Dear friends,
As I write this letter from the Manse, these are strange and tense times in Brussels. Brussels continues to face a level 4 security alert which means a high presence of armed police and military personnel outside schools, around Metro stations, within the main train stations and guarding important buildings. We often pray about the impact of terrorism upon people’s lives; it has been far reaching this year. Tourists on beach holidays, publishers, museum visitors, aircraft passengers and more recently a busy fun-filled Friday night in Paris turned into a bloodbath. For most of us, to think that some of the people who live in the city are at the heart of this kind of activity, is beyond belief. It makes us question what kind of world we live in. Perhaps, when you heard about the Paris attacks on 13th November, your faith was shaken?
What was the world like in Jesus day? It was no less brutal than it is now. Think of the Roman Empire expanding its borders ever wider and they cruel way they dealt with insurgents by crucifixion or some other grisly form of execution. Life was hard for many people and those who were in power in Jerusalem were corrupt and compromised. Two things strike me about the New Testament world: firstly that the Roman Empire made it easier for people to travel (the Romans were accomplished road builders) and secondly, they gathered information on people in the empire by organising regular censuses.
It is clear as we reflect upon Paul’s missionary journeys that there were open borders. The passport hadn’t been invented either and if people had the financial means they could easily move from one place to another, usually for the purposes of trade. It is clear that many of the places that Paul visited had settled Jewish communities as there were established synagogues. Then, as now, ethnically mixed communities brought cultural enrichment and diversity to urban centres. However it is likely that in these centres people of particular ethnicities occupied certain areas of the city, just as they do today. How well different ethnic groups mixed in the Roman Empire is difficult to tell. There may have been tensions, just as there are to today when groups of people stick together and don’t integrate much with an indigenous community. A culture of ‘them and us’ develops. This is a huge challenge to Western Europe at present and if we are not careful, has the potential to worsen, as we try to resettle migrants who have fled their homeland. How should the Church reach out to migrants? Creatively and generously I believe. We have the potential as Christians to lead the way and show Christ’s kindness. At some stage most of our diverse congregation left our homes to come and live in a place that was strange to us.
Luke tells us that Joseph and Mary were on the move. They had to return to Bethlehem where Joseph has been born, to register in a census. The Roman occupants gathered basic information about the people in the empire. While their method of recording would be simple, today a lot of personal information exists about each of us in various data bases. The Belgian State hold the information that is on our identity cards, and banks, airlines and hospitals will have our details on other data bases. This can be helpful to us and to those who wish to keep us safe but the potential for our personal data to be abused by the wrong people, such as computer hackers and others with malevolent intent, is increasing.
You might think that as you read this Christmas letter that I don’t describe much hope. Advent and Christmas time are all about hope. We have the hope of the arrival of Christ, the light of the world, who will come into the world to save humans from sin and the Creation from its fallen state. What could be more hopeful that the gospel message of forgiveness and life beyond the grave through Christ? However we must remember that the light of the Lord Jesus Christ shines against a backdrop of darkness.
John writes in the Prologue of his gospel ‘the light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it’ (John 1: 5).
If we reflect upon the behaviour of King Herod the Great, then his conniving behaviour culminates with the slaughter of the innocents. Herod’s brutality is motivated by a moral and spiritual darkness that has corrupted his heart and twisted his thinking.
Some of our favourite Advent hymns and carols give a clear account of the spiritual state of the world and what Christ has come to put right. In the third verse of ‘O come O come Emmanuel‘ we find written:
O come, o come, though Rod of Jesse, free
thine own from Satan’s tyranny:
from depth of hell thy people save.
And give them victory o’er the grave
Or the words of Edmund Hamilton Sears in the third verse of ‘It came upon the midnight clear‘:
But with the woes of sin and strife
the world has suffered long:
beneath the angels’ hymn have rolled
two thousand years of wrong
and warring humankind hears not
the love song which they bring;
oh, hush the noise and still the strife
to hear, the angels sing.
It’s true that we live in challenging times. Yet God knows the depths of our fear, our need for the assurance of his grace and faith that in the ultimate reckoning, he has defeated sin and evil in all its guises.
Wishing God’s blessing to you over Advent and Christmas.
