2006 Christmas Message from the General Minister and President of the United Church of Christ
Monday, December 25, 2006
2006 Christmas Message
The Rev. John H. Thomas
General Minister and President
United Church of Christ
"Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors!" (Luke 2.14) The place where, it is said, the angels appeared to the shepherds now lies hard up against the concrete and steel separation barrier that encloses Bethlehem in most places behind a twenty five foot high wall. Young Israeli soldiers guarding the checkpoints eye those who seek to enter or leave with professional condescension, no doubt cloaking an underlying fear. Palestinians endure their virtual imprisonment with emotions oscillating between resignation and rage. Each day is a mockery of the angelic choir’s announcement of peace. In Bethlehem and throughout the world peace is offered only to those we favor, to those who meet our standards of justice, our interpretation of law. As a result, everywhere pilgrims on their way to holy shrines must pick their way past the wreckage of human destruction like children tiptoeing through fields littered with unexploded cluster bombs. Who are the ones God favors? Are we? We journey toward Bethlehem this year in a world where the angels’ voice is not only mocked, but muted. Iraq, Lebanon, Sri Lanka, Darfur form a dismal litany. Even in the Church, even in our church, the promise of peace is elusive as partisans of various kinds of truth and soldiers of all sorts of justice launch assaults against one another, as walls are erected to separate and imprison, and extravagant and idolatrous claims are made for God’s special favor. Have we forgotten who it is we travel to Bethlehem to see? An infant who first and foremost is not a child of truth or of justice, but the Child of God, of Love, of Forgiveness? Have we forgotten that if peace is for those God favors, then surely it must be for all the people? The great Orthodox theologian Alexander Schmemann once wrote in a reflection on the Lord’s Prayer: Perhaps the terrible tragedy of our times, of those societies in which we live, consists precisely in the fact that while there is much talk about legality and justice, while many assorted texts are cited, these societies have almost entirely lost the power and moral beauty of forgiveness. This is why the petition in the Lord’s Prayer for forgiveness of sins of those who have sinned against us, and of us and our sins by God, is possibly that very center of moral rebirth before which we stand in this age. In the center of troubled Bethlehem today stands the Christmas Church, built by European missionaries in the 19th century. Its interior very much reflects its German Lutheran origins, save for the dome over the sanctuary which has been repainted a beautiful blue, a color so representative of Islamic culture. And around the base of the dome are the angels’ words, written not in German or Latin, but in Arabic. Here notions of God’s favor burst beyond old and confining limits. Here in Bethlehem, where the hopes and fears of all the years still meet, the heavenly chorus continues its song, and by the witness of the Church its promises may still resound, "Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom God favors." Peace. For all the people!
If Christmas teaches us anything, it is that the world is redeemed not by our moral certainties, our ideological truths, or even our steadfast claims for justice. It is redeemed by the power and the moral beauty of forgiveness revealed in the Manger.