Relaying the message of 'In Grace Alone, Through Christ Alone, and By Faith Alone'
Presbyterian Moderator the Rev Dr Richard Murray says ‘O Little Town of Bethlehem’ is one of our best loved Christmas carols and will be sung many times over the Christmas season.
The author was Rev Phillips Brooks, who in 1865 spent Christmas in Bethlehem, where Jesus was born. Three years later, reflecting back on that visit, he wrote the carol with the opening lines ‘O Little Town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie.’
Thinking of Bethlehem where our Saviour was born, and the whole of the Middle East today, we find a place that can by no means be described as ‘still’. For the town that saw the arrival of the ‘Light of the world’ (John 8:12) is still in darkness, in a region that still does not know peace.
Dr Murray said: "Earlier this month I had the privilege of visiting Poland to encourage and support a fledgling Presbyterian denomination, the Evangelical Presbyterian Church in Poland. I spent time with my brothers and sisters in Christ and preached in one of their four congregations, Christ the Saviour in the ancient city of Kraków.
"How encouraging to see a growing congregation of believers in a country not noted for reformed truth. Truly, the Lord is mighty to save and many are discovering that salvation is not to be found in church rituals and traditions, but salvation is to be found 'In Grace Alone, Through Christ Alone, and By Faith Alone'."
Church of Ireland and Roman Catholic primates archbishops, meanwhile, accept what is they call, sometimes rather lamely, “the Christmas story” brings another of the great unavoidable facts of existence, to set alongside the irrefutable fact of the darkness of evil.
"The fact of the bright mystery and love of God. It is one of Bible’s great strengths that it does not pretend that the world is other than how it is experienced by men and women", say archbishops John McDowell and Eamon Martin in their joint Christmas, message.
The archbishops add: "It doesn’t pretend that the mystery of evil and the mystery of God are easy to understand or come to terms with. It may have fallen into disuse but one remembers when those who offered simple, trite or baseless reassurance about life’s bitterness were called 'Job’s comforters', after the group of his friends who offered false hope to that long suffering man."
"However, the Christmas story as we will encounter it at midnight worship on Christmas Eve or on Christmas morning will include the words “…and the light shines in darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it”. Before the invention of either printing or the spread of literacy those words would have been heard by believers rather than read by them. Perhaps in modern terms they might even be called “a spoiler” because it’s as if the writer or editor of John’s Gospel doesn’t want people to have to wait until the end of the drama to know the outcome of what it means for the world and for the believer when Word became flesh.
"And the outcome is that the Father’s love follows Jesus into the darkness of the world and that light has the last word and not darkness. And that for all of life’s obscurity and complications and suffering, that Jesus Christ and his love for the cosmos is the foregone conclusion of all things."