Christmas Message 2000
It hasn't been a brilliant success as a millennium year. High hopes and rather a lot of fantasy this time last year - all about new beginnings and new visions; and then a year of pretty depressing events. The empty Dome in London looks like a sign of disappointed expectations.
One thing that's been pushed at our attention again and again this year, though, is the fragility of the material environment we live in. During the crisis over petrol prices, some people at least started thinking a bit harder about what our lifestyle in this country and countries like it means for the environment. Dependence on cars - with the resulting running down of public transport - not only contributes to the poverty trap for people at the bottom of the economic heap, it also keeps up the level of pollution that threatens to choke us.
Anxieties over genetically modified crops and foods raised the same questions: do we actually know the cost of what we press ahead with? And then, right on cue, came the appalling weather of the last two months; and we all had to reflect on whether something was going quite seriously wrong with the environment.
What has any of this to do with Christmas? Well, the heart of the Christmas message is that God takes our material world completely seriously. He doesn't just send a message, he comes to live in the physical world in the flesh and blood of a real person, Jesus. He uses physical things to communicate with us (this is what Christians mean by "sacraments", especially the meal of bread and wine that is Holy Communion)
If we believe that God takes the environment seriously, that he can speak through the physical things of the world , we are horribly wrong if we think we can ignore these environmental matters. The good news God sends at Christmas has to be good news for the whole world. If we start thinking about protecting our environment properly, we shall be reflecting the way God himself looks at the world into which he came at Christmas.
Every blessing and good wish for Christmas and the New Year.