This transcript has been automatically generated, and therefore may not be 100% accurate.

Thank you very much. Can I add my welcome to Hughes and say how good it is to see you here this afternoon. Thank you for coming to this first carol service. It feels early in December to have a carol service, doesn't it? And early in the day as well.

03:30 but here we are. And it's great to be together. And a warm welcome to those who are joining us online. I hope that you can hear us loud and clear. And can I say thank you also to those who have made this church look so beautiful with the candles and the flowers.

I hope you can see them. And the Christmas tree behind me. And thank you to our readers, and thank you to our choir and our instrumentalists. Under Chris's leadership. Can we give them a round of applause to thank them?

Well done.

We're very grateful to you all in this wonderful celebration. And I just have a few minutes with you this afternoon to ask you a question. And this is my question, what makes Christmas for you? What really makes Christmas? I hope it's a candlelit carol service like tonight.

But maybe it's the smell of a Christmas tree. Isn't that wonderful? When you go downstairs in the morning and you're greeted by the smell of the pine tree. The Christmas tree. Or is it mince pies?

Hands up if you've had a mince pie already. Oh, well done. Very obstemious lot. Well, mince pies, a few days off work, perhaps the chance to eat and drink a little bit more than we would usually time with your family, maybe watching the little ones open the Christmas stockings or presents around the tree. Well, for one mother, Alison Johns of Hounslow in west London, Christmas is clearly about the Christmas dinner, to be exact, her Christmas dinner.

So a year or two ago, the newspapers reported that. So determined was she that her newly married son had a plate of her Christmas dinner that she arranged for a motorbike courier to carry a plate of her roast turkey and trimmings 101 miles down the motorway to Barry St. Edmunds in Suffolk, where her son was spending Christmas day at his mother in law's house.

One can only imagine what that did for family relations.

What makes Christmas? Well, our readings this evening have told us what made the first Christmas. And I'd just like to take a few minutes of your time to share that with you. And it began that first Christmas, of course, with a test result, a surprise pregnancy. In jewish custom, the engagement was often arranged in childhood.

It was followed by a period of betrothal, and that usually lasted for several years until the marriage proper. And that's probably the situation that Mary and Joseph found themselves in. And during their betrothal, although they were called husband and wife, they didn't have the responsibilities or relations of a married couple. And during that betrothal, Mary was found to be pregnant. Well, Joseph could only draw one conclusion, I'm sure, and had in mind to divorce her quietly.

He was a good and righteous man. He didn't want to humiliate her, so he planned to end things quietly. But angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son, and you're to give him the name Jesus because he will save his people from their sins.

Parents spend ages, don't they, choosing names for their children? We did. And one of our boys had two weeks being called Thomas. And then we decided, no, he's not a Thomas, he's a Toby. So he's never really forgiven us for that.

Sometimes you try and keep a family tradition going, don't you? Or you look at the meaning of a name. What should we call this little one? It's a name they're going to carry for the rest of their lives. But this little baby comes with a name tag already attached.

You ought to call him Jesus because he will save his people from their sins. And we'll come back to that in a minute, what that means. But first, I'd like us just to sort of turn the clock back, back to our first reading, back to the first couple, also another couple desperately in love in a paradise world. And we met them in Genesis, chapter three, our first parents. And they literally had the whole world going for them.

But almost as soon as it had begun, they made a terrible choice. Even though the Lord God had said to them, the whole world is yours. Just trust me. There is one tree in the whole world I don't want you to eat from. That was the one they wanted, so they ate from it.

They thought that God was a taker, that he was keeping something from them. They thought that they would be much happier in their lives without God, that he was making them miserable. And generation after generation, well, we've shared the family likeness, haven't we? Walked down the same footpath, followed their footsteps, and we have shared in their death. I do love Christmas trees.

We got ours yesterday afternoon. I love the smell. I love the decorations. I love the lights. I love the presents underneath.

