The challenge of contemporary politicians was enormous. Bishop Redfern said that Prime Minister David Cameron’s task, just like the Emperor Augustus in Jesus’ day, was to hold all those different tribes together: “Modern politics is about the challenge of creating a kind of public space which brings together many disparate elements.”

Here, said Dr Redfern, the Church also had a mammoth role to play: “Remember that Jesus was born in the public space. The Innkeeper took them in and he made them part of his family.

He added: “Jesus, of course, was to continue this work of taking people in from all families, tribes and the sense of a family identity was expanded. “The Church is there to serve all people, we are there for everyone. That is the reminder which the story of Jesus’ birth brings.”

Read it all.

Read it all and take the time to see the video (just under nine minutes).

…the religious leaders of Jesus’ day regarded God….[chiefly in terms of His holiness] ”“ [they viewed him as]…a God set apart from His world and separate from everything that might be unclean and messy and unworthy.

So the emphasis is on the importance of dignified worship, carried out in church buildings with due reverence, awe and majesty which nothing must interrupt or disturb ”“ the world kept at a respectable distance so that it doesn’t sully what is going on inside the sacred space. The holy must not be contaminated with the unholy, or the spiritual with the material or political.

But it is precisely this view of God’s holiness that Jesus shattered. He spent most of His ministry out of doors, not in synagogues or temple but preaching to ordinary people, attempting to relate ordinary everyday events to God. He saw everything within that world as having a connection to God such as treasure in a field, a lost coin, a lost sheep, a lost son. And He was born in a cowshed amidst the mess and smell of animals. God, in the midst of the warp and woof of real human existence; the link between holy and unholy, inextricably joined.

Read it all.

Read it all.

But the object of divine action in the Incarnation is man. God’s free decision is and remains a gracious decision; God becomes man, the Word becomes flesh. The Incarnation means no apparent reserved, but a real and complete descent of God. God actually became what we are, in order actually to exist with us, actually to exist for us, in thus becoming and being human, not to do what we do-sin; and to do what we fail to do”“God’s, His own, will; and so actually, in our place, in our situation and position to be the new man. It is not in His eternal majesty”“in which He is and remains hidden from us”“but as this new man and therefore the Word in the flesh, that God’s Son is God’s revelation to us and our reconciliation with God. Just for that reason faith cannot look past His humanity, the cradle of Bethlelhem and the cross of Golgotha in order to see Him in His divinity, Faith in the eternal Word of the Father is faith in Jesus of Nazareth or it is not the Christian faith.

–Karl Barth (1886-1968)

This is a time of great anxiety about what lies ahead. The global balance of power is changing and here at home at a time of financial stringency there is an urgent search for how human beings and communities can flourish at a time when having and consuming more and more things no longer seems a plausible road to happiness.

Today’s good news is that God so loved the world that he was generous and gave himself to wean us away from our obsession with power over things and people. The way of Herod the Great and the way of the Emperor who decrees that “all the world should be taxed” is contrasted with the future opened up by the infant king born into a poor family. He comes to initiate us into a way of generous living; in love with God and his world which involves loving ourselves and our neighbours equally.

A few years ago the former President of the Royal Society published a book about the prospects for the human race worryingly entitled “Our Final Century” ”“ without a question mark ”“ although he has ascribed this to a publisher’s error. There is a question about whether we shall develop the wisdom to channel the power we have acquired from the scientific knowledge and discoveries of the 20th century? Where indeed, to quote T.S.Eliot, is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge and the knowledge we have lost in information.

Read it all.

Almighty God, who didst rescue Samuel Ajayi Crowther from slavery, sent him to preach the Good News of Jesus Christ to his people in Nigeria, and made him the first bishop from the people of West Africa: Grant that those who follow in his steps may reap what he has sown and find abundant help for the harvest; through him who took upon himself the form of a slave that we might be free, the same Jesus Christ; who livest and reignest with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

O Gracious Father, who sent not thy Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved: Fulfill the good tidings of thine angel and bring great joy to all people through the nativity of him who is the Prince of Peace; to whom with thee and the Holy Ghost be glory in the highest, now and for evermore.

After this there was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Now there is in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate a pool, in Hebrew called Beth-za’tha, which has five porticoes. In these lay a multitude of invalids, blind, lame, paralyzed. One man was there, who had been ill for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him and knew that he had been lying there a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to be healed?” The sick man answered him, “Sir, I have no man to put me into the pool when the water is troubled, and while I am going another steps down before me.” Jesus said to him, “Rise, take up your pallet, and walk.” And at once the man was healed, and he took up his pallet and walked. Now that day was the sabbath. So the Jews said to the man who was cured, “It is the sabbath, it is not lawful for you to carry your pallet.” But he answered them, “The man who healed me said to me, ‘Take up your pallet, and walk.'” They asked him, “Who is the man who said to you, ‘Take up your pallet, and walk’?” Now the man who had been healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had withdrawn, as there was a crowd in the place. Afterward, Jesus found him in the temple, and said to him, “See, you are well! Sin no more, that nothing worse befall you.” The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had healed him.

