Happy Christmas! Enjoy Archbishop Mark Coleridge’s uplifting Christmas message, which emphasises humanity’s response to the birth of Jesus. Guided by a star, the Magi bring gifts to the newborn King, recognising Him as the ultimate gift and returning transformed, leaving behind their old ways. May the peace of the newborn Jesus be with you, inspiring you to embrace His love and share this precious gift with others.
Transcript
Christmas isn’t just about the birth of the Child who is God-with-us. It’s certainly about that, but it’s also about the human response to the birth of the Child. That’s why the Magi are such a part of the Christmas story. Their journey is the journey of every human being, you and me. It reaches deep into our soul. The routes travelled by the Magi from the East to Palestine were well known trade routes, providing everything necessary for the great commercial caravans that went back and forth.
These were roads for doing business, the economic arteries of the Ancient Near East. But the Magi come not as business men bearing goods for profit. They come as pilgrims bearing gifts for the Child who is the newborn king. The journey of Christmas is a journey from goods to gifts, from the logic of commerce to the utterly different logic of gratuitousness, the one-way traffic that makes no commercial sense, the giving that looks for no return. That’s why we give gifts to each other at Christmas time.
Once the Magi set out on their journey, they enter the world of gift; and they are led by a star which is itself gift, “a lone wanderer between heaven and earth” as an old Anglo-Saxon sermon says, the star which turns all their wandering into journeying. Led by its light, the Magi find the Child who is supreme gift, not just for some, but for all the people. The gifts the Magi bring recognise the truth, the gift the Child is. They return by a different way because they have entered, once and for all, the new world of gift. The old ways of commerce are left behind. Nothing can ever be the same again. As they turn for home, they leave the Child, but the Child will never leave them.
May his peace be with you on your journey. Happy Christmas to you all.