|
 Archbishop's
Christmas Message 2006
The
Most Reverend Father, Archbishop Gary Beaver, delivered his 2006
Christmas and 2007 New Year's Message utilising modern technology with a
globally transmitted internet broadcast listened to by over 10,000 listeners
on Christmas Day.
The sermon is being repeated for
the next week twice daily on Archbishop Gary Beaver's "Got God" radio
programme on Interfaith Radio 1, where it is expected that it will be heard
by many thousands from every country in the world.
Click Here to Link to Interfaith
Radio 1
Christmas Message 2006
Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of Great Joy that
will be for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been
born to you,
He is Christ the Lord". [Luke 2;10-11]
At this holy time of the year I send you my wishes for a
Blessed and Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. May you have a Blessed Holy
Holiday and all your prayers be granted while you celebrate the coming
holidays together in peace and joy. May the Holy Spirit fill your heart with
the presence of Christ.
I pray together with you for all soldiers in Iraq, for Peace
in the Holy Land and throughout the world.
With God’s blessings may this sermon send a Christmas message
to the Western and Eastern Rites and all Christian brothers and sisters that
make up the global Body of Christ, reminding us all of the true meaning of
Christmas, and how our love for God cannot be separated from the Christian
love we should express for the rest of humanity.
For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten
Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting
life. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world, but
that the world through Him might be saved. [John 3:16-17]
During my consecration as an Archbishop in the Old Catholic
faith, I laid prostrate before the altar, my arms stretched outward in the
shape of His cross, the divine calling still ringing in my ears, for me to
become the servant of the servants, to proclaim and protect the good news,
to seek out the lost sheep and bring His message and comfort to those in
need, to become a Soldier of Christ and fight the good fight, to dedicate my
life to love all His children.
Love is the true meaning of Christmas. God loves us so much,
and we show our gratitude through remembering the day he became human in the
person of Jesus Christ. "I give you a new commandment, that you love one
another. As I have loved you, you should also love one another." [John
13:34] This is not a suggestion, but a commandment. God even goes so far as
to describe love; ‘Love is patient. Love is kind. It does not want what
belongs to others. It does not brag. It is not proud. It is not rude. It
does not look out for its own interests. It does not easily become angry. It
does not keep track of other people's wrongs. Love is not happy with evil;
but it is full of joy when the truth is spoken. It always protects. It
always trusts. It always hopes. It never gives up. Love never fails.’ [1
Corinthians 13:4-8a]
So is it lack of love that has seen the discord between
people amplified, more so over the course of this year, than any other in
living memory? The media has portrayed a greater divide between Christians
and Muslims, between Jews and Muslims, and between the faithful, and the
non-faithful.
We saw this year, harrowing footage of Muslim children
slaughtered in Lebanon by Jewish hands, we saw too an over zealous maligning
of the Muslim veil, creating issues where none exist, an intolerance
feasting on ignorance. We saw too, police interrogating Christians who
expressed and protected their biblical doctrine on sexuality. It seems that
whilst Church is separated from State, State is separating from sense and
sensibility.
Abraham Lincoln made a shrewd observation when he said "Our
task should not be to invoke religion and the name of God by claiming God’s
blessing and endorsement for all our national policies and practices—saying,
in effect, that God is on our side. Rather, we should pray and worry
earnestly whether we are on God’s side."
The answer to whether the current discord and culture of
violence is due to a lack of love amongst humanity is a clear affirmative,
but further it is also man’s attempt to live without God. Absurd
principles of ‘independence’, ‘humanism’, ‘naturalism’ to name but a few,
are applied to society, where it can be conducted and governed disregarding
religion, as though it had never existed, or at least, distinctions are not
made between true religion and false babblings, such as the perversities,
heresies, and blasphemies presented in the Da Vinci code. Millions placed
their hopes in such corruption.
A society without God, is a society without true justice,
whose only purpose is the unbridled and ravenous desire of ministering to
its own pleasure and interests.
The world around us calls us ever more often to worship the
idols of fame, power, abundance and pleasures. Yet the Church knows that
this path leads to darkness. In embracing it we receive not freedom but
slavery, not joy but disillusionment, not strength but destruction, not life
but death. Yet in following Christ, we not only ourselves acquire the true
good but can also enlighten the whole world with what we say and do, for
“Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a
candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house” (Matthew
5:15)
The primary religious duty is to love God. The Koran opens
with "Praise be to God, the Lord of the Universe" (Koran 1:1). In the
inspired songs of the Bible, we hear this universal call: "Let everything
that breathes give praise to the Lord! Alleluia!" (Psalms 150:6). And in the
Gospel, we read that when Jesus was born the angels sang: "Glory to God in
the highest heaven" (Luke 2:14). This duty of love, adoration and devotion
is combined with a duty to all of our human family. "If anyone says, I love
God, and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his
brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen." [1 John
4:20]
Christianity is rightly intolerant in many respects. It is
intolerant of hatred, rivalry, violence, exclusion, conflict,
discrimination, injustice and persecution.
All religions promote in some fashion “Do unto others as you
would have them do unto you”. True love is even more profound, true love
dictates that when we love our neighbour, we are showing our love for God,
and when we hurt our neighbour, we offend God. One wonders what the world
would be, if each of us could give to each other, what Christ gave to the
whole human family.
The Christmas story is profoundly sad on some levels.. A baby
born, far away, due to a census, from extended family and friends, with
animals, because the inn keeper said ‘no’, he had no room. A baby who grew
up, excluded, and marginalised on the fringe of society, threatened with
stoning, because people said no to what he had to say, a baby who was born
to die for humanity’s sins, and when he died he was even put in a borrowed
tomb.
It is not my God vs. your God, their God vs. our God… vs. no
God. It is very easy, in these times, to see religion as a force for
division rather than unity. As leader of the Free Catholic Church of Europe,
with its brothers and sisters of the Old Catholic Communion, I pray for
God’s help in sending a clear message of interfaith tolerance to all this
Christmas and the New Year of 2007. |
