2009 Letter No 12

Each month Bill writes a pastor's letter for our monthly church magazine called 'The Messenger'. Here is the letter for December 2009:

Christmas fast approaches. We will soon be singing carols, eating mince pies and hanging baubles on the Christmas tree. In fact, you may already have started to do these things. I have certainly started on the mince pies!

We celebrate an amazing fact – that a baby was born to a virgin mother, and that this baby was none other than God himself in human flesh, who had come to rescue us from the consequences of our sin and rebellion against God. As Christians we believe that the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth hold the key to understanding the universe and to unlocking meaning and purpose for our lives. It is an extraordinary claim, and it is not accepted by most of the people around us. This scepticism is expressed rather well in a book I am reading at the moment about the relationship between science, God and the Christian faith. The author is a Christian, but he stands back to look at Christian claims through his unbelieving neighbours’ eyes:

“For, after all, what are the odds of a little, blue and white ball being God’s favourite thing in the universe? What are the chances of that God becoming a man, born of a virgin for that matter, so that he could suffer a cruel death of mystic significance, rise from the grave and announce he will revisit the planet one day to judge every human that ever walked on it?” (Michael Pfundner, 2008)

And yet Christians affirm these truths every Sunday, as we gather for worship. We say to God, to one another and to anyone else who may be listening that those events, two thousand years ago in the Middle East, changed everything – that God was acting in and through Jesus to mend what human beings had broken, namely our relationships with God, with one another, with ourselves and with the whole of Creation. Truly Christmas is about “Peace on earth to all whom God favours.” (Luke 2:14)

Now, don’t get me wrong. I believe that there are good reasons for accepting the claims which Christians make about Jesus Christ, but let us also recognise that they are not immediately obvious to everybody.

Christmas gives us an excellent opportunity to talk about our faith with family, friends and neighbours. Some will come with us to events at church or be willing to sing carols which contain this great message. But let us remember what an extraordinary truth it is that we are celebrating. We need to recognise that many people around us have a very long journey to make before they accept these truths for themselves and submit to the Lordship of Jesus Christ.

So we need to have patience as we accompany people on a journey into faith, and we need also to pray that eyes will be opened and lives turned around by the Holy Spirit of God. We cannot do this by ourselves.