Sermon quotes on Christmas
Athanasius
For this purpose, then, the incorporeal and incorruptible and immaterial Word of God entered our world. In one sense, indeed, He was not far from it before, for no part of creation had ever been without Him Who, while ever abiding in union with the Father, yet fills all things that are. But now He entered the world in a new way, stooping to our level in His love and Self-revealing to us.
On the Incarnation
Augustine of Hippo
Man’s maker was made man that He, Ruler of the stars, might nurse at His mother’s breast; that the Bread might hunger, the Fountain thirst, the Light sleep, the Way be tired on its journey; that Truth might be accused of false witnesses, the Teacher be beaten with whips, the Foundation be suspended on wood; that Strength might grow weak; that the Healer might be wounded; that Life might die.
Sermons 191.1
Augustine of Hippo
He was created of a mother whom He created. He was carried by hands that He formed. He cried in the manger in wordless infancy, He the Word, without whom all human eloquence is mute.
Sermon 187
Augustine of Hippo
Christmas is fast approaching. And now that Christ has aroused our seasonal expectations, he’ll soon fulfill them all!
Augustine of Hippo
He was created of a mother whom He created. He was carried by hands that He formed. He cried in the manger in wordless infancy. He, the Word, without whom all human eloquence is mute.
Karl Barth
The nativity mystery “conceived from the Holy Spirit and born from the Virgin Mary”, means, that God became human, truly human out of his own grace. The miracle of the existence of Jesus , his “climbing down of God” is: Holy Spirit and Virgin Mary! Here is a human being, the Virgin Mary, and as he comes from God, Jesus comes also from this human being. Born of the Virgin Mary means a human origin for God. Jesus Christ is not only truly God, he is human like every one of us. He is human without limitation. He is not only similar to us, he is like us.
Karl Barth
This is the good news of Christmas. He who stands by you and helps you is alive and present! It is he who was born that Christmas Day! Open your eyes, open your ears, open your heart! You may truly see, hear, and experience that he is here, very expectation delays the “necessary adjustment of the preadolescent child to the world of reality.
From the sermon: He Stands By Us, Quoted in Lend me Your Ears: Great Speeches in History ed. William Safire (1992).
Jeremy Begbie
Only with great care. For thousands, carols will be their only link with a church. At the same time, sentimentality is perhaps the single most dangerous feature of our Church and culture-and the sentimental air is never thicker than at Christmas. The Incarnation is messy, dirty, and resonates with the crucifixion. We need a new wave of carol writing that can gradually swill out the nonsense and catch the piercing, joy-through-pain refrains of the New Testament.
Pope Benedict XVI
The Christian faith can never be separated from the soil of sacred events, from the choice made by God, who wanted to speak to us, to become man, to die and rise again, in a particular place and at a particular time.
Wendell Berry
I take literally the statement in the Gospel of John that God loves the world. I believe that the world was created and approved by love, that it subsists, coheres, and endures by love, and that, insofar as it is redeemable, it can be redeemed only by love. I believe that divine love, incarnate and indwelling in the world, summons the world always toward wholeness, which ultimately is reconciliation and atonement with God.
William Billings
Seek not in courts, nor palaces,
Nor royal curtains draw;
But search the stable,
see your God, Extended on the straw.
“Methinks I See a Heav’nly Host,” in The Singing Master’s Assistant.
Bono
The idea that there’s a force of love and logic behind the universe is overwhelming to start with, if you believe it. Actually, maybe even far-fetched to start with, but the idea that that same love and logic would choose to describe itself as a baby born in straw and poverty is genius, and brings me to my knees, literally. To me, as a poet, I am just in awe of that. It makes some sort of poetic sense. It’s the thing that makes me a believer, though it didn’t dawn on me for many years.
Stuart Briscoe
The spirit of Christmas needs to be superseded by the Spirit of Christ. The spirit of Christmas is annual; the Spirit of Christ is eternal. The spirit of Christmas is sentimental; the Spirit of Christ is supernatural. The spirit of Christmas is a human product; the Spirit of Christ is a divine person. That makes all the difference in the world.
Phillips Brooks
It was not suddenly and unannounced that Jesus came into the world. He came into a world that had been prepared for Him. The whole Old Testament is the story of a special preparation. . . . Only when all was ready, only in the fullness of His time, did Jesus come.
