CAPTION: Bishop James says 2023 brings challenges but also the chance for transformation
Bishop of Plymouth New Year Message
A year ago, as I prepared my first sermon for 2022, I wanted to encourage people and offer them hope.
I wanted to say that 2022 was bound to be better than 2021, especially with all the false starts of the long-anticipated end to Covid restrictions.
But I didn’t want to give false hope, and, with hindsight, it really would have been false hope, given the war in Ukraine and the current cost of living crisis.
And I’m afraid 2023 doesn’t offer huge improvements. As Pam Eyres wrote over Christmas:
Well, happy Christmas mateys, you can’t get on a train,
The Border Force is striking, so you can’t get on a plane,
The nurses on the picket line feel underpaid and wronged,
And if you need an ambulance, the wait could be prolonged.
No turkey on the table, the blighter’s got the flu,
Here’s a Yuletide sausage, one’ll have to do,
Let’s raise a glass of water, with blankets on our knees,
And drink to festive merriment, as we gently freeze. @Pam Ayres 2022
In 2023, it is likely that we will feel even more profoundly the secondary costs of war in Ukraine. An ongoing war that we are not directly part of, but which has a huge impact on our lives.
Also, January is always one of the hardest months financially for people even without a cost of living crisis. Aren’t you glad you started reading this article?!!
Real Hope
I think we need to be real about the problems and challenges we face and the fact that for many they are far more acute than for others. But I do also want to offer hope. Not false hope but real hope.
Times of crisis seem to bring out the best or worst in people. In the last couple of weeks, the crew of a scallop fishing vessel rescued 31 drowning migrants from the freezing sea.
They not only saved their lives but also gave them all their own clothes and bedding. Whilst being met with accolades of heroism, they were also decried for not leaving them to drown.
We may be shocked by such inhumane responses but under pressure it’s easy to close in and look to our own needs. The choice of whether we respond positively or negatively is down to us alone.
Years ago, I was profoundly challenged by a lad who said that his community was different from mine. He said, “We’re like family in our close. If one of us has a packet of cigarettes we’ll share it with the others.
If one of us has a sofa we no longer need we’ll give it to someone else. Whereas for you, your stuff is your stuff.”
Even longer ago we took our two sons to a shanty town in South Africa. My sons were the first white children to visit it.
Generosity for Others
The poverty was extreme and harrowing and yet people were so generous in their hospitality and welcome. It’s not down to how much we have but our attitude towards it.
We’ve seen in the last few years greater and greater levels of generosity and care for others. Communities have opened up and looked to the needs of others and are the better for it.
Neighbours have become friends. Isolated older people have connected with people living near them. Warm hubs have not only provided vital physical warmth but also human warmth.
So many have worked tirelessly to resource food banks and meet basic human needs. Churches are at the forefront of so much of this provision in towns and villages across the land, where previously they may have been seen as irrelevant and disconnected.
Ultimately, hope and value don’t actually come from the external things in life. Yes, we need food, warmth and shelter as essentials for life, but our worth and hope does not come from what we own, what we earn or what we do for a living. It comes from within.
God Adds an Extra Dimension
I also believe that faith in God adds a whole extra dimension to our lives. God came as man at Christmas not to eradicate the struggles and challenges of life but to offer two things.
First, that he is with us today at all times and in all places and will never abandon us. As a child he faced poverty, rejection and the reality of being a migrant and so knows the challenges we face and is with us in them.
Second, he offers internal transformation with external consequences. He came to instil hope and love in our innermost beings.
He offers to set us free from fear, condemnation, shame, insecurity and all that so easily eats away inside.
God promises security, meaning and hope in a world that so often lacks them. No matter what 2023 holds for us, I pray that you will know more of this God and the love and hope he has for you.
The Rt. Rev’d James Grier, Bishop of Plymouth