Struggling through twixmas

Anyone else struggling a bit in these bizarre times and in these days between Christmas and New Year? 

We face uncertain times. And we are all weary. For the first time ever on Christmas Day I didn’t fall asleep. The load in Advent this year was different. Less rushing around but more intensive work producing zoom reflections and you tube quiet days and trying to visit people on the doorstep and producing what I wanted to be meaningful worship for those who wanted in the season to be in a church building for it. I struggled with worship in a building over Christmas if I am honest. A carol service where we couldn’t sing them; the lowest number I’ve ever led worship for Christmas morning; trying a communion service which I didn’t find at all spiritual... For me Christmas in church was saved by sharing in a midnight communion in Boroughbridge and preaching on the greatest passage in the Bible - the prologue to John’s Gospel. 

So what’s the weariness? I think we are weary of this pandemic! That’s all. We’ve now had nine months of it. When we were locked down in March, it was spring. We did those jobs we had put off for ages, we watched those box sets we’d never got round to watching, we enjoyed our gardens, we rang people up, I started writing my book, I enjoyed a long daily walk, I discovered putting a reflection on line weekly helped people. We valued people we previously took for granted who we suddenly had to rely on - the Sainsbury’s delivery man and the lay worker in the Circuit who fetched our medicine from the surgery. We clapped NHS workers, we had VE Day parties in the garden, we were promised this would be over by Christmas...

We were locked down again in November. That one was only a month but it was harder. We’d been out and about, the cases were falling, the government told us to shop, eat out, as long as we took care. So being back indoors was hard. It has been hard for me to begin a new Circuit appointment in September getting to know eight churches in a crazy time but I’ve done my best to at least form some relationships in each place and be positive but planning long term stuff has been impossible. We’ve done Christmas but it’s been very strange. 

And now, well... we face 2021.

There is hope. Some of our folk here have had their first vaccine dose. That’s good to hear. It will take some time before we are all done though, but there is hope! 

But there is also danger. Danger that we have in our weariness become complacent, breaking rules (I heard singing in church on Sunday and people are chatting in the building - naughty) and just being so fed up with it now. I’m tired of face coverings. I’m not enjoying “going to church” but I understand those who need to do that especially those who can’t Zoom etc. 

And today I’ve heard of someone who went for a test and luckily the test came back negative but the person was in church on Christmas morning so had it come back positive, the whole congregation would have had to self isolate. Today we have reached 50,000 cases in a day in this countryand we have over 70,000 deaths which is nothing short of a scandal. Tomorrow the rather exhausted looking Matt Hancock, who always looks like he’s looking like a rabbit caught in headlights when addressing the nation, will surely tell us we are going up a tier. Or even two! How can we not, with cases rising, hospitals in London becoming overwhelmed, and some thinking schools need to remain shut in January as the teenage age group seem to be the current mass spreaders.

I struggle with the fact the government and even Methodist HQ say we can carry on opening churches in the higher tiers - surely if we can’t mix anywhere else we shouldn’t be encouraging that in churches should we?  

 

It’s clear we are heading for a difficult start to 2021. Pastorally people will need support just keeping going.  All of us will need that support. 

So how do we enter a New Year? 

Well, two ideas.

First, we hold on and keep going. When we know how the land lies tomorrow we look after each other, do nice things for our well-being, like a walk or reading a good book, we follow the rules. We sacrifice doing what we want for now so the future we want can come earlier. Cases need to come down urgently. We admit when we struggle - it’s okay to feel overwhelmed some days. I’ve done a lot of doorstep visits these past weeks. I hope they can continue. But if not I’ll be on the phone to folk. 

And second, we try and remember the story we have just celebrated in the uncertainty we have to live through. I was thinking about this as I went for a walk round the city this afternoon. Pictures through this blog. The lights in the cathedral reminded me of the heart of the Christmas story: the light shines in the darkness and the darkness comprehendeth it not. And will not! The colours of the sky this afternoon were a reminder that even in the drabness of life, if we look for the bright things they are there. There’s a prayer I find helpful thanking God for the bright and glorious things of life and asking him to help us count them and remember them. What do we hold on to in weariness spiritually? 