–John 5:1-15

A shameless lover of Christmas carols, I have found support for my sentimentalism in a most unlikely place; an essay by Dr. Lewis Thomas, one-time dean of New York University School of Medicine. He notes that the human faculty for language is rooted in a specific collection of neurons in the left hemisphere of the brain. This corresponds with a similar center of neurons in the brain of a song bird. It is there that the bird’s song is “recorded,” that is, if the bird learns it as a nestling. If the bird hears the proper song at that stage it will have it in mind for life. It can then add its own arpeggios so that it is the song of the species and at the same time the bird’s own recognizable voice””“perceptively different from the song of all his relatives.” But, according to the dean of medicine, if it does not hear the song as a youngster, the collection of neurons cannot compose the song on its own. Sadly enough, “what comes out later when it is ready for singing and mating is an unmelodious buzzing noise.” The song isn’t instinctive. The urge to sing is instinctive, but not the song. The little bird must first be sung to if it is to know and sing the song.
I think of this fascinating fact as we draw closer to when we shall sing again the Song of Christmas. Like the brain of the song bird we cannot nor did we compose this song on our own. It was a song sung to us. Sung to the human race, to our species, by angels. They sang it to the shepherds out in the fields near Bethelehem on that first Christmas night. It is the song of the Savior, the God-Man Jesus Christ. We did not create it, for Christmas was not an idea of the human race. In our sinful condition we could never have composed it. We tend to want to save ourselves””to find a way out of our problems by our own ingenuity and effort. But we never get there. All we produce in our attempts to save ourselves is the “unmelodious buzzing noise” of human pride and striving. The truth of the matter is that we are saved by God’s grace or we are not saved at all.
There were many who were striving to save themselves when the Angels first sang the song of Christmas to the shepherds. Caesar Augustus tried to bring peace to the world by the power of the Roman Empire””by its unique blend of politics, statesmanship and military might. Among the Greeks, the intellectual sophisticates of the day, it was the aspirations of culture, science, art and thought that promised from year to year a salvation for humankind that never came. The Priests in Jerusalem sought salvation by the sacrifices offered daily in the temple. The Scribes and Pharisees tried to deserve God’s favor through their religious perfectionism, by keeping the demands of the Law. But religion then, as it too often does today, brought only conflict to the individual’s conscience and from there to one’s relationships with others. Instead””from politics, culture, and religion””there came only the unmelodious buzzing noise we hear all too often in the world around us today.

But, to certain poor shepherds the song was sung; they, in their everydayness, represent all of our race, the entire human species””existing somewhere between animals and angels””to such the angels came. And the Glory shone around them and the song of salvation, the song composed in heaven (to be lived out on earth) for our species was first sung”¦. “Behold, I bring you good news of a great joy that will come to all the people, for unto you is born this day, in the city of David a Savior who is Christ the Lord.” Of course the shepherds””just as you and I would have done, for this is hardly a story of their virtue but of God’s grace””ran with eager steps to Bethlehem. It was God’s grace-filled invitation that sent them breathless across the fields.

After the angels departed, and the glory that shone around them had given way to the normalcy of the night; after the shepherds returned from the stable, the night song of the Savior, once heard, was never forgotten. Sure, the night was still dark; the air cold; the duties still needed to be done. The wolf and bear still lurked in shadows of the glistening moon. Nothing had really changed, and yet everything was different. I remember. For that’s how it was for me when Jesus Christ came into my life as a college student some 38 years ago. Nothing had changed, and everything was different. It has been that way for me ever since. The Song of Christmas, the song of Salvation, the hope of Jesus the Messiah, once heard, was never forgotten. And like the song of the songbird, it can be heard in the darkest of nights, and on the coldest of mornings.

