Category Archives: Christmas

The Carol Service Talk

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This is a bit late for Christmas 2023.  But, hey, I write for posterity (if not prosperity), so I’ll borrow (and slightly adapt) some thoughts from Chris Green and pass them on.

How can we give our Carol Service talk a cutting edge?  What will help us to slice through the layers of predictability and (let’s face it) banality that besets such discourses?

Chris Green offers:

1. Choose one obvious passage.  Speak from one of the old faithfuls, one that requires a minimum of background and explanation, and let it loose.…

Twelve Ways of Christmas

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Most people, including the totally unchurched, will celebrate Christmas one way or another.  How can we connect them with the Christian meaning of this season?

Andrew Knight has some helpful suggestions.  I present them here in slightly abridged form

1. Host

‘The holidays offer a myriad of opportunities to have people over to your home. You can invite others over for family meals, dinner parties, work parties, dessert gatherings, neighborhood functions, or school holiday celebrations. Christmas affords you the opportunity to gather for anything, whether secret Santa, ugly Christmas sweaters, or a good Christmas movie.’…

Acts 5:37 – a neglected clue to the Quirinius question?

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The beginning of Luke 2 presents one of the best-known challenges to the historicity of the Gospel narratives:

2:1 Now in those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus to register all the empire for taxes. 2:2 This was the first registration, taken when Quirinius was governor of Syria.

I have explored the problem, and its possible solutions, in some detail elsewhere.

To be brief, the problem is that the census associated with Quirinius is usually dated to around 6AD, whereas the birth of Jesus took place about 8 years earlier.…

Gifts

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I guess that for most of us, Christmas and birthday are among the most exciting times of the year, because of the gifts we receive.  Have you noticed that the gifts we get the most pleasure from are often not the most costly ones?  What parent has not spent quite a lot of money on some marvelous new toy, only for the child to get hours of enjoyment from playing with the box the toy came in!…

Recovering the wonder of Christ(mas)

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Simon Ponsonby is a well-respected church leader, Bible teacher, and author.

He has written about how, after 30 years of ministry, he realised that his faith had grown somewhat cold.  He felt disappointed by the drift he saw in his own denomination (the Church of England), and discouraged by the moral and spiritual failings of some of his friends and former role models.  In his own life and ministry, he had become spiritually dry, tired, and inward-looking.…

Luke 2:7 – Jesus was (probably) not born in a stable

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2:6 While they were [in Bethlehem], the time came for [Mary] to deliver her child. 2:7 And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in strips of cloth and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.

‘No room in the inn’ (along with a grumpy inn-keeper) is part of the fabric of the nativity story, as popularly told.  But the biblical text makes no mention of a stable, and the word commonly translated ‘inn’ may well mean something else.…

Matthew 2:11 – ‘Gold, frankincense, and myrrh’

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2:11 As [the magi] came into the house and saw the child with Mary his mother, they bowed down and worshiped him. They opened their treasure boxes and gave him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

Summary.  Rather than supposing that the gifts brought by the magi carry symbolic meaning, it is probably better to view them as gifts ‘fit for a king’.

Do the gifts have symbolic meaning?  I have some hesitation about this, but I’ll put this out as a gentle warning to my fellow-preachers anyway.…

Why are Matthew’s and Luke’s birth narratives so different?

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The most celebrated critical commentary on the birth narratives is that of Raymond Brown – The Birth of the Messiah.

In discussing the birth narratives as history, Brown cites two sets of problems:

1. The problem of corroborating witnesses

Regarding the main body of the Gospel narratives, there is no shortage of witnesses whose reminiscences could be harvested.  And there was a tradition that had been passed down from this first witnesses.  See Acts 1:22; 1 Cor 15:3 etc.…

Virgin Birth – meaning and significance

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‘The first and most indisputable fact about the birth of Jesus is that it occurred out of wedlock. The one option for which there is no evidence is that Jesus was the lawful son of Joseph and Mary. The only choice open to us is between a virgin birth and an illegitimate birth.’ (J. A. T. Robinson, Twelve More New Testament Studies (SCM, 1984), 3–4.)

Luke announces the heavenly origin of Mary’s firstborn in unmistakable terms. …

Luke 2:14 – ‘On earth peace, Good will toward men’

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Christmas, as everyone knows, is ‘the season of goodwill’.

It’s a lovely thought, and captures so much of what we all long for.  What’s not to like about ‘peace on earth’ and ‘good will toward men’?  It’s ‘the true meaning of Christmas’, isn’t it?  If only we could do ‘peace’ and ‘good will’ all year round, the world would be a much better place.

But, attractive as the sentiment is, it is not quite what the angels said.…