God with us
A Sermon for Christmas Morning 2025
Primary Texts
Isaiah 62:6-12
Titus 3:4-7
Luke 2:1-20
Luke tells the story of Jesus’ birth in a way that is grounded, political, and profoundly human. “In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered.” Luke begins not with angels, but with empire. Power is named. Control is asserted (that is what politics is about). Ordinary people are moved around like pieces on a chessboard. Mary and Joseph are not travelling for romance or adventure; they are compelled by forces far beyond their control.
That detail matters, because it places the birth of Jesus squarely in a world that already knows injustice, fear, and weariness. Luke’s Christmas story is not a retreat from reality. It is God’s entry into it.
We hear this story again in a season when the world feels heavy. The Hannukah shootings in Sydney early last week (14 December) shattered a time meant for remembering light’s triumph over darkness, reminding Jewish communities—and all of us—that hatred is never as distant as we wish it were. In Gaza, Palestinians endure conditions that strip daily life down to survival, where children grow up knowing more about fear than safety. Ukraine, after nearly four years of escalating war, is exhausted—its people resilient (they are tough people), but worn down by grief, loss, and uncertainty. And here in New Zealand, many families are struggling quietly: jobs insecure, costs rising, and a soft economy pushing some of our best and brightest to leave, not because they want to, but because they feel they have no choice.
Luke would recognise this world. He tells us that Jesus is born not in a place of comfort or security, but on the margins—far from home, with no room in the inn. The Son of God enters history amid displacement and rejection. The first sounds he hears are not songs of triumph, but the rough breathing of animals and the cries of a young mother far from familiar support.
This is not incidental. Luke wants us to understand that God’s saving work begins precisely where the world is most fragile.
When the angels finally appear, they do not go to the palace or the military headquarters. They go to shepherds—workers on the night shift, people of low status, people accustomed to danger and uncertainty. “Do not be afraid,” the angel says, “for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people.”
All the people. Not just the powerful. Not just the secure. Not just those who have managed to stay hopeful. This good news is spoken into fear, not after fear has been resolved.
That matters when fear is close to the surface: for Jewish families on edge after the cruel terror in Sydney; for Palestinian parents wondering how to protect their children in Gaza when there is nowhere safe to go; for Ukrainian civilians living with air-raid sirens as part of daily life; for New Zealanders lying awake at night worrying about mortgages, rent, and whether their children will have a future here. Into these realities, the angel does not say, “Everything is fine.” The angel says, “Do not be afraid”—not because fear is irrational, but because God is doing something new right in the middle of that anxiety.
The sign the shepherds are given is striking in its ordinariness: “You will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.” Not a weapon. Not a throne. Not a strategy for domination. Just a baby—vulnerable, dependent, exposed. God’s response to the violence and arrogance of empire is not greater force, but deeper presence.
This is difficult for us. We often long for God to act decisively, dramatically, to fix things now, or preferably yesterday. We want an end to war, an end to hatred, an end to economic anxiety. Luke does not deny those longings, but he reframes them. God begins by sharing our vulnerability, not bypassing it.
The heavenly host then sings: “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favours.” This is not a sentimental peace. It is not the peace of quiet suburbs or balanced budgets. It is peace proclaimed in a world still ruled by Caesar, still marked by occupation of various sorts, still shaped by inequality. The angels sing not because peace has been fully achieved, but because its seed has been planted.
That seed grows slowly. It grows through faithfulness rather than force. Mary treasures and ponders these things in her heart, not because she understands them, but because she trusts that God is at work beyond what she can see. The shepherds return to their fields—not promoted, not rescued from hard labour, but changed. They glorify and praise God, carrying hope back into ordinary, demanding lives.
There is something important here for us. Faith does not remove us from the world’s pain. It sends us back into it, bearing witness to another, better way of being human.
For those watching the devastation in Gaza, Luke’s story insists that God sides with the vulnerable, not the powerful. For those standing with Ukraine’s long endurance, it proclaims that suffering does not mean abandonment. For Jewish communities shaken by violence, it affirms that God’s promise of light is not extinguished by hatred. And for New Zealanders feeling worn down by economic uncertainty and the loss of people they love to overseas opportunities, it offers a quieter, but no less real, hope: that our worth is not measured only by growth or success, but by the depth of our care for one another.
Luke’s Christmas story also challenges us. If God is born among the displaced and the overlooked, then we cannot claim to worship this child while ignoring those same people today. The shepherds go and see for themselves. They do not stay at a safe distance. They move towards the manger. So are we called to move—towards compassion, towards generosity, towards courage—even when it is uncomfortable or costly – and one of the biggest symbols we have of costly courage in recent days is the heroic action taken by Ahmed al Ahmed in Bondi to single-handedly and unarmed, wrestle a gun away from one of the terrorists on Dec 14.
What we are able to do in the field of compassion and courage may be much less dramatic. It may just be having a conversation with someone who hasn’t been heard in a long time. Sharing a meal with someone or giving them a hand to do something they are struggling with. A refusal to speak with contempt.
In a world addicted to scale and spectacle, Luke reminds us that God works through the particular, the local, the fragile.
At the heart of this story is a promise: that God has not given up on the world, even when the world seems intent on tearing itself apart. The child in the manger does not solve everything in a night. But he changes what is possible. He shows us that love is stronger than fear, that presence is more powerful than domination, and that hope can be born even in the darkest places.
So this Christmas, we do not look away from the pain of the world. We bring it with us to the manger.
We stand with the shepherds—tired, wary, uncertain—and we listen again to the angels’ song. “Good news of great joy for all the people.”
May we hear it not as an escape, but as a calling. And may the peace that begins in a feeding trough take root in us, and through us, in a wounded world.
Tony Surman