If you look at the Christmas cards that you have received this year you will find that they can be easily sorted into two piles. One pile of cards will be religious cards and the other pile will be non-religious cards or cards representing what I would call the cultural or "white Christmas" dimension of Christmas. Both piles are part of yet a third dimension of Christmas, the commercial Christmas. Today nothing about Christmas escapes this commercialization. You may have read into today's newspaper about the manger display in Texas filled with small cheeses and beneath a sign saying, "The Baby Cheeses" and in the background stands a woman in surgical garb with the sign, "The Surgeon Mary"

Those of us who acknowledge Christmas as a religious celebration most likely participate in all three dimensions. I assume that this applies to most of us here tonight. These three Christmases just sort of blur together. This is not bad, but it does mean that, as believers, we can loose track of the significance of the birth of Christ which is, after all, the occasion for the party for us as Christians.

Christmas is a time that brings out strong feelings in most of us. If our memories are fond ones we tend to wax on the sentimental side. We want our Christmas to be just like it always was.

But truly, Christmas is a stressful time. Christmas comes but once a year as the old cliche goes but you might agree with someone who rephrased it this way, "Christmas comes but once a years enough". Don`t you find the gift giving thing a tricky endeavour? I mean when you receive yet another awful tie from Aunt Bessie will you be truthful about what you really think of it or will you express great appreciation thereby dooming yourself to a repeat performance next year?

We are reminded over and over again that the spirit of Christmas is giving. While the spirit of giving is a fine enough spirit, it often gets reduced to a kind of round robin of gift-giving whereby we exchange gifts based on where the recipient fits in score card of our affections. If your gift for Aunt Bessie costs twice as much as that for your spouse, the much touted spirit of giving can quickly turn into a spirit of recrimination and hurt feelings. The energy required for this calculating feat can leave us exhausted by the time the last gift is wrapped.

This is what makes our giving so different from God`s giving. Our giving is nearly always based on mixed motives but when God gives to us God has nothing to gain that God needs. I don`t mean to be cynical but I`m sure that all of you recognize some of the problematic aspects of the season as a cultural and commercial occasion.

It will not surprize you now when I tell you that I consider my job this evening is to talk to you about Christmas as a religious celebration. After all, the other two Christmases have pretty much absorbed all of your attention since you heard the first Christmas carol in the mall the day after hallowe`en.

First of all, let me tell you that there are two Christmases in the bible. The birth of Jesus Christ as seen from below, that is, from a human perspective; indeed the very humble human perspective of the stable family and of peasant folk. Secondly, there is the account of the birth of Jesus Christ as seen from above, that is, from the perspective of God. The birth of Jesus as a human event and as a divine event.

Tonight we heard the story as from above. You heard us read the first 14 verses of the first chapter of the Gospel of John. You heard this reading along with hundreds of millions of other Christians gathered this evening around the world. It is the prescribed text for all Anglican, Roman Catholic, and Orthodox Churches( and many others too) representing at least two thirds of the worlds two billion Christians. If you attended our early service at 4 pm, especially for children, you would have heard the story of Christmas from below. This is the narrative version of babe in the manger, angels, shepherds and the like. In fact all the children are invited to dress in costumes of sheep and goats, shepherds and angels. Clearly, for children it is a much more accessible version that the reading we heard this evening. And if you attend a mass here tomorrow morning, which is pretty unlikely, I suspect, you will hear that version again.

But place of prominence is always given to the first story, the birth of Jesus from the perspective of God`s purposes. And that is because it speaks of Jesus as eternal, as existing since the beginning of all things, as the very expression and essence of God.

In St John we read, "In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God." In this gospel "word" means more than words. It means reason, meaning, and communication.

It is a powerful message for humanity in every age. It is powerful because it reminds us that creation is not random, it is not arbitrary, and it is not impersonal. Rather, creation is purposeful, it is intended to show us God, and it is full of love. If your life lacks these fundamental insights into reality, then you need the blessing of this biblical reading in your life.

The writer of John`s gospel begins his story with the very same word as that which opens the first book of the Old Testament, the Book of Genesis, where we read "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth". St John intends us place these openings together so that our eyes and hearts may be open to the amazing fact that God continues to create and to provide us with the means of seeing God. A later Christian writer, writing in the letter to the Hebrews, says something very similar to this, "He is the reflection of God`s glory and the exact imprint of God`s very being . ." (Hebrews 1:3)

And yet, most of us experience God as hard to find. God is hidden. God is seen by Adam and Eve in the story of creation and then God is not seen directly by human beings again until Jesus speaks. According to the biblical record thousands of years pass during which God remains veiled from us. We receive second-hand accounts from prophets and sages and angels but humanity does not see God.

And then along comes Jesus. Jesus is not like just any other wise or holy man who comes along. He brings God is us in ways no other can. Not the prophets, not John the Baptist (referred to in our reading this evening as well) and not like anyone since however powerful their speech or their influence upon human affairs might be or will be.

I don`t know why God remains hidden. The Torah tells us that God remains hidden from us because we would perish if we saw God directly just like we will perish if we stand too close to the sun. Many despair and say there is no God because God cannot be proven or because God does not fix things up. And yet one very clear message that comes to us in the birth of Jesus Christ is that God is around us at every moment. God appears in things so ordinary that we don`t even notice. I mean God appeared as a peasant child. Who ever took notice of a peasant child? Millions of children are born into abject poverty in our world every year. Do we notice them?

This means that God is sitting right next to you at this moment in that person you may not know at all, or in that person that you know too well to ever come to such a conclusion. This means that God is within you as well. That God is within you is a conclusion which we must draw from the birth of Jesus. That God was in the humanness of Jesus means that God is in us too. Do you believe that? Can you see that? Do you want to see that?

St John tells us that most of us do not want to see that or that we are blind to this reality Remember his words, He came to his own home, and his own people received him not. And he also said, "He was in the world and world was made through him, yet the world knew him not". Theologian Walter Wink suggests that we can best understand this phrase if we replace the word "world" with "system". So now we read- He was in the system and the system was made through him, yet the system knew him not.

This speaks to me. We all belong to systems whether they be basic systems like our families or complex systems like governments or corporations or empires or economies. We all know how powerfully anti-God most systems can become. I don't mean anti-God in the religious sense of that word, that is, in denigrating they religious institutions or established teachings; no I mean anti-God in the far more significant sense that they actively destroy what God creates and loves, human and non-human. Systems are wilful and easily serve the interests of the few who control them. There is no system on earth, including religious systems , which is not prone to replacing love for creation with money, security, power, or national glory.

But despite this universal context for our lives the birth of Jesus Christ, Jesus the Word, reminds us each year that there is a far greater and more important reality behind life: the reality that God has created and continues to create all things with meaning, reason, love.

May this knowledge bring you blessing in the year to come.