The Christmas story is one of hope amidst despair and light in the darkness and divine answer in a world of questions. The story is set in chaos, myrrh is part of it, genocide is part of it, fear is part of it, it’s not pretty and straightforward - it comes to a weary world. And so we keep the faith, we keep doing what we are doing, we rehearse the story every say, we remember that incarnation becomes real especially on struggling days when we seek God and ask him to remind us of his ways.

I found when reading the daily C of E devotions on line for the Christmas season that yesterday a verse we leave out from It came upon a midnight clear was included. The verse really spoke to me this afternoon:

And ye, beneath life’s crushing load,
Whose forms are bending low,
Who toil along the climbing way
With painful steps and slow:
Look now, for glad and golden hours
Come swiftly on the wing;
O rest beside the weary road,
And hear the angels sing.

Perhaps at the end of what has been an awful year really, we feel on a climbing way and we walk it with painful steps slowly. When I was really unwell two years ago now and I couldn’t walk very far, I began to walk to the pond in Hailsham from our front door. At first every step was painful as my lungs ached. Today I walked for 55 minutes happily and briskly. Today a journey can feel a climb. 

What the hymn reminds us is that even on the climbing way, even in the worsening of the pandemic, even with New Year celebrations restricted, even with deep worries and fears, we need to look for glad and golden hours. We need to breathe and take time and in that resting time on the way, listen for the angels singing. The whole point of angel intervention in the story is that they come not when life is alright, they come when life is pretty crap. When the time was right God broke into this world. He can do it again. We are all open to something better coming. We listen and we wait. It might take time, but he who is coming will come...

So I’ve been really honest today. I’m unsure about so much. But my faith keeps me afloat and I’m determined the churches I am trying to serve will put pastoral care and time for people this coming year at their heart. People need reassurance. There is a lot of soul search in going on which the Church needs to be part of. We cannot just return when it’s all safe to just what was. 

After all, doesn’t Christ come to give us a second birth? 

Answers on a postcard! 

A word for 2021

Passage for reflection: John 1: 1 - 14

I had to take my car to the garage in Knaresborough for its MOT just before Christmas. It was a icy morning and it took me ages to scrape the ice off it once I’d found some de icer. The traffic on the Ripon by pass was horrendous and I hate being late for anything and I get grouchy and impatient in a traffic jam. Shouting “come on” at the car in front doesn’t help. 

So we sat in two lines of stationery traffic freezing cold and the woman in the next lane had a face on her as miserable as mine. Then Zoe Ball on Radio 2 played “we wish you a wombling merry Christmas” by the wombles and we both laughed as we noticed each other singing along! The fact I have a Wombles LP and some 46 years after that song was released it is rather sad but the words were in me as I was word perfect! 

Both of us in the traffic jam took notice of what was being shared with us and we responded. What words do we listen to and alter our lives? I guess we’ve all sat and listened to government briefings, several even in the last few days as the Prime Minister or the rather beleaguered looking Matt Hancock come out and tell us what tier we are in and what we can do. The words affect us.  

All words, communication does that - we can either feel jolly with the Wombles or shout at the TV at Matt Hancock. 

At Christmas we encounter the word. It’s intestine that John 1 is the lectionary passage for the first Sunday of a New Year. The word became flesh and dwelt among us we are told. The word is incarnate. One with us. 

The words at the heart of the Christmas story are words of peace, tidings of great joy, goodwill, inclusivity and vulnerability. The word is life changing and it is here.

Of course there are two responses to the word. Here’s the Matt Hancock one: He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not” .“He came unto his own, and his own received him not”

So it’s ignored, or seen as irrelevant - surely our task as churches is to bring that word alive and make people notice it. When Queen Victoria was there she sometimes took a walk outside the grounds of the castle disguised in old clothing. Her bodyguard John Brown followed her. As she walked down the road she came to a flock of sheep driven by a boy. He shouted at her, “Keep out of the way, you stupid old woman.” The Queen smiled, but said nothing. A moment later her bodyguard came up to the boy and said, “Be quiet, that is the Queen.” “Well,” said the boy, “she should dress like a queen!”

