Bishop David's Message
The period of the Church’s Year between Christmas and Lent includes a number of important festivals. We remember the Naming and Circumcision of Jesus - reminding us of his Jewish race, and the importance of his membership of the religious community of his family.
We celebrate the Epiphany, that is the discovery by Gentile Wise Men of who this little child was - and they worshipped him as Lord not only of the Jews but of the world. In this period we also remember the Baptism of Christ - when God the Father declared to the watching world that Jesus was his Beloved Son, and Jesus immersed himself in our humanity as both God’s divine Son, and a wholly human being. Then there is another reminder of Jesus’ childhood in the festival of the Presentation of Christ in the temple, and the old priest Simeon’s recognition that Jesus was both a light for the Gentiles, and the glory of God’s people Israel. Jesus’ childhood reminds us of the significance and preciousness of children within the family of God.
Jesus’ Jewishness reminds us that he comes as the climax of God’s covenant story which began when God said to Abraham “I will be your God”. He fulfills all that the prophets of the Hebrew Bible were looking forward to, and their expectation that God would come to his world as king to put it right. But just as the Jews understood themselves as called by God to be a light to the nations around, so the light which shines in Jesus Christ is a ‘light which lightens everyone’.
There is no narrow exclusiveness to God’s love and God’s light: it shines for us all. And all this throws into sharp focus one of the themes which the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity will remind us of again: that if we belong to Christ we belong to each other, for in Jesus Christ we are all united with God the Father, he is our peace who breaks down dividing walls between us.
+ Bishop David