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Dear friends,
”I could imagine Jesus being born in the camp” was the headline in my newspaper & were the words of Giles Fraser, who resigned as Canon Chancellor of St Paul’s Cathedral recently. As I write the furore of the Occupy the City camp outside the Cathedral is still ongoing. What Giles wanted to say was that, whatever the rights and wrongs of the camp and the anti-capitalism protestors, if you look around and try to imagine where Jesus would be born, then start with the unlikely, uncomfortable, scandalous places.
This should help us as we approach Christmas, for if the story of the birth of the Prince of Peace in a stable, among the least, last and lost teaches us anything, it’s that God dared to take a downward journey which meets people where they are – including you and me. This is an amazing truth which should never cease to jolt us out of our complacent Christmases. There is of course plenty of room for celebration and giving and feasting and families and sometimes we run the risk of appearing rather puritanical when we criticise the commercialism of Christmas. For in what we call “commercial” there is also people’s ordinary way of expressing love and hope and joy. But if there is no room for noticing the left-out, the left-behind in our society (& that at least is one effect of the Occupy camps around our country) then we have missed the real point. Just as the great majority of people in Bethlehem that holy night missed the birth of our Lord.
Maybe you can imagine Jesus being born in a peace camp, maybe in an underpass or a hostel. But the point of Christmas is that God is with us, with all of us. And if we can imagine Jesus born in a camp, then maybe we can imagine our hearts being big enough for Jesus to be born there. And if there, then the challenges to do God’s mission in the new year might be better begun or continued.
Andrew Wood
Andre
w Wood is our District Chair - find out about other District Officers here