Bishop Poulson’s 2025 Christmas Message

King’s College Chapel, Cambridge

“The Loving Purposes of God”'

For most of my life, the service of Lessons and Carols has been a beloved part of my celebration of Advent and Christmas. We are blessed that a number of our Episcopal churches and schools in Oklahoma offer it each year. As a child and youth, I sang in Lessons and Carols services at my Episcopal school, and at church. And often I would listen, with my mother (a church organist), to the public radio broadcast of the iconic Nine Lessons and Carols on Christmas Eve from King’s College, Cambridge.

And so it was thrilling, last summer, as the choirs of our cathedral (including my three boys) were on pilgrimage to England, when we were able to visit King’s College Chapel, and to learn some of its history. Lessons and Carols first came to King’s College on Christmas Eve, 1918, introduced by Dean Eric Milner-White, who had served as an Army chaplain in World War One.  Just six weeks after the end of that World War, Lessons and Carols comforted a grieving and traumatized nation with a simple, but beautiful assortment of readings from Holy Scripture, prayers, and choral and congregational carols meant to communicate, in Dean Milner-White’s words, “the loving purposes of God.”

My friends in Christ in Oklahoma, we are not in the aftermath of a World War, but we are in stressful and chaotic times, nonetheless. Political and religious division and violence, economic pain, fear, anxiety, greed, and cruelty are all around. It feels as if we are losing our way, not sure where, or to whom we should turn. In our celebration of Christmas this year, may we, through Scripture readings, prayers, and the carols of the season, find comfort in the yearly reminder that our God is with us, Emmanuel, in Jesus Christ. 

For us, as Christians, Christmas is not nostalgic sentiment, but living hope and strong faith. Hope that Christ will return to set all things right, with justice and peace, and faith that, in the meanwhile, he will strengthen us to shine with God’s light in a dark world. Our communities, our nation, and our world need engaged Christians more than ever, to seek the common good, to come alongside the vulnerable in compassion and kindness, and to speak for those whose voices are silenced. God’s purposes have always been, and will always be loving. Let us, with confidence, share that Good News, revealed to us in Jesus Christ, with all who are in need of it.

May God bless you and yours this Christmastide. O come, let us adore him, Christ the Lord!

The Rt. Rev. Poulson Reed

Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Oklahoma