That’s the way it was with Jesus.

But here’s the Wombles reaction: to those that received him he gave the right to become children of God... it’s rather awesome that isn’t it? This word comes down from heaven, empties itself of all but love, and shares all of life with us, so we can see through it the glory of God. God with us.

Sam Wells from St Martin in the fields puts it well how the church should be if we embrace this word: I have a particular in­­terest in the word “with”, which I see as the crucial word in theology. By using the words “God with us”, you’re describing the incarnation as the place from which theology be­­gins for Christians.

 I think it begins with pastoral care, because in pas­toral care what a minister, priest, pastor — not always an ordained person — is doing is [that] they are dwelling with another person at the most challenging points in their lives, to which there aren’t usually answers; and not running away from those places, and staying in those places until the Holy Spirit reveals the face of Christ. . .

The best of all is God is with us. The word made flesh dwells with you and with me.

There are a lot of words spoken to us in life. This word is God’s gift to us as 2021 dawns. 

2021 will open with many words: the Prime Minister wants us to inwardly digest his deal with the EU and words about fish; we will still need to listen to words about restrictions and tiers and when we might be called for a vaccine. I know three church members who have been to Harrogate for their first one. We will hear words of hope and fear as people voice their feelings as a new year opens. 

The word was made flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld his glory the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. No matter what the world is up to, God is here with us. There is no greater Christmas present. And it’s a present that lasts well beyond twelfth night into the reality of January.

Hovering Spirit, because of You there was a beginning. Heavenly Dove, because of You there is a continuing. Untameable Wind, because of You there will be a completing.

From the emptiness before the birth of time to the fullness of the new earth and heaven, Holy Spirit, You breathe and blow,

dancing to our Creator’s tune,

in step with our Saviour’s purposes.

Fill our expectant hearts

as we stand on this threshold of a new year. We have been here so many times;

and we have never been here before.

Source, Saviour, Spring of life,

refreshing and replenishing God,

all that pours from You is good and wise and true. Soak us with the delight of Your surprising nearness and let us splash in puddles of joy.

God in Community,

how privileged we are to be Your people, chosen and known and loved by You,

here and now and in all our days gone by and still to come.

(Prayer from the Church of Scotland website) 

Advent Anticipation

Passage for reflection: Luke 2: 1 - 20

Who were the shepherds?

The shepherds above the hills of Bethlehem were despised by the orthodox good people of the day. Shepherds were dirty and smelly, quite unable to keep the details of the law like hand washing and rules and regulations. They were looked down on as very common people. Why does God come to shepherds? Not to our script! William Barclay in his commentary reminds us that in the Temple an unblemished lamb was offered as a sacrifice to God morning and evening. To see that the supply of perfect and unblemished offerings was always available the Temple authorities had their own private sheep flocks, and we know that those flocks were pastured near Bethlehem. Barclay suggests it is likely these shepherds who looked after the Temple lambs were the first to the see the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. 

Have you ever had that experience of being offered something/told something/shown something and said “what me?”    

How does God announce good news? Through angels. What picture in your mind does the scene in Luke 2 create? 

It would have been terrifying wouldn’t it? That’s why “fear not” is used over and over again when angels come. It was not usual for angels to break into our world. The shepherds have a sense of wonder within them. We need this too. 

Nick Fawcett in an old Advent study book called “Lighten our Path” says this re our worship sometimes:

“Familiarity can erode our sense of wonder even in the presence of God. Instead of approaching with a sense of privilege, we take him for granted. Instead of being transported into a different dimension of life, we stay tied down to this world, unable to see beyond our limited horizons. Prayer becomes mechanical, worship a routine, the sense of awe that marked the early days of Christian discipleship tempered by the humdrum business of daily life. Do we still marvel at the glory of God?”

Are there times we simply need to bow down and worship for this is our God? Do we forget the wonder of God coming TO us? Do we need like Job(42: 1 -3) to say “I know that you can do anything, and that nothing is beyond you. I have spoken of mysteries I do not understand, things so wonderful they are beyond my comprehension”? 

