Letter from the Vicarage

December 2009

Dear Friends,

It was a shock to come home from a hot Sierra Leone in November to be greeted by pictures of snowmen in shop windows and adverts for Christmas gifts. Christmas seems to come around more quickly each year.

Despite its familiarity the Christmas story has a resonance with today’s troubled world. A country occupied by a foreign power, a family uprooted from their home, a baby born into poverty and a tyrant who murders the innocent; the same story could be told a thousand times today. It is a story of how the weak, vulnerable and marginalised are so often ignored or even destroyed by the prosperous and powerful.

Christmas though reminds us that God is at work through those who are powerless. The baby who is born in a stable is the Saviour of the world. The child who flees as a refugee to Egypt is the Lord of heaven and earth. The man who is stripped and nailed to a cross of wood is God made flesh. Christmas though reminds us that God is at work through those who are powerless. The baby who is born in a stable is the Saviour of the world. The child who flees as a refugee to Egypt is the Lord of heaven and earth. The man who is stripped and nailed to a cross of wood is God made flesh.

It’s no accident that for the first three hundred years of Christianity it was a religion of the poor and marginalised. In our own country and globally it is among the poor and the powerless that Christianity is growing fastest. While many of the wealthy and prosperous have little time for God, many of the poor know their need for Him. This seasonal perspective challenges so many of our received attitudes. Rather than giving the poor our pity and money, the Christmas story challenges us to ask what we can learn from them. It helps us to see that the immigrant attacked by the tabloids might actually have something to tell us about being a disciple of Christ. The nativity challenges us to recognise that the failed asylum seeker might know more of God’s power than we do.

Christmas reminds us that God is at work through those at the margins of society. If we really want to know God, if we want to be disciples of Christ, we cannot ignore the poor. This means not simply giving them our money, but also recognising that God might be at work among and through them.

This Christmas may we be open to what God is doing among those who like the baby born in Bethlehem are weak and helpless and vulnerable.

I wish you all a very joyful and peaceful Christmas.

Mark

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