Highlights of Canterbury and Durham Christmas sermons; Attack on government by RC archbishop; PM’s christmas message; Fightback of the faithful has begun
Archbishop of Canterbury’s Christmas Sermon – ‘join the human race this Christmas’
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, is urging people to go and ‘join the human race’ this Christmas and become agents of transformation and renewal.
In his final Christmas sermon in Canterbury Cathedral Dr Williams says the purpose of the Christian message isn’t to defend religion or make the church credible, but to pose a challenge to everyone to reconsider who they are:
“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 …”
Dr Williams acknowledged the damage to credibility that the church experienced in the vote over women bishops, but rejected the notion that census statistics showing an apparent religious decline were entirely good news for campaigning atheists. 59% of people still identified themselves as Christian, he observed, and faith has to mean more than ‘what public opinion decides’. Christians should not, he says, lose heart:
“We are after all, doing something rather outrageous, asking men and women to stop and look and turn around, and learn how to keep company with a figure whose outlines we often see only dimly.”
The challenge of the Gospel message, he says, is not about religious defensiveness but about the possibilities of transformation:
“Jesus does not come just to answer the questions we think important … he does not come to give us a set of techniques for keeping God happy; and he certainly doesn’t come to create a harmlessly eccentric hobby for speculative minds. He comes to make humanity itself new, to create fresh possibilities for being at peace with God.”
And people responding to this invitation and bringing about incredible transformation and had proved inspirational to him in his time as Archbishop:
“When people respond to outrageous cruelty and violence with a hard-won readiness to understand and be reconciled, few if any can bring themselves to say that all this is an illusion.
“The parents who have lost a child to gang violence, the wife who has seen her husband killed in front of her by an anti-Christian mob in India, the woman who has struggled for years to comprehend and accept the rape and murder of her sister, the Israeli and Palestinian friends who have been brought together by the fact that they have lost family members in the conflict and injustice that still racks the Holy Land – all these are specific people I have had the privilege of meeting as Archbishop over these ten years; and in their willingness to explore the new humanity of forgiveness and rebuilding relations, without for a moment making light of their own or other people’s nightmare suffering, or trying to explain it away, these are the ones who make us see, who oblige us to turn aside and look, as if at a bush burning but not consumed.”
The challenge is for everyone, he says;
“Go and join the rest of the human race and acknowledge who you are. That’s the truest heroism and the hardest. It’s a foreshadowing of the New Testament invitation: repent and believe and be baptised. Turn round and look where you’ve never looked before, trust the one who is calling you and drop under the water of his overflowing compassion. Be with him. Join the new human race, re-created in the Spirit of mutual love and delight and service.”
Full text at :
http://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/articles.php/2772/archbishops-christmas-sermon-join-the-human-race-this-christmas
Christmas is good news for people in bad situations
The next Archbishop of Canterbury has encouraged people to celebrate this Christmas despite the difficulties they may be facing. He used his Christmas Day sermon to stress the main job of the Church is never self-preservation, but glorifying God.
The Rt Rev Justin Welby, Bishop of Durham, told Durham Cathedral: “It is very easy to be despondent about the Church.
“Some speak of division and even of betrayal.
“The processes we go through are agonisingly wounding for many.
“There are profound differences of opinion about the nature of Christian truth and its place in society, about the right of an ancient tradition to dictate or even to advocate ethical values around the end of life, around marriage, around the nature of human relationships, inequality, our duty to each other.”
And the bishop said: “It is even easier to be despondent about the world.
“From the horrors of forgotten Goma in the DRC (Democratic Republic of Congo) to the atrocity in Connecticut, and from Aleppo in Syria to tribal struggles in Burma, and in so many places between, there is the usual diet of tragedy and loss.
“Near at home we remain in the economic doldrums and seem to find a perverse pleasure in emphasising the impossibility of trusting any institution
“But he told worshippers it was important to recognise that God’s answer to all our despondency or triumph is to come in weakness as a child, to become utterly vulnerable.”
Bishop Welby said: “Christians reach to the jagged edges of our society, and of the world in general.
“Food distribution, places for rough sleepers, debt counselling, credit unions, community mediation, support for ex-offenders, support for victims of crime, care for the dying, valuing those who have no economic contribution to make, or are too weak to argue for their own value.
“All this is the daily work of the church, which goes on every day and everywhere. We leak out into the world the love that God leaks into us.”
The bishop said that despite only two-thirds of people now identifying with the Christian faith, we would never hear the end of it if this figure was associated with a political party.
And he said: “The main job of the church is never self-preservation, but glorifying God.
“The moment we lose sight of that, we lose everything we are about. The same is true for us as individual Christians.”
Bishop Welby was chosen in September to succeed Rowan Williams as archbishop of Canterbury. He is expected to take up the post next year.
Archbishop attacks gay marriage
The leader of Roman Catholics in England and Wales Archbishop Vincent Nichols says the government’s plans for gay marriage are a “shambles”.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-20840531
Discover a vulnerable God says Methodist President
The President of the Methodist Church has invited people to discover a vulnerable God in Jesus this Christmas
PM’s Christmas bid to calm Christian anger at gay marriage
By Tim Shipman, Daily Mail
David Cameron quotes Gospel of St John in annual message
• Ministers have come under fire from churchmen and MPs over the plans
• Cameron made numerous Bible references during his Christmas message
• Speech appeared to be designed to defuse anger over the proposals
David Cameron offered an olive branch to Christians last night, issuing the most overtly religious Christmas message by a prime minister in recent times.
He quoted from the Gospel of St John in an apparent attempt to parade his religious credentials while controversy rages about his government’s plans to introduce gay marriage.
Ministers have come under fire from churchmen and MPs over the plans, on which the Commons will vote in the New Year.
Mr Cameron has regularly ignored advice that politicians in the modern age should not ‘do God’. But the Prime Minister went further than ever last night when he quoted from the Bible, referring to Jesus as ‘the light of all mankind’ and the ‘Prince of Peace’.
He spoke about the ‘extraordinary year’ featuring the ‘spectacular’ Olympics and the Diamond Jubilee, when ‘we cheered our Queen to the rafters and praised the efforts of the Armed Forces’.
But the most striking passage of his message came when he turned to the meaning of Christmas.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2252685/David-Cameron-quotes-Gospel-St-John-annual-message.html
Donkeys bring Christmas service to life
Two live donkeys made a special appearance at a Christmas Eve service in Hampshire last night
Christians are not just for Christmas: the fightback of the faithful has begun
By Cristina Odone, Telegraph
Christmas, and the fightback begins. Christians have stopped turning the other cheek and are beginning to reclaim this country. For years, now, members of the majority religion in Britain have been humiliated by child abuse scandals involving their priests, have listened to the mocking of the media, have been squeezed to the margins by calls for multiculture and equality legislation. They no longer dared wear their crosses, or speak of their faith at work. As for praying for someone, sending them to the devil was more acceptable.
Now, the tune is changing. Listen to the Prime Minister, quoting St John, if you please, about Jesus being grace, truth and love. The Christmas message from Downing Street has never been so self-consciously Christian; in fact, Cameron was positively American in his insistence, like Barack Obama, on praying with, and for, us.
The PM may have been guilty of some unhappy contortions over gay marriage, but he seems genuine when he pays respect to his faith and heritage. Let’s hope he realises Christianity is not just for Christmas.