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 Sometimes we feel uncomfortable about the juxtaposition of Christmas festivity and the harsh realities that punctuate life. How can we sing 'Come and join the celebration' knowing that Christians in India are being murdered for their faith and young people in south London knifed, for what? How can we ponder the Magi's lavish gifts, when the person beside us in church, even we ourselves, may be living in fuel poverty? How are we to understand God's Christmas love when our own family is fractured by domestic violence, infidelity or neglect? It can seem that the seasonal carolling flies in the face of the unrelenting hurting.
Yet into such a world as this Jesus Christ was born. 2000 years ago things were far from idyllic: they knew international tension as we do, political oppression and all the other vicissitudes of life, too. What is more, they had nothing like the medical miracles and easy electronic communication that can transform even our darkest moments today. Jesus didn't come to paradise; he came to a world marked by wounds and incompleteness, there to offer healing and wholeness. In short, Jesus was born to be good news when and where good news was profoundly needed. It's precisely because he was light in the darkness that the angels sang, 'Glory to God'; precisely because he was love in the face of inhumanity that they continued, ‘Peace on earth'.
Christmas comes not as a season of cruelly insensitive jollity amid our suffering, but as a reminder of 'love divine all loves excelling ... to earth come down' and an offer of hope. That hope is because of the difference-making with-us-ness of God, which ceaselessly reminds us of how God loves us, and urges us to treat one another with love, too. It's also a resurrection-inspired hope that God has ultimate purposes - 'God's great clean up of an unjust and violent world', as one has put it. So our carolling is right on message. As financial recession threatens, as we grapple with grief, as too many places are politically unstable or at war, as ecological fragility alarms us and as we wonder about the future of the church in these islands, we can, we must sing with heart and voice, 'Joy to the world, the Lord is come.'
2008 has been a year of experimentation as we have explored new ways of organising ourselves in the URC. There are green shoots of real possibility but it has not been easy. For your commitment and for your patience, I should like to say a genuine thank you. I look forward to the current review of these things enabling us to move forward purposefully during 2009. To that end, we are always seeking willing volunteers to be part of the Synod's operation. Paul reminded the people of Corinth of the different gifts and abilities given to us through the Holy Spirit. We, the body of Christ, need to be aware of these gifts so that they can be used in his work. The Synod hopes to compile a list of those who might be asked as particular roles become vacant. If you know of people who might be willing to become involved in our work, please send names to the Synod Clerk. We'll be grateful.
The Synod's Officers and Staff join Bethan, Jess and me in sending warm Christmas greetings and very best wishes for the New Year.
Very sincerely, Nigel Uden.
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