Sunday Service 28th December

Dec 28, 2025
11 min read

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJ4snMoF99Q

Seeing things as they are

28/12/25

Call to Worship

Hymn 303: It came upon a midnight clear

Time for all

Hymn 326: As with gladness men of old

Reading: Matthew 2: 1-12

Talk 1 Things may be as they seem

Prayer

Hymn 322: Good Christians, all rejoice

Reading: Luke 2: 1-7

Talk 2: Things may not be as they seem

Hymn 271(JP): We three kings of Orient are

Benediction

Welcome to our meditation for 28^th of December.

It is the last Sunday of the year

So I thought it would be good to look at the Christmas stories again.

Because there is always the problem that we think of them just as stories.

Maybe we think of them as myths, poetry, adapted history, to get over deep spiritual truths that we need to hear.

And so I want to look at a couple of small parts of the stories we have heard, that maybe we can take them at face value,

or maybe we shouldn’t, because the story we have made up in our head, may not be the true story,

and because of that we have maybe missed the true meaning we needed to hear.

Talk 1 Things may be as they seem: The impossible star.

And so they left, and on their way they saw the same star they had seen in the east. When they saw it how happy they were, what joy was theirs! It went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was. (Matthew 2: 9-10)

I think we can all agree that is not the way stars act; they move, they don’t stop.

And the idea that there was a comet and that the comet moved over Bethlehem, and then that just stopped for a while....that is equally unbelievable.

So what do we do with that?

Well if you are a really conservative then you say that God created a star in the skies at that time and the star did what God wanted it to do.

You just have to have faith; if you don’t believe that then you just don’t have enough faith.

You are at fault.

That then leads to two scary outcomes.

One is that you make yourself believe that something happened that you think didn’t, and you look like an idiot, and feel you have to keep your faith to yourself...because if anyone challenges you, you sound like a fanatic.

We are supposed to have a faith that we want to share with others, we have good news of a God that cares.

And those that are furthest from God are often the one that need God the most.

But how can we share that hope to them if we are scared every time they challenge us about the Bible being a bunch of impossible stories.

The other scary outcome is that we pretend that we believe something that we are not sure we believe.

So when we are with our Christian friends we say, ‘Oh yes God made a star that moved and then stopped.’

And when we are with our non-Christian friends we tell them it is just a story to explain that Jesus is the Lord of all people at all places, not just Jews.

Do you know how much hard work that is emotionally trying to hold on to a pretence that we don’t really believe in?

There is a third option.

That we have a faith seeking understanding.

That in situations like this when we truly don’t understand what is going on, we say,

‘I truly don’t understand what is going on.

I know I believe in a God that cares for us.

That God sent his Son to share that truth with us.

That Jesus was willing to do whatever it took for us to see the levels of God’s love, even dying for us to see that truth.

And that God’s love was so strong that even death couldn’t stop that message reaching us.

And now I believe in that love for myself, and that love for you.’

Now me being me, I am happy with that.

Because I know that I am a geek and I will keep my ears and eyes open and read lots of stuff.

And at some point, when I need it, I will hear something that fits in and helps explain stuff later on.

So it was that last week I was listening to an interview (Sunday Radio 4: 14/12/25) between William Crawley and NASA scientist Mark Matney who had written an article saying that the Star of Bethlehem could have been a comet recorded by Chinese astrologers in 5 BC.

He looked at all the theories of the star being a supernova or an alignment of planets, or a comet, but the problem was always that none of them do what this star was supposed to do...stand still.

So he looked at the recordings of the astrologers of the time, and the Chinese have records of that time of their observations.

Now there are many scientists that say they are rubbish, that you can’t trust them because people weren’t as smart then. And the example they give is Halley ’s Comet. The Chinese astrologers have many records of the appearance of Halley ’s Comet and one of these records say that it stayed in the sky for 70 days. And they looked at this as proof that you couldn’t trust their records, because comets can’t do that.

Well Mark asked himself what would happen if they took the Chinese records at face value, was there any way that they could be right?

And he tried to plot the comet at that time and it could happen exactly the way the Chinese recorded it, if the comet was heading straight to earth. So to someone on the earth it would look as if the comet was always in the same point in the sky.

So he saw an article about these Chinese astrologers which recorded a comet at around 5BC, and he thought that he could then compute the trajectory of that comet as it passed the earth at that time. And his theory was that a comet passing over the earth could temporally pause over the earth if its orbit and speed was exactly the same as that of earth at that time.

A bit like a satellite.

A satellite can be travelling at astronomical speeds round the earth, but if that speed is the same at the earth’s rotation then to someone standing on the earth the satellite doesn’t seem to be moving at all.

And he came up with a plausible orbit that would do that with the comet.

What does this mean to us?

The Bible is not a history book, so we should never treat it as a history book.

The Bible is a book about God reaching out to humanity.

But God does that by working in people’s lives.

In the lives of those in the past, which we could call history.

But also in the lives of those living now, our story, the stories of those around us.

So we should never stop looking for God, for he is around us, within us, within others.

Like the wise men, if we seek God, we will find him, because God will communicate to us in ways that we will respond to, and we will be able to find him, even in the most unlikely of places.

Let us pray

Heavenly Father,

We so long for Christmas to be more than just crackers and candles; feasts and opening presents..

