CAPTION: Bishop Robert joined the Bradninch Festival Choir at St Disen's Church for his Christmas message video
Bishop of Exeter Christmas Message 2022
Churches and other organisations across Devon are showing God’s love in action this Christmas by offering a helping hand to those of us for whom the cost-of-living crisis is all too real.
I recently visited St Disen’s church, in Bradninch, near Cullompton. Every Wednesday it is offering a warm welcome space in its community hall between 9am and 3pm.
The volunteer team serves home-made soup, hot drinks and cake. There is free Wi-Fi, magazines and books to read and the opportunity to chat with others or just enjoy a bit of peace and quiet in a warm environment.
One of the local church ministers tells me that people are coming in the morning and staying until it closes. She said it has been wonderful getting to know new people in the community.
I know of another church which is handing out hot water bottles to keep people warm during services and another which has raised money to give vouchers for the local food shop for people struggling to make ends meet
Welcome is at the heart of the events of Christmas – or rather the lack of it. After all, there was no room in the inn for Mary and Joseph after their long journey and you can bet your bottom dollar the stable wasn’t heated and there wouldn’t have been a cup of tea or bowl of soup in sight!
I’m not an avid reader of psychology, least of all American psychology, but last month I came across an article that caught my attention. It was entitled, ‘Gap-Induced Relatedness.’
For all its jargon and highfalutin language, what the article actually described was experiences common to us all. The theory was simple: we create the kind of relationship we think appropriate by the way we modify the gap between ourselves and others.
For example, if you are standing alone on a train station platform late at night, waiting for the last train, and you suddenly become aware that a stranger is walking towards you, the chances are you will feel anxious and, depending on their behaviour and where they choose to stand on the platform, possibly intimidated or threatened. In response to perceived threat, we literally ‘keep our distance.’
At the opposite end of the spectrum is the experience of intimacy.
With our families or close friends, we close the gap in the company of the people we love to the point where there is no gap at all, for example a grandparent enveloping their grandchild in a giant bear hug.
Gap-induced relatedness: it’s how relationships work. It’s how society works or doesn’t work, as the case may be.
What Christmas achieves is God’s initiative in closing the gap between us and Him. He closes it in the person of his Son, Jesus Christ.
At Christmas, God himself becomes human. God’s living heart beats in this child of Mary, lying in a manger. In this birth we encounter the extravagant, self-giving love of God inviting our love in return.
God does not expect us to come onto his territory. Instead, God steps into our world, our mess, our weakness and sin, our midwinter, our struggles for justice, our yearning for peace.
Jesus closes the gap between the mysterious unknowable God and confused humanity. The initiative is entirely God’s and that is the meaning of grace.
Emmanuel – God with us in the cold times and the dark times, not just the happy times. God with us in times of illness, loss and disappointment, not just in times of celebration and joy. God closes the gap.
As many face a bleak midwinter with escalating fuel bills and increased mortgage payments, we need to keep loving our neighbour by offering a warm welcome and closing the gaps in our society.
May that experience of being a child of God, held in the warmth of his embrace be all of ours this Christmas.
Bishop Robert