Christ Church Moreton Hall

This week I will be at General Synod, and will be reporting on the proceedings on Premier Radio each day. If you would like to listen, tune in Monday to Thursday at 8.20am during Inspirational Breakfast and either either 5.20pm or 5.40pm during Premier Drive.

As we begin a New Year many of us will be setting together some new resolutions. One of the reasons why they don’t last very long is, we often don’t think out the consequences of our resolutions before we commit ourselves to doing them. So at the beginning of 2008 I don’t so much propose a resolution but a revolution and a political one at that.

It is obvious to all that the Bury Town Council is deeply unpopular. Whether we retain it or not and what it is for, remains a very unhappy issue for us all. It is a vestige of a political system, which has proved to be stillborn for our region. Regional government will not go ahead as it was initially planned and therefore there is less reason for Town Councils than there was before.

However, the problem remains that people feel disengaged from the political process. Voting patterns are in decline and getting people to stand for elected posts is becoming more and more difficult. So at the beginning of this year I would like to start a balanced and well-reasoned debate about what sort of political structures we want for our town.

There has been much debate recently about whether the title “Christmas” should be dropped and replaced with “Winterval”. And whether or not the Christmas lights should be retained, and if they are retained who will pay for them – the Town Council, the Borough Council or even Greene King. It does seem to me unless there is some sort of focus to our Christmas celebration that is more than just having a party and spending lots of money the event will quickly die out. The recovery of the true meaning of Christmas is important for the event itself and what it has become as well as what it is supposed to represent.

At this point clergy will often turn to the biblical narratives and tell us the important truths that Christmas is about God coming in person to meet his people, it is about the significance of family live when Jesus was born into a family and they will also tell that it is of course to celebrate a miracle, the miracle of a virgin birth.

Now while these meanings are important and of course true, there is as always with any event involving God even deeper meanings. The first is one to do with vulnerability. It was not just that God came to be amongst his people but that he came in a way that entrusted himself totally to their generosity, common sense, love and kindness.

We have just come through the period of Halloween and the flashes and bangs of bonfire night. Now we have a brief pause before the maddening rush of Christmas. Let's hope that this year people will not spend quite so much on credit cards. It is not good to wake up to a very bad case of the January “blues” brought on by “big red” bills.

However, as we have this brief pause, let us do some remembering. Bonfire night is really about a group of religious extremists who wanted to blow up the houses of Parliament and kill the monarch James 1st. Imagine the media frenzy if such a plot were prevented by the security services today. This seems very familiar.

We know that Christmas is all about Jesus being born in a stable. But what we often forget is, that because of King Herod’s death threats, the holy family had to flee to Egypt for two years and live as refugees until Herod died. All around us are people who have come Britain precisely because their own government wants them dead. So, suddenly we see that what we are going through now is not very different from what happened all those years ago.

The new Bishop of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich, the Rt Revd Nigel Stock, is recording some podcasts over the next few weeks. You can listen to them here.