Plenary, 11 Jan 2006
Meeting date: Wednesday, January 11, 2006
Official Report
452KB pdf
Time for Reflection
Good afternoon and welcome back. The first item of business is time for reflection. Our time for reflection leader today is the Rev Peter Macdonald, who is minister of St George's West church in Edinburgh.
The Rev Peter Macdonald (St George's West Church, Edinburgh):
I am pleased to be here.
When I was a teenager in the 1970s, the walls of my bedroom were decorated with pictures of my heroes. Pride of place went to my two favourite footballers: Jim Baxter and Charlie Cooke. Although they were nearing the end of their careers, to me they embodied what a Scottish footballer should be. They did not score many goals, but they were skilful and crowd-pleasing entertainers.
I lived in the west of Scotland in the early 1970s, when there were sit-ins at Plessey in Alexandria—where my father was a shop steward—and at Upper Clyde Shipbuilders. There were two general elections in 1974 and Govan featured prominently in that time of political upheaval. I also had pictures of Jimmy Reid and Margo MacDonald on my bedroom walls—I have not told Margo MacDonald before now that she was my teenage pin-up because I did not want to embarrass her. Jimmy Reid and Margo MacDonald embodied for me the best of Scottish politics all those years ago: they wanted to protect jobs and communities and to champion the rights of ordinary people over the schemes of distant politicians in Westminster. I am therefore pleased to be here today.
The Christmas season is about embodiment. Christians make the outrageous claim that the fullest revelation of the purpose and character of God—the creator of all things—is known in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. At Christmas, we therefore celebrate the birth of a baby who was born not in a place of power and political intrigue, but in an outhouse in a small town in Palestine. Christians claim that if a person wants to see God, they should look to that baby and to the man who he became. There is God—incarnate; made flesh; embodied; a vulnerable and helpless baby who was born into a sometimes cruel and indifferent world and was soon to be a refugee fleeing for his young life. We still claim him to be God incarnate, God embodied. That tells us something so profound about the nature of God that we need to be constantly reminded of it because we are easily seduced by wealth, power, privilege and status.
Angel choirs, shining stars, wise men and poor shepherds are not in the Christmas story—which is a wonderful weaving together of mystery and myth—for decoration; rather, they tell of that child's significance and of how God is embodied in him. They tell of good news and hope and they symbolise God's love for all humanity, especially the stranger and the outcast.
Among my Christmas cards—which are now off to be recycled—I found the following short message:
"When the song of the angels is stilled
When the star in the sky is gone
When the kings and princes are gone
When the shepherds are back with their flocks
The work of Christmas begins:
to find the lost,
to heal the broken,
to feed the hungry,
to release the prisoner
to rebuild the nations,
to bring peace among the people,
to make music in the heart."
That is what each Christmas means to me. God gives that commission to all Christians. Let it also be your manifesto for the new year, and you too might be someone's pin-up.