I love the fact that the Christmas tree is at the centre of your home on Christmas day and everybody gathers around it. But as a race, we are a little bit like a Christmas tree that has been cut off from the source of life and planted in the living room. It looks magnificent, doesn't it? For a while. And the Bible says we flourish, we achieve great things, lots of things to give thanks for.

But actually, we've been cut off from the source of life itself, from God himself. And you know what it's like in January when you take the decorations off the tree and you strip the needles off, don't you, as you pull the decorations off the branches? That's like us without life of our own. We're separated from God and we need rescue. Rescue.

But as soon as it went wrong, the Lord promised a saviour, a rescuer born of a virgin. And as the years rolled by, it's as if the torchlight of God's promise is pulled tighter and tighter and the promises fill out and the details are filled in. And we heard in our other readings, he will be called the Prince of peace. He'll be born in Bethlehem, the town of David. He'll reign over the whole world.

He will be king one day. He will bring peace to this world. And don't we long for that now, as we see the news, as we see Gaza and Israel and Ukraine and Yemen, and the list goes on and on, we long for that day when he will come back and wipe every tear from our eyes. And there will be peace. And this world will be all that he made it to be.

Because he is God's saviour, God's rescuer. So the angel says, you are to give him the name Jesus because he will save his people from their sins.

But secondly, Christmas isn't just about a rescue by God, it's about a relationship with God. And Christmas is about relationships, isn't it? We know that for many, Christmas lunch or Christmas dinner is one of the highlights of the day. Although research by the Food Network UK found that cooking it, cooking your Christmas lunch requires so much skill that most people do not get it right until they are 47 years old.

One in ten cooks has made watery gravy. 9% has forgotten to defrost the turkey, 20% have misjudged the cooking time. And getting your food in front of your family is only the start of the problem. Because one weekend supplement produced a little while ago, a two page guide saying, surviving Christmas with your family. If you and your family bicker all year long, you can be sure that there'll be tension at Christmas lunch.

It recommended avoiding known hot topics, diversionary tactics at the meal table and going out for a walk afterwards. It encouraged essential oils, deep breathing and relaxation techniques, and it discouraged excessive alcohol, cigarettes and other drugs. So there we are. Good advice, I'm sure. Christmas is meant to be a time of relationships, of being together again.

It's a time, more than any other, when we want to be with those that we love, isn't it? And when we miss those who are no longer here with us. But Christmas is about God healing the greatest relationship of all, the one we were made for. Our relationship with him. Matthew, the gospel writer, adds a little explanation.

All this took place to fulfil what the Lord had said. Through the prophet, the virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Emmanuel, which means God with us. Jesus the Saviour grew up to be a man, and he died on a cross to pay for our sins so that we might be rescued, so that we might have a relationship with him and with his father right now and forever. And this afternoon, that offer is as powerful and true as it was the day it was first made. Whoever you are, whatever you've done, the God of the Bible loves you.

He loves you and me. And he sent his son for you to be your rescuer, to bringing you into relationship with him forevermore. And at all saints, we'd love to help you find out more about that and more about him as you leave tonight. In just a few minutes time, please do take one of these books. We've got boxes of them.

Take it away. It's a very short book. It's a chance to think a little bit further about these things. And on the back of your order of service, you'll find a link to a great resource called three, two, one, which does the same, written by a friend of ours down in Eastbourne. We'd love to help you.

So, rescue and relationship. The angel said you're to give him the name Jesus because he will save his people from their sins and they will call him Emmanuel, which means God with us. Well, as I end, I just want to wish you all a very, very happy Christmas indeed, a good start to the new year. And I wonder if I might be our chaplain, as it were, and just pray for us before we move on in our service. Let's pray.

Our loving heavenly father, we thank you for giving us your son to be our saviour at Christmas time. We thank you that through Jesus, your son, we can be your sons and daughters, brought right into your family through his death and resurrection. Draw us to yourself this Christmas, Lord, we pray. Show us yourself self and make us yours for Jesus sake. Amen.

Amen.