Quick! let us go to Bethlehem

… it is Luke, perhaps, who leaves us with the most profound, the most enduring image of God from these stories of a child’s birth.  It is not only standing beneath a cross that we find ourselves face to face with God.  The same happens when we kneel beside a manger.  That is why we celebrate Christmas with such gusto, and why some people who cannot handle our God at other times of year are strangely drawn towards him then.  For at Christmas we all find ourselves with a God who does not threaten or condemn, but a God (wonder of wonders!) we can hold in our arms; a God who does not wish to be left out in the cold and needs the warmth of our hospitality and care; a God who comes very close and makes himself at home; who stands on no ceremony and has no majesty about him except the majesty of love; a God who is accessible to all and who brings those on the edge of society into the centre of his circle; a God crying in the world’s dark, whose tears we must dry; a God who seems so small, so vulnerable, and yet is large enough to to hold the universe in his embrace.

When there are so many fearful images of God going the rounds of our world and its many enmities and conflicts, and when the dark side of religion is so often turned towards us, there is an urgent need for us to find this God who lies in a manger.  Quick!  Let us go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.

from The Christmas Stories by Trevor Dennis

salvete

Twice this week I have found myself preaching  and saying ‘this is the season when God turns the world upside down: when all our expectations are broken and something new begins.’  And that is the way with preaching, sometimes:  God makes us repeat and repeat and repeat an idea till we notice what we have said.

So today,  this topsy-turvy world of Advent is offering themes of Salvation, re-creation, coming to life again;  the themes of Lent.  Time bends back on itself to welcome eternity, and all the golden threads are revealed.

I have never found it easy — nor indeed desirable — to hang salvation solely on the cross.   Healing begins with Incarnation:  a new-babe born into a world of possibility, God-with-us teaching us how to be human.   Oh, I know the dangers of this sort of talk.  No, I don’t think Christ is simply an exemplar.  Yes, I believe things ‘happen’ along the way that truly change the  state of our being with God.    But more than that, I believe that it is in seeing God-with-us that we are saved.  It is in knowing, deep within ourselves, that there is no part of our human life which is separated from God’s love, no part that cannot be transformed and redeemed by Christ’s presence.   All life is held in God’s longing and loving.

The time of our salvation is near.

O Come quickly.  Come, Lord come.

Motherhood

Lord, as you dispelled

the fears of a maiden mother

by whispering the promise of your presence,

so banish the world’s misconceptions

about you and your ways.

Come to each of us.

Roll back the clouds of doubt and pessimism.

Fill our individual lives with servant love

and direct the nations to humble awareness;

for you are God,

rich in mercy,

strong in righteousness,

ready to make your home with us

now and for ever.

from Further Everyday Prayers

 National Christian Education Council

the Lion Prayer Collection

Detail of stained glass ‘Motherhood’ Bute Hall University of Glasgow

sapphires and diamonds

Truth shall spring up from the earth
and righteousness shall look down from heaven.

…………………………………………………..Ps 85.11

For all that the rhetoric of Advent is ‘watch and wait,’ the reality of December is often very different.  Holiday shopping, dance recitals and nativity plays; parties and too many ‘Christmas’ lunches; Carol services and tree trimming parties; and too often, an expected-unexpected death of who hasn’t the energy to fight through another New Year.

In the midst of all that, prayer is honoured more in the desire than the reality.   But God is ever creative, finding new ways to interrupt us and give us God’s presence.

Once this week, the moment God caught was as sudden as the silence of the radio being switched off as I drove over a hill and the light filled the fields with gold.

And then, a moment that took slightly more effort on my part: an hour in Durham cathedral as the light faded through the east window.   But surely, that’s cheating:  claiming that in an hour spent in a cathedral God still has to catch us off guard.  True enough, I had gone to pray.   I love Durham cathedral, and it has often been a place where ‘things happen’.  But the chapel where I had planned to pray was full of Christmas tree and plans for dismantling my soul to see if God would put it back together again were much in jeopardy. (It’s not quite the sort of thing one can do in the nave.)

