We wish you a Messy Christmas:

Aim : to show how God meets us in the messiness of our lives. Yet he has a plan and purpose for us which is to know his love for us at Christmas.

I would like us to think about all the "messiness" of that first Christmas. The way it was compared to the way we might have planned it, or wanted it to be.

For example, it would have been a lot easier if Jesus parents had been married. In those days you could be stoned to death for having sex outside marriage. Also, when Jesus was older, there would not have been the gossip about who his real father was.

Better too if Mary had not had to travel. 100 miles on a donkey over three days riding on a donkey is difficult enough if you are not pregnant.

Arriving there the place was so crowded they couldn't have a comfortable room. It is unlikely that they tried to get a room in an inn. The word translated "inn" usually means a "guest room" and it was likely that there was no room in the guest room in the family house of Joseph in Bethlehem. You would have thought God might have had Jesus born into a family with a bigger house! Or with a smaller family.

There was no maternity ward with pethydene, gas and air, and sterile conditions. No waiting colour co-ordinated baby "all in one" suit but a stable, feeding trough for animals and a cloth.

The news was not given out by a royal decree, an advert in the Bethlehem Bugle or Daily Israeli or by e-mail, text, or telephone. The news of the conception and birth was given out by angels who tended to terrify people. We know this because the first thing an angel said to Mary and the shepherds was "Do not be afraid..."

The first visitors were shepherds. They couldn't worship in the temple or give evidence in court. They were despised, and regarded as irreligious, untrustworthy.

The next visitors were foreigners. They studied stars, not the God of the Israelites. They didn't know where to find Jesus so they went to King Herod. This was a mistake. He was jealous and killed all the boys in Bethlehem under two years old.

Not only that but Jesus and his family had to be refugees in Egypt.

Although these things may be familiar to us it shows that Jesus wasn't born into an ideal world. Many things were not neat but messy. Not how we might have planned it.

But this was the way God planned it. There is a sense in which this is right because if Jesus had entered in such a civilised and sanitised way we could turn round and say, "It was easy for him. My life isn't like that."

This week one of our Alpha Group asked if anyone had got everything ready for Christmas, the cards written and personally delivered, the presents bought and wrapped, and so on. They said that if anyone had they would hit them!

I guess many of us feel a bit like that. Unprepared, in a mess.

In Jesus, and amongst all that mess of the first Christmas God came amongst us.

He is willing to meet us where we are. We don't have to be in a certain place for him to come to us. He is happy to meet us where we are. This is what Christmas in really all about. God coming to us. Through Jesus we can know the love of God. Something he demonstrated at Easter in another "messy" occasion.

He has a plan for our lives. The pinnacle of that plan is that we should know and love him through Jesus. Wherever we are. Even if we feel unready.