How do we respond to the glory of God, and good news for all? 

What do the shepherds do? They make a decision! They go to find the good news, the joy and they return from it, glorifying and praising God for all that they had seen. Not like us “preacher went on too long, didn’t like those hymns, church was cold,” or my mother’s criteria for a good service “they finished at ten to!”          

Jurgen Moltmann’s Theology and Joy is helpful as we approach Christmas in a few days. In this wonderful book, he quotes Psalm 16 verse 11: “You show me the path of life, in your presence there is fullness of joy, in your right hand are pleasures for evermore.” And he says the church’s role is to be there if this is true, with others. Christ’s life and death  shows us that he is with us and that we shall be living, laughing and reigning with him IN THE END! Moltmann says you know we are not to simply offer help to a troubled world we are, because of Jesus and what he does, to change it!

Jane Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury’s wife, a few years ago wrote a lovely little book about angels – she wrote this about the shepherd’s encounter:

“What a privilege for the shepherds, they not only see one angel, who has a message just for them, but they also see the joyful excitement of a flock of singing angels. They must have told the story of that night for years to come. What a good thing there were several of them, one shepherd on his own would certainly never have been believed. The angels are thrilled to be involved in God’s plan and fly across the world singing out the good news. They long for the time when human beings can communicate with God as freely as they can, and they do not have to keep saying, “Do not be afraid” whenever they talk to them. The angels understand that God is working to bring the human world and the angelic world back together, and they are excited to be part of it. 

The shepherds set off to find the baby. They do not ask any of the sensible questions like “why would God send hosts of his angels to tell a bunch of shepherds what he is doing?” They tingle with the excitement of the angelic singing, and run to do as they are told.”       

A final thought: God chooses to come to ordinary, unnoticed people and he can transform them where they are. He does not come as we expect! The shepherdscame, they saw, they were conquered by the overwhelming truth of one whose nativity reconciles, indeed marries, earth and heaven, and begins the story of our redemption.   Like the shepherds we have heard a summons that makes it impossible not to come and see this thing that has come to pass.  And when we stand, like them, at the manger, we know in a way we could not know before, that love is his meaning - the great and wonderful love with which, as St John says, God so loved the world that he gave his only Son.  

The holy Child of Bethlehem it seems to me calls out to us to revive our faith.  He re-awakens in us our belief in God's purposes of goodness, and our resolve to live by the hope set before us in the incarnation. Despite the sad world of the end of 2020, we need to know there can be something better and it is that God comes into this world, as it is, and can transform it. 

The Christmas story is the beginning of his work of salvation and he needs us to respond to help him bring it about.   

The angels come to bring news to our world. 

Someone wrote “they roll back the curtain of the real world and open the eyes of people working on earth to a vision of heaven.” That’s the sort of church I try to lead here – giving people a vision of heaven. Christmas is all about the badnews of today’s experience, no matter how bad, soon, unexpectedly giving birth to good news for the world. The angels bring us the news, open our eyes, have a party and then clear off – they do – read the story! They leave us then to work out where we go from here. What difference does this story make to us?  

Advent watching

Passage for reflection: Habbukuk 2: 1 - 4

Whether it was on the top of the tallest mast of a ship or on the gate to the city, it was vital that the person on watch was always alert.

There could be icebergs ahead, there could be enemies on the horizon.  It was only the alertness of the watcher that would save the ship, save the city, save the people.  It must have been a demanding job to be always on the lookout.

‘If the owner of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into.’

The season of Advent is such an important one because it’s all about being watchful people.  That great Advent hymn, ‘Wachet auf’ sums it up so well with those words

Zion hears the watchmen shouting,
her heart leaps up with joy undoubting,
she stands and waits with eager eyes;

We are a people on the look-out, for the birth of Jesus at Christmas, of course, but also for the coming of the Son of Man, for the coming of the Kingdom of God, for the coming of the perfection of all things.  We’re watching as the prophets have called on us to watch, for those glorious days when

‘they shall beat their swords into ploughshares,

   and their spears into pruning-hooks.’

