At Christmas we celebrate the birth of Jesus, somebody unique in the whole of history.  The writer of the letter to the Hebrews takes great pains to explain at the start of this letter that Jesus is more than a prophet, more even than an angel.
We’ve had prophets before, he says: Jesus is greater than them.  Now God has spoken to us through his Son. 
The author uses two images to explain to his readers that Jesus was more than a prophet.
One of the images is that of an imprint. Greek word here is karakter, which we use for a printed letter or number, and also for the personality of an individual. But the Greeks used it to talk about a carving, such as the stone monuments we have on the walls of this church, or perhaps of a king or an emperor on a public building; or the imprint on a coin stamped with the head or emblem of the ruler. In the latter case, the image on the coin is the exact counterpart of the image on the harder metal stamp used to make it. We remember that the Jews were forbidden to make an image of any god; but here we find Jesus is described as a living image of God. The Greek word used here is translated variously in different versions of the Bible: NRSV – reflection, KJV – brightness, NIV – radiance. As a somebody trained in physics I find this idea intriguing, and I am reminded of the work that Newton did with a glass prism, taking a sunbeam and creating a spectrum of light on his laboratory wall. Not just the seven colours, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet, but in fact hundreds of different colours merging into one another. When later scientists tried to refine his work, and projected bigger and better spectra on their walls, they were surprised to find fine black lines recurring in certain colours. The location of the these lines in the spectrum proved to be independent of the kind glass used, of the season of the year, or where on planet earth the experiment was performed. They experimented to see whether they could reproduce the same pattern from hot objects here on earth: hot metal, hot stone and hot gases. They found that hot hydrogen gas have the same pattern, and therefore deduced that the sun was made of hot hydrogen gas. Nobody has ever been to the sun to check this out, but because of the quality of the light we receive from it, we know what the sun is made of. The writer to the Hebrews is saying that although nobody has seen the Father we know what he is like because of our experience of his Son. Jesus, reveals to us what God is like: more than a messeger, his very nature reveals the nature of God. The author then goes on to speak of the work of God’s Son, which shows that he is more than an angel: With echoes of the creation story, when God spoke and made the universe - the author claims that this Son is the sustainer of the cosmos. In John’s gospel we heard Jesus described as the word of God through whom all things were made. In Colossians Paul tells his readers that Christ is the one in whom all things hold together; and here the writer to the Hebrews calls him the sustainer. God did not create and then stand back and let the creation run on its own - the witness of scripture is that God continues to be intimately involved with his creation, moment by moment. Then we are told that Jesus These few words in our Christmas reading look forward to Easter: the death of Jesus on the cross, the sacrifice to end all the temple sacrifices; the sacrifice that puts us right with God. As we sing in that great Christmas hymn Jesus was Jesus is therefore both sustainer and redeemer: far more than the angels who were mere messengers from God. Conclusion Something amazing happened that first Christmas. Something earth shattering that had never happened before. God became man. Jesus born at Bethlehem was the imprint and radiance of God: he is our sustainer and redeemer. We thank and praise God for that.