After Christmas reflection four: Pondering

How have we reached the last day of 2022 so quickly? Where’s this year gone? Today a lot of people ponder what the year has brought them - joys and sorrows, celebrations and disappointments, surprises, missed opportunities maybe, plans that never happened. For some, this year has brought huge change. For me, it’s not been the easiest of years. A fabulous sabbatical was the highlight, getting Covid and latterly costocondritis and bleeding ulcers losing half the blood in my body hence two hospital stays were the lowlights. Juggling eight churches and responding to expectations some long out of date when ministers had less to sort continues to be a challenge. 

People will be gathering tonight in different ways to see out 2022 and ring in 2023. Others won’t bother. It’s a hard night if you are on your own and one to ignore and go to bed early on. We will join the tribute acts in the market square tonight then share in a city watch night service and then Councillor Sid, the Mayor of Ripon will countdown to the new year from the town hall balcony. 

Brian Bilston has released a new poem today reminding us the year never quite goes as we plan…

This was the year that was not the year 

I repaired the bathroom tap

And emptied out the kitchen drawer

Of a lifetime’s worth of crap.

This was the year that was not the year

In which I launched a new career

A West End hit eluded me

As did Time person of the year.

This was the year that was not the year 

I became a household name 

Action figures weren’t sold of me

I wasn’t made a dame.

This was the year that was not the year

I spent less time on my phone 

Nights of passion did not happen 

In boutique hotels in Rome.

This was the year that was not the year 

I didn’t get that much done -

Much the same as the year before 

Much like the one to come. 

I guess there was much pondering after the Christ event that first Christmas. Mary was sore afraid an angel had come, but later she thought deeply about what everything meant; Joseph lost sleep tossing and turning on several occasions; shepherds on a hillside responded to the story by making a journey; Simeon waited patiently in the temple for salvation and Anna devoted herself to prayer. That year became different because of one moment of divine intervention. Like we wonder what the year past has brought us or bruised us with, the Christmas characters are deep thinkers and ponderers. Quite rightly, because life has been shaken for ever. 

If you ever watched the mad Vic Reeves Big Night Out in the 1990’s, with Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer, Vic would periodically go on a live video feed on the show "to our Swiss counterparts, the Ponderers", who were blond shirtless versions of Vic and Bob with giant strap-on chins to aid their pondering. Brilliant! 

Whatever a year brings, however we end it, we need to remember we are held every day through it. We are not alone. This morning we heard Pope Benedict had passed away. He was a ponderer! Let’s hear and heed his words from 2013 as we let this year go soon and anticipate another.

“The splendour of the face of God, shining upon us and granting us peace, is the manifestation of His fatherhood: the Lord turns His face to us, He reveals Himself as our Father and grants us peace.  Nothing can take this peace from believers, not even the difficulties and sufferings of life. Indeed, sufferings, trials and darkness do not undermine but build up our hope, a hope which does not deceive because "God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us.”

A happy day of pondering to us then! Happy New Year everyone when it comes. 

After Christmas reflection three: Hope

 

Thoughts at the church coffee morning today  were turning towards January.

I sense today there are signs we might be flagging a little with this Christmas thing. I ate too much Christmas pudding last night accompanied with what I thought would go nicely with it - cream with Baileys in it. It was too much! This morning one of the folk was desperately trying to get us to eat up little shortbread and caramel delicacies she’d made so she didn’t have to take them home. The big issues of church life - all the tea towels in the kitchen have gone missing!!!!

How do we hold on to the wonder and the hope of incarnation as we end the too much food period of Christmas jollity? Wizzard, the 70’s pop band wished it could be Christmas every day. But we can’t keep stuffing our faces and living excessively for ever. I fear the reality of January and having no money to eat or heat your home will be really difficult for many. 

Today’s lectionary includes part of Paul’s mighty first chapter of his letter to the Colossians. Here is Paul’s christology:

 Jesus is described as “the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature: For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him:

And he is before all things, and by him all things consist.
And he is the head of the body, the church: who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things he might have the preeminence.
For it pleased the Father that in him should all fulness dwell;

And, having made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself; by him, I say, whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven.”

