The Rector's Christmas Message 

A prayer of St Francis speaks about our hands being like tree roots, absorbing goodness as we place them upon the good things of God's creation. This got me thinking of a similar analogy for our hearts. Our hearts could be thought of as sponges absorbing the energies of the objects upon which we fix our affections.  This is all well and good when our affections attach to good energy objects, such as people we love or things and situations we value and are thankful for. Yet, our hearts also become attached to objects that generate fear and anxiety in us. It's not just that fear and anxiety are absorbed by our sponge-like hearts from people and objects that are no good for us, we can also fear-for and be anxious-about the people we love, especially if those we love are going through a bad patch.

At Christmas, we have a set of images that reflect the colorful imagination of the medieval mind. Although the birth of Jesus stories are taken from the Gospel's of Matthew and Luke, it's St Francis who gives us the custom of creating the crib scene in church. To our modern, very rational minds the figures of the Holy Family, angels, shepherds, sheep, cows and wise men, hold a child-like allure but maybe not much more meaning beyond this.

Yet, buried in the heart of this folk-story is an attempt to show something truly unexpected. What is truly unexpected and seemingly improbable is that God is made known through the most fragile of life forms, the human infant - in circumstances that are very rough and tough indeed! Beyond the fable-like quality of the Christmas story is a reality of God becoming truly vulnerable and taking risks. God comes into a situation of vulnerability and risk, showing how fear and anxiety can be transformed into joy and blessing.

The secret is love. Not special, heroic, or romanticized love, but ordinary, everyday love found in run-of-the-mill places. In the Incarnation, God expresses love via aspects of experience we normally try to avoid.  In powerlessness, vulnerability - among the hardships of rural poverty - set against a political backdrop of fear, persecution, and the flight and plight of the refugee, Jesus' birth becomes the source of joy and blessing for a world in desperate need of both.

For God so loved the world becomes, for God so loves the world ----. Let our prayer this Christmas be - to search for and find love in the unexpected. That we may transmute what feels, at times, very rough and tough in a loved one's experience into an experience of love that we can then transmit back to them.

Dear God, in our experience of vulnerability and acknowledging our own need of others, let our hearts become transformative sponges for the absorbing and sharing of love. In the ordinariness of our lives, in the anxiety of our risking, may we all be surprised by true joy at the birth of the Christ Child, this Christmas.  Amen

Mark+

Linda Griggs

Director of Christian Formation

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Sunday, December 21st

December's Youth and Family Dinner Church is going on the road! Join us on December 21st at 5:00 at ECC for their annual Advent Service in the Barn followed by a simple supper. Speak with Linda Griggs for details.

Peace and Cheers,

 Linda