wrapping paper (tree)

wrapping paper (tree), a photo by ben bell on Flickr.

This just made me think... Thanks Ben Bell for a fantastic photo.

God's greatest gift just shoved under the tree?

God's greatest gift willing to to be amongst the other gifts in life?

Looks like all the others...

Incarnation

Masterchef

As I write this I am watching Masterchef and I am beginning to feel hungry - I know that's a bit Pavlov's dog (I see food therefore I feel hungry) - but there it is!

Advent is the expectant waiting, the hopeful anticipation and cheerful preparation for the coming of Christ at Christmas - His breaking into our world and into our lives every day. Advent is not to be confused with Lent even though both seassons are coloured purple.  Advent is about hope and not repentance, the hope of God coming amongst us.
In the story of God's involvement with people as told in the Bible, again and again God speaks of things many of us hunger for - justice for poor, liberty for the metaphorically and literally captive, food for the hungry and so on.

The question is, as we wait, what are we hungry for? Are we willing to be fed from God's menu of justice, mercy and peace? And are we prepared to be a part of satisfying the appetite of of our neighbourhoods and our communities serving up God's love in practical and demonstratable ways?

O Come O Come Emmanuel - Sufjan Stevens

He sees when you are sleeping...

I loved this poster referencing Psalm 139... using lines from a well known Christmas song... 

With thanks to Occupy Advent for the heads up on htis where you can even buy a copy!

Hope - like light in the darkness

This week the Leveson report was finally published - 2000 pages long, so big it has to be carried in it’s own box.The inquiry’s origins lie in the public’s utter revulsion that the phone of a murdered teenager was hacked for information by someone acting for a section of the British press and their sole aim was - with ever increasing sensationalist stories - to sell more papers. This led to the seventh inquiry in less than seventy years which has dealt with concerns about the press and it carried the personal authority of the Prime Minister.

Lord Leveson’s inquiry has left no stone unturned into the culture and practices of the press and has exposed endemic failings, unacceptable practices and and deeply unhealthy relationships especially with the police and other media empires.

Many significant and robust recommendations have been made by Lord Leveson. Many people agreeing that they are needed to atrophy the all encompassing power of the press. And yet after months of investigation and hundreds of witnesses, some would argue that it has all been brought to nought by parliament being unable to agree on the need to implament the key recommendations.

And the gut-wrenching massacres in Syria and Gaza continue... and the world has largely stood by, sucking it’s teeth and shaking it’s head. All too quick to act to bring about peace in Afghanistan or Iraq and yet unable or, worse still, unwilling to bring an end to the hopelessness that fills make shift refugee camps and appartment blocks.

Place that alongside another round of failed UN led talks in Doha to seek to slow the global affects of climate change, and the increasing hardship that many in the UK and across the world are feeling due to a continuing recession that slowly but surely is grinding many into deeper and deeper debt and unemployment, and a bleakness settles like new fallen snow.

I am sure that I speak for all of us when I say that throughout my life, I have had longing that things on the world stage as well as things local and personal would be better by now. God knows we pray that it would be. And yet, as we we edge ever nearer another season of goodwill, it feels like we no nearer that utopian goal. The things that I hope might have been resolved have been replaced by other seemingly unsolvable issues.

The people of Israel, at the time that God spoke through Jeremiah, understood hopelessness on a far grander scale. In 587 BC Assyria attacked the nation of Israel, burned Jerusalem, destroyed the temple, and carried off its people into slavery. Their situation puts ours into stark contrast doesn’t it? In those years of exile the people of God quite rightly asked God again and again ‘why?, Why are we in this situation? Why did you allow it God?’

It is into this sense of devestating defeat and discouragement, this longing for God to right things, that these words from Jeremiah come. In that context, they feel like naive words indeed. Yet it is all to easy to ‘grin and bear it’, because it takes real courage to stand up, to make your voice heard, to swim against the flow, and to complain.

But Jeremiah goes one step further. In the midst of their sense of gut-wrenching hopelessness, Jeremiah along with the prophet Isaiah, proclaim a different vision based on a renewed trust in God. "Your God reigns!" All of those grand phrases that are so well celebrated in Handel’s Messiah "Comfort, ye, my people," "And he shall reign forever and ever" came out of exile. "The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah... In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety" says Jeremiah. The time is coming! I will restore, re-gather Israel and Judah, do for you that which you cannot do for yourselves, namely, bring you home.

Pushy, risky theological claim that, all present evidence to the contrary, God still reigns and God's purposes shall not be finally defeated. It takes a lot of faith to express confident joy in the reign of God and at the same time honesty about the situation. Israel's prophets managed to pull it off.

