NCCA Christmas Message 2004

If you had to use a single word to describe Christmas, which one would you use? The preacher at my congregation on the last Sunday in Advent asked this question, and he got a variety of answers. The one he chose, however, was ‘timing’. God’s timing, he claimed, in sending Jesus into the world, was perfect. God’s timing in our own life is also perfect.

God’s perfect timing? This isn’t the way it looks! We are impatient with God’s timing. As I think about 2004, with all its challenges, and its highs and lows, many of us have lived with a sense of impatience or disappointment at God’s timing. Poverty, injustice, violence, war, and many forms of immorality do not seem to be less but more, and they are often hidden behind a cloak of respectability. We often list a catalogue of discontent as our antiphons of lament.

What’s this, then, about God’s timing with Jesus, that God’s Son came into the world, and gave his life for the world, at the right time? This means nothing without faith, and the only responses are incredulity or worship. Those who chose faith and worship are not blind – we know of injustice and oppression, and we feel it keenly. We also know that, intentionally or unintentionally, we are participants in systems and acts of injustice. After all, we are sinners – that is why Christ came.

There is no Christmas without Easter, and together they both tell us of something totally new, radically different, that none of us would ever have thought of. God entered in the world in humility and service, giving life and salvation. Our hope is in this God who does something so different, so unexpected, and so amazing. Despite everything we still believe God’s timing is perfect. We are surprised by grace, forgiveness, justice and peace, right when we least expect it.

At the NCCA we are overjoyed to be able to work with Australian Churches as they express their unity in Christ, and work together to express their faith in common action in the world. It’s a huge privilege, and we count it as yet another part of God’s amazing grace.

Grace and peace in this festival season,

John Henderson 

General Secretary