I began wandering.  I asked the steward where I might pray uninterrupted, but the miltary chapel he suggested was no use, so I slipped in by the high altar.  I didn’t go into the pews where the rehearsing choir would see me, but up towards the pulpit on the marble steps where I could see altar and reredos and rose window.  The stewards decided to be tolerant.   In summer, they’d have asked me not to sit there, but in the hush of a December twilight they could  be generous.

And so God seized his chance. It wasn’t the time or place for the unbuilding and rebuilding of souls.  Instead, I was given sapphires and diamonds; the evening show of stained glass, and spotlights glinting off silver.  The choir began singing Adam lay y-bounden, and I sang with them:  Deo Gratias.

The Hidden Voices of Advent

This last week I have embarked on an orgy of reading as part of my Advent discipline.  I have dipped into Jean Vanier the founder of the L’Arche communities, Mother Theresa from the Sisters of Charity and Richard Twiss, a leader in the First Nation’s movement in North America.  At the same time I continue to grapple with what it means to live as a Christ follower in God’s global community and how our experience of the coming of Christ at this season impacts our response to the global economic crisis.

What do all these authors have in common you may well ask?  They all express powerfully our need to not just listen to voices from the margins but also to recognize that it is through people who are disabled, destitute and excluded that God often speaks most powerfully.

In this season of Advent how does Christ come to us through the voices of those who are displaced, despised and abused?  In the midst of our busyness and stress are we even open to hearing such voices and recognizing our need to listen and learn from them?

“To love is a way of looking, of touching of listening to all” Jean Vanier reminds us.  If we really long for the coming of Christ and the eternal kingdom of mutual love, abundance and wholeness that his return will bring into being in all its fullness how do we wait at this season and how do we live into this world today?  How do we live by what what NT Wright calls the language of the kingdom and what James calls the royal law – love for God and love of neighbour.

I think that to live in true anticipation of the coming of Christ we must commit ourselves afresh to live according to this language of love.  We must all open our eyes to see and respond to the face of God in every stranger.  We must open our eyes to hear the voice of God in every outcast and must open our lives to be the love of God to every person we encounter who has been cast bu the wayside because of race, class, education, disabilities, illness, gender or any other disfigurement that excludes them from our lives and our society.  It is not an easy task that God challenges us with but it is essential if we really want to see the light of Christ shine in the many dark places of our world.

Maybe as part of your Advent reflections this week you would like to listen to this short video that expresses Mother Theresa’s view of the importance of the poor and the destitute

Watching

This time last week a casual observer walking the dog in Kilmun arboretum – it was pouring with rain so why else would anybody be about? – might have wondered what two women the wrong side of middle age skulking in the trees and wielding large black bags could possibly be up to. Indeed if they had ventured nearer and heard the excited exclamations, “Oh! Pendulous fronds!” “Fluffy filling!” they might have wondered further.

A partial answer might have been afforded should they stick around to see one of the women look about furtively then whip out a pair of secateurs and set about cutting branches from the nearby trees and stashing them into one of the bin-bags, slithering down perilous slopes to reach temptingly pink berries and having to be hauled up again by her partner in crime

Awaiting the Christ Child

At the beginning of this Advent season I wanted to share with you a video reflection on Advent

In this Advent season we await the coming of Christ

Child of promise come,

Revealer of God come,

Bringer of life come,

Come to the beaten and the battered,

Come to the despised and rejected

Come to all in whom the divine image is still distorted

We wait in joyful expectation.