We’re watching as Paul reminds us, for the days when we will

‘lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armour of light.’

We don’t know when it will come, but we know and we believe that it will come and we watch and we wait with hearts eager for things to be different. 

But we know that we don’t just wait and watch in some passive kind of way.  The gospel always calls us to act, to be the people of the kingdom, now, here, to take up plough-shares and pruning hooks, to work in the light and not in the darkness, to help create the world as it should be, as God desires it to be, as God’s people need it to be, as this community longs for it to be.

People within our communities are hurting. There will be people who feel fearful, people who perhaps would rather be anywhere than here, others who just want life to be normal.  We have to stand with them.  We have to help bear their pain but also speak into that pain with words of hope.

We’re on the lookout for God, we’re watching for the one who will come, for God will always come.  We’re watching for the one who will be our peace and our healing, who will bind up our wounds, who will ease our memories and calm our thoughts.  We’re on the lookout for a kingdom that will transform lives and defeat the tyranny of darkness.

God will come, like child; God will come, like bread.  The Lord knows that the call to alertness is demanding, that the call to action is exhausting and so he feeds us, he cares for us, cares for the world – by coming, by coming as child, by coming as bread.  That is why we’re here if we are people of faith, watching for him alert to his presence, so that as the broken bread of vulnerability is held before us and placed in our empty hands (when we are safe enough to share communion again) we can say ‘My Lord and my God’ and know that it is true.  The Lord will come and will not be slow.  The Lord is here, his spirit is with us.

This week, keep watch. And maybe reflect on these words: 

The lack of mystery in our modern life is our downfall and our poverty. A human life is worth as much as the respect it holds for the mystery. We retain the child in us to the extent that we honor the mystery. Therefore, children have open, wide-awake eyes, because they know that they are surrounded by the mystery. They are not yet finished with this world; they still don’t know how to struggle along and avoid the mystery, as we do. We destroy the mystery because we sense that here we reach the boundary of our being, because we want to be lord over everything and have it at our disposal, and that’s just what we cannot do with the mystery…. Living without mystery means knowing nothing of the mystery of our own life, nothing of the mystery of another person, nothing of the mystery of the world; it means passing over our own hidden qualities and those of others and the world. It means remaining on the surface, taking the world seriously only to the extent that it can be calculated and exploited, and not going beyond the world of calculation and exploitation. Living without mystery means not seeing the crucial processes of life at all and even denying them.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

God is in the manger: reflections for Advent and Christmas. 

Advent Comfort

Passage for reflection: Isaiah 40: 1 - 11

We need help: we’ve discovered Channel 5 are showing hour after hour of Christmas films during the day and we’ve started recording them! 

Last Sunday, we noticed a film called “A Very Yorkshire Christmas” and we thought it might be nice. It was filmed in Knaresborough last year. I wish I’d read the Radio Times review before starting it: “large amount of schmaltz”! 

Girl gets stuck in Knaresborough! 

Widower struggling to keep park with lodges open.

Girl falls for widower. Can get back home but makes excuses.

It never snows at Christmas.

It snows.

Happy ending. And the mother in law is Frank Spencer’s wife! Ooh Betty. 

This year people as they look forward to Christmas are looking for a happy ending. It’s been a dark and difficult year. So I understand why Christmas trees are being put up this week and lights are being lit on houses and in gardens. But God does not do schmaltz! God comes in Jesus into the world to transform it but he doesn’t wave a magic wand or give us a bottle of sugary sweet medicine, he gives us of himself. He shares our suffering in order to redeem it. He is born in vulnerability and poverty to underline where we find ourselves matters to him. He “lays his glory by and wraps himself in our clay” as Charles Wesley puts it. 

Schmaltz - no. Comfort - yes. 

“Comfort, comfort my people,”
says your God.
“Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,
and announce to her
that her time of forced labour is over,

her iniquity has been pardoned,
and she has received from the Lord’s hand
double for all her sins.”

How are we comforted?

