ornaments...RED LINE.

It took me about eight months to realise that I wasn’t looking for a house; I was looking for a home. And that was hard to find.

You could argue that all the problems that we face in our lives are because we don’t feel we have a home.

And a home isn’t a place.

A home is a feeling.

A home is knowing you have a place that you can go to which is safe.

A place where you can reflect on your mistakes and learn.

A place where you are accepted for who you are but that the people love you enough to tell you the truth.

A place where you can sulk and they will wait for you to admit that you got it wrong.

A place where; when you do well they acknowledge that; that they care enough about you that they celebrate when things go well.

A place where they care enough to warn you if you are going down a destructive path, and when you ignore them and everything they predict comes right, they care enough to help you recover.

I think the mistake many make is they believe that the most important part of that home is the house, or the things we own, or the power we have.

And to show us how wrong we are the Bible gives us two examples.

King Herod.

Who has the palace, he has the money, he has the power.

He has everything that anyone could supposedly want.

And he has no peace.

His palace isn’t a home; it is a prison he has created for himself to make sure no one else can get in and threaten him.

He executed his wife and son when he thought that they might try to poison him.

He had a bodyguard of 2,000 men.

He created a secret police that integrated themselves with the populace and managed to eliminate anyone who might criticise him.

So when rumours of a possible new king being born in his province are created, he is happy to try to wipe out every child in that area to make sure that the threat is eliminated...This is not the image of a happy man.

And then there is Jesus.

Before he is born his family move from Nazareth to Bethlehem.

They don’t have a home of their own, don’t even have a room of their own.

They share a room with the family and animals.

They are there for a short while and then they have to escape to Egypt, a land where they don’t know anyone, don’t know the language... that can’t be easy.

For a while they return to Nazareth but then Jesus starts a preaching tour where he wanders from place to place telling people of God’s care and offering people a new way to live life.

It doesn’t seem very idyllic, and yet a powerful rich ruler will come up to him and say, ‘How do I have the life you have?’

His life is so attractive that thousands upon thousands come out to see and hear him.

Because a home is not a place.

A home is where you feel secure and at peace and have purpose.

A home is the people that surround you that make your life worthwhile.

Jesus realised that power didn’t give you security, wealth didn’t give you security.

It was God; knowing that he was loved for, cared for...that was what gave him security.

That is why Christians celebrate this birth.

Because of all the things worth chasing; power, wealth, fame, celebrity.

They see that true peace, true happiness, true security, is found in our relationships; relationship with God, relationships with the people that God has put in our life.