Just before midnight on Sunday, October 30^th, just under two months ago, the world paid remarkable attention to the birth of a little girl in Manila. Born about a month prematurely, and weighing a rather meagre 5.5lbs, Danica May Camacho entered this life surrounded by the flash bulbs of the media, in addition to the more usual gathering of medical staff one might expect to find at a hospital birth. For Danica was, as you may well recall, the little baby deemed to be the 7 billionth baby born in the history of the world.

Reaction to her birth was varied, ranging from the straight-forward celebrations of those who get excited when the milometer in the car is about to turn loads of nines into loads of zeros, through to those who were slightly more anxious, and who greeted this milestone with talk about birth rates, fertility, and food shortages, pointing out with just a degree of alarm that the baby who was deemed to be the 6 billionth human is now merely 12 years old.

Such attention around the birth of a baby is not, of course, always a good thing. If we flick backwards in our New Testament from the beautiful account of Jesus birth we have just heard from Lukes gospel, to the equivalent place in Matthew, when we learn of the laborious journey of the wise men to seek the new born Jesus, we rapidly see a darker story emerge. The Magi arrive in Jerusalem which was, of course, the natural place to seek out someone of great importance, rather than the tin-pot little town to its south that was Bethlehem the Magi arrive and start asking questions, which provokes Herod to the kind of dictatorial rage and bloodlust with which that region is all too familiar. And, as a result, countless young babies are slaughtered, and the Holy Family only just make good their escape to Egypt.

I dont know what kind of a world Camille and Florante of Manila think their little Morning Star has been born into, but Mary and Joseph must certainly have had a pretty bitter view of the world into which Jesus was born. After all, just take note of how tonights gospel reading began this story this remarkable story of God becoming human begins with a decree from the Emperor Augustus a decree that happened while Quirinius was governor of Syria.

Dont let the fact that you have heard this passage so many, many times over the years lull you into a false sense of Christmas beauty and complacency this is Luke reminding us that Mary and Joseph, and all their kith and kin, lived under a severe and ungenerous military occupation. And a military occupation, furthermore, that tolerated the local exercise of power by the puppet King Herod, with all his paranoid temper tantrums.

And the funny thing is that, once you start to peel away the tinsel and the schmaltz with which we all like to wrap up not merely the presents under the tree, but the scandalous act of the Incarnation once we open our eyes to the realities of Christs birth the real implications of that when and that where, it all starts to feel just a bit too uncomfortably familiar. Military occupations, and violent dictatorships in the Middle East have been as much a part of the 2011^th Year of our Lord as of the very first such year.

And even when you take away that military and murderous back-drop, there is the same shameful fact that the Jesus, who in the closing words of the Bible, describes himself as the bright morning star, and Danica May Camacho, born some 2000 years and several billion births later, were both born into poverty, despite being born into a world so richly blessed with resources by the God who created it that nobody should go without food or shelter.

And the question for tonight the question that, if we do not ask it makes us guilty of sinful, scandalous neglect and complacency the question which, if we do not ask it, makes us part of the problem and not part of the solution - the question for tonight is whether or not any of this makes a difference to us.

A month or so ago, I was privileged to hear a talk by someone whose faith spurred him to try and make a difference. You may well have heard of Steve Chalke a man of remarkable energy and vision in his mid 50s, who having become a Christian in his teens, realized that the Christmas story, and the life of the baby born this night had to make a difference to the world, and thus to him, personally.

Steve became a Baptist minister, but he felt the need to make a difference on a bigger platform than local ministry, and so, in 1985, he founded the Oasis Trust, in an attempt to make a difference. To make a difference about just the kind of issues that were as prevalent around the illegitimate birth in a stable we celebrate tonight, as around the 7 billionth birth, personified in Danica May Camacho just eight weeks ago.

