PSA 18 December 2011 Carol Service

Ken Howcroft. “Saying Yes to the Way that God Loves”. A sermon for the fourth Sunday in Advent. The sermon followed straight on from a presentation by the children and young people entitled “The Way that God Loves”. For God’s love to become real in the form of the birth of Jesus, lots of people had to play their part. We often act as if we want Christmas to be unreal, a fancy story that is not about lives like the ones that you and I live. If people like the innkeeper, the shepherds, the magi, Joseph and Mary were really human, and God came into their lives, then God might come into ours. That might be one of those Christmas presents that we prefer not to get! Mary had to say “yes” to God. She had to let herself be turned upside down. She had to put her reputation and her life on the line to let God be God in ordinary, everyday human experience. Pray God that we can do the same at this Christmas time.

The reading was Luke 1:26-38.