Thought for the Week

by the Rev Peter Willox, Vicar, Ben Rhydding.

WHAT is this all about?

At this time of year, it is a real privilege to be able to offer our building at St. John’s, Ben Rhydding, to three of our local schools as they put on their Christmas events for their school communities. Of course, the stories and themes are quite predictable, but it always amazes me how each school takes a slightly different slant, often giving me pause to think about Christmas again from another angle.

The story feels much more familiar to me this year because we at St John’s did our own Nativity about three weeks ago. We put on a musical called “Simeon”, written by the composer Roger Jones. It is, to all intents and purposes a straight retelling of the Christmas story, however it is done so from the perspective of the eponymous character. Simeon doesn’t appear in the traditional Christmas story, but is there in the Bible nonetheless. He has been waiting in the temple for many years as he believes he’s been promised something by God. This promise is that he would not die before he saw God’s salvation coming through the promised Messiah. The musical has Simeon recounting his meeting with the young child, Jesus, and his mother and father, Mary and Joseph, as they bring their son to be dedicated according to the Jewish law of the time. In the musical, he speaks of how excited and joyful he is as he recognises, in this young child’s face, the long-awaited promise being fulfilled.

It was great to be involved in the musical, and despite all the hard work around its production, I still found time to think about its central message, and to wonder at its challenge for me. In the Bible, Simeon is quoted as saying a prayer of thanksgiving to God for this wonderful encounter. The Message version of the Bible translates this as “God, you can now release your servant; release me in peace as you promised. With my own eyes I’ve seen your salvation; it’s now out in the open for everyone to see: A God-revealing light to the non-Jewish nations, and of glory for your people Israel.” As he met Jesus, he realised that he didn’t need anything else to make him happy, to make his life complete; meeting Jesus was all that mattered.

What I realised was that I can watch countless nativity plays, I can read the Bible stories again and again but, nice and comforting as they may be, they are only stories. It is the person that the stories point towards who is important. I wonder what Simeon would make of the way we do Christmas today? And I wonder whether you would agree with Simeon that when it comes down to it, the only thing that matters is meeting Jesus, who many believe to be God’s answer to the question “what is all this about?”