FROM THE MINISTRY TEAM
Dear Friends
One of my abiding memories as a
child was reaching down to the bottom of the eiderdown (1940’s speak for duvet)
early on Christmas morning to see if Father Christmas had been. I would run my fingers over the lumps and
shapes of the stocking that I found there. No point in calling to my parents to tell them
the good news – last year’s experience told me that anything before
At teatime we had trifle, which came in a large cut glass
bowl. It was decorated like a crown on
top with a layer of custard (gold), pieces of glace cherry (rubies), angelica
(emeralds), silver balls (pearls) and small pats of whipped cream (ermine). Inside there was sponge cake and tinned fruit
and jelly. This represented a triumph of
culinary wheeler-dealing on my mother’s part – it was wartime – and did not
last long.
I took for granted the fact that I had my own bedroom, that
my parents loved me and that we lived in relative security, in an undamaged
house. In
Some years later there were new interests and traditions:
the Nine Lessons and Carols from King’s College,
For many people the Christmases I have described so far may
reflect much of their experience, but truth is I haven’t said much about Christ
yet. Those who ran the campaign to “Put
Christ back into Christmas” would know what I mean.
For Christians, the Christmas message is all about God
loving the world and mankind so much that he sent his only Son to us, so that
we might better know what God is like, (“He who has seen Jesus has seen the
Father”) might be reconciled to Him, (“Peace on earth and mercy mild,
God and sinners reconciled”) and might by our faith and behaviour finally attain eternal life. These insights are just some of God’s presents
to us at Christmas.
We are rendered speechless because God in his mercy
deliberately chose to appear in this world as an infant. In that way He puts Himself on an equal
footing with us, He makes no attempt to pull rank and impose His will on us,
instead He offers us a free choice: “This is my beloved Son, listen to him.” He acts in the weakness of a dependant child,
in the vulnerability of an infant whose very survival depends upon devoted
parents. Christ is born in a stable in a
village not his own, at the margin of society; worshipped by shepherds, who,
because of their livelihood, were also at the margin of society; and within a
few months he will be a refugee in Egypt.
In saying this we are making another mind-blowing claim:
that God became incarnate; (“Word of the Father, now in flesh appearing. O
come, let us adore him, O come let us adore him, Christ the Lord.”)
He took flesh and moved about among us, he became a man just as we are. He was not, and is not, a remote divine person
who, having created the world leaves it to its own devices, like some detached
watchmaker looking on from a distance (a view that circulated in the eighteenth
century).
We believe that ours is a God who is
active in history, who can change people’s lives – always acting within the
constraints of the scientific rules that govern the physical world and form
part of his providence. He rages against
injustice, weeps with us when we weep, laughs with us when we laugh. Tested in all things just as
we are. Jesus, the Word of God,
became what we are that he might make us what he himself is.
The birth of Christ radically alters
our status (“O come, thou Rod of Jesse, free thine
own from Satan’s tyranny”). We are
like prisoners released from a dark dungeon, or citizens who used to be
enslaved members of the kingdom of sin and evil, but who are now citizens of a
kingdom whose king is Christ Jesus, free to enjoy the liberty of spirit that
his rule brings.
Finally, God’s chief gift to us at
Christmas is the gift of hope, the hope that we may attain eternal life (“
A happy and joyful Christmas
everyone!
Colin Bailey