Bishop Rachel's  Christmas message to all in Gloucestershire and beyond.

It is said that Christmas is for the children — and amid the twinkling lights and Santas and food adverts, there is a tiny child – Lying ‘away in a manger’ over 2,000 years ago in Bethlehem, Palestine. The first Christmas. Although it’s not all sweetness. Let’s not forget King Herod. The nativity plays stop short of Herod’s slaughter of innocent babies, and Jesus and his parents fleeing into Egypt. It all seems rather poignant as I look to the Middle East this Christmas.

There has still been the cry of a child – well many. Amid the joyful cries of new birth there have also been the traumatic cries of babies tortured in a kibbutz in Israel; crying child-hostages in tunnels; And there have been the cries of children buried under the rubble of military attack in Gaza; babies removed from incubators; and let’s not forget the cry of the children of Bethlehem and the Westbank. Indeed, let us not forget the cries of children in so many places of conflict, famine, earthquake, flood, poverty…

And yet — and yet — here’s the glorious mystery of that first Christmas: Here is God as tiny child come to earth to be amid the mess and pain – And I hear too the cry of that Christmas child Jesus Christ, now as man, crying out in anguish as he is cruelly nailed to a cross. Yet amazingly — almost unbelievably — there is a cry of forgiveness. Here is love amid hatred and division. And his cry of pain and death was not the end of the story. Three days later Jesus Christ arose from the grave — love and life stronger than even death itself.

And now the Christmas celebrations and the twinkling Christmas lights all make sense, because the hope and light of Jesus Christ are stronger than the darkness, even in the darkest tunnel or pile of rubble.

And yes Christmas IS for the children — the children who are no longer with us, the children who laugh and play, and the children who scream in trauma; and the children now young people and adults celebrating, grieving, laughing, weeping… And that first-Christmas cry from the crib in Bethlehem is a cry of hope and love for everyone. Here is Jesus Christ, Emmanuel which means ‘God with us’. And God IS with us…

And with God one day there will be no more crying — no more pain, no more death. Even now God longs to hold us — as children. Longs for us to cry ‘yes’ and to stretch out our hands to God and to each other. May it be so.