Christmas is Relationship: NCCI’s Xmas Message to the People

Nagpur – In its Christmas greeting, National Council of Churches in India (NCCI) has stated that on this significant day, God renewed His relationship with the creation.

“Love, joy and peace are the regular themes of Christmas. We know that these can be expressed only through relationships. At Christmas, God renewed relationship with the creation,” said Rev. Dr. Ipe Joseph, general secretary, NCCI, in his message.

“The transcendent God became imminent. The celestial became the terrestrial. Jesus also is known as Emmanuel, which means God is with us. It is God’s avatar as human being which built a new relationship between God and human beings. God also reaffirmed that humanity and creation can be changed and transformed only through intervention in their lives,” he said.

According to NCCI, though many people appropriate the reality of God through meditation, prayer and the other worldly attitudes, only Christmas can tell us that there is a better way of relating to God, i.e. through touching, feeling, hearing and seeing. “Touching whom? Touching the Baby in the manger. Seeing and understanding that there is nothing extraordinary about the divine because we see that the fully divine being is present in an ordinary child,” he explained.

“God renewed relationship with ordinary people or the bahujan (ordinary people). They are represented by the shepherds who received the Good News of the birth of Christ first. The Good News reached them in the form of celebration and singing of the angels. That is what bahujan need – ‘celebration of life’,” the message stated. “The message of Christmas also tells us that we must stop our search for heaven elsewhere. If our definition of heaven is that it is a place where God is in fullness, then it is in the manger that we see heaven. So it is time to stop searching for heaven in other worlds. Heaven is among the bahujans, in the depravity of a manger.”

Recalling a poem by Rabindranath Tagore that suggested to the seekers of God to find the Almighty where the tiller is tilling the land, Rev. Joseph said that the incarnation of Jesus – Christmas – adds dignity to human life: “Until our society, nation and the Church recognize the truth that God is present in the lives of the poor and the marginalized, and accordingly accord the dignity they deserve, Christmas will not be real to us.”

“The message of Christmas also says that wherever, in whichever human conditions you are, heaven is reaching you. And when heaven reaches you, you will praise God like the angels, yet knowing that it is God’s presence that changes our lives and not the comforts of this material world,” he concluded.