Hollowell 20 December 2015

We all know the message of Christmas  -  Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace goodwill towards men.    The Gospels' lessons describing the Christmas story are as familiar to groups of us  -  depending on our age and upbringing - us as almost anything else we know, like nursery rhymes or rugby songs.    It's hard to say anything new about this the season of goodwill-  
But as we look around the world it is quite clear that in an awful lot of places it is not the Season of Goodwill.  The those messages from the Heavenly Host are being ignored even as we sit here.   The refugees, the wars in the Middle East and Africa, ISIL and Bokoharam etc.  
The violence we are all  too familiar with.   Since a school shooting horror  in the US three years ago, I read yesterday, that 90,000 people there have been killed by guns in the United States of America.  Yet that is the country that has " In God we Trust" as its motto.  It's on the banknotes.  You don't get more official than that. 
That sixteenth century poem called " Preparations"  about the hustle and bustle attending the unexpected arrival of a King  " set me fine Spanish tables in the Hall  etc. " 
Yet at the coming of the King of Heaven / All set at six and seven, we wallow in our sin/ Christ cannot find a chamber in the inn/ We entertain him always like a stranger / and, as at first, still lodge him in a manger. "   Four hundred years ago. So what's  new you may ask  ?   
Sitting the kitchen this morning listening to the radio I heard a man talk about what he remembered of Christmas 1945.   Three German prisoners of war were  invited to spend Christmas Day with his family in their 3 bedroom flat in Harrow.  Their camp was nearby in Scrubs Lane.  They sang, they played music on piano and a concertina.   It was very ordinary celebration against an extraordinary background of a bitter war just ended and another refugee crisis in Europe.  .  I found his little talk hugely moving  -  the very ordinariness of it brought, I am not ashamed to say a tear to my eye, as I sat with a mug of tea. 
There is kindness, love and forgiveness about.  The message of the King of Heaven is still there above the clash and clamour of war, the tinsel and the adverts. 
Vital Pass that message on vital . Children starting on life's journey. It's a season for them above all.  The donkey in the church yesterday, Father Christmas.