But...  The nation never returned to their homeland as a whole. The restoring vision that God shared through the prophets was true for only a handful, a remnant of the the people ever made it back... But look again at what God says through Jeremiah as that’s not what he promised - a future time is coming, when I shall not only restore things to the way they were, but also do a new thing - a righteous branch shall spring up for David. A new spring shoot will begin to grow from the long dead tree that is the historical line of King David. When that time comes says God - things will not only restored to the way they were but the lasting the peace and security that you long for will come. Hope will shine out like blinding light in the middle of the deepest darkest night.

Advent is a time when Christians are invited into exile. It is a time when the church calls us to live differently. To slow down. To refocus our priorities. To step away from the madness that is the innevitable rush to Christmas and to stop and look at the world and our lives and the mess that they often really are. But instead of being stilled into inactivity through a crippling hopelessness and despair that thing have ever been thus and will not change. Instead we should live as exiles - refocussing our lives and hopes on God, knowing that it is only He who can bring the transformation we long for.

Advent calls us to look for the searing bright light of the hope of God.  Jeremiah reminds us that that things in our world and in our lives will not only be restored, but that God will do a new thing in us and amongst us personally and globally. Advent must be time to cry to God about the injustice of war, of debt, of a climate change, but also to expect, with sure hope, that God will bring a new spring shoot of faithfulness to grow in us. So that through us our world and our lives together can be transformed. Friends I still hope that the world would be a better place and that my life would be in better shape - in Advent God reminds me that it will be. That’s not wild hope. That’s Advent hope.

Advent Podacasts

The CofE's Advent podcasts for 2012 are a great way to make the most of this holy season.  Here they are, introduced by Archbishop Rowan Williams.


To enhance our spiritual journey through Advent this year, The Church of England are offering a daily Reflections for Advent podcast from Monday to Saturday from 3 December to Christmas Day.

Each podcast (lasting approximately 7 or 8 minutes) includes:
A piece of music for Advent (including traditional favourites and new commissions)
A Bible reading from Common Worship Morning Prayer
A reflection on the reading from Reflections for Daily Prayer
A Collect (or gathering prayer) for the day

To make sure you receive all the Reflections for Daily Prayer podcasts, subscribe to 'Church of England Podcasts' on iTunes here

What Are We Waiting For?

Not many of my lessons at secondary school stick in my mind but one does... We were waiting for a Maths lesson to begin and our teacher was running seriously late. It’s fair to say we were being a little ‘boisterous’ to say the least and certainly not waiting well with our books out, pens at the ready.  Instead the class ‘Joker’ was up to all sorts of no good at the front of the class - which was hugely entertaining at the time.

In the midst of the mayhem that our class room was becoming, in came one of the English teachers who was teaching in a nearby classroom. He had a reputation of having a formidable temper. Purple with rage with thin pursed lips he burst into the room and yelled above the noise, ‘What are you waiting for?’

The collective nature of our activity and noise merged us as if into one being - a creature oozing the hormone-laden scent of deodorant and bravado - and we responded as with one voice, “CHRISTMAS!” This earned us collective laughter and a detention, but the question remains - what are we waiting for as 2012 draws to a conclusion?

Many are waiting for a better time when jobs and income will be more secure. Many are waiting for war in far-away lands to end so that loved ones can return. Many are waiting for the arrival of a baby or someone they love to get well or to die peacefully. Many are waiting to win the lottery. Many are waiting for nations and Governments to act on a plethora of international issues like working to prevent the impact of Climate Change or Peak Oil or poverty in developing nations.  Many are waiting for things in some unnamed general sense to be better, like they were before. Many are waiting. Many are waiting...

Even as we stand in the queue at the Post Office waiting is not a passive thing - we wonder when it’s our turn, we look at the posters around us, we plan our day, what we will eat, how we will make that awkward phone-call....

But waiting is an active thing.  The same is true of the season of Advent. It is the time that the Church sets aside to wait actively and attentively for the God who promises for generations in the story of what we call the Old Testament in the Bible, to come among us in person. He comes to right wrongs, to restore justice, and to renew our relationships with each other and with Him.  It sounds good doesn’t it and it buys right into the hopes and longings of many of us right at the moment.

But as December rolls on and our hopes are raised and our longings met we discover that God Almighty is delayed in coming in person and He sends a baby instead.

All too often this baby is portrayed in many a Christmas card scene as ‘little Jesus meek and mild’ and yet we forget at our peril, that this baby, this Jesus comes to fulfil God’s hopes...  and ours. This Jesus - healer of the broken, crosser of barriers, welcomer of the outsider, forgiver of willfulness, lover of the loveless, table turner, water walker, crucified, dead, buried... and raised...

As we wait for things to get better. As 2012 rolls into 2013. Why not gives this Jesus a chance to fulfil your hopes and dreams... Meek and mild, as if...