Frederick Buechner
The incarnation is a kind of vast joke whereby the Creator of the ends of the earth comes among us in diapers… Until we too have taken the idea of the God-man seriously enough to be scandalized by it, we have not taken it as seriously as it demands to be taken.
The Faces of Jesus: A Life Story
Frederick Buechner
It is impossible to conceive how different things would have turned out if that birth had not happened whenever, wherever, however it did … for millions of people who have lived since, the birth of Jesus made possible not just a new way of understanding life but a new way of living it. It is a truth that, for twenty centuries, there have been untold numbers of men and women who, in untold numbers of ways, have been so grasped by the child who was born, so caught up in the message he taught and the life he lived, that they have found themselves profoundly changed by their relationship with him.
The Faces of Jesus: A Life Story
Thomas Chatterton
How shall we celebrate the day,
When God appear’d in mortal clay;
The mark of worldly scorn;
When the Archangels heavenly lays,
Attempted the Redeemer’s Praise
And hailed Salvation’s Morn.
A Hymn for Christmas Day
G.K. Chesterton
Christmas is built upon a beautiful and intentional paradox; that the birth of the homeless should be celebrated in every home.
Brave New Family: G.K. Chesterton on Men and Women, Children, Sex, Divorce, Marriage and the Family
G.K. Chesterton
Home shall men come
To an older place than Eden
And a taller town than Rome.
To the end of the way of the wandering star;
To the things that cannot be and that are,
To the place where God was homeless
And all men are at home.
The House of Christmas
G.K. Chesterton
When we were children we were grateful to those who filled our stockings at Christmas time. Why are we not grateful to God for filling our stockings with legs?
Pamela F. Dowd
God sent a star to light the night for
The Way, The Truth, The Life—His Son.
He sent the Light of Life to prove His heart
so we would invite His Son into our own.
God has given us all the light we’ll ever
need to find peace on earth,
goodwill to men.
Elisabeth Elliot
Jesus loved the will of His Father. He embraced the limitations, the necessities, the conditions, the very chains of His humanity as He walked and worked here on earth, fulfilling moment by moment His divine commission and the stern demands of His incarnation. Never was there a word or even a look of complaint.
T.S. Eliot
The hint half guessed, the gift half understood, is Incarnation.
Four Quartets
Lucinda Franks
Christmas in Bethlehem. The ancient dream: A cold, clear night made brilliant by a glorious star, the smell of incense, shepherds and wise men falling to their knees in adoration of the sweet baby, the incarnation of perfect love.
Benjamin Franklin
A good conscience is a continual Christmas.
Billy Graham
Christmas is not a myth, not a tradition, not a dream. It is a glorious reality.
Billy Graham
The very purpose of Christ’s coming into the world was that He might offer up His life as a sacrifice for the sins of men. He came to die. This is the heart of Christmas.
George Herbert
The shepherds sing and shall I silent be?
My God, no hymn for thee?
My soul’s a shepherd too; a flock it feeds
Of thoughts, and words, and deeds.
The pasture is they word; the
streams, thy grace
Enriching all the place.
From Christmas
Robert Herrick
What sweeter music can we bring,
Then a Caroll, for to sing
The birth of this our heavenly king?
A Christmas Caroll, sung to the King in the Presence at White-Hall.
Gerard Manley Hopkins
Moonless darkness stands between.
Past, the Past, no more be seen!
But the Bethlehem-star may lead me
To the sight of Him Who freed me
From the self that I have been.
Make me pure, Lord: Thou art holy;
Make me meek, Lord: Thou wert lowly;
Now beginning, and alway:
Now begin, on Christmas day.
Washington Irving
Now Christmas is come,
Let us beat up the drum,
And call all our neighbors together,
And when they appear,
Let us make them such cheer,
As will keep out the wind and the weather.
The Good Old Christmas Song
Ben Jonson
I sing the birth was born tonight,
The author both of life and light,
The angels so did sound it;
And like the ravished shepherds
Said, Who saw the light, and were afraid,
Yet sarched, and tru they found it.
A Hymn on the Nativity of my Saviour
David Jeremiah
All the Christmas presents in the world are worth nothing without the presence of Christ.
Timothy Keller
Christmas is telling you that you could never get to heaven on your own. God had to come to you.
Sermon: “Mary”, December 23, 2001.
Timothy Keller
Christmas, like God himself, is both more wondrous and more threatening than we imagine.
Hidden Christmas: The Surprising Truth Behind the Birth of Christ, Penguin Publishing Group.
