The Rev. John H. Thomas, UCC General Minister and President, offers his 2005 Christmas Letter to members and friends of the United Church of Christ.

In 1936, amid the gathering clouds of holocaust and war that would turn much of Europe and Asia to wilderness, children’s author E. B. White penned this note in The New Yorker:

Shopping in Woolworth’s in the turbulent days, we saw a little boy put his hand inquiringly on a ten-cent Christ child, part of a creche. “What is this?” he asked his mother, who had him by the hand. “C’mon, c’mon,” replied the harassed woman, “you don’t want that ” She dragged him grimly away, a Woolworth Madonna, her mind dark with gift-thoughts, following a star of her own devising.

This has been a turbulent year for the United Church of Christ, a year we have felt the tug of Woolworth Madonnas within and without and have struggled to know whether the stars we follow are of our own devising, or of God’s. We move through this Advent season weary from the year that is passed, both amazed and unsettled. Turbulent.

Leadership transitions, some planned and gratefully acknowledged, others abrupt and painful, have challenged us. Intense debates about our commitments to Palestinians in the Middle East and to the Jewish community here, or about marriage equality, have at times led us to question one another’s faithfulness and good will. The financial requirements for our enormously ambitious Stillspeaking Initiative, for Our Church’s Wider Mission, for the needs of people around the world devastated by war and flood, have left many congregations feeling overwhelmed, perhaps even confused by multiple and urgent invitations to give. Turbulent.

Months of uncertainty over the viability of our UCC property and liability insurance program, the UCCIB. caused high anxiety and stretched our understanding of covenant. The loss of over twenty congregations following this summer’s General Synod votes diminished us, not just financially, but also spiritually as communities with rich traditions of faithful ministry left us. Inquiries from non-UCC congregations about membership in the United Church of Christ are welcomed, but also raise challenging questions around identity and ecumenical commitment. Heightened media visibility following our commercial in December and March and our whimsical embrace of Spongebob have offered new opportunities for public witness and evangelism, but also challenge us with new responsibilities for which we do not always feel prepared. It has been a turbulent year.

Yet beneath this turbulence there is another current, steady and constant, flowing from the rich reservoirs of our reach for an extravagant welcome and call to evangelical courage. In her novel Gilead Pulitzer Prize winning author Marilyn Robinson, a member of the United Church of Christ, points to this current in her narrator’s description of baptism. It is, he says, “to touch another with the pure intention of blessing,” a blessing that does not “enhance sacredness, but acknowledges it.” Amid the turbulent chapters of life this past year, the real narrative flowing through it all has been one of extraordinary efforts to bless.

Delegates and visitors to General Synod in Atlanta this past summer noted the holiness of liturgy, community, and discernment, and the sacredness of location and history in a place marked by the touch of the American Missionary Association in the 19th century and the courage of the Civil Rights movement of the 20th century. While faithful people across the United Church of Christ struggle with integrity over the vote on Marriage Equality, for millions in the UCC and beyond, this historic decision was experienced as blessing, as the acknowledgment of sacredness. There has been much turbulence. But there has been profound blessing as well.

While every setting of the church has fretted over finances this year, members of the United Church of Christ have demonstrated amazing, record breaking generosity. By the end of this year we will have received nearly $9 million in special gifts for victims of the tsunami in southern Asia and east Africa, of Katrina, Rita, and Wilma, of violence in Darfur and the Sudan, of the earthquake in Pakistan and Kashmir, and for vulnerable people struggling globally with hunger and HIV/AIDS. Few had the opportunity, as I did in southern India last February, to physically touch survivors with a hand and a prayer of blessing. But hundreds have now entered into a “Covenant of Compassion” so that we might bless in sustained and disciplined ways.

The Stillspeaking Initiative has entered our life with creative, disruptive energy. Our commercial, uncomfortable for some among us, was a gift to hundreds of thousands who came to our website looking for this unexpected source of blessing. Our red and black banners and our welcoming congregations discovered that in each of our communities there are the left alone, left out, left behind yearning for community with Christ. We have been blessed with a new commitment to evangelism, and we are actively planning for how that commitment can be a blessing in parts of the country where we have been hard to find. Designated gifts to TSI have topped $1.5 million and while there was disappointment at not being able to show our new commercial in Advent, we are confident that we will move forward with an arresting - and delightfully whimsical - message of hope and invitation at Easter. Blessing.

Our prophetic witness focused this year on the poor amid a nation preoccupied by the agony of death and the vain deceptions of war in Iraq The needs of hungry people lifted up at a large Bread for the World sponsored convocation in May, the desperate need to move the minimum wage to a living wage and to support the rights of workers in low paying jobs, the devastating proposals for the Federal budget are not political questions of the left or the right, but profoundly moral issues increasingly being embraced by mainline Protestant, Catholic, and evangelical Christians together. They are about blessing the poor, acknowledging sacredness with justice and helping all to imagine that another world is possible.Blessing.

This fall’s celebration in Berlin of 25 years of Kirchengemeinschaft - church fellowship - with the Union of Evangelical Churches in Germany reminded us of global partnerships, whether in Germany or Palestine, that break down dividing walls where walls are both disturbing memories and oppressive living realities. Closer to home, persistent efforts by conferences and national boards to restore stability to the UCCIB is really about restoring health to flood, wind, and fire ravaged congregations seeking once again to be blessings in their communities.

Our touch of blessing is not always marked by pure intentions. We do not always resist the lure of stars of our own devising. Such has been the case for the United Church of Christ, and for your leaders. Yet the yearning to bless has been at the center of our life as the currents of baptism have buoyed us amid the turbulent days. Now as we approach Christmas still in the grip of Woolworth Madonnas and dark gift thoughts, may we pause long enough to reach toward the images of Christ all around us, sighting a star that can lead us to the place where our own sacredness is acknowledged. May this be at the heart of Christmas for you.