Oasis, of course, has gone from strength to strength, both in the UK, and around the world thanks, both, to the vision and energy of Steve himself, and of the countless people who, following his example, also want to make a difference. For there is always a difference that needs to be made, and, even today, on Christmas Eve, 2011, the Oasis website is high-lighting the fact that youth provision is being cut, and that Vulnerable young people need your help now more than ever. And, lest you have any doubt about it, it was pretty bad for the vulnerable when Jesus was a baby.

And I was privileged last month to hear Steve Chalke give a talk, during which he mentioned a profound experience he had while on hoiday in Prague recently. For in that great Eastern European city there is a remarkable synagogue the Pinkas Synagogue. A 16^th Century synagogue, it was, of course, closed down during the Nazi occupation, where had Hitler triumphed it was destined to become the Exotic Museum of an Extinct Race. Mercifully, the Second World War saw a different outcome, and having been restored and repaired, it is now the most remarkable memorial to the Holocaust, for, all around the inside walls of the building, two men spent four painstaking years inscribing the names and dates of all 77,297 Czech Jews who lost their lives as the forces of the Third Reich engulfed Europe.

So one learns of Elsa Lutzova, who died aged 43; of Bernard Macner, who died aged 36; of Adela Maglicova, who died aged 63, and of so many more. But, said Steve Chalke, the extraordinary thing amongst all those names and dates the truly remarkable thing which affected him so profoundly there, alongside the record of those in their sixties or seventies, and of those in middle age or early adulthood, there also are the names of those who died aged five, or four, or three, or even aged two years or less. Jewish children who died even at just the same age that Herod was slaughtering the Jewish boys who were Jesus contemporaries.

What made them do it? Steve Chalke shouted at the 400 or so of us who had gathered to listen to him. What made them do it? And, for a moment, I thought he was asking how even the most corrupt and awful of dictators and super-powers could perpetrate such terrible deeds. But he wasnt. Steve wasnt asking us to explain the motives for genocide, for, I guess, that like the rest of us, he understands just what humans at their worst are capable of

What made them do it? he demanded . What made them carry on having babies at that point? For, even by the mid 1930s it was becoming easy to see the tide of horror about to wash over Europe, and by the end of that decade the War had already begun, with all its evil and devastation. So why did the Elsa Lutzovas and Bernard Macners, and the other Jews of Prague who could see exactly what was going to befall them by that point why did they carry on having babies born?

There is only one reason, asserted Steve Chalke, there is only one reason why you can possibly carry on having babies in such awful circumstances and that is that you know that you know that you have something in your life that is stronger, that is bigger, that is more important, and that will ultimately be more triumphant, than anything that the forces of this world can muster. You can only, he said, You can only carry on having babies at that point, because you know you have something that makes a difference.

The Gospel of Luke is concerned with the life of Jesus, whom we know as the Christ the one who made the ultimate difference to the relationship between God and humanity. And, with such a focus, it is not surprising that Luke never tells us what happened to the Shepherds after that remarkable night 2011 years ago. But, from that moment of what Steve Chalke would probably call divine Social Inclusion, I think we might wager a bet that things changed for them I think it reasonable to suppose that in the birth of that baby, they found something that made a difference. For the angels promised them a sign, and they ran, and they did, indeed, find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.

And so I say to you tonight, whether it be the sign of Heavens bright morning star Jesus, or this years bright morning star Danica May Camacho, do not let the sign of the new born child pass by you without making a difference to you and without you wanting it to make a difference through you. For if you return home tonight, and the birth of this child makes no difference to your life at all, then whatever is waiting for you under your Christmas tree will lack true meaning and true value.

For make no mistake, God has called you here tonight for one purpose only, and that is for us for each one of us to see once again the sign of that baby lying in a manger, and for it to make a difference to use, and thus, to his world.

For, like the prophet, God is calling us to bring that message of salvation, that message of reward, and of recompense, and to tell this waiting world that it is, despite all the odds, it is still, Sought out by him and that we are the member of a City not Forsaken. Amen.

Dominic Barrington, Christmas 2011