Tuesday 8 December 2015

Advent Christmas 2015

The season of Advent is midway, and Christmas already here in the minds of many, while others wait in anticipation, participating in the religious rituals of the Church and preparing in their hearts and minds for the  commemoration of the birth of the Christ child as redeemer and hope for our times.

The season of Advent is a mixture of prophecy, politics and prayer. It is a season of hope in challenging and troubling times. Times where leadership across the world struggle to find just and longterm  solutions to conflict and terrorism alongside poverty and homelessness for 53 million people .

The Gospel stories set for Advent  this year from Luke, seek to remind us that it was an aging childless couple, a peasant girl and a wild man from the desert, who foreshadowed and announced the coming of God in human flesh. All these were outsiders, not mainstream or politically correct as we say today. There response were challenged and ridiculed by the power brokers and the religious elite of the day. They were concerned that their own  power base would diminish or fall, and a new order emerge, that would set different priorities and see justice proclaimed for all people. The call of the Gospel to a radical change to the structures of the world today still remain a stumbling block and a challenge to all who seek to deny justice to  others by their own quest for naked power.

The season of Advent and Christmas stand in contrast to the celebrity worship of our times and the increasingly commercialization of the day. We hear constantly that the fate of our economy rests with how much we spend at Christmas on gifts, parties, holidays and the trivia associated with the sentimentality of the season .  The advertisers and the commercial elites, the profiteers and traders , holidays and family celebrations have taken over  in many places centre stage. Do not get me wrong. I am not a wowser  and I recognize the place of family gatherings, feasting and holidays, but surely Christmas offers more than this ?

Some sections of the media and others with loud voices call for a complete or near abandonment of any religious observance at Christmas while equally others want to enforce their religious views on all the community. I do not suggest that people of no faith and other faiths have to conform to the Christian story but I do not want to be, condemned or marginalized for my faith and understanding of the meaning of Christmas while being generous to others in how they wish to celebrate the season. There is room for us all in a multicultural and faith society like Australia and why should the secularists have it all their own way?

Christians of all traditions at Christmas come together to sing a song of hope praying that the light of Christ "will transfigure the cultural noises, the over consumption, the sentimentality, obsessive work, the violence and fear of our times, the homeless and the  demand of family and shine through into the darkest places to illuminate God's love and dream for the creation that we may all live in harmony with God and each other. May this Advent be a time of reelection and peace to all.