Jacob, why do you say,
and, Israel, why do you assert:
“My way is hidden from the Lord,
and my claim is ignored by my God”?
Do you not know?
Have you not heard?
The Lord is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the whole earth.
He never becomes faint or weary;
there is no limit to his understanding.
He gives strength to the faint
and strengthens the powerless.

There’s an old story of a preacher beginning his sermon with the introduction that he had been led to speak on the subject of God is Love. “But,” he said,  “I determined that was too broad of a subject, so I begin to think about my subject being just God Is. However, after deciding that subject was still too broad, I have settled on the just the word is.”

We can be comforted that God is God. He is on His throne. He is in control. There is nothing too difficult for Him. He rules! He reigns! He is the beginning and the end! He was, and He is, and He is forever. He existed in eternity past. He came, clothed in humanity, as Jesus, and He is coming again to make all that is wrong right! That’s the Advent promise. 

Here is where we find our comfort! 

I get why the powers that be at Channel 5 decided maybe in the summer to bombard their schedule in these weeks with nicey nice Christmas pap. We need some escapism! But we need something that will last into January and whatever 2021 brings. 

Comfort comes when someone sits alongside us in our distress. Comfort is someone staying with us in our uncertainty. Comfort is knowing even if today feels rough, God is coming soon. Comfort wipes away tears, wipes up mess and puts us back together so we believe we have a future again. In chapter 41 of his prophecy Isaiah gives us the attitude we need if we know we are comforted:

"So do not fear, for I am with you"

If you need a bit of schmaltz this season, that’s fine, watch Channel 5 in the daytime to your heart’s content. We all want a happy ending. But know this: the comfort knowing all will be well only comes from God. Comfort my people. Our hard times are soon to be over. I pray in these Advent weeks we may know that comfort and be that comfort for others. 

 

Advent Longings

Passage for reflection: Isaiah 64: 1 - 9

We are about to enter what is my favourite season of the church year, the season of Advent. I love Advent and I love Advent Sunday because it is a time we think about expectation, and hope, and our deepest yearnings. Dare I say I love Advent more than I love Christmas? 

This year perhaps we might actually do Advent. Usually we rush on to Christmas so much so when Christmas comes we are all carolled out. At home for the church year 1995 to 1996, we had a minister serve us from the Uniting Church of Australia, the Rev. Brian Whitlock. Brian was a character who shook us up after we’d had ten years with his predecessor and perhaps we’d become a bit too comfortable. He made us learn Advance Australia Fair and he wouldn’t let us sing a carol until midnight on Christmas morning. He wanted us to sing the fabulous Advent carols in Advent, and then sing the Christmas ones well into January. He had a point. 

We like to rush on in life. I’m terrible in a traffic jam. I hate being late and so I’ll stress when I’m stuck. I get that from my Dad. He’d never sit in a jam on a motorway. He’d turn off at the next junction believing that would be quicker than waiting in the gridlock. He’d often be wrong as all we did was rejoin the chaos a mile or so further along! My mother used to get very cross with him. But waiting is seen as negative, wasting time. There are people who want instant results, and who believe waiting is unnecessary. 

There was a vote this week on Wednesday, November 25 on Radio 1 whether it was too early to start playing Christmas songs. The overwhelming view was it wasn’t. While I was driving about on Wednesday, Nick Grimshaw, playing the annoying “All I want for Christmas is you” for the first time said “come on, let’s get on with it. One month to go!” (I usually am a Radio 2 listener but I can’t stomach Steve Wright in the afternoon so change the station while he’s on!) 

But maybe we need a season of waiting and soul searching and spiritual yearning before God. Maybe we need a time to give God our deepest longings and fears. Maybe to receive what Christmas brings, we need to do Advent. To prepare for God breaking into the world again, we need to be ready. I understand though this year more than any the impatience. We are longing for hope and for relief, for good news as this dreadful year comes to a close. 

None of us dreamt when we were locked down in March we’d still be restricted how we live. We now face tiers. We are in tier 2 in North Yorkshire which means we can open our churches again a week on Sunday very carefully and I can see people again outside or on doorsteps.

