Barnes in Common

the magazine of Churches Together in Barnes
November/December 2006

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Pastoral letter

Father Paul, St Michael's Church

His Name will be called, "Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace". These words will ring out during Christmas Services, a reminder of the world's yearning for peace. And, once again, we find ourselves celebrating the birth of the Prince of Peace in a world torn by conflict and war.

We may wonder what relevance and what place this birth has for us today. The stage on which this drama unfolds seems small and rather insignificant - the birth of a baby. Yet, this birth takes place in a world not that far removed from the experience of those caught up in situations of helplessness and vulnerability; the world of Iraq and Darfur.

Despite his wife being heavy with child, as Saint Luke records, Joseph had to travel from Nazareth to report to the city of David, Bethlehem, to be enrolled. Everyone throughout the empire was to return to their place of origin and have their name and family recorded on the census.

This was the world of unreasonable and callous bureaucracy, a world of frightened powerless refugees, of perilous travel, of colonial occupation, of vulnerable people whose lives were fractured by the tyranny of greed and fear.

Like everyone else, Mary and Joseph had to be registered, counted and taxed. This was a very real world in which one powerless couple among many had to submit themselves to the greatest power the world had ever known until then. It was to these parents, at this moment of risk, danger and humiliation, that God entrusted His own son.

The irony is that it was through this tangle of fear and helplessness that God was working out His own purposes by bringing the child to his intended place of birth.

The Christmas message begins with the truth that God is creatively present in the mess we may see around us and the confusion we may experience within us. There are no short cuts on the road to peace. Rather, the route inevitably will have to pass through places of frustration and disappointment where we may not be able to see a way forward. This is true of both the political and the personal, our own inner world as well as the world around us.

Our Christmas faith is that God has not deserted us, that his creative freedom enters the world of mess and pain and begins to change things from within. Love does not send messengers. He comes Himself.

Timothy Radcliffe makes the point that there were two groups of participants in the Christmas drama that the Emperor was unable to tax or record on his censor, angels and shepherds.

Angels do not appear on any census form. As for the shepherds, they were treated with contempt and suspicion not far removed from robbers or murderers. They were not worth counting. It was to this group that the angelic hosts appeared with the good news of great joy: "And you will find a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger".

A child is always a sign of hope, of a future we can only guess at. And this new future is first offered to the marginalised, the invisible people who have no stake or place in the visible world of power and status. Their future, their Saviour, comes to them in such a way that they are able to approach that future in love and awe.

No one can be afraid of a new born child. This is what love does. It gives away its power. There in the arms of Mary is the power of God made flesh in a helpless child. He can only draw us to himself by his vulnerability. Who can be afraid of a God such as that?

All of this runs against the grain of our competitive and controlling nature. How can weakness ever be understood as the secret of true love? In Bethlehem, God marginalised himself. By his defenceless presence in this child, his shocking and precarious weakness, he was overturning all our notions and ideas about the nature of God and how he goes about things. It is not power that draws us but the warmth of an infant`s smile that melts our fears and beckons us to come closer.

This is the marvel of Christmas. Babies have the power to transform us because they don`t threaten us. They bless us with the inner freedom to be ourselves. Here, even the shepherds would have had the confidence to approach - such is the power of a new born child.

Of all people, the shepherd would have been aware that before God we are all beggars with only our poverty to offer. But in this stable none of that seemed to matter any more. God in Jesus was simply delighting in being with his creation and wanted to share his joy with all who stumbled in from the dark, whatever kind of darkness that might have been.

Today there will be children born in Darfur and Iraq and in all the forgotten places of the world. They will express something of the hope that first entered the world in Bethlehem.

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