22 December 2011
Challenge your pre-suppositions this Christmas, says Methodist President
The Revd Leo Osborn, President of the Methodist Conference, has
challenged people to push past their assumptions about the nativity
story this Christmas.
Mr Osborn said that asking God to take away our belief that we've
"seen it all or know it all" would help us to reflect on things in
a new light. "For if we look carefully, this simple story may have
important things to say to us about many of the personal, social,
religious and international issues facing us and our world today,
and God's part in them all," he said.
The full text follows:
"Each year the Connexional Team send out a Christmas Card from
Methodist Church House and this year the Vice-President and I have
been allowed to use it too! It's from a painting by He Qi. When I
looked at it, at first I could only see two wise men. "Where's the
third?" I immediately thought and then not long afterwards thought
again, "But why should there be three anyway?" Yet we all bring our
pre-suppositions to the Christmas story, don't we, perhaps
expecting to find not only three wise men but kings and innkeepers
not to mention donkeys, holly, ivy and snow! But you'll be hard
pushed to discover any of them in the Gospel narratives - not even
in the Authorised version! Even the wise men themselves of course
had pre-conceptions that a king would be born in Jerusalem, not
Bethlehem. But when I glanced for a second and third time and in a
different light I could eventually see where the third Wise Man was
- and although it doesn't add anything to the Gospel story it made
me feel sentimentally better!
"Well perhaps this Christmas each of us needs to come again to
this oh so familiar story, asking that God would take away the
pre-supposition that we've seen it all or know it all and help us
to reflect on things in a new light. Or perhaps to have light shed
on something long since known but forgotten or ignored. For, if we
look carefully, this simple story may have important things to say
to us about many of the personal, social, religious and
international issues facing us and our world today, and God's part
in them all.
"And challenging our pre-suppositions and opening our eyes is
surely what God is always about, as I have discovered during my
first six months as President, when, although some situations and
people have been as I'd imagined, many haven't and I've had to
learn to look at things in a different light. And for the coming
year you may already have imagined - or planned out - how life or
faith or church is going to be. Well prepare to be surprised like
Mary, Joseph, the shepherds and wise men were long ago! But
remember too that the one who came and comes is named Emmanuel -
God with us - so whatever may be different from what you imagine
and however things may seem as a result, God remains the same -
dwelling alongside you in grace, truth and love.
"May that same God bless you this Christmas and beyond!"