Skip to main content

Christmas Video Message

Text version-

Hello from St Andrew’s Church in Rugby, where once again I’m surrounded by Christmas trees. This year there are a couple that pick up the WW1 remembrance theme using poppies as decorations. 2014 has been a significant year for the UK and for Europe as we’ve reflected on the significance of the first and the second world wars. The not uncontroversial Sainsbury’s advert reminded the nation that the story of Christmas can do extraordinary things; even in war it can unite enemies, as in the famous Christmas Day truce in 1914.

At Christmas we do enter a mystical moment, a moment of opportunity, where the message of God’s love and care for each one of us comes really close. The vulnerable child, the nativity scenes, the bringing of gifts, they tell us that we can still believe in the power of love to transform human experience. At Christmas 1914 on the Western front, some soldiers dared to look their enemies in the face and wish them happy Christmas.

In our societies today we all have the need to look those we dislike, blame and accuse in the face and see that they too bare the image of God. Transforming our enemies into friends is the mystical work of God, but it is made possible in the story of Christmas. Jesus, the baby in the manger, the Prince of Peace, tells us of God’s desire for peace, love and unity for all humankind. I hope that that message reaches deep into your life this year.


From everyone at St Andrew’s Church in Rugby, I wish you a very blessed, holy and peaceful Christmas. 

The video message will appear on the Rugby Advertiser website on 25th Dec. 

Comments

  1. Kenneth L. Chumbley30 December 2014 at 06:34

    Imogen, Beautifully written and delivered. In case my earlier comment disappeared, as I wrote there, I, too, am a priest and rector, although here in America. I have added your excellent blog to my list of ones I read regularly. Thank you for writing. Grace and peace in Christ. Ken

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Please be respectful when posting comments

Popular posts from this blog

Radical Story-telling?

Public Domain   The Flight into Egypt  File: Adam Elsheimer - Die Flucht nach Ägypten (Alte Pinakothek) 2.jpg Created: 31 December 1608 Which of the Gospel writers include an account of the birth of Jesus? When were they writing, for what audience? Mark’s Gospel is almost universally considered to be the earliest Gospel and it’s understood that both Matthew and Luke used it as a source text. But Mark has no account of the birth of Jesus, he begins with John the Baptist and Jesus’ baptism. Only Matthew and Luke have birth narratives and they are different whilst sharing some common features: Mary and Joseph are to be married and there’s a miraculous virgin birth in Bethlehem. But that’s about it. Jesus is born in a house in Matthew’s account whilst he is placed in a manger in Luke’s because there’s ‘no room at the inn’. Mary’s thoughts and feelings are not mentioned in Matthew at all, whilst from Luke we get the story of the Visitation, Annunciation and the wonderful radical
2 comments
Read more

Silence

Lent Study Group One of my top 10 books of the last 10 years has to be: 'A Book of Silence' by Sara Maitland. I first heard Sara talk at Greenbelt many years ago and I was fascinated then by who she was - an eccentric woman, speaking with intensity and insight, offering an alternative and captivating viewpoint on the human experience. In this book she explores silence in all sorts of ways: by living on her own; by visiting the desert; through analysing the desert traditions within early Christianity; and through attending to what happens to the body and the mind in and through extended silence and isolation. Her book begins: I am sitting on the front doorstep of my little house with a cup of coffee, looking down the valley at my extraordinary view of nothing. It is wonderful. Virginia Woolf famously taught us that every woman writer needs a room of her own. She didn't know the half of it, in my opinion. I need a moor of my own. Or, as an exasperated but obvious
1 comment
Read more

Invited by God

Anyone who seeks to say that God exists and that they have something to say about God, or even for God, is walking a very fine line between insanity and megalomania: religions have fallen foul to both and still do. With that in mind, how can I stand before you as a priest, a person who is meant to be a sign of God in the world? Am I mad or a psychopath? And yet I stand here, and you are here too...... The most important thing I can say to you, is that I do, because of a sense that life is a mystery. That mystery of my existence and of yours isn’t easily located in all the other narratives that I hear and have heard through my life, about creation, purpose and meaning, or lack of it. Science and humanism offer us much, but not that.  There’s a mystery at the heart of me that’s profoundly invitational – by which I mean, it invites me to believe that my existence isn’t just a matter of flesh and blood.  And this mystery can be explored through the medium of poetry, ar
2 comments
Read more