I have heard it myself in the waiting rooms of hospitals. I have sung it as I have walked before a hundred caskets”¦leaned my ear near to the beds of the dying to hear it whispered in the last breath of the faithful. It is why the trees, and lights; the eggnog and the parties are only a preparation. For perhaps you’ve noticed, as one preacher has put it, “the hurt of life does not become suspended, magically put on hold until the festive days are done.” And he is right. It is not only priests and preachers who live with these things. You too find yourself going from a divorced friend’s loneliness to another friend’s wedding; From hospital room to holiday party; From toasting champagne to tossing dirt on a coffin. And among the glow of Christmas lights are a score of grieving memories for each of us””grief and worries that trouble our hearts even while we are digesting the evening’s dinner. Yet that is why we gather for the Christmas Eucharist. To sing again the song that the Angels first taught our race to sing. The song that announced the Savior was born. Born in a stable; “ right between the mystery of the angels and manure of the cattle.” (J. B. Shepherd) In that very intersection where we so often live our lives. That is where the song was first sung to our race; and once the Angels had sung it, it is now ours to sing. It is the reason we will gather on Christmas Eve: singing the song of our Savior; experiencing anew the birth of his grace in our lives.

You can hear it again this Christmas season. Hear it in the words of the Gospel; in every poorly crafted, but faithful sermon. It vibrates in the strings of the harp; in reed and brass and flute. In the chords of carols and anthems. Once you have heard the melody, like the young song bird, you will never forget it. You may add your own arpeggios; your personal witness to his salvation. For each human voice is unique and like no other. God made it that way. Just as he also made your voice to sing the song that heaven composed for our human race””even when you sing with wounded voice. His birth and his cross are the only things that can keep us from singing again that old unmelodious buzzing noise of a fallen and sinful world. It may be your instinct to sing. But this song, composed in heaven, sung first on earth by angels to shepherds, lived out from crib to cross by Jesus Christ, shall be passed on person to person and sung again soon in a thousand thousand churches around the world; sung by voices all around: wounded or angelic: it is the same song they sing”¦The Song of Christmas.

–First penned to the Diocese of South Carolina in 2009 but well worth a rereading I think

Dickens and Disney’s Tiny Tims both hope that those who feel pity for a poor crippled boy in church “”¦ will think of Him who made lame men walk” at Christmas time.

This was a lesson that Dickens meant for adults, as well as children.

There is no separating the generosity we owe to others from the generosity God has shown to us by sending his son to give us new hearts. Christmas shouldn’t just bring out the best in us once a year; it should transform our lives””as it did for Scrooge. Dickens knew where he wanted to end his story, and finished it accordingly:

“Some laughed to see the alteration in [Scrooge] but he let them laugh … he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed that knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us! And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God bless us, every one!”

Read it all.

Listen to it all. A reminder of the English translation of the words:

O great mystery,
and wonderful sacrament,
that animals should see the new-born Lord,
lying in a manger!
Blessed is the Virgin whose womb
was worthy to bear
Christ the Lord.
Alleluia!

God with us means more than God over or side by side with us, before or behind us. It means more than His divine being in even the most intimate active connection with our human being otherwise peculiar to Him. At this point, at the heart of the Christian message and in relation to the event of which it speaks, it means that God has made himself the one who fulfills his redemptive will. It means that He Himself in His own person ””at His own cost but also on His own initiative””has become the inconceivable Yet and Nevertheless of this event, and so its clear and well-founded and legitimate, its true and holy and righteous Therefore. It means that God has become man in order as such, but in divine sovereignty, to take up our case. What takes place in the work of inconceivable mercy is, therefore, the free overruling of God, but it is not an arbitrary overlooking and ignoring, not an artificial bridging, covering over or hiding, but a real closing of the breach, gulf and abyss between God and us for which we are responsible. At the very point where we refuse and fail, offending and provoking God, making ourselves impossible before Him and in that way missing our destiny, treading under foot our dignity, forfeiting our right, losing our salvation and hopelessly compromising our creaturely being””at that very point God Himself intervenes as man.

–Church Dogmatics (IV.1) [E.T. By Geoffrey Bromiley and Thomas Torrance of the German Original] (London: T and T Clark, 1956), page 12

The Bishop of St Albans, Dr Alan Smith, said that “those of us in Weste­rn Europe cannot go on con­suming more and more when so much of the world has so little.” He called for “a new moral vision of what we do with our wealth and how we ensure that everyone has a fair share in it”.

The Bishop of Whitby, Dr Martin Warner, in a Christmas message on his website, said that Britain was “riven by inequality of opportunity and the enjoyment of material wealth. . . This year we should be concerned not only about the rise of unemployment towards the three million mark but more particularly about the fact that so many young people are bearing the brunt” of it.

The Bishop of Bath & Wells, the Rt Revd Peter Price, preaching at Bath Abbey, said: “There is a sense of the very fabric of society being torn apart. Accompanying this is a feel-ing of loss about the way we used to live our lives, the way we managed our relationships, the way education was. . . There is something missing.”

Read it all.