Henry Law
What self denial! What self abasement! What self emptying! He, whom no infinitudes can hold, is contained within infant’s age, and infant’s form. Can it be, that the great ‘I AM THAT I AM’ shrinks into our flesh?
Jay Leno
The atheists have produced a Christmas play. It’s called Coincidence on Thirty-Fourth Street.
David Letterman
Halloween is the beginning of the holiday shopping season. That’s for women. The beginning of the holiday shopping season for men is Christmas Eve.
C.S. Lewis
“Once in our world, a stable had something in it that was bigger than our whole world.”
C.S. Lewis
Among the sheep (I like a sheep have strayed)
I watch the manger where my Lord is laid;
Oh that my baa-ing nature would win thence
Some woolly innocence!
Larry Libby
Late on a sleepy, star-spangled night, those angels peeled back the sky just like you would tear open a sparkling Christmas present. Then, with light and joy pouring out of Heaven like water through a broken dam, they began to shout and sing the message that baby Jesus had been born. The world had a Savior! The angels called it “Good News,” and it was.
Hamilton Wright Mabie
The season which
Engages the whole
World in a
Conspiracy of love.
Steve Maraboli
Want to keep Christ in Christmas? Feed the hungry, clothe the naked, forgive the guilty, welcome the unwanted, care for the ill, love your enemies, and do unto others as you would have done unto you.
Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience
Brian D. McLaren
Politicians compete for the highest offices. Business tycoons scramble for a bigger and bigger piece of the pie. Armies march and scientists study and philosophers philosophise and preachers preach and labourers sweat. But in that silent baby, lying in that humble manger, there pulses more potential power and wisdom and grace and aliveness than all the rest of us can imagine.
Thomas Merton
Into this world, this demented inn
in which there is absolutely no room for Him at all,
Christ comes uninvited.
Raids on the Unspeakable
Thomas Merton
There were only a few shepherds at the first Bethlehem. The ox and the donkey understood more of the first Christmas than the high priests in Jerusalem. And it is the same today.
Jürgen Moltmann
God became man that dehumanized men might become true men. We become true men in the community of the incarnate, the suffering and loving, the human God.
The Crucified God: The Cross of Christ as the Foundation and Criticism of Christian Theology.
Mother Teresa
At this Christmas when Christ comes, will He find a warm heart? Mark the season of Advent by loving and serving the others with God’s own love and concern.
Mother Teresa
As soon as we take the enfleshment of God, the incarnation which, for Christians, is represented by the person of Jesus Christ, then we start taking things seriously.
Mother Teresa
It is Christmas every time you let God love others through you.
Taken from MariLee Parrish, Love Came Down at Christmas, Barbour, 2013.
J.I. Packer
The Christmas message is that there is hope for a ruined humanity–hope of pardon, hope of peace with God, hope of glory–because at the Father’s will Jesus became poor, and was born in a stable so that thirty years later He might hang on a cross.
J.I. Packer
It is here, in the thing that happened at the first Christmas, that the most profound unfathomable depths of the Christian revelation lie. God became man; nothing in fiction is so fantastic as this truth of the incarnation.
J.I. Packer
The Almighty appeared on earth as a helpless human baby, needing to be fed and changed and taught to talk like any other child. The more you think about it, the more staggering it gets. Nothing in fiction is so fantastic as this truth of the Incarnation.
The Christian Reader
Pope Paul VI
We consider Christmas as the encounter, the great encounter, the historical encounter, the decisive encounter, between God and mankind. He who has faith knows this truly; let him rejoice.
John Piper
Christmas: the Son of God expressing the love of God to save us from the wrath of God so we could enjoy the presence of God.
Twitter Post, Dec.24, 2012
Christina Rossetti
What can I give Him
Poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd
I would bring a lamb;
If I were a wise man
I would do my part,-
Yet what I can give him
Give my heart.
A Christmas Carol
Dorothy L. Sayers
The dogma of the Incarnation is the most dramatic thing about Christianity, and indeed, the most dramatic thing that ever entered the mind of man; but if you tell people so, they stare at you in bewilderment.
Luci Shaw
And when she, birth-giver—
her ordinary vision arrowed down between
her legs, through pain and straw, to her son’s dark,
slime-streaked hair, to his very skin, red with
the struggle of being born—she lifted him
to her breast, kissed the face of God,
and felt her own heart leap.
