What are you doing here?

 

In the name of the God who meets us in candlelight, questions, and quiet longing. Amen.

Tonight, the place is full. That matters. It tells me something important about you. Because nobody drags themselves out on a cold December evening out of habit. Not in 2025. Not when there’s a warm sofa, a glowing screen, and plenty of Christmas viewing already queued up on iPlayer. Something has drawn you here. Something quieter than nostalgia, deeper than tradition, and—if I may suggest—more stubborn than logic.

For if we’re honest, the story we tell tonight is a strange one. Virgins. Angels. Stars that behave suspiciously like GPS systems. Shepherds receiving divine messages while minding their own business. If this were submitted as a Netflix pitch, it would be sent back with a polite note saying, “Interesting, but totally implausible.”

I imagine that many of you are sitting here thinking, I love the carols. I love the atmosphere. But I’m not quite sure what I’m supposed to do with all the supernatural bits. And if that’s you—let me say this clearly—you are very welcome here. You are not a second-class Christian. You are not a failure of faith. You are, in fact, standing in a very long and honourable tradition.

Because the Bible itself is stuffed full of people who respond to God not with instant belief, but with raised eyebrows. Mary herself asks, “How can this be?” Joseph assumes something has gone badly wrong. The shepherds are terrified. Even the wise men, by setting off on an epic journey across deserts, seem to be saying, We’ll believe it when we see it. Doubt, it turns out, is not the opposite of faith. It is often the doorway into it.

So what if—just for tonight—we loosen our grip on the question of whether Jesus’ birth really happened like that? And instead ask a deeper one: why does this story refuse to let us go?

I think it’s because, at its heart, the Christmas story is not really about unlikely human reproductive methods, or astronomy. It’s about where God chooses to be found. Not in palaces, but in borrowed rooms. Not in strength, but in vulnerability. Not in the centre of power, but on its margins—perhaps in a space no larger than this chapel.

This is a story that quietly but relentlessly challenges our assumptions about power. God does not arrive as a general, or a billionaire, or a social media influencer with perfect lighting. God arrives as a child—dependent, fragile, carried by ordinary people doing their best under difficult circumstances. If that sounds unconvincing, that may be precisely the point.

Christmas suggests that the sacred is not hidden in the spectacular, but woven into the ordinary. That holiness does not shout—it whispers. That love does not conquer by force, but by persistence. And that God’s way of changing the world begins not with fear, but with invitation.

You might not believe in angels with wings. But I suspect you believe in moments that break in unexpectedly. A word spoken at just the right time. A kindness that changes the course of a life. A sudden clarity that arrives when you weren’t looking for it. Call them coincidences if you like. The Bible calls them messengers.

You might have trouble believing in virgin births. But perhaps you can believe that new beginnings still happen. That something genuinely fresh can be born in places that seem exhausted or closed down. That history does not have to repeat itself forever, but can still be interrupted by hope.

You might not be sure what you believe about God at all. But something has drawn you here—to the light, to the music, to this ancient, stubborn hope that refuses to die. And maybe faith, tonight, is not about signing up to a set of supernatural claims. Maybe it’s simply about allowing yourself to be addressed. To be nudged. To be invited into a different way of seeing the world.

Because if Christmas is true—at any level—then it says this: that love is stronger than fear, that light still shines in dark places, and that the ordinary stuff of human life is precisely where God chooses to dwell.

And whether you call it belief or not, that is good news worth coming back for.