Merry Christmas 2025

Last Updated on: December 27, 2025

“And Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart.” (Luke 2:19)

Christmas has a way of unsettling us, if we let it. We dress it up with candles and carols, but the story itself—Luke’s story—is anything but tidy. It begins with an emperor flexing his muscles, issuing decrees, counting heads, reminding the world who’s in charge. Caesar Augustus speaks, and the world moves. Or so it seems.

But Luke is already smiling behind the text. Because while Caesar is busy measuring his empire, God is quietly remaking it. The true King arrives—not in Rome, not in a palace, not even in a respectable home, but in a borrowed space behind an inn, wrapped in rags, placed in a feed trough. The contrast is almost comic. The emperor counts people; God becomes one of the counted. The ruler demands obedience; the true ruler arrives as a child who cannot yet speak.

This is the first great surprise of Christmas: God comes small.

And then there are the shepherds. We sentimentalise them now, but in their own time they were nobodies—rough sleepers, shift workers, men who lived on the margins and smelled of their labour. If you were planning a global announcement, you wouldn’t start with them. But heaven does. The angelic choir bypasses the palace, the temple, the scholars, and the influencers of the day. They go straight to the paddock.

This is the second surprise: God comes to the overlooked.

And when the shepherds arrive at the manger, they become the first evangelists. Not the priests. Not the scribes. Not the powerful. The shepherds. The ones no one expected to carry a message of hope. They return to their fields “glorifying and praising God”, transformed not by privilege or education but by encounter.

This is the third surprise: God entrusts the good news to the unlikely.

Christmas, then, is not a story about everything going right. It’s a story about God showing up where no one thought to look. In obscurity. In vulnerability. In the cracks of the world’s power structures. And if that’s how God came then, perhaps that’s how God still comes now.

Maybe the unexpected places in our own lives—the disappointments, the detours, the quiet corners where no one applauds—are precisely the places where grace is waiting to break in. Maybe the people we overlook, or the parts of ourselves we’d rather hide, are the very places God chooses to dwell. Maybe the manger is not just a historical detail but a pattern: God keeps arriving in the places we least expect.

Luke tells us that Mary “treasured all these things and pondered them in her heart.” Perhaps that is our task this Christmas: to ponder the unexpected, to treasure the small signs of hope, to look again at the places we assume are empty and discover that God has been there all along.

🌲❤️ MERRY CHRISTMAS ❤️🌲

Our Sunday Eucharist

We celebrated another wonderful Sunday Eucharist last weekend, and a special thank you to my two wonderful panelists—Andrew Madry and Diane Bates

Our dialogue on Romans 4 was the highlight for me, and that included some solid input from our virtual brother, AI Saint Paul. You’ll find the video of that discussion at the end of this newsletter. It’s 13.5 mins long. As to the shorts (each around one minute in length), you’ll find the two most popular from last week below. It’s no surprise that they were both related to the Bondi attack.

View our other shorts on the Sunday Eucharist Instagram page, or find the archives of all our broadcasts in full on YouTube.

This Sunday I’m looking forward to having Scott Minchin and Rev. John Jegasothy with me on the panel. Do join us if you can, and please invite your friends by referring them to our Facebook Event Page or the Streamyard page and join us at midday via Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Faithia,  Streamyard or TheSundayEucharist.com.

Let me work your corner

​If you’d like to see my work continue, please click here to make a one-off donation. If you can afford a monthly contribution, sign up at Patreon.com and choose either:

Middleweight—$10/month (community mentoring)

• Enrol in the Fighting Fit training program
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• All of the above +
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• One weekend per month at Binacrombi Bush Camp.

Every dollar helps keep the wheels turning—the websites, the newsletters, the broadcasts, the boxing club, and the bush camp. Sign up at Patreon.com.

What’s On?

• Sunday, December 28– Our Eucharist from noon @thesundayeucharist.com, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Faithia or Streamyard
• Tuesday, December 30 – Boxing at the Mundine Gym in Redfern from 7pm
• Friday to Sunday, January 2nd to 4th, 2026 – @Binacrombi. Please join us.

I am hoping that some of you are going to join us at Binacrombi over the first weekend of the New Year (January 2 to 4). As mentioned last week, not only can I

promise you all the usual fun—boxing, running, weight training, swimming, fishing and feasting—but you also get a special weekend of Tattoo Art, courtesy of my darling daughter, Imogen, better known by her Instagram handle, SHCLGRL 

​Check out Imo’s portfolio on her Instagram page. You’ll find the link to the booking form on the same page. Book there or just talk to Imo about your tattoo when you roll up at Binacrombi. Book your cabin by calling Amanda on 1800-620-706.

The other big news for me is that on Christmas Day I led my last service at South Sydney Uniting Church (SSUC). I’ve had a role there for the last three months, and I’m sad to be leaving. My time there was not without friction. Even so, I met so many wonderful people at SSUC. I will miss them dearly. You’ll see many of those people in the pic above (scroll up). SSUC, my heart and prayers stay with you. ❤️🙏

I pray that Christmas is a time of joy for you. Yes, it’s a hard time for many of us who are grieving family members who are lost or estranged. I pray that, one way or another, you will find Christ this Christmas and that Christ will find you.

Your brother in the Good Fight,