Clergy Letter

I often pray as I walk along a beach - it seems somehow to lend itself to quiet reflection, I think - and I often come back to this theme of margins: how Jesus in his ministry was often to be found in rural backwaters, or among those at the margins of his society. Now, we can sometimes make the mistake of assuming that the point of Jesus seeking out those whom society was shunning was simply a matter of him curing them. Yes, Jesus heals miraculously on many occasions, but the healing itself is only part of the story. In the society in which he lived, these healings also led to people being welcomed back into the thick of things, restored in their communities and given true dignity. So what do we learn from those on the margins of society? Well, unlikely as it sounds, they should be our role models. The diversity of what it means to be human is often most challenging for those who do not have social barriers to overcome - whether these be of race, gender, disability, sexuality or neurotypicality. The thing is, this is a direct challenge from Jesus for everyone. I bet for each of us there is someone, or some group of people we find it harder to love than others. We find it hard to love unconditionally because this is a universal human disability, and this is why we need the grace of God and the gift of the Holy Spirit to help us to love as God loves us. We need to actually see ourselves as outsiders, to get a proper perspective. To follow Jesus is to follow God the ultimate outsider: in Jesus, God came to the extreme margins of human existence and met us there. God met us in the extremes of pain and death on the cross of Jesus. God met us in the ministry of Jesus among the excluded and marginalized. And as we prepare for Christmas, this is a helpful way to put things in perspective. God didn’t rock up as a warrior, a mighty emperor with an army to rival the Romans. God turned up as a baby, born in inconvenient circumstances in an insignificant backwater of the fragile margins of an empire. At Christmas we remember how God comes out to meet us on the margins. When we learn to love as Christ loved us, when we ignore social and cultural barriers between ourselves and others, when we truly invite God to transform us into a community of love, the result is that the love of God is born again in the world. Christmas means God is with us: God’s love is loose in the world. And when that happens, there are no margins, because we haven’t set a boundary: there is only an inclusive, loving community which puts all human models of society, all political structures of nationhood or community in the shade. Those, my friends and neighbours, are the glad tidings of great joy which I offer you and yours this Christmas. Bless you all,