The message of Jesus and his birth marked each Christmas is for me and each of us the beginning of a new world; the arrival, suffering, dying and rising of God himself. The central theses (there are many, but here are two of them) of Christmas is lived out in the insignificance of Christ’s beginnings; from the birth of Christ ‘til now no one has the right to ask us where we come from (we are Christ’s) and we are in no one’s debt, except Christ’s! Let me illustrate with a story I have often told but never written. It goes like this. It is a true story.
They knelt down on the shores of Lake Ontario and gave God thanks for their deliverance and promptly looked for a church home. It was not to be. No Protestant church in Toronto of the 1820’s would allow them in unless they fulfilled two conditions; first, they needed to provide a letter of transfer from their former church and secondly (wait for it) they needed to re-pay their former masters for stealing property from them because they had escaped without paying their masters compensation. Knowing there was no welcome, the Afro-American Christians sent to Abyssinia Baptist Church in Harlem to send a missionary to begin First Baptist Church in Toronto.
The above story reminds me that in the coming of Jesus no one gets to ask me where I’m from (He welcomes me unconditionally) and I owe no other person simply the work and person of Jesus my Lord and the Christ.
May I welcome the Christ anew in this Christmas time and may I welcome others in His name.
A healing, while, powerful and thankful Christmas, New Year and Epiphany (may the Magi teach us as we be Magi) this day and evermore. Amen.
Warmly,
In Christ
Jeremy Bell
Christmas 2008