Isn’t that great stuff? Paul goes on to say our relationship with God depends on us not wavering from the hope of the Gospel we have just heard. Maybe that’s the challenge on a grey and dreary Friday surrounded at home by Christmas debris and feeling too full and surrounded by churches who so easily say we’ve done it now. Indeed, I was asked about services on Christmas Eve 2023 this morning! We need to hold on to the hope of the Gospel: we only heard it last Sunday! 

I suggested to my Christmas morning congregations that they might light a candle later in the day to remember why Christmas is here. Perhaps to keep hope alive we need to do that every day of this coming year and especially when hope feels absent. 

And God held in his hand
A small globe. Look, he said.
The son looked. Far off,
As through water, he saw
A scorched land of fierce
Colour. The light burned
There; crusted buildings
Cast their shadows: a bright
Serpent, a river
Uncoiled itself, radiant
With slime

On a bare hill a bare tree saddened the sky. Many people held out their thin arms to it as though waiting for a vanished April to return to its crossed boughs. The son watched them. Let me go there, he said.

R.S. Thomas, The Coming

Jesus is the Word spoken in the world, the Word who became flesh and lived among us, Jesus who saw our world and said, in the words of the RS Thomas poem, Let me go there.

Jesus, the very Christ in and through and for whom all things were created, the image of the invisible God, came to us. And in him all things hold together: things in heaven and things on earth.

When the Word became flesh, suddenly heaven and earth were held together – together in the body of Jesus, human and divine. In him all things hold together, the heavenly and the earthly. Nothing out of reach of God’s love.

And when the Word became flesh, as we hear in RS Thomas, birth and death, Bethlehem and Golgotha, incarnation and passion are held together too. The Word became flesh; Jesus was born in Bethlehem; knowing how his earthly story would end. With a bare tree, a bare hill, crossed boughs; blood and pain and death.

‘For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of the Cross.’ 

On this 30th day of December, does that help you focus on the hope of the Gospel and not waver from it? Perhaps there’s more hope in Jesus to be found than the missing tea towels returning to the kitchen draw (probably in the dead of night!!!)  

After Christmas reflection two: Incarnation

Today’s lectionary includes the wonderful prologue to John’s Gospel: a reminder of the heart of Christmas, that God himself, the Word, “became flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld his glory.” I love to read the prologue in the Authorised Version of the Bible. The language is beautiful. 

I’ve been challenged by what Max Lucado has to say in “God became near.” 

“The omnipotent, in one instant, made himself breakable. He who had been spirit became piercable. He who was larger than the universe became an embryo. And he who sustains the world with a word chose to be dependent upon the nourishment of a young girl. God as a fetus. Holiness sleeping in a womb. The creator of life being created. God was given eyebrows, elbows, two kidneys, and a spleen. He stretched against the walls and floated in the amniotic fluids of his mother” 

"It’s not something we like to do; it's uncomfortable. It is much easier to keep the humanity out of the incarnation. Clean the manure from around the manger. Wipe the sweat out of his eyes. Pretend he never snored or blew his nose or hit his thumb with a hammer. He's easier to stomach that way. There is something about keeping him divine that keeps him distant, packaged, predictable. But don't do it. For heaven's sake, don't. Let him be as human as he intended to be. Let him into the mire and muck of our world. For only if we let him in can he pull us out.” 

It’s mind blowing that God chose to enter his world as flesh. One of us. Not throned above, remotely high, untouched unmoved by human pain but daily in the midst of life. Our God contracted to a span incomprehensibly made man. Into the muck and mire of the world. Paul reminds us in his letter to Timothy that this coming down is part of the nature of God: “great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory.” 

