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Sunday morning worship at CUC is at 10:00 AM
with the He/SheBrews Café following in the Van Roon Community Hall
Advent/Christmas Dates to Keep in Mind
- Monday, December 1
- Women’s Advent Service 7:00 PM with reception to follow
- Sunday, December 7
- White Gift Sunday, kick-off to hamper week with many volunteer opportunities
- Sunday, December 21
- Worship with The Winnipeg Brass
- Wednesday, December 24, Christmas Eve
- 5:00 PM Christmas Eve Family Service
- 7:00 PM Christmas Eve Communion Service
- 9:00 PM Christmas Eve Candlelight Communion with Senior Choir
Dear Friends
Welcome to worship for Sunday, November 30, 2025.
We had an enjoyable event at the church Wednesday afternoon. The Seniors Fellowship Christmas Lunch was held. After a terrific meal we were entertained by a wonderful program led by Rabbi Matthew Leibl called “The Jewish Contribution to Christmas”. Matthew is a spiritual care provider at the Simkin (Jewish) Personal Care Home. But he is also a great storyteller and musician. He sat at the piano and regaled us with tales and examples of Jewish composers and lyricists who had written some of the best known and best-selling popular Christmas songs of the last century. The set list included “White Christmas”, “I’ll Be Home for Christmas”, “Silver Bells”, “Chestnuts Roasting”, “Let it Snow”, “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year”, and most emphatically, “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer”. We had a great time.
What Matthew did not talk about was the biblical Jewish contributions to Christmas which are significant if not essential. Needless to say, we could begin with Mary, Joseph, and Jesus, all of whom were Jewish. But I have recently been drawn to re-read some of the texts from the Old Testament, especially Isaiah and Micah which we read in church during Advent and which shape our understanding and meaning of the birth story of Jesus.
It is important to say from the outset that we do not read these passages because they ‘predict’ the birth of Jesus. Rather we use them because they help us understand what is was the chosen people expected. What they were looking for. What they longed for. The prophets help us understand what it means to hope.
Take Isaiah 9:6 which is the familiar text saying, “For a child has been born to us, a son is given to us; he will bear the symbol of dominion on his shoulder, and his title will be: Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty Hero, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.” Isaiah is focussed on his own time which is centuries before Jesus. But he believes that God raises up leaders for God’s people, something that reverberates through the generations and was echoed in the people of the first century.
Or Isaiah 2 where we find the encouraging word that days are coming when swords are turned into ploughshares and spears into pruning hooks, when nation will not lift sword against nation nor ever be trained for war. That was as much the longing of God’s people in Jesus’ day as it is for us today. That day seems impossibly far off but it remains the promise. It is in the ways of peace that we find meaning for our lives.
Isaiah 11 paints the picture of the so-called peaceable kingdom where the wolf will live with the lamb and the calf and lion will feed together. It is also the text that tells God’s people to expect this promised and promising leadership to come from the tree of Jesse. That name may not be as familiar to you as that of Jesse’s son who was King David. Israel came to expect that a messiah would come to them from the line of David, in the tradition of David, and in the manner of David. This ‘messianic expectation’ figures prominently in the ministry of Jesus.
And finally, Micah 5 is the source of the line spoken by the wise men in Matthew 2, “And you O Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for from you come a ruler who will govern my people Israel.” While Micah was undoubtedly using Bethlehem as an expression of the hope in his own generation that a king-like-David would rise up to bring salvation to God’s people, the early church seized upon the promise of Bethlehem in the prophets to align with their experience of Jesus as a shepherd-leader.
So that is a few of the reasons why the Jewish contributions to Christmas are extensive and essential. A new born child, a Prince of Peace, a promised kingdom, the ancestry of David, and the elevation of Bethlehem. Without the traditions and understanding of Judaism the birth of Jesus holds no meaning at all.
Take that, Rudolph!
Grace and peace,
Michael
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- Read this week’s scripture lesson here: Matthew 24:36-44
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