Christmastime is here again, and many of us have been sending and receiving Christmas cards, expressing best wishes to loved ones and friends, business associates and clients.  Themes that are echoed in many of these cards are but a shadow of the great theme of Christmas – salvation and peace through God, our Savior. In a personal way, I am always moved to think that the Angels’ song best captures the hope - the restless hope, of all the ages, and in our time the wonder of the Angels’ message remains a call and challenge to us all.

A Christmas Message from the Chairman the PEC

Dear Brothers and Sisters

Christmastime is here again, and many of us have been sending and receiving Christmas cards, expressing best wishes to loved ones and friends, business associates and clients.  Themes that are echoed in many of these cards are but a shadow of the great theme of Christmas – salvation and peace through God, our Savior. In a personal way, I am always moved to think that the Angels’ song best captures the hope - the restless hope, of all the ages, and in our time the wonder of the Angels’ message remains a call and challenge to us all.  

This Christmas, I urge us to work more intentionally to celebrate this hope which the Angels so boldly announced to the simple shepherd folk found on the shadowed hillside on the outskirts of Bethlehem.  Let us see its fulfillment as both possible and necessary lest we simply make an annual pilgrimage to a happy imaginary place where we but stay a little while.  To be sure, Christmas is more than a feeling or the sharing of good cheer, it is a lived reality of salvation through faith in “the Child that is born and the Son that is given.” He has cometo be our peace and to transform our hearts and communities with love. “His is an everlasting kingdom and of his government and peace there will be no end. He is Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God and the Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9:6).

Our world is still torn by strife; our economic affairs are tainted by the bloody exploits of war and social injustices; people are still homeless and hungry; and humanitarian crises and catastrophes are still emerging.  We are scientifically advanced but we are morally troubled.  The human heart still hates the light and resists the demands of God, the call to faith and communal good. Sometimes, we ourselves grieve God’s heart and frustrate His will through disobedience.

The announcement of the Angels has again scoured the distant horizons of time, and crossing the centuries, the announcement has reckoned with humanity’s worse fears, failures and frustrations – ‘Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill to all people (Luke 2:13-14)!’  The vision is plastered across time and eternity.  This vision of the earth’s future and a new humanity is specific, realistic and achievable because the Holy Child of Bethlehem – God’s gift of Himself to us has come and has touched our lives and our world.  In this Child, God has chooses to reconcile the world to himself. The result is, as one poet puts it, turning war to peace, hate to love and every to everyone’s neighbor, and banishing misery, suffering and ill-will” from the relationships we share. Thus, what God dreams, He grants humanity to achieve, through the change which He perfects in individual hearts: Each one, in turn, touching the other through the love of God and the fullness of the grace which is ours through “the Word made flesh.”

God invites us to participate in his mission. God’s dream for the world begins in His heart. This hopeful dream becomes His rich and living deposit in the heart and life of every believer.  It is a call the pushes us to reach out and to draw others into the circle of the transforming power of His love; to equip the saints and empower the faithful; to witness to the world that the announcement of peace is news of great joy and eternal salvation.  The din and rush of life may threaten to drown out the song of the Angels but as Bethlehem’s star shines ever brightly so the celestial choir sings ever more loudly and sweetly the song that will ever call the world to the designs, dream and hope of its Creator, the Incarnate God.  So then with the songwriter let us join to say, “Oh stop the noise ye men of strife and hear the angels sing.”  

Brothers and Sisters, we have received a wonderful and heavenly invitation.  We have a birthday to celebrate - the Savior to show to the world. Christmas is less about us and more about what God is about in the world.  He came “in flesh for flesh (humanity)” to bring us to a true and new identity.  The best way to celebrate His birth is by living as he did, “for others”. Let us therefore make the commitment to leave this world better – more hopeful, more peaceful, more just and more loving - than we found it.  Let us daily surrender ourselves more fully to God’s purpose and live the dream of “peace on earth, goodwill to all people.”

On behalf of the Provincial family, I thank you for your sustained commitment and joint effort in support of the Gospel, and wish for us all a Blessed and Joyful Christmas, and a Productive and Prosperous New Year.  The year 2007 will usher in great waves of celebration as we observe the 550^th Anniversary of the Moravian Church Worldwide and the 275^th Anniversary of the Moravian Church in the Caribbean. Then let us look with expectancy to the future.  May peace, hope, and joy in Jesus fill each home, each life, and the lived experience of each day of the year, and the rest of the Church’s earthly witness.

Sincerely in Christ,

Errol L. Connor (Rev.)
Chairman of the PEC

December 22, 2006