wfn.org | The Presiding Bishop's Christmas me

[ENS.parti@ecunet.org (ENS)]

November 13, 1997
Episcopal News Service
Jim Solheim, Director
212-922-5385
ens@ecunet.org

97-2008
The Presiding Bishop's Christmas message   

The Fresh Wonder of Christmas

       How can it be that each year, once again, we await with
excitement the arrival of Christmas?  How can it be that each year we
count forward the days, no matter how many Christmases we remember,
no matter how many trees we have covered with glitter and light and so
soon carried out amid a shower of falling needles, no matter that not all
memories of Christmas past bring joy and satisfaction.  No matter.  Even
so, each year,  our sense of anticipation rises, not yet beaten down by
commercialization, or exhaustion, or earlier disappointments.  How can it
be that the message of Christmas is heard once again over the jingle of
bells and the electronic whirring of the cash register? How can it be?   Is
it a miracle, beyond our human understanding?  Indeed not, and that, my
dear sisters and brothers is the glorious paradox of it all: the story lives
on and never fails to amaze us because of, and in spite of, our humanity
and the humanity of Jesus.
       Because of men and women who have heard and remembered, the
story of Godžs love is as real, and as amazing, now as it was two
centuries ago. To this day we remain amazed that Godžs Word would
take on human flesh, and all that goes with it: frailty, weakness, a
divided mind and a heart ready for breaking.  To this day we are almost
incredulous that God's son would be afflicted by all that assails our
human selves and leads, in the end, to the death of our mortal flesh. 
       The message of Christmas has been carried forward by Godžs
people, in spite of our human frailties and failures. Ringing down
through the centuries, the message of the birth of the Holy Child lives
on. The Good News has been carried forward to this very day,  by
generations of faithful women and men who felt as inadequate in their
time as we do in ours.  Empowered by the Spirit of God, and the
memory of Jesus, we human creatures have followed Jesus and struggled
forward through the centuries, wondering sometimes how, for Heaven's
sake, this had all come to be. 
       The message has survived and we today are left to carry it
forward, in spite of and because of who we are. Who would have
thought that such an important work could have been left to us, but
indeed it has been.  We have discovered that it is we, all of us in all our
frailty, to whom the message has been given. Itžs up to us. We delight
again in the fresh wonder of Christmas, and we pass the story forward to
the next generation. We carry on, in our human way, the work of the
angel heralds.
       So, go and tell the story with a heart full of the love of the Holy
Child.  My prayers are with you, as is my thanks to each and all of you
for your witness. God bless you.

The Most Rev. Edmond Lee Browning