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Peace on earth an aspiration this year, not a reality, religious leaders acknowledge

26 December 2023

Alamy

The Archbishop of Canterbury with members of the public after the sung eucharist in the cathedral on Christmas Day

The Archbishop of Canterbury with members of the public after the sung eucharist in the cathedral on Christmas Day

CONFLICTS around the world were an inescapable backdrop for addresses by Christian leaders on Christmas Day. The King’s broadcast focused on the value of faith and service, and centred on Jesus’s injunction: “Do to others as you would have them do to you.”

In his Christmas Day sermon at Canterbury Cathedral, the Archbishop of Canterbury began: “This year, the skies of Bethlehem are full of fear rather than angels and glory.” He reminded the congregation that “the skies that rang with the angels on that first Christmas also heard the cries of despair, pain and suffering.

“What is God’s answer? The cries of a newborn. Far below wing-born angels, wondering shepherds, wandering Magi, lies a child.”

That child, he said, “points to a different way for each of us and for our world. . . The baby’s cry is God’s voice saying that there is another way. ‘Seek to serve, not to be served.’”

He continued: “In serving, not in being served, we resolve the problems of climate, the threats and realities of war, the malevolence of terrorism, the injustice of economic inequality, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, racism, whatever else is dissolved in the sweet scent of those who serve.”

He told the congregation that the cross he was wearing was made from melted-down guns: the product of a project run by an American activist, Shane Claiborne, in a deprived area of Philadelphia, which seeks to “transform broken lives into restored dignity” by helping people turn away from violence” (Interview, 19 July 2019).

In September, Archbishop Welby presented one of these crosses to Pope Francis, before attending an ecumenical prayer vigil in St Peter’s Square (News, 6 October 2023).

The Pope delivered his Christmas message to the faithful in St Peter’s Square. He, too, drew attention to the fact that “the eyes and the hearts of Christians around the world are turned towards Bethlehem”, currently a place of “silence and sorrow”.

Christmas celebrations in the Holy Land have been muted this year. The Dean of St George’s College, Jerusalem, the Very Revd Canon Richard Sewell, has written that, while “celebrations and festivities will be cancelled . . . the good news of the Saviour’s birth is needed more than ever. The promise of Immanuel, God with us, could not be more relevant than in these days of suffering and agony” (Comment, 22/29 December 2023).

At midnight mass in St Catherine’s, Bethlehem, adjacent to the Basilica of the Nativity, above the spot where Christ is traditionally believed to have been born, the RC Patriarch of Jerusalem, Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, said: “My thoughts go to Gaza and its two million inhabitants. Truly the words ‘there was no room for them’ describe their situation, which is now known to all. Their suffering ceaselessly cries out to the whole world. No place or home is safe for anyone.”

Late on Christmas Eve, Palestinian officials reported that an air strike on a refugee camp in Gaza had killed at least 70 people, and described the incident as a “massacre”. The Israeli military said that it was reviewing reports of the incident, and said that the Israeli Defense Forces were “committed to international law including taking feasible steps to minimise harm to civilians”.

Although, during his Christmas sermon, he did not explicitly repeat his previous calls for a ceasefire (News, 17 November 2023), Archbishop Welby appealed to political leaders around the world to change. “Be transformed. It is within your gift. For that child will return as our judge and their judge, the leaders judge.

“And the test of that judgement will not be ability or success, or fame or names on boards of past archbishops, or fortune, however great. But that test will be a question: ‘Do you, do we, do leaders, let this God who made himself child become our model, our leader, our power, our form of transformation? Will that cry be heard?’”

The Archbishop of York’s Christmas Day sermon in York Minster also focused on the Christ-child, but without direct references to conflict in the world.

He recounted the first time he could remember holding a baby, when he was a curate in south London visiting a new mother. “On this Christmas morning, I wonder, is God asking us the same question? The question that mother asked me all those years ago: ‘Would you like to hold the baby?’”

But to do so, God required Christians to let go of the other things that they were carrying, Archbishop Cottrell said: “Put down your phone. Silence its jabbering chatter. Close your laptop, your tablet: switch them off, unplug them. Take off your headphones. Put down your magazines, your books, your newspapers, your wisdom, your opinions, your prejudices, and your fears.”

In his second Christmas broadcast, the first since his Coronation, the King reflected on the value of faith and fellowship.

“Many of the festivals of the great religions of the world are celebrated with a special meal: a chance for family and friends to come together across generations; the act of sharing food adding to conviviality and togetherness,” he began.

He spoke of his “delight” at the presence of “volunteers who serve their communities” at the Coronation in May. “Service . . . lies at the heart of the Christmas story — the birth of Jesus who came to serve the whole world, showing us by his own example how to love our neighbour as ourselves” (News, 12 May 2023).

Care for the environment was one aspect of service to which the King drew particular attention: “I have been so pleased to see a growing awareness of how we must protect the earth and our natural world as the one home which we all share.”

He also referred to the “increasingly tragic” conflicts around the world. “I pray that we can also do all in our power to protect each other. The words of Jesus seem more than ever relevant: ‘Do to others as you would have them do to you.’”

This precept, although quoted from the New Testament, was shared by belief systems “across the Commonwealth and wider world”, he said.

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