Just as there are sacred places like churches and cathedrals and sacred images like the cross - so too there are pools of sacred time.  Second only to Easter, Christmas for Christian people is one such sacred pool of time when we celebrate the Incarnation or the birth of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

Having this year had the joy of becoming a grandfather - I know that there is nothing quite like the joy which the birth of a baby brings.  It was the same in Bethlehem 2000 years ago when shepherds and kings gathered around that baby so divine in order to worship and adore - as we shall gather in our churches during the sacred pools of time which are Advent, Christmas and Epiphany to pay homage to the birth of the Christ Child - the Saviour of the world.

We mark the sacred pool of time which is Christmas with special customs and feasts - we enjoy one of the most sumptuous meals of the year on Christmas Day itself - we decorate our homes and churches (I am very much looking forward to our Christmas Tree Festival during the first weekend of December) - we send greetings cards wishing one another - a Happy Christmas.

It won't be long now, postal workers willing, before those seasonal cards start plopping though the letterbox onto the doormat.  This year, I'd like to invite you to take a really good look at your Christmas cards.  Ignore the skating penguins, the robins on pillar boxes and the reindeer sporting Santa hats.  Personally, I much prefer Christmas cards depicting the Nativity as they help to emphasise the sacred pool of time which is Christmas.  Take a look at the more obvious religious cards and try a little theological detective work by asking which part of the Gospel the artist is trying to illustrate.

If the picture is of a stable, with a manger and shepherds gathered round, then we know we are in St. Luke's Gospel.  There might be angels in the sky singing "Glory to God in the Highest".

If the Christ Child, the Virgin Mary and Joseph are surrounded by richly dressed men in jewelled turbans presenting luxurious gifts, with the odd camel parked outside, we know that we are in St. Matthe's Gospel.  There might well be a bright shining star in the sky - the one that led those exotic oriental visitors to the new born king.

However, some artists through the centuries have found it hard to be so biblically pedantic and pure. So some of your cards will have a straw carpeted stable with shepherds kneeling on one side of the baby and wise men on the other - combining two stories as if they were the same story.  Thus two separate sacred pools of time (Christmas and Epiphany) have unfortunately been merged into one.

This same confusion occurs in many of the carols that we sing - stars and stables, kings and shepherds, mangers and myrrh, donkeys and camels in a wonderful scripturally indiscriminate pageant.

Does it really matter, I hear you asking?  Well, yes, I think that it does.  It matters because the people who wrote the gospels of Matthew and Luke were very different kinds of people with different perspectives on the stories they were telling.  If you play a Beethoven symphony and a Bach cantata at the same time, you don't hear either of them properly.  Similarly, if you blend both nativity stories into one, you don't get the best out of either.  You simply muddy the waters if you mix together Matthew's sacred pool of time with Luke's.  You miss those distinctive flavours if you mash up together the two separate gospel accounts.

We mustn't, of course, forget St. John's Gospel.  In his account there isn't a donkey or a nappy in sight, but a big majestic picture with great sweeps of light and colour that speak of the Word who was with God from the beginning, becoming flesh, pitching his tent and living among us.  In the same way, although Mark's Gospel, the earliest of the four, has no Nativity stories, St. Mark is perfectly clear who he thinks Jesus is - for right at the outset - in verse one of chapter one he states:- "The beginning of the Good News of Jesus, the Messiah, the Son of God".

So use your religious Christmas cards to remind yourselves that the Christmas story is much, much bigger than simply the story of a baby in a manger.  The Incarnation of God is a love story that we have hardly begun to grasp, a mystery whose outer edges we cannot begin to imagine, but whose heart we already know.

So Happy Christmas one and all - I look forward to welcoming you to St. Mary's and All Saints' as together we immerse ourselves in the sacred pool of time which is Christmas and realise once more that we are touched, embraced, accompanied and held by a divine love that changes everything.

CHRISTMAS BLESSINGS,
FATHER DAVID