Christmas in Winter 2021

Print 🖨 Download PDF 📄

20th June to 4th July, 2021

For us here in Hobart, celebrating Christmas mid-winter feels somewhat strange and out of place. Although it is principally a winter festival, the first Europeans to settle in the Southern hemisphere kept the date, rather than the season. We’ve become so used to outdoor Christmas barbeques, that singing carols about snow and sleigh bells in broad daylight doesn’t seem strange!

READ MORE BELOW

Sunday 20th June, ADVENT 1

Sunday 27th June, ADVENT 2

Sunday 4th July, CHRISTMAS DAY

CONTINUED FROM ABOVE

But there is something about Christmas that should leave us feeling somewhat strange. That the Creator of the cosmos would come as a fragile, helpless baby is not only unexpected, but inescapably perplexing. But so begins the life of Jesus – born in a manger and destined for execution on a Roman cross. For the ruling elites of his day, Jesus was strange and totally out of place.

This mid-winter Christmas, we will explore how this Jesus is our prophet, priest and king. He was not quite the Messiah people expected, and yet he was God’s Messiah – the Anointed One. As a fellow human being he knows and understands our mortal pains and sufferings.

And so, as a prophet he proclaims truth in love and calls each one of us out of dark into the light. As a priest he prays for us with deep understanding of our inner turmoil, because he too experienced it. As king he leads the world by example, not afraid of its horrors, and willing to serve and give his life for others.

As our prophet, priest and king, Jesus is more than challenging. In expressing and demonstrating God’s love, he does not pander to our wants and frivolous desires. Rather he exposes our faults, attends to our needs and calls us to follow.

In many ways it is good that Christmas feels so out of place, because it needs to jolt us out of our familiarity and complacency. Just like Jesus did.