May we seek something greater than ourselves, like the magi, maybe following an instinct that things could be different, maybe taking a risk and going on a journey that may lead us to uncertain places.

May we live out your nativity today, tomorrow, and every day following.

For we believe that this is not just a story on a page of the bible,

but a celebration of you becoming human to save us, show us, call us to live your way.

May we respond to your love by going to where you are and seeking to offer something of ourselves.

Today may we say thanks for the gift of hope that was given, and promise that we will

share this love with the world

Amen.

Talk 2 Things may not be as they seem: The inn that doesn’t exist.

She gave birth to her first son, wrapped him in strips of cloth and laid him in a manger –there was no room for them to stay in the inn. (Luke 2: 7)

We all know this story.

We have seen it all in countless primary school nativities.

Mary and Joseph and the donkey travelling from one inn to the next.

Joseph knocking on the door of the inn and the innkeepers telling them to go away, that they are full.

Then in desperation Joseph pleads with the last innkeeper, he will take anything as his wife is just about to give birth. Well the innkeeper tells him that they have a barn at the back where the animals are stored; they can stay in there,

And so Mary gives birth in a shed, and the baby is placed in a manger.

Part of it was just bad translation on the part of King James translators.

The translators were no doubt experts in their field of knowledge of Greek.

However, they didn’t have knowledge of house construction in Israel at that time.

They didn’t know of the population of Bethlehem at that time.

But they were expects in Greek, they knew the term manger.

And they were experts in 17^th century housing in England, because they lived in 17^th century England.

And they knew that mangers weren’t put in houses, because farm animals weren’t put in houses.

So they tried to work it out in their head what was going on.

Where would a manger would be found? In a barn for storing animals.

Would an ordinary house have a barn? No because they wouldn’t be able to afford one.

Ordinary people had their livestock outside.

But an inn, or a farm, would have a barn.

It didn’t make sense that they had gone to a farm after a long journey.

But if you were travelling from Nazareth to Bethlehem you would try to stay in an inn, and if you were in the barn it was because the inn was full.

It all made sense.

And it has stuck.

There are only a few things wrong with the theory.

1) Bethlehem was too small to have a commercial inn. If you needed an inn in that area you would stay in Jerusalem which was far bigger and had the population, and the temple tourism to sustain many inns.

2) Joseph came from Bethlehem; he would have had relatives in Bethlehem. There is no way that he didn’t organise to stay with one of them, and even if he didn’t the hospitality code was so strong that there is no way that one of his relatives would have left a pregnant woman out in the streets.

3) And most importantly, the word for inn is wrong.

I know this might seem strange to talk about. But I want to talk about the parable of the Good Samaritan. At the end of that story Jesus tells us that the Samaritan takes the wounded man to an inn and tells the innkeeper that if he spends more money on the man’s recovery he will pay him back when he comes back that way.

You would expect the word Luke uses for inn in the nativity story to be exactly the same word as the word for inn in the parable of the Good Samaritan.

It isn’t.

It not only isn’t the same word; it isn’t close to being the same word.

However, Luke does use the word that they translated as inn in the nativity story, at another place in his Gospel.

When Jesus is preparing for the Last Supper, he tells the disciples to go to a man with a private house and tell him to prepare the room for the Passover.

The word Luke uses for that guest room is the same word he uses when he says that they placed the baby in the manger because there was no room in the guest room.

Now we get into the architecture of first century houses in Bethlehem.

Here is the general layout of a normal house.

You had one room, with two levels.

The family stayed on the upper level, the animals on the bottom level.

Joseph was a carpenter, a bit middle class, so his relatives would be a bit middle class.

Their houses were a bit like this...

The same layout as the poor folk, but they may have had a guest room where family could stay in.

So what Luke tried to tell us is that Joseph was staying with his middle class family, but the guest room was full already because of the census. So he and Mary stayed with the family in the family room. And when the baby was born they placed Jesus in the manger, because there was no room in the guest room to stay.

Why is this important?

Because we react to what we see.

All those years of primary school nativities and we take it as read that they are telling us the truth.

We are learning theology from five years old and we trust them to be telling us the truth.

Deep down we believe that when Joseph and Mary were at their greatest need, God abandoned them.

Everywhere they turned they got a locked door.

And then when this teenager was giving birth she was on her own in a dirty barn giving birth. And God was happy to allow that to happen.

We may not want to believe that...but after subliminally watching that story told again and again we can see it for ourselves.

Joseph and Mary are left alone by God...who doesn’t help them; it is only by fluke that Mary doesn’t give birth in the streets.

If that is how God treats his own beloved son, then what chance do we have when we need help?

But that is not what Luke means to tell us.

In Luke’s Greek he is telling us that when Joseph and Mary were in trouble God put people in their lives to help them, that no matter how inconvenient they were,

their hosts would never turn their back on them.

In fact the hosts would put them in with the family so that they were never alone during that time.

As God treats his own son, so God treats all his adopted children, us,

and when we are in trouble God is putting people in our lives to help us.

That is the message of hope for us this Christmas.

God cares...I know it doesn’t sound very profound, but in this uncertain world it may be the most important message that we need to hear...God cares.

Let us pray

Heavenly Father,

The star has moved on, the angels have stopped singing, the shepherds and wise men have returned to their daily lives.

And for us it may feel that time has moved on.

But remind us that we continually live in Your time

the forgiving time,