As I write this, two coincidentally related things have just happened. Firstly, I’ve just finished reading Carl Trueman’s book The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution (Wheaton: Crossway, 2020). Secondly, I’ve just heard the news that the Australian state of Victoria’s Parliament, in their lower house, has passed a bill prohibiting “conversion practices”.
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Review: The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self by Carl Trueman
Principal’s Christmas Message
Christmas in 2020 will be a bleak time for many. In places all over the globe the coronavirus continues to run rampant, infecting and then killing, millions of people. Though we have been spared the worst of it in Australia, each night we hear of one horror story after another. No one can deny that all is not well in this world.
Yet into a world of such massive uncertainty and brokenness, into our world, God sent his son ‘to save his people from their sins’ (Matt. 1:21). God’s purposes are unstoppable and his goodness is beyond anything we can imagine. The best efforts of human beings, the raging of the elements, and even a deadly pandemic, simply will not overthrow God’s purpose. God has a plan. It is a good plan. And it centres on Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ.
So Christmas, the celebration of Jesus’ first coming, reminds us that the seemingly never-ending cycle of loss and disappointment, shame and powerlessness, that we all witness and many of us experience, is not the final word. It is right to feel the weight of the world’s convulsions and disappointments. Yet it is critical that we remember God is moving all things towards the goal he has planned for them. And such is God’s goodness, that his goal is astonishingly grand and beautiful and satisfying (Rom. 8:18). The same Jesus who grew in Mary’s womb, was born into the world, always did his Father’s will, and always showed compassion and mercy to the broken, injured, oppressed and needy, will return. And when he does it will be mind-blowingly good.
Christmas is one of those amazing times that all at once encourages us to look back (to the moment God broke into his own creation to save it), to look around (at the many indications that God has not abandoned us, even though no-one could blame him if he had), and to look ahead to the second coming of Jesus, when every wrong will be set right and God’s Messiah will gather people from all tribes, languages and nations to enter into the joy of our master (Matt. 25:23). The one born in the manger, who came to save his people from their sins, is the one who will return to rescue his people from the wrath to come (1 Thess. 1:10).
So, as we celebrate Christmas this year in a very strange and confusing context indeed, let us remember the scale of what God is doing and the one who stands at the centre of it all — the one who has called on us to leave aside everything and follow him.
May Christmas in 2020 be a wonderful comfort and encouragement to each one of you.
Mark D Thompson
Principal
GAFCON Commitment 2020
Gafcon Australia commits itself to supporting orthodox and faithful Anglicans in each of these
situations. While we hope that none of this will be necessary, we make our commitment to do the
following as need arises.
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Response to actions in the Diocese of Wangaratta
We are deeply distressed that the previous Bishop of Wangaratta should take presumptive action by blessing a same-sex marriage.
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A Theological Account of Blessing
At the recent Synod of the Diocese of Wangarratta (Aug 2019) Dr Dorothy Lee mounted a case for the possibility of Australian Anglican churches blessing same-sex unions in keeping with the general practice of blessing civil unions and the local practices of blessing various aspects of daily life.
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The Christmas Tree
A practice of bringing plants into the home during winter, especially the boughs of evergreen trees, has a long history in Europe. Sometimes it had religious significance and sometimes not. We know that in medieval Europe, ‘the tree of paradise’ was decorated with shiny red balls representing the forbidden fruit from the Genesis account of the Fall. Trees were associated with a number of different festivals and celebrations.
Associating a decorated tree with Christmas seems to have originated in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, perhaps first in Estonia and Latvia, and then, a little later, in Germany. One popular story links the origins of the modern Christmas tree to the German Protestant reformer, Martin Luther. He is said to have been walking through the forest one night before Christmas, when he looked up to see the stars shining through the tree branches. It was so beautiful that he went home and told his children that it reminded him of Jesus, who left the stars of heaven to come to earth at Christmas so that he could be our Saviour. They recreated the scene in the family home and the practice soon caught on.
Eventually, through the German princes and princesses who occupied the English throne in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and through Hessian soldiers who were deployed in the garrison in Québec, the practice of decorating a Christmas tree in the home crossed the English Channel and then the Atlantic Ocean. Today the installation of Christmas trees is well-known right around the world. It adds to the celebratory tone of this traditional Christian festival.
The joy of Christmas is, as Luther put it, the arrival of the one who is our Saviour. In 2020, after a year of dislocation and stress, a Christmas tree is a tangible symbol of life and a reminder that against all odds there is hope. That hope centres on a child born in extraordinary circumstances and in fulfilment of an ancient promise, Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ. Forgiveness, new life and the restoration of all things are found in him.
Happy Christmas.
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