The Bishop of Gloucester, the Rt Revd Rachel Treweek shares her Christmas message to all in our communities.
This Christmas, may we notice the hidden ladders — in celebration, in tears, and in the ordinary — and see that God is with us.
Watch now:
Transcript
I wonder if you have seen or used a ladder in recent days? The putting up of lights, the decorating of trees, the ladders which come out when things break or go wrong.
As I go round church buildings, prisons, homes, community projects, there is always a ladder, whether tucked away or in full view, ready to be used to fix, decorate, repair, change… And the thing with ladders is that we often don’t notice them.
In the Bible, there is an account of a dream of someone called Jacob, hundreds of years before the first Christmas.
Jacob was running away from a very, very messy family situation. It involved argument and lying and awful broken relationship. And as Jacob lies down to sleep under the dark night sky, he dreams of a ladder connecting earth to heaven with angels going up and down it — and he realises that the God of love and forgiveness is closer than close.
And so it is, hundreds of years after Jacob, heaven touched earth, and earth touched heaven in a profound way on another dark night as God chose to come among us in human form that first Christmas.
I don’t know whether there was a first century ladder in Bethlehem in that animal shelter where Jesus Christ was born, but I do know that there was a profound revelation of heaven touching earth as the cry of baby God was heard on earth — God choosing to make explicit the being ‘with us’ in a profound and mysterious way.
My prayer for you this Christmas, is that you notice the ladder, perhaps even hidden. And whether it’s in the celebration, or in the tears and what is broken; or in the ordinary, or amid the messy, dare to look and see that in Jesus Christ coming to earth God is with us. Let the ladder invite us to see beyond the surface, beyond the media headlines and social media, and invite us to glimpse heaven touching earth, and earth reaching up to heaven, as we peer into the animal feeding trough to see the baby Jesus revealing the mystery of God’s transforming love and hope and peace… knowing that the darkness will not have the final word…
Jacob awoke from his dream and said: ‘Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it.’
Whatever our age, or story, might we be saying that this Christmas in the different places of our lives. Oh, and near you, there will be a church with a ladder and a story of joy to tell. Go look!
Happy Christmas.
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