Time! It's essential for the running of modern society. Not only digital but now atomic clocks rule our days. But then, no civilisation has avoided the necessity for marking the duration of night and day. In the 17th century the great mathematician, Isaac Newton, declared that time was something that could be considered as an 'absolute', perhaps given by God for our needs. This was challenged quite soon by other scientists and philosophers of the revolution in thought which we call the Enlightenment. Today, through the work of Einstein and others we see time as relative to events and it is now seen to be more naturally as part of the space-time conditions under which we live. There is yet another twist to this discussion about time! We often assume that the history of events throughout the centuries is something that can be accepted as true. But the writing of history is always slanted from a particular point of view of the writer however hard she or he strive to maintain objectivity; even if the writer avoids sheer manipulation in writing about events in the past. Or consider the modern media where no two journalists can write about the same incident with equal accuracy or objectivity. Speculation on the part of the writer is often a great temptation.

Leaving all these difficult ideas behind, there is another level on which humans live daily apart from space-time and the constraints of our history. And that is we each cherish the possibility of purpose in the way we live our lives. True, some of us, on account of the conditions we meet, can give up on having any purpose in life. But normally there is this personal, positive looking forward in living each day. There is a sense in which this exists in each of us quite apart from the external conditions outside us - almost outside of the space-time process. When we say a person has arrived at maturity it is this process we are referring to.

Now consider the fact of Jesus' birth - I am getting round to the point of this letter! There were rarely any written records of births in those days and we only know about Jesus' birth and life from the gospels. There were no constraints in those days to achieve what we would call historical accuracy - even if, as we have seen, literal, historical accuracy can never be totally achieved. But it was considered quite legitimate to make a point of 'history' by allusions to past events and to write them up as contemporary events. There is a case in point with the story in Matthew of the massacre of the children in Bethlehem. There is no independent record of it anywhere. It has been said that Matthew's story of the the massacre is presented as showing Jesus to be the Messiah, in fulfilment of a prophecy from the Old Testament in Jeremiah 31. The inclusion of a sort of hagiography in the accounts of Jesus' birth and life would be considered normal in Jewish society at the time - and we can note that this procedure was still acceptable in the Middle Ages! But the purpose of the authors of the gospels was quite clear - almost independently of the 'facts' their main concern was to point to what they considered as the most important fact in the history of the world - that Jesus had been made Lord. In other words, in Jesus' life, death and resurrection. there can be seen, they alleged, the fulfilment of the whole thrust of history. The end of time had been realised in this one person. The 'end', in Greek, the eschaton, had been realised. This is the overall message of the gospel. Naturally, there are other indications in the New Testament that the 'end time' was to be preceded by terrible catastrophes and preachers have made great play with these 'predictions'. But that's just to underline that we are all quite human in our fears of what may happen on the basis of our experiences in life. But over and above these natural fears there is in the gospel the assurance, in Jesus' own life and hopes, that he was indeed inaugurating the new era of God's new creation. 'Time' and eternity have coalesced in the history of Jesus.

When we come to consider worship however, we find that throughout the centuries it is the historical idea of time that dominates rather than the eschatological understanding we have just been thinking of in relation to the person of Jesus. This means that emphasis has often been put on the temporal succession of events in Jesus' life rather than on our union with him through our own sense of the inner purpose of our own lives that we thought about earlier. So from the celebration of the birth we go on to mark some of the main events from Jesus' baptism through to the passion and death. The resurrection celebration then appears eventually almost as a cyclical, repetitive 'event' in the world, space-time series of events. It is difficult for us to reconcile our understanding of 'time' with the eschatological thrust of the gospels in Christian worship. It is possibly inevitable that when the church became enlarged from the fourth century onwards that the historical view of worship (that is, not viewing worship as an alignment, here and now, with the end time seen in the risen Lord with us) should predominate. It can be seen today not only in the mainstream churches' emphasis on the Calendar but also in those churches which keep to a literal view of Scripture and take the prophecies of an 'end time' to come in some future date as critical for understanding the gospel.

It is particularly in the Christian Eucharist that we are able to express this 'end time' meaning of the gospel in Jesus, the Lord. We come together to share the meal in response to Jesus' invitation. In relationship with him and with each other, we give thanks for what God has already achieved in Jesus, and as an anticipation of the completion of this new creation in which we now share. What that completion means we cannot tell. It can only be seen in terms of the fulfilment of those purposes which we can dimly see at work within ourselves apart from the ticking away of 'time'. But it will be glorious!