 I am sorry for those in tier 3 where so much cannot happen. I understand why the government has given us five days of relief over Christmas but decisions how those days are spent will be hard. Don’t hug your granny! And if we don’t behave we will be back in lockdown in January. So I get why lights are going up early, we are all tired of this virus and we need something to look forward to.

The people of God in Isaiah’s day had their yearnings. After many years away from home in exile in Babylon they returned home having been freed by King Cyrus of Persia. But the homecoming was not the party they hoped for. They found Jerusalem and their beloved Temple in ruins. Standing on the rubble they cried out to God. Where was he? The Temple was the sign of the presence and power of God and it was no more. So they cried out “O that you would tear the heavens apart and come down.” In other words they prayed “don’t abandon us, do something, we need some sign you care.” Perhaps we are feeling like them. 

We long for something good to happen. All we talk about is this virus and we are bored with it. 

We long for healing.

We long for answers to our problems.

We long for light in our darkness. 

Don’t abandon us, God!

The papers this past week have suggested Christmas has been saved. But I read an article in a recent Church Times by a retired Bishop, David Thomson, which suggests we don’t save Christmas, it saves us. 

“ Even if warm hearths and family togetherness are what we long for, they are powerful because they speak not just of a kiss under the mistletoe or a blow-out meal, but of a deeper sense that winter will not have things all its own way — a sense of unconquerable light. We have been celebrating it since Stonehenge, and we want and need to celebrate it now. But just saying “Boo” to the darkness — or, indeed, the virus — and getting on with the party is going to end in tears.”

 “From ancient times, Christians kept fasts before they dived into their feasts. They didn’t take the waiting out of wanting: they knew that a bit of waiting, a bit of preparing, a bit of pondering, would make the feast all the more fun.

Cue Advent: not just the Advent of a boozy miniature a day in December, but the Advent that starts four Sundays before Christmas and takes us slowly and carefully through the Bible’s story of how we got into this pickle we call life, and how God’s plan to join us in it, and raise us from it, came to pass. It’s all those readings you’ve heard at a traditional carol service, but old-school, taken slowly, savoured for all they’re worth. Then, at Christmas, the Great Twelve Days of Feasting can begin.

Hearts that are heavy with deathly fear can resonate poignantly with the Advent warnings of the day of the Lord that are ordinarily too strong a meat for many to take — but with them the assurance that, in the crisis, endings can turn to beginnings, and death and fear themselves flee before the face of God.”

Maybe we need a time to think seriously about our lives and what is missing in them for us to be whole and happy spiritually. 

Maybe we need a time when we can say to God “o that you would tear the heavens apart and come down —- for us!” To say to God actually life isn’t alright - we stand on today’s rubble and we wonder where you are. Or if we still think you do things, stop faffing about and do something. Maybe we need a time to lament at how things are.

Maybe we need a time to refocus to prepare to receive what God might have planned for us. The story of how Christ came into the world surprised all the participants in it. This year let’s not do a boring Christmas with everything the same - let’s be open to being challenged. What’s the heart of it? Let’s take time revisiting the yearnings and longings of God’s ancient people. Let’s hear again the promises shared by prophets like Isaiah and Micah and Zephaniah and Malachi. Let’s get inside the characters who heard Jesus was coming and be as gobsmacked as they were about it. 

Longing, waiting, expecting, all are necessary in a lively faith journey. Let’s be Advent people. Let’s be open with God and open to God in this season so that when he comes we might be ready. 

The book I return to every Advent is “The Coming of God” by Maria Boulding. It’s a classic. This quote for me sums up what Advent longing is. As Advent begins I pray we might find our expectancy and our longing for God again as a church. Perhaps I’m mad but I think we only have a future if we find them... 

“If you want God, and long for union with him, yet sometimes wonder what that means, or whether it can mean anything at all, you are already walking with the God who comes...lf you have ever had an obscure intuition that the truth of things is somehow better, greater, more wonderful than you deserve or desire,...that there is a mercy beyond anything you could ever suspect, you are already drawn into the central mystery of salvation.
Your hope is not a mocking dream; God creates in human hearts a huge desire and a sense of need, because he wants to fill them with the gift of himself.'

