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From astronauts to Die Hard, and a plea to "spare a thought" for the man who discovers his wife-to-be is pregnant, and it isn't his... the Dean's Christmas message is full of 'surprises'.
In today's Seasonal Greeting, the head of the Church of England in Jersey, the Dean, the Very Reverend Mike Keirle, starts by looking to the heavens for inspiration...
"On a wall in my house, I have a very large picture of 'Earthrise', the photograph taken by Bill Anders, who was one of the astronauts on the Apollo 8 mission where, for the first time ever, human beings left earth orbit when they flew to the moon over Christmas in 1968.
The image, probably the most iconic photo in history, shows the earth rising over the moon’s surface and it was actually taken on Christmas Eve.
Pictured: The iconic 'Earthrise' photo taken on Christmas Eve 1968.
If you listen to the radio transmissions of the flight on the NASA website or watch the documentary about the photo, you will hear that earthrise came as a complete surprise. The astronauts were on their fourth orbit around the moon and for the other three, the spacecraft had been facing the other way, so they hadn’t seen it. On the fourth orbit, they rotated the spacecraft and, as they looked out at the window, there was the earth coming over the horizon of the moon.
There was a mad scramble for the camera because no one had thought about this prior to the mission, they were focused only on the moon. NASA even discouraged photography because it was not the primary purpose of the mission.
No group from NASA had anticipated this extraordinary moment… but it was a photo that changed the world and our perception of it. Only 24 human beings in history have seen earthrise take place and Bill Anders said: “Everything I held precious was on that planet and made me realise how small we are, how fragile it is and how important it was to me."
When the Astronauts came down to earth (in every sense of the word), their conversation wasn’t about the excitement of seeing the dark side of the moon for the first time or breaking earth orbit, it was about seeing the earth from a different perspective and the surprise of that extraordinary moment on Christmas Eve.
Pictured: The Dean, the Very Reverend Mike Keirle, with the Bishop of Salisbury and the Dean of Guernsey.
The first Christmas of course, was full of surprises, which, to be frank, is a bit of an understatement.
For example, spare a thought for Joseph, who discovers that his ‘wife-to-be’ is pregnant and it isn’t his. She says she has been visited by an angel who has told her she is going to give birth to the Messiah. That pretty much comes out at the top of the ‘surprise’ list in my book.
But Christmas is also meant to surprise us. I’m not talking about that unexpected gift from a family member or some distant relative turning up on your doorstep when you least expect them, I’m talking what Christmas really asks of us. The coming of Jesus is meant to disrupt and even subvert our expectations of how the world inevitably has to be and it invites us and challenges us, to live differently because of the birth of this baby.
The irony is that God doesn't explode on an unsuspecting planet at the place of most political significance and force everybody down on bended knee in awestruck amazement.
Pictured: "Spare a thought for Joseph, who discovers that his ‘wife-to-be’ is pregnant and it isn’t his."
Most people in downtown Bethlehem don’t have the faintest idea what is going on. It is outsiders - shepherds and foreigners – who are first to have their eyes opened to this surprising mystery, born in a stable in the middle of absolutely nowhere. It isn’t the ‘pious, the prepared, the priests or the pretentious’ who are part of it, but those on the margins, those who ‘don’t count’ in the world’s eyes and who least expect to be included. Surprise!
I wonder if we have lost that sense of surprise because Christmas has come to mean something different. It is now, by and large, a Christian festival celebrated by those who aren’t Christians, who draw their own personal meaning from it, regardless of its origins.
As one journalist put it: “Whether your vision of Christmas is giving or receiving presents, seeing relatives, watching a ‘Die Hard’ movie, listening to the Queen’s speech, or simply enjoying family traditions, Christmas has ultimately become a canvas for personal choice. It is what you choose it to mean."
Of course, there is nothing wrong with those things per se but the romanticising and commercialising of Christmas, has acted as a cuckoo in the nest and pushed out the true shocking “surprise” of Christmas and reduced it to a series of predictable traditions repeated year on year.
Video: Christmas "is what you choose it to mean", the Dean says - even if it's watching Die Hard.
Christmas is about God ‘coming down to earth’ and inviting us to view it from a new perspective; where we look on the planet and see it as fragile and precious, where we learn just how important the world is to God, however small or insignificant we may feel; where we love our neighbours, instead of seeing them as a threat; where we treat the marginalized and those who don’t really count, with dignity and care; where we live more simply that others may simply live and where we welcome God into our lives through this baby, instead of dismissing him as a Santa Claus figure that we grow out of. Christmas is about earth being surprised by heaven!
So may God surprise you during this festive season and may your Christmas Day be over the moon!"
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