Wesley Mission Christmas Message 2023

We live in a VUCA world – volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous – VUCA. This past year, 2023, has been VUCA all the time and everywhere, it seems.

Our world has become more violently volatile – the war in Ukraine, pushed to the margins of our news feeds, continues to exact a terrible toll, while in Israel and Gaza, unimaginable suffering threatens to spill across many borders.

Our world struggles with increasing uncertainty – will interest rates, mortgage stress and rents continue to climb, and the cost of living tighten its squeeze on so many families increasingly feeling the pinch?

Our world grows every more complex – Global politics is filled with more questions than answers, whether it’s how to respond to the rise of populism or what might emerge from increasing tensions over the South China Sea.

Across our post-truth world nothing, it seems, is certain, but ambiguous. We have access to more information than ever before, but it’s hard to know which voices and platforms we can trust, what is true or not – turbo-charging anxiety and fear.

Truth be told, many of us are stumbling into the end of the year tired, exhausted even – looking forward to turning the page into a New Year with its tentative promise.

2023 also saw Australia go to the polls again, not to elect a new government, but to consider a constitutionally enshrined Voice for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders. While in the end a majority of Australians said no to the Voice, there are still critical questions we must answer as Australians.

How will we ‘close the gap’ on disadvantage that for too long has impacted too many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, to our nation’s shame?

Will we commit still to reconciliation with our First Nations peoples, reconciliation grounded in truth-telling and the pursuit of justice?

The good news we celebrate this, and every Christmas is that the baby at the heart of the story was born in and spent all his earthly life in a volatile and uncertain world. As the Christmas story unfolds, with Mary and Joseph and while still a child, Jesus fled from the clutches of a murderous dictator, seeking safety in Egypt as a refugee, poignantly in the process tracking his way from Bethlehem right through Gaza, where the suffering of children cries out again today.

Here’s the thing. Both the story of Christmas, and the ensuing life, death and resurrection of Jesus declares with life-transforming clarity that Jesus isn’t distant from our pain, but one intimately acquainted with our grief. More, he is one who can transform it – transporting us from hopelessness to hope, converting our despair into joy and smothering our crippling fear with his eternal peace.

Our VUCA world is not without hope, because our VUCA world is most definitely not without God. That first Christmas marked the confirmation and fulfillment of a divine promise, itself defined by one ancient word, Immanuel, which means ‘God is with us’.

God is with us in every season, in every place, in every time. This VUCA world is held by him, will be made new by him and will one day return to him. One day this VUCA world will be his Shalom world, a world marked by perfect peace and eternal love – all because of Christmas.

May God, Immanuel – God with us – bless you and those you love this Christmas season.