The Rev. Donald Sensing has posted his Christmas Eve sermon: why Christmas is, in its most profound sense, a family reunion.
When someone receives Christ as Christ was sent – the unique embodiment of the eternal God – and when someone believes in the name of Jesus, God makes him a son or her a daughter of God. It takes a second birth to be made a child of God, a birth of the spirit, not of flesh. We are reborn from above. Jesus said in the Gospel of John, "Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. You should not be surprised at my saying, 'You must be born again'" John 3:6-7).So we are brothers and sisters of Christ in the family of God. The book of Hebrews teaches, “Both the one who makes people holy [that’s God] and those who are made holy [that’s you and me] are of the same family. So Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters” (Hebrews 2:11). In a way, the Nativity is the adoption ceremony of you and me as God’s children.
Read the whole thing.