Saint Michael’s Church
Serving God and Bishop’s Stortford
Clergy Letter For Dec09 and Jan10
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CLERGY LETTER FOR DECEMBER 2009 & JANUARY 2010 |
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The Vicar writes....
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THE COMING OF CHRISTMAS....AGAINIt’s always difficult to write about the season of Christmas before we have even begun Advent. But that is what I have to do to fit in with Magazine deadline dates. So I have to cast my mind ahead to what is coming, and at the same time think back to what happened last year. One image sticks in my mind from last year and it is this. Amidst the busy-ness that St Michael’s church had been experiencing over the days immediately before Christmas Day itself perhaps the most telling moment was late one morning when a woman came in to church and sat in one of the pews half way down towards the nave altar. No one else was here, except me and she did not know that I was there at the back. I had left the light on in the Crib under the altar and she just sat and gazed at it for several minutes in silence. It was an act of pure adoration. She was transfixed. The Crib is only a few figures, and fairly old-fashioned ones at that, but it is was means for her to be in touch with something deep and personal. It was a precious time for her, and, (though she didn’t know it), for me. Christmas is a time for people who don’t often give much thought to the things of the spirit and of God to look again at this most famous, but most misunderstood, story. If they begin to look seriously they don’t find all sweetness and light. That’s good, because realistically we know that life isn’t like that, and any religion that made out that it was, or that it could be, would simply be peddling another cruel deception. No if you look carefully at the activity of God you find something different. God took the loveliest of his eternal things and He matched them to the world's need. So he made Christmas. He took the dignity of wise Men and the simplicity of shepherds. He took a star, a mother, a baby and a song. Then He set them gently among us. He put them
God made Christmas out of his love and out of our need; not of the first alone but out of both. He came to earth at Christmas, He, all-powerful, all-loving, came to dwell among us. He took our over-crowded inn and made its stable a shrine. He took the startled shepherds’ cry and turned it into a prelude of glad tidings of great joy. He took the half-knowledge of the wise and led it homeward by His star. He makes our Christmas this way still. He takes our needs and our incompleteness and interfuses it with his light. The greater our need the more wonderful the miracle. So coming to the Festival again this year we need not shut our eyes to the signs of human failure all around us. We need not set ourselves a desperate task to keep Christmas in spite of the headlines in our daily newspapers. We keep Christmas in the midst of them. Christmas truly kept will change the way they look. Because Mary and Joseph were far from home and among strangers on that first Christmas night, perhaps we will pray for the homeless and the refugees this year and maybe we will find the Christ child more easily ourselves. Because the shepherds were ordinary men, startled by strange interruptions to their normal round, perhaps we will pray for people whose lives are turned upside down by events beyond their control and maybe we will find the Christ child more easily ourselves. Because those wise men only knew in part and had to obey and follow their half knowledge, we who are bewildered by our modern world can look up with new understanding to the guiding star, and we may find the Christ child more easily ourselves. Because those wise men only knew in part, and had to obey and follow their half-knowledge, perhaps we will pray for those who are bewildered by our modern world, and maybe we may find the Christ child more easily ourselves. Because we too are in the midst of wars, political unrest and the struggle for the mind and soul of men and women, perhaps we shall come humbly to the stable and maybe we will find the Christ child more easily ourselves. And when we have found him we will realise that this is none other than the Son of God Himself. Toby Marchand |
Office Address:
Saint Michael’s Church
Windhill
Bishops Stortford
Hertfordshire
CM23 2ND