I remember preaching on John’s prologue one Christmas morning in the little chapel I grew up in. After the service, Christine, a lovely Supernumerary minister who worshipped there said something to me I’ve never forgotten: “thank you for giving us theology this morning not thrills.” I guess today I want to say if Christmas is really real, it takes some thinking about. There’s a wow factor. God is no longer out there, he is right here. 

After Christmas reflection one: Innocents

I thought we’d have a little series of reflections to take us from Christmas to Epiphany, one each day. Let’s start with a scene we’d rather not include…

Today the liturgical calendar asks us to remember the Holy Innocents, the victims of the brutality of Herod. The weeping of Rachel for her children comes to jolt us out of any sleepy post-Christmas contentment. Listen to these words about the kings from Kate Compston, a poet and writer of prayers reflecting on the magi whose journey has started by now to get them to the house some time in the future, a journey that will unsettle Herod and his henchmen…

“We call them wise and I had always thought of them that way respecting the pilgrimage of anyone who sees a star and follows it to his discomforting being prepared to change.

And yet - in following their star, the star that was to lead them to enlargement of the soul (their own) they blundered mightily, and set in train the massacre of many innocents. Naive and foolish men they were, not wise to go and ask of Herod “where is your rival? where is he who might unseat you?”

I wonder if back in their own countries for all that they themselves were born again, they heard the voice of Rachel weeping for her children, refusing to be comforted because they were no more?”

Kate Compston plunges us into the world of good intentions and even courageous deeds that prove to have unintended consequences. The travellers from the East upset the political balance in Herod’s kingdom and St Matthew tells us that the outcome was horrifying.

How did Herod take the surprising news of a revival in the lineage of King David? Not well. Herod had too much respect for the venerable magi to dismiss it as “fake news,” so, as Matthew tells us, “When King Herod heard this, he was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him.” The birth announcement brought by the magi filled Herod with dread, and Herod’s fear of a baby shows just how fragile his ego was. And Jerusalem was afraid too. The citizens of Jerusalem were well aware of how dangerous life can be when a powerful ruler with a fragile ego is afraid. So all of Jerusalem was on edge — anxious about what the paranoid king might do. 

What Herod did was commit one of the greatest crimes in the Bible — we call it the Slaughter of the Innocents. Though it’s true we have no corroboration of this atrocity outside of Matthew’s Gospel, the account is in keeping with what we know about Herod’s ruthless methods. Matthew tells us that the paranoid king sent death squads to Bethlehem with the ghastly instructions to kill all male babies under the age of two.

The words of Kate Compston were included in a book of prayers ‘Bread for Tomorrow’ commissioned by Christian Aid. The commentary on this section said ‘Prayer that is deaf to the ‘voice of Rachel’ has missed the epiphany. Prayer is only truly ‘contemplation’ when it enables us to see all that is to be seen, including the violent realities we are normally not prepared to contemplate’.

Are we shocked by Herod’s crime? Of course. But though we are horrified, we should not be surprised. Tyrant kings and kingdoms have a long history of ruthlessly dealing with threat and dissent, even today, and innocents get swept up in their brutality. Threat can lead to terror. Look at 20th and 21st century examples of this: Hitler’s barbaric Nazi project swept all those who were “different” aside, leading to unimaginable Holocaust; Ukraine this past year has seen innocent blood spilt as the neighbouring leader wants more and more land. There are so many examples. 

I once preached on the slaughter of the innocents when the Matthew passage fell on a Sunday and I was asked “are you alright?” I’d spoilt the church’s Christmas party! But in beginning a series of these little reflections up to Epiphany, I again remember incarnation comes in the dark… and it isn’t a nice story detached from reality but deep within it. So today we remember innocents caught up in something desperate happening, and we remember the Rachel’s of today lamenting the loss of innocent children. Don’t forget the abuse of children in today’s world in its many forms. 

Here’s the collect for today:

Heavenly Father,

whose children suffered at the hands of Herod,

though they had done no wrong:

by the suffering of your Son

and by the innocence of our lives

frustrate all evil designs

and establish your reign of justice and peace;

through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,

who is alive and reigns with you,

in the unity of the Holy Spirit,

one God, now and for ever.