Come not as an distant emperor but as a helpless babe

Come not as a prince in a gold palace, but as a displaced and frightened refugee

Come not as a man of power, but in love and compassion

Come to those outcast like shepherds in the field

Come to foreigners like Magi watching from afar

Come to rich and poor, young and old, male and female,

We wait in hopeful anticipation

Come to bless all creation with your love

Come to bring salvation on the earth

Come to rule with justice and in peace

Come Child of promise, open the windows of our hearts

Come Christ of compassion, open the doors of our homes

Come Prince of Peace, open the pathways to our lives

We wait with all the peoples of the earth

Child of hope we welcome your coming

Christ of life we welcome your coming

King of glory we welcome your coming

This was first published on my blog with several other video reflections on Advent

Nativity

Today we had our yearly Nativity play by the younger members of our congregation aided by a few of the more elderly.

This year however it wasn’t so historically accurate. We had two female magi and no shepherds (partly due to the fact she forgot her lines but I believe it was because she felt it was too cold for her sheep to travel to the nave alter, I mean manger).

It was acted out this year through mime and rhyme, Joseph had a few cups of tea and we had the  Arch angel Gabriel and the star doing a mini version of “Heads, Shoulders, Knee and Toes”.

Yet ever year I think of what it would have been like that cold evening for the expectant parents: tired, weary, fearful yet I believe, ready. Bless Mary, the young girl, and from all accounts we’ve come to realise she may have been as young as 14, who accepted the role as Mother to the Saviour of the world.

Think about the same situation into our society today, let me break it down this way: a young mother unexpectedly pregnant, a young man thrust into fatherhood before he was thinking about it. We see it all the time, young parents, but we walk past them and, I think unintentionally sometimes, sneer or look down at them, without knowing their story, how can we do this to them and yet praise our Lord and light an Advent candle today for His mother Mary, who on the face of it, were in a very similar situation.

No News Is Good News…

First post of 5: 

     I was listening to a favourite band of mine, New Found Glory, at work whilst thinking “I need to get a post up on lovebloomsbright soon when I realised this is the basis for my first post.

The song who’s name forms the title for this post came on and I started thinking, isn’t this similar to what my view of the commercial Christmas is?

The lyrics that got me were:

We all give in,
We all complain,
We sit and wait,
For things to change,
We’re waiting,
We’re waiting.All along, we follow blindly,
All along, we follow blindly

(full lyrics)

 This Christmas season I have become increasingly aware of so many people, including myself, who are getting frustrated by the commercial aspect of the season. It starts with the hints in October, then leads up, the advertising increasing, until this weekend, where the shops are full, the shoppers are fretful and people become angry and will snap at your for the smallest of reasons. When did it become like this? The pressure to buy more presents, to do more and be more is too much at times. I’m good for a small exchange of gifts after church on Tuesday.

On the same thread, I’ve noted a few newspaper articles discussing the decreasing awareness of “the reason for the season”, I think it was the Times that gave the statistic of only 1 person out of 8 who knew the story or baby Jesus.

A shocking statistic.

I often wonder why Easter isn’t the same.

Light and darkness

During Advent I have been very aware of light.  These thoughts started with the Christmas lights in George Square, Glasgow.  As I waited to cross the road on the way to work, I realised that I could see the coloured lights on the edge of the square.  They did not make much sense, like the cliche they looked like the back of the tapestry, just a mixture of colour without any pattern.  To me they looked like the false lights of Christmas, set up well in advance of Christmastide, with no idea of Advent as a time of waiting and expectation.  Missing the point.

But I became more aware of light generally as the days went by.  The days last weekend, when the sun did not appear to rise above the horizon.  Monday when the sun bright, but low.  The darkness of the evenings as I make my way home.

Thoughts of what the Bible says about light and darkness: The Lord is my light and my salvation - whom shall I fear?  (Ps 27:1) 

The central thought came last Thursday evening as I sat in a candlelit church:  The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it (Jn 1:5).  In the darkness aware of the light all around knowing that night is not dark to God, we wait again for the celebration of the coming of Christ, who is with us as we wait.

This light of Christ that is the true light.  Jesus said, ‘I am the light of the world.  Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life.’  (Jn 8:12)  The light that is worth the wait.