Tower and Town, December 2015 (view the full edition)Clergy Letter: Christmas And The New YearChristmas starts with Christ is a campaign to help churches to put the birth of Jesus back at the centre of today's Christmas celebrations. Looking at this campaign, it made me wonder: should the birth of Christ be at the centre of our celebration of Christmas? That may be a rather controversial question to ask for someone in my position, so let me explain. In his final Christmas sermon as Archbishop of Canterbury in 2012, Rowan Williams said: "Here is something so extraordinary that it interrupts our world; here is something that - like Moses in the story of the Burning Bush - makes you 'turn aside to see', that stops you short. Faith begins in the moment of stopping ... the moment when you can't just walk on as you did before ..." The Christmas story is only going to be the extraordinary story interrupting our world and lives, if it is told from the perspective of the crucified and risen Christ, if it is told as an Easter story, so to say. The nativity story, the story of a baby born in a stable, will only make us turn aside to see if it is told as part of the whole story of God and His people. How can we do this? How can we tell the Christmas story in a way that is relevant yet radical? I would like to suggest that a way of doing this is by inhabiting the story: living it out by what we say and what we do. So, when we do our Christmas shopping, we remind ourselves of the blessing of family, friends, and neighbours, and of the God-given gifts we have to share. When we cook our Christmas meal, we think of the abundance of God's creation, an abundance which we are invited to celebrate and share. When we prepare for Christmas in this 'ordinary' way, trying to be aware of our part in God's story, we will experience moments so extraordinary that they interrupt our life. At these moments, I suspect, suddenly the relevance of the story of Jesus' birth becomes clear. Because at Christmas we don't just celebrate God's birthday, but we are reminded of the greatest gift of all: God's giving of Himself, to become a human person like us, who was willing to die for us, and defeated death by rising to new life. That is the real essence of Christmas, and the real essence of our faith and lives. Every blessing for Advent, Christmas and the New Year. Janneke Blockland |