NCCA Christmas Message 2006

“Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place,
which the Lord has made known to us.” (Luke 2:15)

The Bible story of Christmas involves real people, living in a real place, at a real time. It could have been any of us – people living their ordinary, everyday lives as best they know how.  Many of them were sceptical about God acting in the lives of ordinary people, just as many Australians still are today.

Our society is uncertain whether faith in God is a good thing or a bad thing.  The Australian dream of a comfortable non religious and vaguely agnostic society seems to have evaporated.  The realities of faith, and of the religions that go with it, are pressing us hard.   Will this make for a better, fairer world, or a worse, theocratic nightmare?

Issues of faith and religion are not just a result of migration.  The growth of the Muslim community, along with many other religions, did not bring this ‘problem’ here.  It merely throws it into sharper relief.  We now know we must tackle questions we have tried to ignore but that would not go away.  What do we want?  What do we believe?  What gives our life value and meaning?

This is an important stage in our growth.  Material wealth is not the answer.  Our politicians claim to bring prosperity but there is a mixed message that we are also one step short of total catastrophe.  In other words, despite all the best advice and planning, there is no security, there is no lasting prosperity, and there is no guaranteed easy life.

Among this turmoil the Christmas story is unique.  It begins with a divine choice but its enactment takes place among the choices of human beings – real people, in real places, experiencing real events.  The birth of Jesus, the centre of the story, happens right there among them, and it’s a perfectly ordinary and everyday, although miraculous, event.

A baby is born.  It happens every day.  It has always happened.  Why this one?  Why would the birth of Jesus be different to any other?  That’s the miracle of faith.  It wasn’t any different in its detail, or in the experience, but it took place by divine choice.  God acted in human history.  Jesus is Immanuel – God for us.  That makes him our hope, and our certainty of life and a secure future, because God has entered human history in a way we never thought possible.

Of course this takes faith – we shouldn’t shy away from that.  We should not be ashamed of faith.  Faith is part of existence.  If we didn’t believe and trust we would be dead.  It’s time we recognise that, discover the hope that is born daily among us, and learn to believe that God really is doing something good here.

Christmas could have happened to any one of us.  It does happen to all who believe that in Jesus God came into the world as a human being to live a human life to the full.  Christian faith, and Christian living, means living out that belief, day by day, week by week, month by month, among real people, in real places, and at real times in our life.

John Henderson
General Secretary
December 2006, Sydney