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light;
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.
Ring out the grief that saps the mind,
For those that here we see no more,
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.
Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care the sin,
The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes,
But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease,
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.

–Lord Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892)

Catholic leaders condemned the spate of bomb blasts in Nigeria and urged the government to get control of security.

Lagos Cardinal Anthony Olubunmi Okogie criticized the government for its failure to protect citizens.

Speaking at the dedication of St. Peter Church in Awka, the cardinal said the spate of bombings in a four-day period makes people wonder “what the government is doing with our money. If they cannot protect the lives of its citizens, then why do we have a government?”

Read it all.

…in all of our giving, even in our best gifts, there is always, to a greater or lesser degree, there is always a gap ”“ a gap between the sign and the thing signified, between the gift and the giver. We say “it’s the thought that counts” because we have to, because the thought and the gift can never be identical.

But here’s the thing. Again, here is Christmas: God does not give us something external to himself; God gives us himself. In this child born unto us, that gap between the Gift and the Giver has disappeared. That baby is not a gesture. In this Gift, it really is the thought that counts, because in this gift the Thought, the Heart, the Logos, the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.

Read it all.

As with the holiday, so with the culture at large. The increasingly post-Christian culture of America and Europe are nevertheless more deeply rooted in Christianity than is usually recognized by its opponents (and some of its adherents). It’s at least theoretically possible that this culture will eventually get Christianity out of its system, out of the roots of its consciousness, and negligible as a cultural force, reduced to the private practices of an eccentric few. This would take several generations, and I don’t think it will happen, but it certainly could. And if it did, the resulting culture would, like Christmas, lose the hope and the humanism which had been its legacy from Christianity. As with Christmas, if the heart were to stop beating, the body would die.

We have seen the prospects for that new culture already, in the totalitarian nightmares of communism and fascism, in the wasteland of pleasure-and-power-seeking which is offered as the good life by much of the entertainment and advertising produced by capitalism, in the drab materialist collectivism of “Imagine” and the absurd materialist egoism of Atlas Shrugged.

Perhaps it’s not even too much to say that if Christmas were to die, the remains of Christian culture would die, too, and with it that softness toward the individual human person””imperfect, of course, and slow to develop””that has characterized it. As long as the mad mixture of the very earthly and the very heavenly which is Christmas””the poor and vulnerable newborn baby among the animals on the one hand, choirs of angels on the other””remains at the heart of the holiday, and the holiday remains very much alive in the culture, the natural coldness and brutality of the human race is always challenged from within the culture itself. Should that challenge be removed, no one would be more surprised by the result than those who worked to remove it. They might not live to see that result, but if their souls were not lost altogether, part of their purgatory might be the knowledge of what they had done to their descendants.

Read it all.

Christmas means different things around the world, but in China one of the things it’s come to stand for crackdown. In recent years Chinese courts have chosen the holiday season as the time to hand down the harshest sentences to political dissenters, possibly in the belief that their rulings will received the least attention abroad. On Dec. 26 a court in the southwestern city of Guiyang sentenced longtime dissident Chen Xi to 10 years in prison for “inciting subversion of state power,” Reuters reported.

Chen was active in the 1989 protest movement, organizing a pro-democracy group in Guiyang and later serving 13 years in prison after the government crushed the Tiananmen demonstrations. Chen Xi, who is also known as Chen Youcai, was arrested on Nov. 29, a week before the Guizhou Human Rights Forum, a group to which he belonged, was declared illegal, according to Chinese Human Rights Defenders, an activist group.

Read it all.

The Coptic Orthodox Church will send out invitations to presidential hopefuls and all political parties, including Salafi ones, to attend the Christmas holy mass on 7 January, a papal source told Al-Masry Al-Youm.

The source said that Pope Shenouda III insisted on inviting both Muslim and Coptic Egyptians to the celebration.

Read it all.

Merciful God, who didst raise up thy servant Frances Joseph-Gaudet to work for prison reform and the education of her people: Grant that we, encouraged by the example of her life, may work for those who are denied the fullness of life by reasons of incarceration and lack of access to education ; through Jesus Christ, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Almighty God, who hast revealed the glory of thy love in the in the face of Jesus Christ, and called us by him to live as thy children: Fill our hearts, as we remember his nativity, with the gladness of this great redemption; that we may join in the heavenly song of glory to God in the highest, on earth peace, and goodwill towards men; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord.

