Christmas message: Northampton’s Father Oliver Coss reminds everyone to be ‘inspired by what they have’

Father Oliver Coss from All Saints Church, Northampton has written this Christmas Day message
Father Oliver Coss.Father Oliver Coss.
Father Oliver Coss.

The run up to Christmas this year has been especially full of doomsayers. When I stopped to think about it, I realised that it always has been.

Pope Benedict made headlines a few years ago for pointing out that when St Luke tells about the shepherds visiting the manger where Jesus had been laid that the angels were described as ‘saying, Glory to God’, rather than traditionally singing.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Each year a certain theologian points out that just because St Luke tells, in his gospel, that Jesus was laid in a manger doesn’t necessarily back up the idea that he was born in a stable, or not if you know what houses were like in the first-century AD.

Far from the Christmas-card type scenes, depicting a bit of agricultural architecture that wouldn’t be out of place on the Yorkshire Moors, these were homes for the whole household, including livestock, and it wasn’t unusual for them to contain mangers from which the animals would feed.

In a busy inn that was out of room, it would have been the most natural, comfortable place to lay a child.

Just as we have an impression of what the gospels tell us about the birth of Jesus, and traditions that accompany the celebrations of his birth (by the way, Christmas isn’t pagan – it predates ‘sol invictus’ by about 150 years) we probably all had an impression of what our Christmas would look like this year.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

More so than at other times in the pandemic, I could name dozens of people who are sick or isolating, dozens of businesses that are suffering because people are being careful, dozens of medics who are worried about what happens when the tinsel is down, and dozens more who wonder if this will ever end.

In lots of ways, from the big to the little, the distance between our impression and our reality can leave us very disappointed when things aren’t quite what we expected.

So, let us take what we have and allow our imagination to inflame it. When you hear someone giving good news, or speaking about something wonderful, why shouldn’t it seem like a song and as if music is sounding with their words?

When we talk about the trials of childbirth, why shouldn’t our scenes be full of the placid joy of a mother nursing her newborn child in her arms?

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

When we are capturing something that happened so long ago, and in such a far off place, why not imagine it is occurring on our doorsteps so that the joy and peace might come closer?

The rational part of us can only take so much hard truth before our inspiration runs out of fuel, and Christmas is a time to nurture how we feel.

So if your Christmas is, yet again, a bit different this year, make it about being inspired by what you have, and motivated by what you hope for. And for everything else, I pray that faith and hope and love, born into our homes at this tide, might spur you onwards.

Christmas worship takes place, unabashed, this year at All Saints’ Church, beginning with Midnight Mass at 11.30pm on Christmas Eve, and 8am and 10.30am on Christmas Day. Let’s make the angels sing, and warm our hearts.

And a very Merry Christmas to everyone reading the Chron.

Related topics: