Posted Monday 20 December 2010
A Christmas message from the Most Rev David Chillingworth, Bishop of St Andrews, Dunkeld and Dunblane and Primus of the Scottish Episcopal Church:
One of the toughest winters in living memory. The worst recession for generations. Deepening personal debt and the fear of unemployment.
Happy Christmas everybody.
It sounds a bit empty, when you put it like that. Like an invitation to escape from reality. And that’s the problem with the way we traditionally look at Christmas. We tidy it up, soften it and put coloured lights around it. But of course the heart of the Christmas story is very different.
It’s about a child born to homeless and refugee parents who belong to a nation under occupation. It’s a story of innocence and vulnerability. The Christmas faith story is that this child is ‘God with us’ - a sign of the presence of God in every situation of pain, suffering and sacrifice.
That means that the Jesus of Christmas knows about and cares about loneliness, about poverty and disease, about the people of Haiti living in cholera-ridden chaos, about the empty chair at the Nobel Prize Awards - empty in the cause of human rights - about relief workers and those who commit their lives to peace and reconciliation. Our thoughts are always with the young men and women who serve on our behalf in Afghanistan - and with their families who live every day in fear for them.
Yes it’s a difficult Christmas. But in the story of the child born in a stable, we believe that God is at the heart of it and God is with us.
Happy Christmas everybody.
