2008 UUCF Christmas Message from Ron

[RevRonRobinson at aol.com]

Hi all. What a blessing it has been to walk with you, in our many and  
diverse ways, this past year. Your hopes and dreams have been such gifts to me  and 
to all.  

During Advent we, like Mary, experience, wait for, and ponder in our  hearts 
the Incarnation, the Word made flesh, the coming of Jesus into  the world in a 
way that changed and turned the world upside down, when the  Spirit of God is 
made known not in power but vulnerability, not in the people  and places of 
Empire but in the forgotten people and abandoned places. The  mission of the 
church, and of our lives that give life to it, is  simple: to keep incarnating 
such a Spirit, to be a body of the people of God  making Jesus visible in the 
world. Doing that has always, and will always,  turn the world, lives and 
communities, upside down. The Magnificat of  Mary in the Gospel of Luke testifies 
to that. The radical geneaology  of Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew, full of 
"scandalous" women, testifies to  that. The taking away from Caeser the titles of 
power and giving them to  the one born as a refugee in an occupied land 
testifies to that promise of how  God is truly with us. Of course, many different 
people and traditions seek to  make Jesus visible in the world, and often the 
result is a Jesus "in name only."  I am honored and humbled by our historic 
witness to a much different  Jesus,and, equally radical, by our witness and work 
for the way of Jesus  made with those who follow other paths.    
 
I sit surrounded by a mighty cloud of witnesses at this time of the year. I  
sit surrounded by the archives past and still growing of testimonials and  
thoughts of UU Christians of the ages. I sit surrounded by one of Christianity's  
richest gifts, and, unfortunately, one of Christianity's best-kept secrets. 
Row  upon row of shelves near me contain issues of the UU Christian Journal, of 
the  Good News periodical, of pamphlets and curriculums, occasional papers 
and  reprints of sermons, books on Christology in American Unitarianism  and 
books of prayer. A few samples of such unconventional spiritual  wisdom I include 
below. I am surrounded, mostly, by the wonderful knowledge  that thanks to 
you these same precious gifts are surrounding many others,  and that many are 
finding out about them for the first time, through their  church, through their 
friends in a UUCF small group, through our new and ever  evolving webministry 
at _www.uuchristian.org_ (http://www.uuchristian.org/) . 
 
Please check often to our website as we update material on the Revival 2009  
in Tulsa with Bishop Carlton Pearson and the new experiments in worship and  
community at All Souls Church, as we continue to present meditation and prayers 
 from one another at our Virtual Monastery site, and as we make it more  
interactive (go to the page and light a candle and leave a prayer) and with  more 
videos, podcasts, and contemporary sermon links. We also have posted the  
latest Good News periodicals on the website, and we will be doing so with the  
Jan./Feb. and July/August 2009 issues, to be read online or printed for use--let  
us know if you wish to receive a hard copy in your postal mail. 
 
Right now online you can go read the UUCF President's Christmas Message.  You 
can easily make gifts to the UUCF, and you can renew your membership or  
start again with us, all in the spirit of the One whose starting over and  
reconciliation with the world we celebrate in this season.  
 
You can go and simply rest in the lives coming through to us in all the  
witness made by those "freely following Jesus."
 
This email is also a first of a new and developing way we will stay in  touch 
with our UUCF members and friends and seekers. We are building a new and  
updated email address book and we have much work to do to get it revised and  
current with everyone's email preferences. Our website will help with this  
eventually but for now we are doing it the old-fashioned way: trial and error  and 
updating. Many of you may get this at an email address you prefer not to use  
and may get duplicates. Pardon us as we pull this together. And Please send  
changes to our Administrator Lisa Franklin at _UUCFoffice at aol.com_ 
(mailto:UUCFoffice at aol.com) . We will be converging  various lists to make this happen. 
Also feel free to forward this on to others  in your UUCF small groups, or to 
those in your church who may find it meaningful  and who might be interested in 
the UUCF. 
 
>From a small sample of such gifts as have been shared with us over the  
years, I share with you now below as my Christmas gift for your reflections and  
prayers and inspiration to service in the coming year. Remember, as we live in  
two worlds all the time, just as Jesus said the realm of God is here now among 
 and around and within us, and still coming, that Christmas begins, not ends, 
on  Dec. 25. So I pray will our spirit and service.
 
December Prayers by Carl Scovel: Christ my morning, Christ my evening,  
Christ my noon, and Christ my rest...Transcendent truth, transform me...O God,  
teach me my insufficiency, then my power...Holy God, Holy River, Holy Reservoir  
to which my waters flow, Holy Spring from which they come, Holy Moving, Holy  
Mystery, Holy More than my mere words, Holy Void into which I pour my pitcher, 
 Holy Flowing in which I love and move and am--and all this does not say yet. 
 (after reading Psalm 46:3-4). 
 
Christmas is about the coming of the Messiah. It is about the breaking  
through into time--our time, not just a time two thousand years ago--Christmas  is 
about the breaking through into time of God's grace...The Christmas faith is  
not a faith in something which happened two thousand years ago, and it was 
done  and over with then. We do not wend our way to the manger at Christmas to 
worship  past history but to worship him who was called Emmanuel--God with  
us--here...now.--Judith Hoehler.
 
And as we sing our lessons and carols, this from James Luther Adams: The  
Christian, in singing, does more than express emotion. Like the singers of other  
traditions, there are songs of praise, confession, recollection, dedication, 
and  fellowship. Hymns become forms of communion between people and God, 
providing a  bridge that leads to the victory of the creative and recreative powers 
of the  divine, thereby enabling us to find a new flute and a new melody such 
as the  song the stars sang together on the morning of creation. Why do we 
sing? Carlyle  has told us: "All Deep things are song. It seems somehow the very 
central  essence of us is Song; as if all the rest were but wrappings and 
hulls. The  primal element of us and of all things, the heart of creation, is 
music."
 
We are surrounded by a mighty cloud of witnesses, those who have left us  the 
legacy of their lives and those who are with us today, supporting us and  
reminding us to look up where the Star of Bethlehem shines for all to see. For  
all, no matter what.  
 
Happy Advent, Merry Christmas, Blessed Epiphany
 
Rev. Ron Robinson
Executive Director
Unitarian Universalist Christian Fellowship, _www.uuchristian.org_ 
(http://www.uuchristian.org/) , founded 1945
"freely following Jesus" 

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