Tidings of Comfort and Joy

A Christmas Feast of Faith and Fun

Pam Rhodes

• Publisher: Hodder Faith
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN:
  9781473630048
• eBook ISBN:
  9781473630055
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christianity

Pam Rhodes is best known as the familiar face of the BBC's Songs of Praise, and here she brings together her personal selection of carols, poems, Bible readings and other inspirational passages from a wide range of sources.As well as the usual old favourites - from Hark the Herald Angels Sing to the stories of the shepherds and the wise men visiting the baby Jesus - there are plenty of lighter moments, with excerpts from Gervase Phinn's memoirs and funny poems by modern writers. Alongside the items themselves Pam shares some of her own Christmas reminiscences and explores the resonance of the Christmas story for all our lives in her trademark inviting and heartwarming style.There is something here for everyone, from those wanting to enjoy dipping in for a taste of Christmas to those needing a sourcebook to inspire selections for Christmas services. Enjoy!

1

Does Christmas Matter?

Though Christ a thousand times

In Bethlehem be born,

If he’s not born in me

My heart is all forlorn.

(Anonymous)

 

Why on earth should something which happened in a little town in Judea more than two thousand years ago be of any interest to us in our lives today? What is it about the birth story of a baby who wasn’t famous, rich or obviously noteworthy that has made it so enduring?

The power of that story was made clear to me in the most humbling way a couple of years ago when I was lucky enough to be one of the leaders on a pilgrimage trip around the Holy Land. It’s a fascinating, and often very emotional, experience to visit those places whose names we’ve known all our lives from stories in the Bible. But if you’ve ever been on such a trip, you’ll know it can be completely exhausting too, as there are so many sites to see in a short space of time. You’re forever climbing off and on the coach, tearing around one significant location after another at breakneck speed, and no pilgrim wants to miss out on any of them!

There were about fifty of us travelling on our coach, and I soon became aware of an undercurrent of exasperation among some of the group about a delightful but quite elderly lady, Phyllis. She was cheerfully struggling to keep up with the rest of us but going at such a slow pace that some were grumbling she was holding up the whole party. It was clear, though, that she just couldn’t walk any faster, not because she was disabled in any way, but for the simple reason that she was wearing the most inappropriate shoes – huge open-toed leather flip-flops that seemed to be several sizes too big for her. No wonder she had to take her time walking over the uneven surfaces in the ancient places we were visiting!

Finally, the inevitable happened. While we were wandering around the town of Bethlehem she lost her footing and took a nasty tumble, though it left her shaken rather than hurt. For the rest of the afternoon, I kept her company as we meandered around, leaving the others in the group to make the rounds much more speedily without us to hold them back.

As we walked, she told me her story. This pilgrimage was something she’d dreamed of doing for years, and when she finally booked it, she’d bought a place not just for herself, but also for her son, because they really wanted to share the experience together. Tragically, soon after the tickets arrived, he developed a severe form of cancer, and by the time the trip came around, he was far too ill to travel. So she decided to take him with her by wearing his shoes, so that she could walk in the footsteps of Christ for him.

What faith! What love! And what inspired such faith and love in her was the sense of fellowship she felt with another mother in Bethlehem from two thousand years earlier. That young mother also gave birth to a son she loved; taught and cared for him as he grew; felt pride in his achievements as a young man – and she too knew the pain that one day she would have to watch him die.

Phyllis had no doubt that the baby born in Bethlehem all that time ago was the Messiah, the Son of God – but her heart went out to Mary, a mother facing a similar sense of grief as Phyllis was facing herself two thousand years on. She believed that Mary’s maternal love and faith was all she had to comfort her as she watched her son die on the cross – but because Jesus rose again to fulfil God’s eternal will, the same hope and reassurance Mary had in the knowledge that her son was now seated with God in heaven could be shared by Phyllis too. Because of Christ, her son would also be in the care of the God she loved. For Phyllis, there was immense comfort in that.

So when she put on her own son’s shoes to walk in the footsteps of Christ, she was accepting God’s will for her family. Christ did that too, from his birth, throughout his life and ministry, beyond his death, to be the living God he is to Phyllis and all Christians today.

That’s why his birth two thousand years ago still matters – and that’s why people around the world continue to celebrate his coming each year with joy and thanks.

Love Came Down at Christmas

Love came down at Christmas,

Love all lovely, love divine;

Love was born at Christmas,

Star and angels gave the sign.

 

Worship we the Godhead,

Love incarnate, love divine;

Worship we our Jesus:

But wherewith for sacred sign?

 

Love shall be our token,

Love be yours and love be mine,

Love to God and to all men,

Love for plea and gift and sign.

(Christina Rossetti, 1830–94)

2

When was the First Nowell?

It came upon the midnight clear,

That glorious song of old,

From angels bending near the earth,

To touch their harps of gold;

‘Peace on the earth, goodwill to men,

From Heaven’s all-gracious King.’

The world in solemn stillness lay,

To hear the angels sing.

(Edmund Sears, 1810–76)

‘It came upon a midnight clear’, we are told – but when, exactly? Was it in fact 25 December in the year from which we start counting our calendar today?

Scholars down the centuries have come up with all sorts of theories about when Christ was actually born, but while absolute certainty is impossible, several major clues can be found in the Bible story itself.

First, we’re told that shepherds were in the fields watching their flocks at the time of Christ’s birth. December is cold and rainy in Judea, so the shepherds would have kept their flocks sheltered at that time of year, rather than out in the fields. Their being out in the fields suggests that Jesus was born in mid- to late summer.

Second, we learn that Jesus’ parents went to Bethlehem to register in a Roman census. As temperatures may well have dropped below freezing in winter and roads at that time were very poor, it would have been a hopeless exercise to try and organise a census in the winter, since it would involve people travelling long distances across country. But these negative indications don’t really help us pin anything down.

So to try and pinpoint the probable time of Christ’s birth, biblical scholars take their clues from events which are easier to calculate. Luke tells us that John’s mother, Elizabeth, was in the sixth month of her pregnancy when Jesus was conceived. The question is, when was John born? Well, his father, Zechariah, was a priest serving in the Jerusalem temple during the course of Abijah, which was known to be in the middle of June. During the time of his temple service, Zechariah learned that he and his wife would have a child, and it was after he’d travelled home from his stay in Jerusalem that John was conceived. If that happened towards the end of June, adding nine months brings us to the end of March as the most likely time for John’s bi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Also by Pam Rhodes
• Title Page
• Imprint Page
• Contents
• Epigraph
• Introduction
• 1 Does Christmas Matter?
• 2 When was the First Nowell?
• 3 Sugar and Spice and All Things Nice
• 4 Dashing Through the Snow
• 5 Light in Our Darkness
• 6 The First Winter
• 7 The Messenger
• 8 People Get Ready
• 9 Let Your Little Light Shine
• 10 Prayers and Presents
• 11 Laughter and Tears
• 12 Christmas Eve
• 13 Busy Day – Silent Night
• 14 On Christmas Day in the Morning
• 15 The Morning After the Day Before
• 16 Journeying On
• References
• List of Extracts
• Acknowledgements