Christmas Message

I’ve often thought that we get the Christmas story’s timeline hopelessly muddled! For instance:

– We tell the story of the angel telling Mary about her forthcoming birth just a few weeks before Christmas, although there’s no reason to think that her pregnancy didn’t last the usual nine months (the Catholic Church gets this right with the feast of the Annunciation in March).

Minister’s Message – December 19, 2021

I wonder how we greet each other over the Christmas season – and I don’t mean with “How are you doing? Terrible weather, isn’t it”! I guess we use phrases such as “Merry” or “Happy Christmas!”; our cards might say “Season’s Greetings” or – at a pinch – “Glad tidings” or even “Yuletide cheer”; if we were American we might well say, “Happy holidays” (ugh). But perhaps the most appropriate greeting for us to use this year should be “Fear not!” That might seem surprising, but it has strong Biblical backing as it’s the greeting which the angels used all those years ago. So let’s have a think about the different occasions on which they said it.

Minister’s Message – December 5, 2021

Every religious community has its customs and rituals, some of which may seem rather odd to outsiders. So our Muslim friends pray five times a day and try to make the pilgrimage to Mecca at least once during their lives, our Hindu neighbours go to the Temple and offer gifts of food to their deities, Sikh men are bearded, wear a turban and carry a ceremonial knife – and so on. These practices all have their meanings although, over the years, they may have turned into habits or simply “the things we do” which don’t get thought about much from day to day. I’m sure the same is true in Christianity!