Recognition
Ralph W. Sockman
The hinge of history is on the door of a Bethlehem stable.
Source Unknown
It is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas, when its mighty Founder was a child Himself.
Source Unknown
Rejoice, that the immortal God is born, so that mortal man may live in eternity.
Michael Spencer
Without the incarnation, Christianity isn’t even a very good story, and most sadly, it means nothing. “Be nice to one another” is not a message that can give my life meaning, assure me of love beyond brokenness, and break open the dark doors of death with the key of hope. The incarnation is an essential part of Jesus-shaped spirituality.
Mere Churchianity: Finding Your Way Back to Jesus-Shaped Spirituality
R.C. Sproul
What we celebrate at Christmas is not so much the birth of a baby, but the incarnation of God Himself.
Charles Spurgeon
We venture to assert, that if there be any day in the year, of which we may be pretty sure that it was not the day on which the Savior was born, it is the 25th of December. Regarding not the day, let us, nevertheless, give thanks to God for the gift of His dear Son.
Corrie Ten Boom
Who can add to Christmas? The perfect motive is that God so loved the world. The perfect gift is that He gave His only Son. The only requirement is to believe in Him. The reward of faith is that you shall have everlasting life.
Alfred Lord Tennyson
Rise, happy morn, rise, holy morn
Draw forth the cheerful day from night;
O Father, touch the east, and light
The light that shone when Hope was born.
In Memorium A.H.H. 30
Howard Thurman
When the song of the angels is stilled,
when the star in the sky is gone,
when the kings and princes are home,
when the shepherds are back with the flocks,
then the work of Christmas begins:
to find the lost,
to heal those broken in spirit,
to feed the hungry,
to release the oppressed,
to rebuild the nations,
to bring peace among all peoples,
to make a little music with the heart…
And to radiate the Light of Christ,
every day, in every way, in all that we do and in all that we say.
Then the work of Christmas begins.
George W. Truett
Christ was born in the first century, yet He belongs to all centuries.
He was born a Jew, yet He belongs to all races.
He was born in Bethlehem, yet He belongs to all countries.
Charles Wesley
Veiled in flesh, the Godhead see;
hail the incarnate Deity
Pleased as man with men to dwell,
Jesus, our Emmanuel
Charles Wesley
Hark the herald angels sing, “Glory to the new-born king.” Peace on earth, and mercy mild, God and sinners reconciled!”
E.B. White
To perceive Christmas through its wrapping becomes more difficult with every year.
The Distant Music of The Hounds”, The Second Tree from the Corner
Christmas is God lighting a candle; and you don’t light a candle in a room that’s already full of sunlight. You light a candle in a room that’s so murky that the candle, when lit, reveals just how bad things really are.
For All God’s Worth: True Worship and the Calling of the Church
Philip Yancey
Yet as I read the birth stories about Jesus I cannot help but conclude that though the world may be tilted toward the rich and powerful, God is tilted toward the underdog.
W.B. Yeats
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
O.P. Kretzmann
One of our troubles, is that we have romanticized and sentimentalized the stable and the manger…We see them through the warm glow of our comfortable homes, our candles and our well-fed bodies….Perhaps we have never quite dared to face up to the fact that a stable is no easy place to have a baby…and a manger is no good place for a child to begin life….It was cold, ugly, dirty, and mean in Bethlehem that night, far, far away, as far as you can get, from the golden streets, the pearly gates and the chanting of cherubim and seraphim … all the things that make heaven Heaven.
J.I. Packer
The Christmas message is that there is hope for a ruined humanity–hope of pardon, hope of peace with God, hope of glory–because at the Father’s will Jesus became poor, and was born in a stable so that thirty years later He might hang on a cross.
Rainer Maria Rilke
If you lacked simplicity, how then should this fall to you that midnight skies are a shine with? God, who stoked at men mild in you now comes to mortal eyes. That he’s not more great—does this surprise? What is greatness? Sweepingly his fate cuts across all human measuring. No star, even, has a path so straight. Look, these coming now are great, these kings dragging to your lap, as presents, things which, they hold, are greater far than all. Maybe they astound you, gifts like these:—look, though, how within your folded shawl he excels already all one sees. Amber, shipped across great distances, golden ornaments and fragrant spice such as makes the heavy sense swim: these were pleasures over in a trove, and regretted when their power grew dim. But (as you will see): joy comes of him
Taken from “The Birth of Christ” in Rilke: Poems (Everyman’s Library Pocket Poets Series) Alfred A. Knopf, 1996.
