A CHRISTMAS message for isleofman.com readers from the Bishop of Sodor and Man:
The sermon of Bishop Robert Patterson, in full, as conducted at the Christmas Day service held at St German's Cathederal in Peel this morning.
"Like most men as Christmas approaches I begin to panic. The female of the species seems to be more-or-less ready but Christmas Eve comes along – in fact the afternoon of Christmas Eve – and suddenly the shops are filled with men all of us with that panic-stricken look on our faces.
"A friend who's an electrical retailer tells me that men come into his shop to buy things like toasters. 'Do you think your wife really wants a toaster for Christmas?' he asks. 'Oh yes she really needs a toaster' the man replies looking relieved that the big Christmas present crisis is now solved – at least until she opens it!
"And I'm as guilty as any of my fellow-men. Yet when I look around in the lead-up to Christmas at the frantic obsession with shopping I get a bit depressed that society seems to have missed the point so badly - even if the recession may have slowed us down a little this year.
"For about 1500 years Christians have been celebrating Advent as a time for stripping-down, simplifying life, in order to experience Christ in the simplicity of his coming - but we shop till we drop!
"It's no use the church shouting from a distance that the rich parts of the world have replaced Christ with the credit card if we ourselves don't try to set an example in the way we live.
"When Jesus Christ told us to go and fish for people I don't think he was asking us to jump out of the boat and thrash around with the fishes!
"Generation Y isn't interested in people with opinions, particularly negative opinions, they want to know whether the gospel will add value to their lives and to the lives of others. The way they test for added-value is to look at how Christians live. If the gospel we say we believe is just words it's a waste of breath."
"Parts of the church of today feel as though their backs are against the wall and that what matters most is what they call 'getting people back into church'. And the victims have noticed particularly if they suspect that the real reason is to solve financial problems.
"I'm the last person to knock church growth – I'm very much in favour of proclaiming the gospel of Christ in the market-place of ideas so that men, women and children can discover the saving love of Christ and become active members of his church.
"But growth is not what the church is for. Growth becomes the driving force of mission when the church feels threatened. In fact growth is the normal product of a church which lives and prays and proclaims the values of the Kingdom of God. If the church stops trying to grow and gets on with the work of the kingdom growth happens naturally.
"So when Christians make well-meaning and important comments about society – like the danger of replacing values with price-tags but don't appear to match those words with actions what people hear is a completely different message.
"They hear the complaints of an institution desperately searching for its own salvation. Instead of getting across a positive message and backing it up with a simpler life-style we're assumed to be people with religious habits and negative attitudes propping up a dying and irrelevant institution.
"Of course, the dangers to society inherent in commercialism are considerable and we need to speak out clearly. There are other key issues about which the church has something positive and important to say and must say it - about creation and the environment, family life, justice, world poverty, population growth, and so on.
"We won't be heard on any of them unless we not only speak but are seen to act on what we believe – the coming of the Kingdom of God.
"Into this world comes the message of the eternal Word of God made flesh and pitching his divine tent among us.
"'To all who accepted him' – that is to those who took hold of him as a shipwrecked mariner might reachout for a liferaft – 'he gave the right to become children of God' (John 1. 12).
"His taking of flesh in total vulnerability - dependent on a stranger's hospitality when the inn was full, the creator unable to look after himself, the word unable to speak, a nobody in a subject people – this gives us the clue to Jesus Christ's total commitment to the world God loves.
"People want more than words from those who have discovered they are God's children. Words aren't to be despised but people need to see how words are expressed in action. They need to see the added value of Christian commitment to making this world a better place of working for the coming of the Kingdom of God as well as praying for it.
"People are unlikely to be influenced unless they see that the total commitment of Jesus Christ, the pitching of his tent in humanity, is reflected in the lives of his disciples willing to walk with him all the way from Bethlehem to the cross.
"Otherwise, we risk looking like desperate men on Christmas Eve!
"Amen."
