Christmas Message and Special Announcement 2015
I am pleased to announce that Presiding Bishop Michael Curry will be at Christ Church Cranbrook the weekend of February 20 and 21, 2016.
We are very honored that Presiding Bishop Curry will be our guest that weekend and I hope you will join us. As a way to prepare, I am sharing the Presiding Bishop's Christmas message below.
Information about our Christmas services may be found here.
Faithfully,
The Rev. Canon Dr. William J. Danaher Jr.
Rector
To watch the Presiding Bishop's Christmas message video, click here.
The following is the transcript of the Presiding Bishop's Christmas message.
Hello. Our original plan was for me to tape a Christmas message in front of the United Nations building in New York as a way of sending a message that this Jesus of Nazareth whom we follow came to show us the way to a different world, a world rounded in God's peace and God's justice, God's love and God's compassion.
I recently had surgery and so we had to change those plans and so I'm here in Raleigh on Capitol Square. Christ Church is here and we're filming this message here just as a way of giving me a chance to say "Thank you" to all of you who sent cards and prayers in my recent surgery. I'm doing well and I'm coming back to work.
But I did want to say something to you. It occurs to me that this Jesus of Nazareth really does make a difference. And God coming into the world in the person of Jesus matters profoundly for all of us regardless of our religious tradition.
In the park across from the United Nations, the Ralph Bunche Park, the words of the Prophet Isaiah are quoted,
They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks
Nation will not rise against nation
Neither shall they learn war any more
What's not there is another part of that passage that's in the second chapter of Isaiah, and it says,
Come, let us go to the mountain of God, That he may show us His ways and teach us His paths
We who follow Jesus believe that the mountain came to us when God came among us in the person of Jesus to show us the way to live, to show us the way to love, to show us the way to transform this world from the nightmare it often is into the dream that God intends for us all.
So, as the words were spoken on that night when Jesus was born, peace, good will to all people, God bless you, God keep you. A blessed Advent, a Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year to all.
The Most Rev. Michael Curry
Presiding Bishop and Primate
The Episcopal Church
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