Unexpected God, your advent alarms us. Wake us from drowsy worship, from the sleep that neglects love, and the sedative of misdirected frenzy. Awaken us now to your coming, and guide our feet into your way of peace. Amen.

 

The last Sunday of the Church year

Passage for reflection: Matthew 25: 31 to the end of the chapter 

I wonder if you read a book whether you are impatient to see how it ends. Some naughty people look at the back page of a book to see if it is worth investing their time trawling through 200 pages! An ending can sometimes be a surprise, what you least expected. 

The way we watch television dramas seems to have changed in recent years. We now are in the era of box sets and complete series being available on demand so you can binge on them in one go because you can’t wait a week to find out how they end. We are dreadful because we watch things late at night and just start another episode having already watched three but then we fall asleep! The joy of on demand is that you can wind programmes back. Do you remember the days when we taped stuff and the video recorder cut off the end so you never knew what happened. 

We have reached the end of the liturgical year in the Church. The Sunday before Advent is known as Christ the King Sunday. The readings for the day are all about how the story of Jesus ends. Ho does it end? It ends with him coming in glory. It ends with his eternal reign. It ends with judgment on his people concerning how they’ve behaved in their lives, it ends with all creation worshipping him. 

The Nicene Creed puts it in these words:

“We believe he will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead and that his Kingdom will have no end.”

We don’t often think about the second coming. But Advent, which we are soon to enter, is really a reminder of how he came as a child, but more crucially, an expectation he is coming to reign in glory soon. We put off making decisions and we drift along whereas the first Christians saw how we live as an urgent matter because they believed the parousia was imminent. 

What will it be like at the end? 

Well, two things. First, there will be judgment. How we have lived in this life will matter. God will reward human acts of kindness and faithful Christian service. When the king comes in his glory he will do some sort of performance management on us. We will be judged by how we showed love by ministering to the hungry, the sick, those in prison. By visiting the needy. By doing these things we are serving the king or forsaking him. Matthew 25 is pretty brutal! To not reflect the king and the kingdom has huge consequences. 

Then the king will be remembered. Nadia Bolz Weber, one of my favourite contemporary writers reflected this week on some dodgy leaders mentioned to give context towards the beginning of Luke’s Gospel. She writes:

“You know that list of powerful men? Those emperors and rulers and governors and power brokers who were so feared and powerful at the time- you know what? The only reason anyone knows their names…the only reason anyone even says their names – the only reason these tiny, pathetic so-called powerful men are even remembered at all 2,000 years later is as a footnote to Jesus of Nazareth.  Those who were caught up into the powers and principalities of violence and empire and greed – whose power at the time they were alive felt so absolute– are only a footnote to Jesus. Jesus -  the prince of peace, the man of sorrows, the friend of sinners, the forgiver of enemies. Jesus – a homeless dude who hung out with fishermen and sex workers and said we should love our enemies. Can you imagine what a blow to Pontius Pilate that would be if he had any idea?  So my prayer this week when I just didn’t know what to pray was simple. I named every single thing and person that seems so powerful right now as to feel inescapable – rulers, tyrants, my own sins, societal forces etc. and I named them and then said “footnote”. 

Pontius Pilate? footnote.

Your depression? footnote.

Student Loan debt? footnote.

Pathetic Narcissists of every variety - footnote

Don’t mistake me – all of those things are very real and the harm they have on us and on the world is also very real.  But to me, the whole point of having faith – the whole point in believing in a power greater than ourselves –is that it allows us to believe in a bigger story than the one we tell ourselves, a bigger story than the one being shouted on Cable News, a bigger story than the one being shouted inside our own heads.  In my own anxiety I can only see a few feet in front of myself and the world can feel like it’s closing in on me, but in the bigger picture I defiantly believe that God can convert our anxiety into hope. In the bigger picture I defiantly believe that forgiveness is more powerful than resentment, that compassion is more powerful than judgement, that love is more powerful than fear. ”

We believe the Kingdom will come. We believe Jesus will reign. The end is not a bad one but a triumphant one. As Billy Graham once said,

I've read the last page of the Bible, it's all going to turn out all right.