CALLS to supply a generous welcome amid fears about immigration were issued by Bishops of their Christmas sermons this 12 months.
“Our national conversations about immigration proceed to divide us, when our common humanity should unite us,” the Bishop of London, the Rt Revd Sarah Mullally, who’s the Archbishop of Canterbury-elect, said in a sermon preached in St Paul’s Cathedral. This and other issues — including the “weight of economic pressure” — could “leave us wondering whether the world is fraying at the perimeters . . .
“Christmas doesn’t ask us to disregard any of this. It invites us to see that God chooses to be born precisely right into a world like ours. A world of limited resources and crowded homes. A world of political tension and uncertainty. A world where people do their best to supply kindness even once they feel stretched. God doesn’t wait for perfect conditions. God arrives within the midst of the unfinished.”
She prayed: “May the enjoyment of Christ be born anew in us today, regular enough to sustain us and generous enough to overflow into the lives of those around us.”
The Archbishop of York, preaching in York Minster, lamented that “we now have turn out to be frightened of one another, and particularly frightened of strangers, or simply individuals who aren’t quite like us. We cannot see ourselves in them. And we, due to this fact, spurn a standard humanity.”
He warned: “Our fearful shielding of ourselves from strangers, the strangers we encounter within the homeless on our streets, refugees in search of asylum, young people starved of opportunity and growing up without hope for the long run, signifies that we’re in peril of failing to welcome Christ when he comes. . .
“This Christmas, and particularly at Christmas, we must find ways of balancing the needs of keeping everyone protected, and yet at the identical time seeing and adoring the face of Christ within the face of strangers, and particularly within the faces of those that are in need; after which dismantle, tear down the partitions, which, in keeping strangers out, keep Christ out as well.”
Overcoming fear was also a theme of the message of the Bishop of Chelmsford, Dr Guli Francis-Dehqani, who said that “fear of the outsider has led to deeply troubling rhetoric and policy proposals on immigration”.
The Bishop of Salisbury, the Rt Revd Stephen Lake, preaching in Salisbury Cathedral, said: “A way forward for faith will probably be happier, will help our hearts sing and can unite us across the Prince of Peace. This is why the recent attempt by some to take the Christian message hostage for a political end is doomed. Christ is in Christmas and doesn’t have to be ‘put back’ — the clue is within the name: Christmas.”
Amid online reports of packed Christmas services, following a 12 months through which the Bible Society reported a “quiet revival” in churchgoing, some bishops spoke of sensing a shift within the nation’s appetite for faith.
The Bishop of Rochester, Dr Jonathan Gibbs, said: “Up and down this country, over the previous couple of months, there have been stories of individuals wandering into churches after having had a dream about Jesus Christ or having felt compelled to purchase a Bible and to start out reading it. They don’t know why this has happened, but they’ve come along to church and desired to know more.
“I actually have seen this happening again and again here on this diocese, when people at confirmation services — especially people of their twenties and thirties — have shared the story of what has led them to turn out to be followers of Jesus, often having had little or no previous reference to the Church.
“Something is happening, or, moderately, God himself appears to be as much as something — way beyond what we as Christians have been doing to share the message of the gospel with the people around us.”
He continued: “Humanly speaking, I think this is going on because people have begun to grasp that the things through which they’d placed their hopes — things like ever-increasing prosperity or the flexibility of science and technology to resolve all our problems — have began to crumble within the face of economic crises, global pandemics, and climate change.
“In the midst of the chaos of today’s world, that is why individuals are turning over again to Jesus Christ, because he offers us hope as a substitute of fear and lightweight rather than darkness.”
The Bishop of Gloucester, the Rt Revd Rachel Treweek, said that she had detected “a craving for certainty amid the turbulence, anxiety, and uncertainty, and the countless messaging of crises.
“But I also perceive a craving for mystery — a reaching out for something beyond ourselves and the way things appear to be. You only have to go searching you to see all that continues to spring up regarding mystic otherworldliness”.
In his Christmas broadcast, the King sought to emphasize points of commonality across faiths. Having observed that the smart men had “relied on the companionship and kindness of others” and “found an inner strength”, he suggested that, “in times of uncertainty, these ways of living are treasured by all the nice faiths and supply us with deep wells of hope: of resilience within the face of adversity; peace through forgiveness; simply attending to know our neighbours and, by showing respect to 1 one other, creating recent friendships. . .
“As I meet people of various faiths, I find it enormously encouraging to listen to how much we now have in common; a shared eager for peace and a deep respect for all life. If we are able to find time in our journey through life to think on these virtues, we are able to all make the long run more hopeful.”
He closed by saying that “the best pilgrimage of all is the journey we rejoice today — the story of The One who ‘got here all the way down to Earth from Heaven’, ‘whose shelter was a stable’, and who shared his life with ‘the poor and lowly’.”
