Presiding Bishop's Christmas Message

My Dear Friends,

Greetings to you on this eve of the Incarnation! As I reflect on this season this year, and on the year that has passed, there are several things that impress me and for which I feel very blessed. I must mention the one thing that fails to impress me, which is that I did not succeed in sending even one Christmas card this year...my sincerest apologies.

I am grateful for the health of most of my family, and I am grateful that Helen Kelly is tolerating her radiation and chemotherapy as well as she is. As you may or may not be aware, Helen and my wife Erin are to each other the sisters they never had. I know this has been a time of trial for both of them. I have found it, while certainly something I would rather have not happened, to be a time of God's Spirit being especially discernibly present and visibly working in all of our lives. I covet your continued prayers for Helen and all those involved in her care.

I find myself to be, at intervals, increasingly limited by my back problems. I would be less than honest if I didn't say that there are moments at which I am simply quite tired of being in pain, but there are more moments in which I have found this to be a great grace. As I said to someone recently, I used to run through walls but now I bounce off them. I believe the latter is a much healthier perspective, and I am reminded of my mentor Thomas Merton who came to terms with his health problems when he realized (to paraphrase) that his body was not telling him to die, but rather to slow down. I have found in the slowing down a profound richness in my prayer life. I would suggest that one does not have to encounter physical limitations to achieve slowing down - a wiser person that I might just decide to slow down and discover for themselves that rich presence of God that has always been there but was obscured by busy-ness.

I find myself blessed by the addition of wonderful new colleagues in ministry during the past year. The ordinations of Rebecca Pierce+, Mary MacInnes+, Mike Wilson+, and Tommy Sheppard+ have been blessings to all of us. The relocation of +Eron Hull and John Jadwisiak+ to Milwaukee, as well as the aforementioned ordination of Mike+, have strengthened not only our staff at Love of God, but also our UAC presence in the State of Wisconsin, which with Ann+ and Chrystal+ now numbers six clergy. The beauty of our situation in Wisconsin is that, unlike other small jurisdictions with concentrations in other parts of the country, we are actually doing ministry in Greater Milwaukee and the Fox Valley.

Locally we have also been blessed by the Love of God family, which has stepped out boldly in faith in procuring full time space for the cathedral community. There are times when we don't know how we will pay the rent, but our experience has been that, somehow, the money appears. We have an active outreach to several disenfranchised folks in our local community, and earlier this month we offered (in conjunction with UMOS) free HIV testing at Love of God. I am so proud of what this faith community has done, and I am confident we will do even greater things in the future to serve the local community.

Finally, I look forward eagerly to the next year with all of you. There are hurting people, disenfranchised people, and people who are just tired of hearing the nonsense of the prosperity gospel and/or the God as punishing parent gospel. Both are false, and both have served to separate people one from another as well as from the Church. Particularly at Christmas, we are provided with the amazing story of Christ's incarnation that speaks so clearly against the nonsense of both of these false Gospels. If prosperity is a sign of God's favor, what does that say about the Jesus who was born into poverty, lived in poverty, loved in poverty, and associated with those not in power or privilege but in poverty and powerlessness? Jesus stands, or in this case lays in the manger, as the voice of God against the Creflo Dollars, Joyce Meyers, Benny Hinns, and Joel Osteens of the world who are nothing more than con men in the name of God who seek to separate people from their money and try to use God as an excuse. Or perhaps you really believe that Joyce Meyer's $120,000,000 a year salary from her "ministry" in the name of God can somehow be justified?

The ordinariness of the circumstances surrounding the birth of Jesus - the earthy symbolism of manger, stable, animals, and rejection from the local Marriott - and the people with whom he associated are ample evidence that God doesn't punish those who fail some litmus test of right behavior. If that was the way God worked, why would Jesus have associated with the "notorious sinners" that he ministered among, chose as disciples, and called his friends?

Despite all of the nonsense that surrounds us and masquerades as religion, the Nativity stands as testimony to the reality of the Love of God and against the fear of God. The liberating life of Jesus, who healed, freed, restored, and even brought back to life those whom his society had rejected calls us to realize that the Church can never reject anyone and still be Church. It also frees us to realize that we will never be perfect, that we will on occasion fail, but that there is nothing we can do to separate us from the Love of God in Christ Jesus. Nothing.

To those who claim that people can be separated from God we need not say a thing. To those who have heard that message, we need to say that it is wrong and misleading. We need constantly to invite those people into our communities, our churches, our ministries, and yes even our homes. We need to show them God's love, not just talk about it, because talk is cheap - unless it's one of those prosperity folks talking, and then it's very expensive indeed.

This Christmas, and throughout this coming year, may each of us become beacons of love to all we encounter.

God's Peace,

Craig