Christmas 2024: A Letter from Bishop Skirving
Christmas 2024
To the People of the Diocese of East Carolina:
Dear Friends,
Christmas greetings to all, as we celebrate “the birth in time of the timeless Son of God!” More than ever, this year, I have been taken back to these words which are a part of an Incarnation litany in the Anglican Church of Canada’s Book of Alternative Services (1985). Yes, my roots are showing!
As we have moved through the season of Advent, I have been struck by the particularity of Luke’s account of the ministry of John the Baptist. Luke names the emperor, the governor, three rulers and two high priests to set his story in its proper time and identifies that the place of his ministry was the region around the Jordan River. During our Christmas worship, we might proclaim Luke’s account of the birth of Jesus, with its similar particularity. Augustus is named as emperor and Quirinius as governor. Luke tells us that Jesus is born in Bethlehem of Judea after his family had traveled there from Nazareth of Galilee.
Other passages of scripture often proclaimed in these holy seasons express universal themes that transcend the particularity of time and place. We might hear from the first chapter of John’s gospel that “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.” Also “The Word became flesh and lived among us.” Or as The Message offers that same verse, “The Word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood.”
Our faith is rooted both in the immanent and the transcendent, in the particular and the universal. Our individual lives are each uniquely particular, each of us with our own joys and struggles. At the same time, we hope for that which we cannot fully see, a hope in God’s promises for now and for all time, in God’s love for us and for all people.
Our celebration in this season must necessarily be centered in Jesus, whom we believe was born in a particular time and place as the human child who grew into the adult who emptied himself in obedience to God’s will, to reveal God’s love and God’s glory in the world. And in Jesus, God’s Word made flesh, whom we believe was in the beginning with God and whom we believe will dwell with God for all time.
This Christmas, I pray that you will experience God’s love in the particularity of your personal situation, however simple or complicated that may be, and whether you will be celebrating alone or with family and friends. I pray also that God’s love will burn brightly in us and through us, that we might share in pushing back the darkness which threatens on every side.
May the holy Child of Bethlehem be born again in all of us this Christmas season!
Yours in Christ,