After this the son of the woman, the mistress of the house, became ill; and his illness was so severe that there was no breath left in him. And she said to Eli’jah, “What have you against me, O man of God? You have come to me to bring my sin to remembrance, and to cause the death of my son!” And he said to her, “Give me your son.” And he took him from her bosom, and carried him up into the upper chamber, where he lodged, and laid him upon his own bed. And he cried to the LORD, “O LORD my God, hast thou brought calamity even upon the widow with whom I sojourn, by slaying her son?” Then he stretched himself upon the child three times, and cried to the LORD, “O LORD my God, let this child’s soul come into him again.” And the LORD hearkened to the voice of Eli’jah; and the soul of the child came into him again, and he revived. And Eli’jah took the child, and brought him down from the upper chamber into the house, and delivered him to his mother; and Eli’jah said, “See, your son lives.” And the woman said to Eli’jah, “Now I know that you are a man of God, and that the word of the LORD in your mouth is truth.”

–1 Kings 17:17-24

In one of the original episodes of Law and Order, some 15 years ago, I’ll never forget the scene of the three cops doing an all-night stake out from their parked car. It’s 3:00 AM or so and over black coffee they’re talking about the regrets of their lives. The guy in the front under the wheel said he regretted being a jerk to his wife most of their married lives before she died. The cop riding shotgun said he regretted chronically stealing money as a teenager from this hard-working father’s wallet. The third cop is in the back with his eyes closed, half-asleep. And they said to him, “Hey sergeant, what do you regret?” And he finally mumbled out, “I regret everything.”

There’s just a little part of me that can identify. I have my share of sin and regret that stem from a self-centered heart. And the message of the angel, that “to you is born a Savior who is Christ the Lord”, is the most wonderful news I ever heard. Would you agree?

I don’t care how low you’ve sunk, there is no reason to give up or think only somber, gloomy thoughts. I’m with you in that I cannot undo my past. But I am privilege to point to a Savior that can wash us clean. Jesus never once in the narrative of the New Testament turned away a helpless sinner who fled to him….

Read it all.

The holly and the mistletoe must be taken down and burnt,
And the children got ready for school. There are enough
Left-overs to do, warmed-up, for the rest of the week —
Not that we have much appetite, having drunk such a lot,
Stayed up so late, attempted — quite unsuccessfully —
To love all of our relatives, and in general
Grossly overestimated our powers. Once again
As in previous years we have seen the actual Vision and failed
To do more than entertain it as an agreeable
Possibility, once again we have sent Him away,
Begging though to remain His disobedient servant,
The promising child who cannot keep His word for long.
The Christmas Feast is already a fading memory,
And already the mind begins to be vaguely aware
Of an unpleasant whiff of apprehension at the thought
Of Lent and Good Friday which cannot, after all, now
Be very far off.

Read it all (emphasis mine).

“Rejoice! Rejoice! The kingdom of God is upon us.” This is a phrase that we hear quite frequently during the Christmas season.

When Mary visited her cousin Elizabeth to share her wonderful news about the message she had received from the angel, she proclaimed great joy in the hymn that has come down to us and is recited each day by those who pray the Liturgy of the Hours: “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God, my Savior.”

Her joy is reflected in the way we celebrate Christmas: Christmas Mass, the beautiful decorations, the family gatherings, the sharing of gifts. With Mary we can offer our thankful praise to the God who loves us so much and is so generous to us….

Read it all.

The challenge of the Christmas story is to sing this same song of peace and good will amidst the sorrows, trials, inequalities and injustices of today’s world. It means caring about those who are without a job, or without a home. It means trying to build a different world and trying to live by a different set of values. It means remembering those who are worse off, and doing something about it. It means providing jobs and homes and meals. It also means ensuring that people have jobs and homes and meals for life.

None of this will be easy. But the biggest danger of all is starting to believe that nothing can change and that our own contribution makes no difference. It does. Things can change.

And if the Christian faith teaches us anything, it is that one person can make a difference. That person is Christ. He shows us a different way of living. He gives us a different set of values. What he brings is what the world so desperately needs. And he begins that life in solidarity with the poorest of the poor.

Read it all.

Faith is risking entering the road of those who, like Him, can forget themselves in favour of others ”“ whoever they are ”“ and can take on the attitudes that derive from this: forgiveness, welcome, listening, solidarity ”¦
The path of losing, marked out by these stages, becomes the path of finding.
Those who take this path, find God, the brother finds himself.
Life is transformed this way.
It may be ”“ usually it is this way ”“ that outside nothing seems to change, that history and, in particular the history of our Holy Land, continues to be the dramatic reality that we see and experience: hatred, divisions, fears, suspicions, prejudice, paralysis”¦
But inside, everything changes!
The way of looking at life changes, the way of being changes and ”“ by grace!- we are pleased with this life, because this life is not only a field, but it is the field that hides the treasure.

Read it all.

Watch it all (link toward bottom).