Andrew
Dear friends,
As I write this letter from the Manse, these are strange and tense times in Brussels. Brussels continues to face a level 4 security alert which means a high presence of armed police and military personnel outside schools, around Metro stations, within the main train stations and guarding important buildings. We often pray about the impact of terrorism upon people’s lives; it has been far reaching this year. Tourists on beach holidays, publishers, museum visitors, aircraft passengers and more recently a busy fun-filled Friday night in Paris turned into a bloodbath. For most of us, to think that some of the people who live in the city are at the heart of this kind of activity, is beyond belief. It makes us question what kind of world we live in. Perhaps, when you heard about the Paris attacks on 13th November, your faith was shaken?
What was the world like in Jesus day? It was no less brutal than it is now. Think of the Roman Empire expanding its borders ever wider and they cruel way they dealt with insurgents by crucifixion or some other grisly form of execution. Life was hard for many people and those who were in power in Jerusalem were corrupt and compromised. Two things strike me about the New Testament world: firstly that the Roman Empire made it easier for people to travel (the Romans were accomplished road builders) and secondly, they gathered information on people in the empire by organising regular censuses.
It is clear as we reflect upon Paul’s missionary journeys that there were open borders. The passport hadn’t been invented either and if people had the financial means they could easily move from one place to another, usually for the purposes of trade. It is clear that many of the places that Paul visited had settled Jewish communities as there were established synagogues. Then, as now, ethnically mixed communities brought cultural enrichment and diversity to urban centres. However it is likely that in these centres people of particular ethnicities occupied certain areas of the city, just as they do today. How well different ethnic groups mixed in the Roman Empire is difficult to tell. There may have been tensions, just as there are to today when groups of people stick together and don’t integrate much with an indigenous community. A culture of ‘them and us’ develops. This is a huge challenge to Western Europe at present and if we are not careful, has the potential to worsen, as we try to resettle migrants who have fled their homeland. How should the Church reach out to migrants? Creatively and generously I believe. We have the potential as Christians to lead the way and show Christ’s kindness. At some stage most of our diverse congregation left our homes to come and live in a place that was strange to us.
Luke tells us that Joseph and Mary were on the move. They had to return to Bethlehem where Joseph has been born, to register in a census. The Roman occupants gathered basic information about the people in the empire. While their method of recording would be simple, today a lot of personal information exists about each of us in various data bases. The Belgian State hold the information that is on our identity cards, and banks, airlines and hospitals will have our details on other data bases. This can be helpful to us and to those who wish to keep us safe but the potential for our personal data to be abused by the wrong people, such as computer hackers and others with malevolent intent, is increasing.
You might think that as you read this Christmas letter that I don’t describe much hope. Advent and Christmas time are all about hope. We have the hope of the arrival of Christ, the light of the world, who will come into the world to save humans from sin and the Creation from its fallen state. What could be more hopeful that the gospel message of forgiveness and life beyond the grave through Christ? However we must remember that the light of the Lord Jesus Christ shines against a backdrop of darkness.
John writes in the Prologue of his gospel ‘the light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it’ (John 1: 5).
If we reflect upon the behaviour of King Herod the Great, then his conniving behaviour culminates with the slaughter of the innocents. Herod’s brutality is motivated by a moral and spiritual darkness that has corrupted his heart and twisted his thinking.
Some of our favourite Advent hymns and carols give a clear account of the spiritual state of the world and what Christ has come to put right. In the third verse of ‘O come O come Emmanuel‘ we find written:
O come, o come, though Rod of Jesse, free
thine own from Satan’s tyranny:
from depth of hell thy people save.
And give them victory o’er the grave
Or the words of Edmund Hamilton Sears in the third verse of ‘It came upon the midnight clear‘:
But with the woes of sin and strife
the world has suffered long:
beneath the angels’ hymn have rolled
two thousand years of wrong
and warring humankind hears not
the love song which they bring;
oh, hush the noise and still the strife
to hear, the angels sing.
It’s true that we live in challenging times. Yet God knows the depths of our fear, our need for the assurance of his grace and faith that in the ultimate reckoning, he has defeated sin and evil in all its guises.
Wishing God’s blessing to you over Advent and Christmas.
Andrew
