Christmas Day 2025: Salisbury Cathedral
‘And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.’
Imagine a world full of grace and truth. Imagine a church full of grace and truth. Imagine your life, full of grace and truth. Christmas reminds us of the greatest event in human history, the birth of a baby full of grace and truth, so full that he is God. 
Call the Midwife is the most watched programme on the BBC. Nine million people will sit down to watch it this evening and tomorrow. Recently, we enjoyed a superb evening with Heidi Thomas the writer and her real-life husband Stephen McGann, the actor who plays Dr Patrick Turner. We were raising funds for the Salisbury Sudan Medical Link and in particular inexpensive Mama Packs for the safe delivery of babies in a country with sadly world topping infant mortality rates. Heidi Thomas spoke about how the tv drama is social history in action, reflecting back to us our stories and events. We can see ourselves in the past events, often of our childhood, just as Christmas reminds most of us of halcyon days of family life and traditions. She calls such storytelling being like an empathy machine.
There was no midwife in Bethlehem. There was not even a room to be had. God was to be born in a stable and laid in a wooden manger, as later in life, God was to be nailed to a wooden cross and instead of living, God was to die. The mystery of the incarnation that we celebrate today is like God’s empathy machine. The creator becomes created, the lover becomes loved into being, the almighty becomes meek and lowly. The eternal God becomes a baby. It is God’s production line of empathy that means he can wait no longer and so has to put that empathy into reality and come among us, share the human condition in all its beauty and in all its mess.
Coming alongside someone is to exercise divine empathy. To make a present of your presence is to be holy. The reason so many turn and return to Christmas is because of that deeply rooted need to have someone alongside us, loving us because of who we are and sharing the gift of one another. This is why the angels sang, this is why the shepherds left their sheep and their socks, this is why the magi followed, knelt and presented the signs of Jesus’ ministry to come, this is why we gather to share food, this is why we gather around the television together, this is why we go to a carol service, this is why we make contact with those we’ve not seen all year, all because God’s empathy rubs off on us and we remember this is what living is supposed to be about, full of grace and truth.
The trouble with all of this is that we see far too little grace and truth. Our human sinfulness and competitiveness makes for sin and shame. War continues in the Ukraine now into its third Christmas and the land that Jesus knew is on fire or destroyed. Civil war rages in Sudan and our geo-political future looks internationally insecure. Soon a returning president will lead with binary distinctions to illicit fear and division. And in the church, we have failed to keep people safe, failed to act, and failed to change our ways to mirror God’s empathy for the victim and the survivor. Humility becomes humiliation for the church and its leaders today.
God’s empathy requires a response. God coming alongside us requires us to do the same to someone in need. God loving us requires us to love all those whom he loves. God the midwife of our salvation requires us to bring to birth a new way in ourselves, in our homes, in our church, in our society, to be literally more full of grace and truth.
The grace we hear of in John’s Prologue is his redeeming love. Its not just being graceful, it has an impact, a result – love redeems, love saves, love never ends. And the truth is his faithfulness in his promises, that the God who calls is faithful and he will do this. This love and faithfulness has lived among us, and we have seen his glory, that humble glory shared here and now in bread and wine – himself humbled on the cross to share his body and his blood.
So how can we remember this everyday and not just at Christmas? How can we live lives full of grace and truth? How can our church and our society be filled with grace and truth? How can our world be that place of divine empathy? Well, grace and truth has to born in your heart and mind today and carried with you as you leave here this Christmas. And there is a midwife that can deliver this for us, everyday from here on. There are some words you will know off by heart and yet we only bring them out once a year. The words are like a creed for a life of grace and truth. You know the words of grace and truth.
O holy Child of Bethlehem,
descend to us, we pray;
cast out our sin, and enter in:
Be born in us today.
We hear the Christmas angels
the great glad tidings tell:
O come to us, abide with us,
our Lord Emmanuel.
You know what to do next……….
(In the cathedral, the organist then plays this verse of O Little Town of Bethlehem and all join in).