One of the remarkable things about the Bible is that it doesn’t paper over atrocity or shy away from giving vivid depictions of the brutality of life in the time of tyrant kings. We need to read the Bible as honestly as it is written and not try to domesticate it into the saccharine clichés of sentimental Christmas cards. For the light of the gospel to shine truthfully, we need to be honest about the darkness in which it shines. Don’t we? 

Christmas 2022

And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.” — Luke 2:7

How does it feel when there is no room? I experienced it in church on Friday! I wanted to go to one of the cathedral’s services of lessons and carols. I got there too late. There were no seats and at the back was a large throng of people standing. I decided I couldn’t stand for an hour so I came home. There was no room for me. 

 

There was no room for them in the inn. Remember the emperor Augustus’ tyrannical census and the arduous journey for a pregnant teenager and her fiancée from Nazareth to Bethlehem, Joseph’s home town. It surely must have been obvious that Mary was with child and it seems to me that for a pregnant woman about to deliver a baby, surely there could have found some space inside an inn. 

Imagine the frustrated exhaustion, and maybe tears because there is simply nowhere to stay that is decent after an 80 mile plod. 

A man went into a hotel and asked for a room. He was told: “Sorry, Sir, we're all full. We just don't have any more rooms." The man said, "Well, let me ask you a question. If the President of the United States were to come in tonight and ask for a room, would you have one for him?" The clerk said, "Why, yes, we would." The man said, "Well, he's not coming, so I'll take that room."

I can't help but believe that if the inn-keeper of the last inn Joseph tried had considered Joseph and Mary's need a high enough priority, he could have somehow provided them a room. But we aren't given any details. We don't know what the inn-keeper was thinking, or what his situation was. All we know is that "there was no room for them in the inn."

But maybe this Christmas morning that’s the point. A God who comes rejected, ignored, driven into filth and poverty, a God who comes into a world that mostly today doesn’t reject him – it ignores him and gives him no room. He comes to those who need him most. Incarnation is inclusive: there is room for everyone in this story. The inn might be full, the partying world has its Christmas, and God’s presence is announced to those who society said back then, there is no room for you in our life. So smelly shepherds are the first to be told of the outpouring of love, a bit of heaven on earth. There is room for those we say we have no room for because we don’t want them near us. 

We’ve domesticated this story. But remember today this is all about God being with us and not just in the nice bits of life. There is room at the manger for those who need to know that they matter today. The lack of room for Jesus is an age-old problem. There still is severe overcrowding. People are overcrowded with news and information, our hearts are overcrowded with innumerable concerns, our schedules are overcrowded with things to do, there is room for us. There is room for everyone. 

Writing in the Yorkshire Post, Archbishop Stephen Cottrell says this:

I can’t stop thinking about those little boys from Birmingham who fell through the ice and died.And about their families. How hard this Christmas is going to be for them. And that policeman, who tried to save them, who I think might still be in hospital, recovering from hypothermia himself.

And I can’t stop thinking about those terrified, desperate refugees, exploited by wicked and unscrupulous people traffickers, getting into little boats on the northern coast of France to try to cross the channel into this country on bitterly cold nights crossing bitterly cold waters. Last week many had to be saved from those waters. And some drowned.

 

And these past few evenings, when I’ve taken the dog out for those last necessary things that dogs must do before bedtime, I stand in the cold and think about those who are going to be cold all through the night. Families huddled together in Kyiv or Mariupol. Anxious parents looking for children that won’t be coming home. Homeless people sleeping on the streets. Refugees in little boats.

 

Let us also remember those who are experiencing a different Christmas this year through bereavement. There is room for them here.

 

Let us also remember those who are facing hard choices this winter who maybe have spent too much trying to make this day perfect. There is room for them here. 

 If God is incarnate, and here, and everywhere, and at the heart of pain, all have to be included. For God has come down to get involved. We cannot be exclusive with this message. 

 

There was no room for them in the inn. There is room for him in us. 

