CANA Missionary Bishop Martyn Minns’ Christmas message

Good News of Great Joy for All People!

We need some good news. A worldwide financial collapse is happening before our eyes and in many of our neighborhoods. Armed conflicts around the globe seem to be never ending. Oppressive governments continue to retain power.

Religious strife is on the increase. Poverty and disease continue to take their unrelenting toll of the most vulnerable. In many ways the world is not much different from that night of nights when the shepherds watched their flocks in the fields around Bethlehem . They needed some good news too!

The word from the angel was clear and simple: I bring you good news of a great joy that will be for all the people! So . . . what on earth was this good news of great joy for all people?

First and foremost, the good news declared that the Creator of the universe had heard their cries and was about to intervene into their world and change the course of human history for good. This intervention had been long anticipated by the prophets but it was not to be a quick fix. The salvation of the world was now assured but it would take time - lots of it. God would bring healing and hope where there had been only brokenness and despair. God could have done all this by sheer force; but instead of following the pathway of power, God chose to work through one of the most vulnerable members of his creation - a newborn baby. It is a unique strategy that God continues to follow.

God also chose to make the good news very personal. Our salvation is not mechanical or automatic. It depends first on God’s grace and second on the response of each person to this amazing gift. And the great joy that the angel spoke about was the promise of this abundant life. We are no longer stuck in patterns of alienation and brokenness, but now we can begin to dream of a new world with new possibilities where freedom reigns and where the ravages of sin no longer hold us in their grip.

The world is still in need of this good news. God is still in the redemption business. During this Christmas season it is good to remember that God chose to bring the promise of healing and hope through one of the most vulnerable of institutions - the church! We have no armies to command or weapons to deploy. We are merely a people whose claim to fame is the one we follow - Jesus of Nazareth. But we know that through this solitary life the world was and is changed for good - one life at a time. And it is by His Spirit that we offer this promise of a new way of living until that day when heaven and nature will sing, “Joy to the world, The Lord is come!”. . . that's good news!

Your brother in Christ,
+Martyn
The Rt. Rev'd Martyn Minns
Missionary Bishop of CANA
(via email)