Article in Church Stretton Focus December 2011
Psst . . Crosswords, both cryptic and quick, are part of our household relaxation. One of the recent clues was ‘Secret whispers’(4) and the solution turned out to be ‘psst’! I doubted if it would be in the Oxford English Dictionary, but I was wrong!
Psst . . would you like to know the secret of Christmas? The word ‘secret’ was widely used by the early church, in reference to what they believed was the meaning and purpose of the life of Jesus. Paul, in his letters, often talks about ‘the secret that God wants to make known to all people’. Paul wrote in Greek and the word translated as secret (musterion) can be better understood as ‘mystery’ (which is where we get that word from anyway). Christianity is really a mystery religion, for there is mystery at the heart of our relationship with God; how could it be otherwise? But it’s a mystery we can enter into.
Psst . . would you like to know the secret of this mystery religion? Well, if you listen closely, there are whisperings of it in the Christmas story. Christmas is not about ‘believing half a dozen impossible things before breakfast’ – it’s about knowing a secret. And Paul tells us what the secret is – “The secret is this – Christ in you, the hope of a glory yet to come” (Colossians 1: 27) It’s about recognising yourself as a child of God just as Jesus was, and just as everyone is – and then living in the light of that knowledge.
Donald Horsfield