 

And you know what, people might just need this story even if they won’t admit it. Like the shepherds, people are drawn into this thing which has taken place which the Lord has told us about. Dallowgill had to cancel their carol service last Sunday due to the ice. They rearranged it for last Thursday. 

 

Geoff Lobley rang me about three quarters of an hour before it was due to start and said “are you free?” As I was nearly there the car in front of me suddenly stopped and a lady got out and said to me “we are trying to find the chapel!” “Keep going!” I said. The chapel was full by 6.30. People had come from all over the place to sing carols and be in a place that matters to them – even if it’s once a year, as we shared the spirit moved and the wonder of the story was powerful – despite some very strange tunes to the carols they only sing in Dallowgill apparently!  Christmas is a good time for us to be open and attractive and to be invitational. There is room for even the once a year regular churchgoer! 

 

There was no room for them in the inn. There is room for him in us. 

 

And finally this Christmas Day, we have to find room for the Christ child ourselves. We have to be a church without walls. We have to be excited and motivated again because Jesus has come. 

We have to make a Christmas in our hearts. I went to the pet shop two days ago for cat supplies and the lady said to me “ I expect you are busy.” I love it when people say that to me this week because it implies I’m not busy at all for 51 weeks of the year. But it’s easy to be exhausted by Christmas and wish it over, but incarnation and joy are permanent. 

 

A learned minister, who quite fre­quently in his sermons used long words his congregation didn’t understand,  found on his pulpit one day a piece of paper containing the following words written by a steward: "minister, we want to see Jesus." 

 

The minister realised that this phrase contained a silent censure of his scholarly sermons in which there was no place for Christ. The words on this small piece of paper made him kneel with contrite spirit and ask God for the necessary knowledge to feed his congregation.. He returned to the pulpit clothed with new power, with a predominant preoccupation of proclaiming the unfathomable riches of Christ. His mes­sages became so powerful that the steward, interpreting the sentiment of the whole congregation, put another paper on the pulpit containing these words: "Then were the disciples glad, when they saw the Lord."

 

God found room in our world when baby Jesus was born in the Bethlehem stable. But God isn’t limited to one place and time. God wants to be born in our hearts too.

There is room in the Bethlehem stable for all of us and there is room in all of us for the stable. What might it look like for you to make room for God? 

 

Where is the room,
where is the house of Christmas?
Where shall we welcome Jesus,
where are the signs of home?

 

Let Christ have space,
place at the heart of living,
centre for birth’s new breathing,
cradle for hope and peace.

 

Let there be room,
room for the friend and stranger,
room without hurt or anger,
room for whoever come.

 

I pray today we have a blessed Christmas. Amidst the dinner, and listening to the King at 3pm (won’t that be strange?) and gift giving and receiving and parties and seeing what Danny Dyer’s fate is in Eastenders, let us make room for him who makes room for us. 

And next year when we emerge again to do church – let us make room for those for who he has come. Then Christmas really will have happened here. 

Cradled in a manger, meanly,
Laid the Son of Man His head;
Sleeping His first earthly slumber
Where the oxen had been fed.
Happy were those shepherds listening
To the holy angel’s word;
Happy they within that stable
Worshipping their infant Lord.

Happy all who hear the message
Of His coming from above;
Happier still who hail His coming,
And with praises greet His love.
Blessèd Savior, Christ most holy,
In a manger Thou didst rest;
Canst Thou stoop again, yet lower,
And abide within my breast?

Evil things are there before Thee;
In the heart, where they have fed,
Wilt Thou pitifully enter,
Son of Man, and lay Thy head?
Enter, then, O Christ most holy;
Make a Christmas in my heart;
Make a heaven of my manger:
It is heaven where Thou art.

And to those who never listened
To the message of Thy birth,
Who have winter, but no Christmas
Bringing them Thy peace on earth,
Send to these the joyful tidings;
By all people, in each home,
Be there heard the Christmas anthem;
Praise to God, the Christ has come!