Madeline L’Engle
This is no time for a child to be born,
With the earth betrayed by war & hate
And a comet slashing the sky to warn
That time runs out & the sun burns late.
That was no time for a child to be born,
In a land in the crushing grip of Rome;
Honour & truth were trampled by scorn —
Yet here did the Saviour make his home.
When is the time for love to be born?
The inn is full on the planet earth,
And by a comet the sky is torn —
Yet Love still takes the risk of birth.
Taken from “The Risk of Birth”, Christmas, 1973, in The Ordering of Love: New and Collected Poems of Madeleine L’Engle.
O.P. Kretzmann
One of our troubles, is that we have romanticized and sentimentalized the stable and the manger…We see them through the warm glow of our comfortable homes, our candles and our well-fed bodies….Perhaps we have never quite dared to face up to the fact that a stable is no easy place to have a baby…and a manger is no good place for a child to begin life….It was cold, ugly, dirty, and mean in Bethlehem that night, far, far away, as far as you can get, from the golden streets, the pearly gates and the chanting of cherubim and seraphim … all the things that make heaven Heaven.
C.S. Lewis
“It seems, then,” said Tirian, smiling himself, “that the Stable seen from within and the Stable seen from without are two different places.” “Yes,” said the Lord Digory. “Its inside is bigger than its outside.” “Yes,” said Queen Lucy. “In our world too, a Stable once had something inside it that was bigger than our whole world.”
The Last Battle
Daniel Darling
The message of Christmas, then, is not about manufacturing sentimental feelings in vain hopes of a miracle. It’s about believing the reality that God has birthed something new in Jesus and because of this, God will birth something new in you and in me. And that newness is breaking out, still today, in the hearts of God’s people amidst a broken world. Sinful, dead hearts finding life again. And we, at Christmas, sit in silence and await another Advent, when that child returns as the King, to complete His mission to restore hearts and renew the world.
The Characters of Christmas: The Unlikely People Caught Up in the Story of Jesus, Moody, 2019.
Philip Yancey
Imagine for a moment becoming a baby again. Imagine giving up language and muscle coordination. Imagine losing the ability to eat solid food and control your bladder. God as a fetus! Or imagine yourself becoming a sea slug—that analogy is probably closer. On that day in Bethlehem, the Maker of all that is took the form of a helpless, dependent newborn.
O.P. Kretzmann
One of our troubles, is that we have romanticized and sentimentalized the stable and the manger…We see them through the warm glow of our comfortable homes, our candles and our well-fed bodies….Perhaps we have never quite dared to face up to the fact that a stable is no easy place to have a baby…and a manger is no good place for a child to begin life….It was cold, ugly, dirty, and mean in Bethlehem that night, far, far away, as far as you can get, from the golden streets, the pearly gates and the chanting of cherubim and seraphim … all the things that make heaven Heaven.
Madeleine L’Engle
He did not wait for the perfect time. He came when the need was deep and great. . . . He came with Love: Rejoice! Rejoice!”
First Coming
Bette Dickinson
The shepherds show us that we don’t prepare to receive the kIng of heaven the same way we prepare to meet the celebrities of our day, through earthly displays of showiness. In fact, receiving our King requires we do just the opposite: we must empty ourselves of any human glory that gets in the way of receiving a heavenly one. We must instead journey to the margins, because it is there where the veil to heaven becomes thin enough to glimpse the divine.
Adapted from Making Room in Advent by Bette Dickinson. Copyright (c)2022 by Bette Dickinson. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press. www.ivpress.com
N. T. Wright
The kingdom of the Christ-child gets to work when we stop, and pause, and look in wonder once more at the baby lying in the manger, and like Mary ponder in our hearts what it all means. Only through deep devotion to the child who is born to us, the son who is given to us, can we make sure that the government really is upon his shoulders, and so prevent our good intentions being misdirected to serve our own ends, real or imagined.
‘O hush the noise, ye men of strife, and hear the angels sing’: we come here tonight, aware that the kingdom Jesus came to bring needs to be worked out in the real and tough challenges that lie ahead of us globally, nationally and locally but aware, too, that if it is Jesus’ kingdom we are working out we cannot get enough of Jesus himself, cannot worship him enough, cannot ponder him enough, cannot invoke him enough, cannot love and adore him enough, cannot taste him enough.
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