Bishop Rachel’s Christmas message 2021

IN recent weeks many of our news items have reminded us of the importance of place.

People trapped at borders such as that between Belarus and Poland, people such as Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe held in a place from which she longs to be freed, people drowning in their attempts to leave one place and find freedom and safety in a new place which could become home, people living homeless on our streets or living in places which afford no dignity and deny identity.

As human beings, we are always located, and place is part of who we are.

And over this past year or so, place has featured highly during a time of viral pandemic - we’ve been very aware of different instructions at different times about the places where we can and cannot go - for work, education, leisure, holiday, need - and even now that sense of uncertainty remains.

And you are in a place somewhere, carrying a story - whether of joy or pain - and into it all, comes Christmas, and place is important.

Over 2,000 years ago, God chose to come to earth in human flesh and live among us.

While the events of the first Christmas were about baby-God born into a specific neighbourhood in the Middle East, the events were, and are, about every person in every place – not least you and your neighbourhood and the places where you spend your life, whatever your age and whatever your story.

One of the titles given to the Christ-child born that first Christmas was Emmanuel, meaning ‘God with us’ – and this Christmas we will sing of the place ‘O little town of Bethlehem’ and we will hear of shepherds located in a field, and of wise men from the East.

Wherever you are, whatever your story, God knows you by name and loves you, and Jesus Christ is present to be encountered in the places where you are.

This Christmas may each of us be open to the hope and love and life of Jesus Christ in all the different places of our lives.

I wish you a peaceful and hope-filled Christmas.

The Right Rev Rachel Treweek, Bishop of Gloucester