Bishops Christmas Message

The Church has read for centuries the first chapter of the Gospel according to St John as the Gospel at the main Eucharist on Christmas morning. In the service of Nine Lessons and Carols, first introduced in Truro by Bishop Edward Benson in 1880, and then modified by King's College, Cambridge, in 1918, this passage from St John's Gospel is introduced by the words, "St John unfolds the mystery of the incarnation." In doing this John's Gospel takes us to the very heart of Christmas. The Gospel of Luke, from which the familiar Christmas stories of the birth at Bethlehem, the angels singing "Glory to God in the highest", the shepherds hastening to adore the child in the manger, and the Gospel of St Matthew with the three Magi (astrologers or wise men, only later in Christian tradition kings) coming to offer their gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh give us the scenes from which our nativity plays derive and which adorn countless Christmas cards. The stories of Luke and Matthew point, just as St John does, to what Christmas is about - it is this child, this fragile life, whose identity is "God-with-us."

St John begins his Gospel by talking about the Word of God. In Greek this is the Logos, which means both a word uttered, the word which gives meaning, the word by which we communicate, and the ordered reasoning of things, the word that is thought, but also the pattern, or plan, or structure, which in other parts of the Old Testament might be called the Wisdom of God. At the very beginning of the Bible, the opening words of the Book of Genesis, which speak of Creation are "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth...and God said, "Let there be light" Now St John tells us that "in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." The creative Word of God by which all things were made, as St John goes on to tell us, the one in whom was light, a light which was light for all humanity. God is said to dwell in unapproachable light. His presence is dazzling and overwhelming. He cannot be boxed in, cabined and confined. He cannot be pinned down by human words and definitions because he is the very creator of humanity, and so of all our human capacity for speech and reason.

This God, this mysterious God who creates and order all things, who is the source of all life and all being, in this new moment, which both completes and fulfils the old creation, and brings about a creation which is new, redeeming the darkness and distortion and evil that has disfigured the old creation. The Word becomes flesh and dwells among us. The creative Word of God enters into the heart of creation, taking our human nature, that being one with us he may know from the inside our human condition. St Paul writes, perhaps quoting an early Christian hymn, to the Christians of Philippi, saying that the one who was in the form of God thought equality with God was not something to be grasped, snatched at, or held on to, but he emptied himself and was found in human form. A seventeenth-century Anglican, Mark Frank, sums this up in a Christmas sermon: "by this day's emptiness we all were filled." And what does he mean? It is because God is self-giving love in his own being, that he gives himself away in this totally complete and identifying manner. So the poet Crawshaw exclaims:

Welcome, all wonders in one sight,
Eternity shut in a span,
Summer in winter, day in night,
Heaven on earth, and God in man!
Great little one, whose all-embracing birth,
Lifts earth to heaven, stoops heaven to earth!

St John goes on to say that in this amazing incarnation of the Divine love, "we have seen his glory, the glory as of the only son of the Father, full of grace and truth." The Hebrew word for glory means something like weight or density, the gravitas of a person. So to see the glory of God is to see God's very being and identity. In Jesus we see what God is like. As Archbishop Michael Ramsey, who wrote much about glory as one of the key themes of the New Testament, liked to say, "God is Christlike, and in him is no unChristlikeness at all." The glory that is Christmas, because it is the glory of God's self-giving love, does not stop there. Bethlehem is not the end but the beginning of a life which runs out until it is lifted up on a cross, where, as St John again likes to emphasise, Jesus is glorified. We see the outpouring of the Divine love and grace to the uttermost. And all this is taken up in the Easter victory, the exaltation and Ascension of Christ, who pours that same love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit given to us. This is surely why the Christmas collect links so closely together the birth of Jesus and our being born again ('being regenerate') in our baptism, and goes on to pray that "we may daily be renewed by your Holy Spirit." God-with-us and God-in-us go together, the source of grace in the incarnation, the transforming of grace in our hearts and lives.

As we give thanks this Christmas, that we have seen the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, let us remember that that grace, that transforming love, is God's gift to us all, that our lives may be shaped in the likeness of the Christ, who was laid in the muck and the straw of the manger at Bethlehem, and who stretched out his arms of love on the cross to draw the whole world to himself. On Good Friday we sing of that love "so amazing, so divine" that "demands my soul, my life, my all." That total love of God with all our heart and mind and soul and strength is no less our adoration of the child of Bethlehem. And adoration must lead to discipleship, to an ever closer communion and following of Jesus in the way of cross and resurrection. It is that grace which shapes the life of the church, in every place to be the body of Christ. Without that transforming grace the church is no more than a religious club. May Christ fill you with his joy and his peace this Christmas, kindle your hearts with the fire of his self-giving love, and enable you both to see and to show forth his glory.

With every blessing,

+Geoffrey Gibraltar