Christmas News Letter 2008

As we prepare to celebrate Christmas the situation is daunting: warfare, financial crisis, knife crime, an unrelenting reminder of the dangers and complexities of our world. Can Christmas make a difference? Does it have the power to transform our despair and revitalise us to engage with life, as it is, with vigour and commitment?

I believe it does. The bedrock of Christmas is the activity of the Living God.

“God so loved the world that he gave his only Son….” (John 3: 16)

It is the world as it is – “warts and all” – that is the object of God’s love and cannot be changed, as you and I cannot be changed, by any other power than the power of love. God accepts the world in its violent, broken separation from himself and in Jesus becomes fully human in order to end the separation and heal the deep seated fear of life and death which fuels our violence.

Bethlehem, the Manger, the Shepherds, the Wise Men, all bear testimony to a Baby – God coming to us in utmost vulnerability, needy and fragile! The birth of Jesus is the death of the fearsome warrior god made largely in our own image and likeness. It is also the possibility of a new life for all of humanity, a new way of being in the world for you and me. The character and nature of God, lived to the full in Jesus, remains vulnerable even to death on the Cross, the gateway to everlasting life for Jesus and for us. Yes, you!

“… as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ” (1 Corinthians 15: 22)

Christmas assures us of God’s unconditional love for the world and so is, rightly, a time of celebration and joy. The killjoys want to point to its commercialisation, its excesses of food and drink and so on. They totally miss the point! Genuine celebration leaves no “hole”, no anti-climax, for the wonder of the baby Jesus, the Incarnation, lies at its centre. Everything else is fertile ground for God’s love to break through to us – our unsatisfied longings, miserable drunkenness and downbeat behaviour, our half-hearted celebrations are where Jesus is with us! We cannot escape the determination of God to encounter us because he loves us more than we can ever imagine.

Have a Very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year,

Love, David