I wonder what you are hungry for at Christmas? I wonder what you\u2019re not hungry for? I\u2019ve got some options for you for your Christmas dinner. I want you to shout out \u201chungry\u201d for the one that you would choose for your Christmas dinner. You are only allowed to choose one on each slide. <\/p>\n
Turkey or Beef
\nYorkshire pudding or roast potatoes
\nParsnips or Sprouts
\nBread sauce or gravy
\nChristmas pudding or Trifle<\/p>\n
I wonder if thinking and talking about these possibilities has left you feeling a bit hungry? Thinking about food can often do that, can\u2019t it. Even when I was sat in my study, pulling together the pictures for this, I started feeling a bit peckish.<\/p>\n
This morning we\u2019re thinking particularly about Mary, Jesus\u2019 mother, and her story. A normal young woman who was pulled into the centre of the biggest event in history. Her humility and love of God have been an inspiration to generations of Christians ever since. One of the things that is amazing about her is how well she understood God\u2019s ways, which are so brilliantly expressed in the song that she sang when she met with her cousin Elizabeth. She sings of how God\u2019s ways are different to the world\u2019s ways.
\nShe praises God for doing great things for someone like her, a normal, lowly servant. <\/p>\n
What does lowly mean? – Synonyms and opposites.<\/p>\n
She then goes on to sing about how God takes down the powerful from their thrones, lifts up the lowly \u2013 there\u2019s that word again, sends the rich away empty, but \u2026. fills the hungry with good things. <\/p>\n
God\u2019s upside down kingdom, with values so different to the world\u2019s values. <\/p>\n
God fills the hungry with good things. <\/p>\n
If we look ahead from Christmas, we see Jesus, when he was all grown up, picking this idea up and running with it. <\/p>\n
One day, he was out in the country side, teaching and healing people, and so many people had heard of him, that they all came out to listen to him and see what he was doing. They were so caught up in listening to him that they listened for hours, much longer than they had intended, and they hadn\u2019t brought food for the length of time they stayed. Jesus\u2019 friends and followers realised this, and suggested that Jesus send them away to buy food.
\nJesus suggests that they should feed the crowd, and they start doing the sums in their heads to work out how much it would cost, and realise they could never afford it, and anyway there wasn\u2019t anywhere to buy that much food. So what happened next?<\/p>\n
A small boy gave up his packed lunch, and Jesus filled the hungry with good things. Thousands of people were fed that day, and there were even left overs!
\nThat night, Jesus and his disciples crossed over the lake, and the next day the crowd came looking for him. He continued to teach them, and he said to them,
\n\u201cI am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.\u201d<\/p>\n
You see, Jesus wasn\u2019t just about filling up the hungry bellies with good things, he came to fill hungry hearts with his life and love. <\/p>\n
Jesus fills the hungry with good things. That\u2019s what Mary sang, and that\u2019s what I believe Jesus still does today. <\/p>\n
There are two things that I\u2019d like us to take away with us this morning, and to think about more over this Christmas time.<\/p>\n
The first is the part we have to play in this. That little boy bought his packed lunch and offered it to Jesus. We know that there are those in our communities who will be hungry this Christmas. Those who don\u2019t have enough to eat physically, those who are lonely or grieving. I know that many of us having given towards CAP hampers, donated to the community fridge, invited people round to lunch to our part in Jesus\u2019 ongoing work to fill the hungry with good things. Let\u2019s continue to look for opportunities to do that, to be part of God\u2019s work in the world.<\/p>\n
The second thing is to be honest with God about the things that we are hungry for. We started off thinking about we would be hungry for at Christmas dinner. I wonder what else you are hungry for this Christmas? I wonder what your heart is hungry for, what your spirit is hungry for? God wants to fill those hungers with good things. You might think you\u2019re not important enough, too young, too lowly, but you\u2019re not – God loves you and wants to fill you with good things. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I wonder what you are hungry for at Christmas? I wonder what you\u2019re not hungry for? I\u2019ve got some options for you for your Christmas dinner. I want you to shout out \u201chungry\u201d for the one that you would choose for your Christmas dinner. You are only allowed to choose one on each slide. Turkey […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[771],"class_list":["post-1079","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-luke-139-56"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carterclan.me.uk\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1079","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carterclan.me.uk\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carterclan.me.uk\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carterclan.me.uk\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carterclan.me.uk\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1079"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/carterclan.me.uk\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1079\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1080,"href":"https:\/\/carterclan.me.uk\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1079\/revisions\/1080"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carterclan.me.uk\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1079"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carterclan.me.uk\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1079"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carterclan.me.uk\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1079"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}