On this Christmas season, each one of us has a choice to make – do we put God first or do we put him last in all our doings?
This was the question the Governor General Sir Bishop David Vunagi left with the church after his Christmas Day sermon at Saint Barnabas Cathedral on Sunday.
The Governor General based his Christmas Day sermon on the Epistle reading Titus 3:1-7 to reflect on Christmas.
According to Governor General Sir David, Christmas is all about versus 4-5 of the reading “But when the kindness and love of God our Saviour was revealed, he saved us. It was not because of any good deeds that we ourselves had done, but because of his own mercy that he saved us, through the Holy Spirit, who gives us new birth and new life by washing us”.
“This is really what Christmas is all about. We do not deserve to be saved because we have done nothing good but it was through the love and goodness of God that Christmas is here,” Sir Bishop David said.
“So the purpose of Christmas is to come and take us back to God, the purpose of Christmas is to reconcile us with God and to reconcile with each other because even in our lives we continue to hate each other, we continue to live in bitterness, in anger and frustration.”
As Christians, Sir David asked, will we listen to God, or will we continue to be stubborn and do what we think is right?
“Christmas is trying to get us back, but are we listening to God to go back to him or continue to be stubborn and do what we think is right?
“Is God wasting his time to try and take us back to him when we are stubborn? What is the reason for this?
“I have been wondering about all this in my journey in life, why is God doing this to us? Every time we celebrate Good Friday, Easter and Christmas I always think about this, why is God wasting his time to us if we are stubborn?
“I cannot find an answer anywhere else. The only answer, maybe a solution, is from the Scripture in Philippians 3: 20 “We, however are citizens of heaven, and we eagerly wait for our Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, to come from heaven”.
“That is the answer,” Sir David said.
He said the Bible is very clear that we are citizens of heaven. “Although we are on earth we are not from earth.
“What a good news.
“We are not from earth, we are from heaven so our ways, our means should be different from those of this world.
“Every time we speak we should speak heavenly things, every time we act we should act in the heavenly manner because we are citizens of heaven.
We are not from earth that is why God is trying to get us back to where we came from and that is Heaven,” he said.
Unfortunately, Sir David said today as we reflect on our society “I feel the society is sick”.
“The society is sick because we are not helping the society to live in the manner God wants us to live. That is why lawlessness continue to occupy the centre stage. That is why children three years of age and seven years of age have been raped, not by strangers but by grandfathers, fathers – these people
should be crucified., they should be castrated – because there is no other way to think about how these things happen and they continue to happen. That is why I said our society is sick,” Sir David said.
He said the reason why there is no change in our society is because we try to solve things by our own power and strength.
“That is what I notice in the country, we try to do things according to what we can do as human beings. We do not allow God to participate in our problem solving that is the reason,” he said.
He said on 20th November 2022 he was at Saint Barnabas Cathedral to attend a combined service which the National Government organised for us to prayer for our nation as we prepare for the Pacific Games in November next year.
“The first thing I noticed when I walk in here is that the Cathedral is empty, apart from the Prime Minister and some ministers I did not see members of parliament, I did not see public servants, I did not even see church leaders, our gathering this morning is fully packed but that day only few of us came. And that tells me where we put God. God is not our priority. And how we approach our issues are all wrong,” Sir David said.
“Every year we protest against corruption, how do we try to solve that, we march on the road. Every year 25th November to December we protest against violence how do we do it, we march. I’m not saying that is wrong, that is good but where do we put God in all these because I know God knows all the answers.
“He has the answers to all the problems and worries that we have but we are not inviting God to come into all these things.
“We are trying to solve things according to our own strength and according to our knowledge that is why we will continue to fail. And the 20th of November was a sad time for me, I came to see very few people here, but the service was for the nation and I said this is where Solomon Islands is, our attitude to God is exactly this. All our programs God comes last.
“So good people as we come to celebrate another Christmas where we heard today it is through his own love and goodness that he came to born in our midst. So that he can take us back to himself so that we can be good to each other. But if we continue to isolate God in our lives, we are wasting our time.
“The good news is God does not give up on us. So while God has the good character, in spite of our wickedness, failures, all the abomination that we commit, God is still for us. So this Christmas Day let us make some kind of resolution so that we put God first before we start marching on the road.
“We must try to do things according to God’s plan and if God is to come into our lives, into our decision making, into our problem solving we must prioritise God. And it is something that each one of us will have to make decision on so that our sick society can change.”
To start, he said we must admit our wrongs.
“All we need to do first is to confess, God we are sorry, we have been wrong, come into our lives and purify our hearts.
“The storeroom for problems is the heart and Jesus said that in Matthew 15:11 ‘It is not what goes into your mouth that makes you ritually unclean; rather what comes out of it makes you unclean’ – the plans for killing, all the rape and the violence comes from the heart. So if you want to change, you better work on the heart. That organ is the source of everything that is evil. But it can also be the source of everything that is good if we give it the chance to do good things for us,” he said.
Therefore, he said whatever we do should reflect the culture of heaven.
Our priorities as heavenly citizens according to Paul’s letter to the christians in the Church of Colossae says this I quote ‘may the word of Christ dwell in us richly and that we must teach and correct one another with wisdom and sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs with gratitude in our hearts to God’.
“We must thank God all the time and that is what Christians supposed to do.
“That means whatever we say or do should reflect righteousness, patience, forgiveness, compassion, humility and above all love ‘which binds all things together in perfect unity’ Colossians 3.
“So that wherever we live people may be able to see in us that we are citizens of heaven. “How we act and behave and speak should be different from earthly culture.
“So the important thing about Christmas may I conclude is that we are outcasts but we are God’s priority.
“We are outcasts, we are not fit for anything in God’s standard, but we are his priority. We do not come last in God’s plan, Christian people, it is not like us who put God last.
“We have to make a choice – each one of us must make a choice – so the choice is yours either you choose God or you choose something else.
“That is what Christmas is, you have to make a choice to accept God or to put God last, but for God we are his priority. We come first in God’s list and that is good news for us. So this season of Christmas to help us, go and do these simple things according to Paul,” Sir David said.
