The whole Christmas story has been so  romantically shaped and interpreted over generations. We know it off by heart – minus the smells of the stable where Jesus was born (you can’t have that in the Myers front windows!). We can predict the whole thing now in a way that has been shaped by us so that it fits into our schedule, our preferences and our mindset with all the appropriate niceties.

God never imposed “Christmas” upon the world. He made Himself vulnerable … the Word became flesh … and tabernacled amongst us … lived with us, full of grace and truth. In a very real sense, God came to earth incognito – almost secretly. In the same way, we must not seek to rescue “Christmas” from the machinations and manipulations of our secular culture.

I was chatting to a young couple this week as they were doing another session of “Prepare” with me, which is a pre-marriage preparation course (hence the name) that I encourage couples to undertake in preparation for married life. It is absolutely the best preparation course for engaged couples there is. Anyhoo, one of the sections in the Prepare questionnaire is about spirituality, and one question asks about whether one “understands what the Church teaches about marriage as a sacrament?”

One psychiatrist describes moral injury as the ethical and psychological toll/price that comes with doing things that stop us from meeting our own eyes in the mirror, or laying our heads on the pillow at night. There is a price we continue to pay when we violate our most precious moral beliefs…

So, where does all this leave us? One of John’s points with the man’s response was that he was relying on legend, myth and superstition for healing – and this was not working and had led to profound disappointment and loss of hope. Enter Jesus…

I’m sure most are aware that in recent weeks there has been quite a bit of woke ridicule and opprobrium directed at one of Melbourne’s local churches, City on a Hill – because of a couple of sermons that were on their website from about five or six years ago. The newspapers and nightly news broadcasts, as well as commentators, politicians and so on have just gone to town criticising the church …

These so-called ‘Christian responses’ to Halloween are really just offering a more sanitised version of the very same thing. Why? Trying to be positive is a good, well-intentioned thing, I suppose, but it doesn’t change the nature of the event itself - and what is actually happening.

In a couple of my recent sermons I have referred to “postmodernism”. Before anything can be “post” there has to be something that predates it, or is antecedent to it. So, before postmodernity, we had modernity. Let’s start there. What is modernity, or modernism?

Kairos moments come in all shapes and sizes, and in all kinds of experiences, too. They can be positive experiences such us a prophetic word, a healing, a major provision from God, a promotion at work, or a revelation from God’s word (logos). They can be negative, too, or painful - a warning dream, discipline from Holy Spirit, confrontation over behaviour/sin from another believer/elder, a significant loss causing pain or grief, a missed opportunity, perhaps even witnessing a tragic event.

There are heaps of these we use, or hear being used, all the time – we could compile a list of hundreds of these sayings. Years ago the American Express advertisement on TV stated, as I recall, used the slogan: “It is better to give than to receive” and the attribution was that it was “an ancient Chinese saying” when, in fact, it was one of the sayings of Jesus Christ – misquoted or misappropriated, take your pick. Jesus actually said…

One morning I came across psalm 86:11 and found it rendered thus … “Teach me your way, LORD, that I may rely on your faithfulness; give me an undivided heart, that I may fear your name.”

And then it made much more sense. An undivided heart cannot focus in two directions at once; it cannot be shared to any opposing parties – not fully.

Many people wear a cross, either as a necklace or pendant, or even a ring on their finger, which, I am guessing, is intended to signal to the world that they are a “Christian”. Of course, wearing a cross as some kind of identifying statement doesn’t make you a Christian any more than someone putting on a wedding ring makes them married, or sitting in a hen house makes them a chook. So, there are….

He was nearing his 81st birthday, but was still pretty fit and strong. He’d climbed the mountain several times in the last few months. It was not a long trek to the summit – not quite 3kms - but it was a very, very steep and rocky. It was a dangerous 3 kms. He’d been up and down the mountain three times in this last year, spending 40 days at a time there, just being with and talking to, Yahweh, the great “I Am”.

The idea of not (literally) shooting the messenger is disappearing in our world – particularly, in political circles. Why? I reckon that there are several reasons. One reason – a biggie – is hate speech. And hate speech is directed against anyone we don’t agree with these days. A person can be so hated and parodied in the public arena today, that whatever they say, even if it is 100% correct, is not believed…

In our post-modern age, to which I occasionally allude, truth is whatever anyone wants (or needs) it to be. “That’s my truth” is a phrase increasingly used these days, and it is really code for “That’s what I want regardless of whether it’s right or wrong, or works or not for anyone else.” However, as I have recently been saying, truth is…

Fast forward to present day Australia, and there are new, secular, albeit unofficial, inquisitors pointing their fingers at cultural and social “heretics”. This is no exaggeration, dear reader. There are many in our increasingly woke culture that refuse to live and let live, who refuse harmonious community and who object to any form of free speech that does not accord with their woke standards.

In our day, we Australians have become so busy and so tomorrow focused that we can barely live meaningfully in the moment anymore. Even families dining out and awaiting their meal order are not communicating with each other, not investing in one another, whilst fixated on their smartphone screens. Recently, I saw a video message…

I came across someone this week who professed to be a Christian, but is not part of any church - and hasn’t attended a church for many years. He was almost proud of the fact. “Nah, it’s not for me, mate”, he said, “You don’t need to be part of a church in order to be a Christian.” This person is an ex-preacher’s kid (he’s grown up now and has a family of his own), and he was proud of the fact that he was still “a Christian”, but did not “see the point of being part of a church, or organised religion”. I asked him…

These things are plain enough for Christians to see. But what we have not always seen – yet have probably suspected for some time – is the systematic imposition of sinful agendas upon the righteous. Concerning many of these, God is opening our eyes. And when God does so, it is a signal for His people to speak prophetically for righteousness’ sake.

Dear friends, we live in a world, a country, where shrill, aggressive and vindictive woke ideologies are wielded like baseball bats to club into silence anyone who dares to speak the truth about anything that is plainly wrong, or unrighteous, immoral or unholy – this has infected the church, in many places. Too many Christians are fearful when we should be bold for truth – intelligently bold, articulate speakers of truth, not rude, holier-than-thou, ungracious ranters and condemners.