Beautiful sermon. I loved his insight about Jesus "...the one who was born at Bethlehem on Christmas day rounded on the prosperous and righteous of his times and said, ‘You can look after yourselves; the others can’t’."

I loved the suggestions he made about Israel and Palestine "...we can give them ...at least the assurance of friendship. Go and see, go and listen; let them know, Israelis and Palestinians alike, that they will be heard and not forgotten. Both communities in their different ways dread –with good reason – a future in which they will be allowed to disappear while the world looks elsewhere. The beginning of some confidence in the possibility of a future is the assurance that there are enough people in the world committed to not looking away and pretending it isn’t happening. ...and without friendship, it isn’t possible to ask of both communities the hard questions that have to be asked..."

I was reading Jim Wallis' latest book the other day. He comments that as they go through the archeological layers, the times the voices of the prophets are most strident are the times where there are greatest disparities in affluence in the communities. The times they are quiet things are shared relatively evenly.

I was reading the other day that 2% of humanity own 50% of the world's "wealth"; whilst 50% of humanity survive on 2% of the world's "wealth". No rational human who reads and understands the bible would be surprised if God were to affirm strident prophets at this time in humanity's history. God knows, we deserve to have our bottoms spanked for allowing things to get this bad for so long.

Nice Christmas message, RW. Rather what we expect from Canterbury.

But, didn't you leave off the real worldwide Anglican covenant codicils: No queers? No women priests? Like-minded conservative Anglicans only?

Should you really be getting all liberal and mush sounding about the poor and the captives?

Shouldn't you just be telling the poor and the prisoners to repent?

Aren't you coddling people with false visions of sugarplums - like democracy or freedom from violence?

Suddenly it sounds like free citizenship is our innate endowment because Jesus loves us. Oops?

Surely believers know Jesus comes first. Surely believers know that the one thing we can count on in the world is that somebody will push a gun in our faces, sooner or later?

As conservative Anglicans are always reminding the rest of us whom they define as apostate: Social justice is maybe irrelevant, maybe tangential to the gospel, maybe a silly fashionable cultural value pasted on from outside God's revelation by deluded leftwing believers in 1930's USA and Europe. We aren't still listening to those believers, are we? Hasn't God corrected us, duh?

Maybe human rights and social justice are mainly applicable to non-believers, because goodness knows you have to use all the brakes available to slow certain unbelievers down. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink.

You have even vaguely echoed these remarkable presuppositional conservative Anglican sentiments, yourself, with regard to Anglican polity and communion.

Haven't you helped denigrate and soft-pedal justice and human rights commitments inside TEC - just because they were being neutrally and fairly applied to non-straight believers - not to mention disavowing such inclusion more widely in worldwide Anglican life - while vociferously upholding these same commitments as standards for the outside secular world?

What is strong and caustic Biblical sauce for TEC is going to be sauce for Canterbury, too.

No wonder some UK citizen unbelievers more easily equate the sign of the cross, now, with other historic cultural signs of cultural domination? It looks like the old, familiar power game - some get, some don't.

The special believer's exemption from human rights is getting clearer inside the communion, even while you still proclaim it for unbelievers.

If TEC must be ostracized, bad mouthed, and punished – utterly - for trying to live justly inside its own provincial canonical life - no less so, Canterbury, right?

Having helped to undermine justice inside TEC, it serves you poorly to wildly ring the freedom chimes in your Advent Season message.

Aw, dude. How sad. You are just making yourself look two-faced.

Yes I like the emphasis, on the radical ethic and the insight to also recognising poverty as well as meeting the obvious least with the best.

Hi i'm from Cape Town and have been in the UK for a while now, well quite a while. I've never really been comfortable with television on this side of the world, especially live shows. Hey don't get me wrong, i'm not anti-telly but sometimes the total disregard for Christianity and foul-comments made by presenters is just too much to take. I mean presenters on the late slots normally have to make some sort of mockery of the Bible, Jesus or like last night "miracles" (well yesterday they set out to prove that miracles performed by Christ was merely illusions. All people have views but these actions sort off struck pain in my soul. I can't understand why these things should be aired normally let alone on Christmas Day.

The thing that really upsets me is that young people watch these programs and seem to see the funny side, when I don't think there's any. What is ironic is that Budhism or any other religion don't seem to get the same bashing.

just a thought

This quote by Robert F. Kennedy came out with today's Sojourners. It seeems appropriate to share it here:

"Let no one be discouraged by the belief there is nothing one man or one woman can do against the enormous array of the world's ills, against misery and ignorance, injustice and violence. ... Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of our generation."

They have fantastic quotes most days. This link might work for those who would like to subscribe http://go.sojo.net/sojourners/join-forward.tcl?domain=sojourners&r=TdSntDs194gb

I'm sorry, beautiful sermon or not, the man is a gutless coward.

I am all with Robert F - and Kurt.

Friend

Some of the British humour is "off". But some of the humour is appropriate. If one learns to take a step back and ask whether it is God they are attacking, or people who have become full of themselves or overzealous, then the humour takes a different flavour. God will use humour to cajole souls into repenting from idolatry or pride. It is a soft form of rebuking, and can sometimes turn hearts where more overt forms will entrench aggressive behaviours.