24th December, 2020.
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My dear friends,

Like many of you, we are in Tier 4 in Great Bardfield. Little Bardfield is in Tier 2, which means we have had to transfer the Midnight Mass to St Mary’s, Great Bardfield. Tomorrow night, of course, we will all find ourselves in Tier 4.
 
Christmas 2020 is going to feel a bit odd. One man I spoke to said he didn’t know what he and his wife were going to do with all the Brussels sprouts they had ordered, because the family were no longer coming to Christmas lunch: I wondered whether they could be turned into soup, perhaps with potato or small pieces of bacon? He could leave a pot on my doorstep!
 
Many people will be alone over Christmas. After my Christmas services, I will be by myself, so I thought I would telephone a few other members of my family who will also be alone, including a cousin of my mother’s who lives by herself in Scotland aged almost 101 (as you’ll see below, we are rather a long-lived lot). I wonder if you know anyone who will be alone over Christmas? A cheery telephone call on Christmas Day or Boxing Day might be much appreciated.
 
Let us also not forget all who have lost loved ones in the past year because of Covid-19, and also St John folk who will be busy helping the sick over Christmas. I will pray for you all at our Midnight Mass.
 
Despite the challenging circumstances in which we find ourselves this year, may I wish you and your families a blessed Christmas and health and happiness in 2021.

​​With my prayers and all good and warm wishes,

The Rev. Dr ROBERT BEAKEN, County Chaplain
CHRISTMAS 2020.
 
Gospel: St Luke, chapter 2, verses 1-20
I have been thinking in recent days of a priest called the Rev. Keith Marr, who died last year – amazingly, in the light of what I am about to relate – aged just over 100.

            Keith was my grandfather’s cousin. He was studying for ordination when, on 3rd September 1939, the Second World War began. Keith put his studies on hold and joined the Army. He was posted to Singapore. When the Japanese captured Singapore in 1942, Keith was taken prisoner. He was the youngest prisoner-of-war in the notorious Changi Camp. Because he had been training for ordination before joining up, Keith was put to work in the makeshift prison hospital. He saw hundreds of his fellow prisoners die, became seriously ill several times and almost died himself. Keith’s boots fell to pieces and parasites entered his body through the cracked skin of his feet. For the rest of his life he never managed to get rid of them. After the war, Keith resumed his theological studies, was ordained, and served God in the priesthood for seventy years. He managed to forgive his cruel Japanese captors.

            Keith was reluctant to talk about Changi Camp – it brought back too many bad memories – but every now and then he would open up about it to me. He told me that they had had a chapel in the camp, staffed by several Army chaplains. They had regular services, hymns, Bible studies, and even managed to celebrate the Eucharist from time to time. I remember him saying that some of their Japanese captors were Christians, and it was very odd sometimes to kneel at the communion rail and find a Japanese officer kneeling next to you.

            They managed after a fashion to observe the Christian year and celebrated three Christmases in captivity. It was a strange experience. The POWs missed home and their families, and worried about them. They mourned their comrades who had died in captivity. They didn’t know if they would survive to the end of the war, or die as a result of Japanese cruelty, or from disease or famine. But despite all this, Christmas gave them hope. Not having the inessentials, they found themselves concentrating on the essential true meaning of Christmas: the birth of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

A few years ago I overhead a snatch of conversation between a father and his young son, walking home from school. The son mentioned Jesus – he’s obviously just had a lesson about Jesus – and the father replied: ‘If he existed.’ It was a deliberately dismissive reply; if you can suggest that Jesus might not have existed, then you can avoid engaging with Jesus’ life and teaching. Of course, you also avoid opening yourself up to Jesus’ love.

So, being blunt, did Jesus Christ actually exist? Or is he just a legend, like King Arthur and Robin Hood? Apart from the New Testament, the existence of Jesus Christ is supported by three other sources. Firstly, Jesus is mentioned by Roman and Jewish historians. Secondly, if the early Christians had gone around telling people about Jesus, and there had been no such person, the Jewish authorities would have said something, very quickly and very loudly. Thirdly, there is the evidence of Christianity itself, which spread like wildfire around the Mediterranean in the years after the Resurrection. The Christian message was spread by men who had themselves known Jesus and had been transformed by him. The other day at Matins we had a lesson from the Second Letter of St Peter in which the old fisherman-turned apostle recalled Jesus’ Transfiguration, which he himself had witnessed:
 
For we did not follow cleverly devised myths ... but we were eye-witnesses of his majesty. For when he received honour and glory from God the Father and the voice was borne to him from the Majestic Glory, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased,” we heard this voice borne from heaven, for we were with him on the holy mountain.
 
            May I ask you a question: When you read the stories of Jesus from the New Testament, when you close your eyes and pray: how do you imagine Jesus? What does he look like in your mind’s eye? I daresay that, like me, you were brought up with Bibles containing Edwardian illustrations of someone in long white robes, scandals, with a white veil over his head, white skin, blonde hair, piercing blue eyes. We see such images in paintings in the National Gallery, in postcards, Christmas cards, and not least from stained glass windows. The images of Christ in this church, even those of him on his cross, all show a blonde, blue eyed, pale skinned Lord. You will forgive me if I observe that this is all a little too Nordic.

            The point about the Incarnation of Jesus Christ is that he was a real man, born in a real place, at a particular moment in the world’s history. So, what did Jesus Christ actually look like? We can only offer a well-informed guess, but he probably had olive coloured skin, dark brown eyes, and very dark brown or black curly hair. He would have worn a long linen robe down to his ankles, rather like my alb. In the winter he would have worn a poncho-like cloak over the top, like my chasuble. Jesus would have worn sandals, and something like a turban to protect his head from the sun. His hands would have been rough, the hands of a carpenter. He would have spoken with a northern, Galilean accent. Because Jesus walked everywhere, he would have been a little dusty and a bit sweaty. With no human biological father, he would have looked very much like his mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary, as regards the shape of his face, hands, etc. Jesus was a man like any other, just like you and me. He did all the things you and I do, except for sin. He experienced all the emotions, joys and anxieties that comprise our daily lives. And yet, as we gather here to celebrate his birth at Bethlehem, we know that Jesus was more than just another man, for he was also Divine, the only Son of God, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, God and man together.

            Today, we begin to follow the story of Jesus with his birth as a tiny, vulnerable baby at Bethlehem. We know how the story unfolds, ending with Christ’s shameful crucifixion, and then his glorious Resurrection on the third day. The love of God is greater than the worst evil; and under the guiding hand of God, the future is always more important than the past.

            Christmas 2020 is rather an unusual one, because we celebrate it during a Coronavirus pandemic and at a time of consequent restrictions. We cannot travel or see many of the people we would like to see over Christmas. There is anxiety about jobs and businesses.

I don’t want to under-estimate the difficulties and disappointments we have to put up with this Christmas. But I would seek to put all this in context, and encourage us to think of Keith Marr and the other POWs, spending three Christmases in Changi Camp. Their problems were far worse than ours. In the midst of their suffering and anxiety, they found comfort and hope in the true message of Christmas: ‘God so loved the world, that He gave his only-begotten Son, to the end that all that believe in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.’ I hope that many other people today might also find comfort and hope in the true message of Christmas.

            Christmas is a time for presents; but the biggest present of all is Jesus Christ, born a tiny baby in a stable at Bethlehem: God’s present to each and every man and woman, boy and girl.

            May I wish you all a very happy and blessed Christmas.