Christmas is a celebration of new beginnings, said the president-bishop of the Evangelical Church of Hungary on the first day of Christmas, Sunday, at the evangelical church in Budapest.
Adam rebelled against God, and his son Cain killed his own brother. If the relationship with God deteriorates, then the relationship between people deteriorates, mistrust of God results in jealousy between people, said Tamás Fabiny.
He added: the Adamic story continued; came Sodom and Gomorrah, the stone axe, the stoker, the war chariot, Auschwitz and the Gulag, and in the 21st century, Aleppo or Bucsa.
Everyone is crying out to heaven for grace and mercy, so that the Adamic story can be broken and a new one, the Christ one, can begin, he said.
He added: what Adam messed up, God will make amends through the birth of Jesus Christ. At Christmas, God started a new story, offering an opportunity for salvation, conversion, and new life, he declared.
He said that at Christmas, God became a man, Adam, "took upon himself the human face", "he even took upon himself the ugly face of Adam", and thereby sanctified this face. According to his words, without Jesus we would all have the face of Adam, or even the face of Cain, but in Jesus Christ God takes on a new face and man can take on a new face.
Let us remember the apple of Adam and Eve, but let us believe in Jesus Christ: we can be part of his story, because he sanctified the face of Adam. Christmas is the festival of the human-faced god; he became a man so that we too could be men, but not the Adamic old men, but Christ's new men, he said.
He emphasized: Adam is the forefather of humanity, but Christ is the initiator of a new humanity, the new beginning. The story of Adam comes to an end, but the story of Jesus is about the beginning, he said. He added: God also wants to forget human sin, he wants to start something new "within us and through us", in our own family, in the church, in the country, in Europe, in the world.
I believe that God wants something new and can start something new through us. Christmas is the celebration of this new beginning, he declared.
MTI
Cover photo: Tamás Fabiny, the president-bishop of the Evangelical Church of Hungary, preaches the word at a festive service on the first day of Christmas in the Lutheran church in Budavár on December 25, 2022. MTI/Zsolt Szigetváry
