All our waiting has finished, we have arrived at Christmas Day!
Christmas Eve we will read from Luke and Matthew and even John, but Christmas morning will see us focusing on the Luke passage.
Our Luke passage ends with the words that “the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.” This is what we are doing Christmas morning, celebrating for all that has occurred, that God has come to be with us Emmanuel and that all things have changed.
As we stop and share with family and friends as we are able, we celebrate that opportunity but also remember that there are those who cannot celebrate for one reason or another. There are a number of our people for whom COVID has meant that those family celebrations are different and a lot quieter, and the same may be for those we know just recovering from COVID. Our Blue Christmas Service reminds us that there are those for whom celebrating at Christmas is the furthest thing from their minds or abilities.
Whatever this Christmas Day may bring us, the deep joy of the coming of the Christ Child is still there, all we need to do is stop and take a moment to feel that.
As we move on in this season of Christmas, we begin our journey through Matthew in earnest. Our first couple of weeks of January see us begin with the genealogy of Jesus. We skip over the Matthew story of the nativity and pick up again with John the Baptist and the baptism of Jesus.
Our theme for this time is “Living…” and we’ll take the opportunity of gathering slightly differently, namely in café style, to explore what some of the ‘living’ might look like for us here at Murrumbeena. This will co-inside with the Church Council exploring our community connections with some help from a community developer. But more of that to come.
It is my hope that our time throughout January and our experience of café style worship will create more spaces and time for us to be in conversation with each other, hear stories we may not have heard before, and get to know each other just that much better.
We probably won’t live stream our January mornings, but there will be something available on YouTube. We’ll also have zoom open so that you can join us at a table even you can’t be there in person.
Christmas Blessings to you all!
Jay Robinson