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!!!)