© 1999 Alcress Communications

I guess that we all know how it is, when a song or a part of a song gets into your head and you just can’t let it go. As I sat down to prepare a message for tonight, I had two song fragments passing through my brain. One from the third verse of the carol we sing later "How silently, how silently the wondrous gift is given" and from Jesus Christ Super Star — "If you’d come today you would have reached the whole nation — Israel in 4BC had no mass communication."

It is a bit strange how these things come together, but it is probably the result of contemplating a Christmas message that was sent to me. It began as follows:

It took me back to talking with Jim Osbourne about his experiences in North Africa.

And with a conversation I had had with a writer, who said, "he never could create a truly evil character, that they tended to always turn out doing something good"

Or the lady who after experiencing the most inhuman of bashings from her ex was searching for the good in him.

I have always said that one of privileges of my Job, is that although there are encounters with the evils of this world, there is often a insight into the secret Good that happens as well. There is the constant awareness of the battle between Good and Evil, but contrary to the popular press, there is a lot of good happening.

It is this contrast that Judas alludes to in the song from Super Star, - the God got it wrong and that human methods would have been preferable. It comes from the mindset that pervades our world. Where advertising is about persuasion (to buy something you don’t need) rather than information (about something you do). And sadly the church has fallen for it as well with corporate models and mega-churches and mass rallies and tele-evangelists. Everything is big and loud.

Perhaps the most profound image of the Atlanta Olympics was that of Cassias Clay (or Mohamed Ali) broken and crushed by illness and the damage of years of Boxing. The man who had declared "I am the greatest" less than thirty years before. What a contrast to the sprightly eighty year old — Nelson Mandela, who the world forgot in prison, and yet his imprisonment changed the world.

You see, God seems to work through the still small voice — the silence and the small. The message of the baby in the manger that we celebrate this night, is not that of big or great or loud, but of the quiet approach of God to each of us as individuals.

There is a part of each of us that is reaching out for the goodness of God. A part that God longs to touch, but with the gentleness of a baby and not the brash loudness of an advertising campaign. In all the fuss and all the hype the world wants to drown out the cry of the baby, but if you listen, you will still hear him.

May your Christmas be Holy and the year 2000 be all that it promises you, and may you hear the silent call of the babe of Bethlehem

AMEN.