Rectors Letter

All Hallows Home Page

December 2003

"Sorry your son's dead - err - Happy Christmas" I don't know what President Bush said to the parents of children lost in the Iraqi military action. I'm sure it was sensitive and caring, and nothing like the start of the article. I don't know what you can say of any great comfort when, charged with making life and death decisions for others, you meet the parents, spouses and children of those who paid the price. Right or wrong, the decision was yours, the grief theirs. It is perceived as particularly difficult to suffer grief in the run up to Christmas. What can you say? It is hard to say anything that can offer comfort, and easy to say something that simply adds to the aching pain within.

I feel more than a little involved in this scenario. I have, of course, been involved in Remembrance services and in taking funeral services for ex-service personnel. I have been a Royal British Legion chaplain, and I am currently the chaplain to the Sea Cadet Corps. My father served and my brother-in-law serves in the Royal Navy. I am comfortable with pastoring service personnel. However, my involvement seems that little bit more since one of my sons and his fiancee joined the Territorial Army. At first, it was just the odd uniform about the house, then the full kit. The odd weekend away and then the two weeks. The proudly presented certificate of completion of basic training. The selection to carry the wreath at the Remembrance ceremony in Blackpool and that very smart uniform (but I couldn't go as the church has its own service at the same time). The off-the-cuff remark 'They asked me if I would like to have an early chance to go to Iraq, but I wasn't ready'… The information arriving even as I write this article that his unit faces compulsory mobilisation in January. The dawning realisation by me that I could be told that my son had 'served his country'. I'm sure I'm not the only parent to be torn between pride in what my son has chosen, the values he has chosen to represent, and the possible cost of those values. This year's Remembrance service was more poignant for me, its all got a little bit personal!

Still, its all a bit morbid to be talking this way at Christmas time. The very reason why death and grieving seem accentuated at Christmas time is the family focus. Christmas is a time when families make an effort to come together, and even make an effort to try to be nice(ish) to each other! Any gap in the family circle is noticed and felt, all the more keenly if that gap is permanent. The family focus itself derives from the 'Holy Family' at the centre of the event celebrated at Christmas time, the birth of Jesus the Christ, making Mary and Joseph into a family circle. We are familiar with the Christmas story of angels and journeys, full inns and stables, shepherds and angelic choirs, wise men and their gifts, although it is surprising how many of the details we now take for granted just aren't there in the original accounts. They've been added over the years from fertile imaginations. We know that this holy trio are the defining centre of Christmas (unless you're the Red Cross), that this family offers hope and a new future, a bright, good future. It's a future of promise which continues to transcend and direct our present. These 'hopes and fears of all the years' are met and focused in the Christ child, destined to grow into the inspirational Jesus, servant of the LORD.

Yet there remains a missing person from the picture. It is the giving Father. God in his mercy and love gave his only son to be born in human form. He gave his only son to be the visible image of an invisible God, so that any one who has seen Jesus has seen the Father. He gave his well-beloved son that we might listen to him, and by union with him, might have union with the Father. He gave to a world he loved his only begotten, so that by faith and union with Christ, believers may not perish but live. He gave the Christ child in the clear knowledge that this mission would end in rejection and death. Even as the angels sang their song of glory to God, even as the shepherds adored, even as Mary cuddled her child, the shadow of the cross hung over the cradle. In the midst of all the celebration we can feel the agony of the Father's self-sacrificing love, a love given in the certain knowledge of the costly and deadly endpoint. Christ died for us - that is the ultimate Christmas gift, meaning and purpose. Perhaps it is our prayer at Christmas time that should recall the Father's love and remind us how our sinfulness required the son's death - 'Sorry your son's dead - err - Happy Christmas - and THANKYOU'

Praying that this Christmas you will find time to see beyond the wrapping to the powerful self-giving love of the Father in the Son, and so find true peace on earth.
Your servant in the Lord Jesus Christ, Simon Cox