Christmas begins with Christ

I have not braved much Christmas shopping this year. Nearly all of my shopping has been done online. Whilst I have ‘shopped’ around I have some wonderful delights that maybe you have stumbled on too...

For the devout PA - there is a 4gb memory stick in the shape of the Blessed Virgin Mary. It even has a little heart that flashes when you plug her into your USB port. Her halo has a prayer - ‘O Maria keep my data safe.’

Or show how devout you are, you might want a Spirit Filled bible - like this one...


There are also the items of a more intimate nature printed with sacred images, marketed simply as ‘thongs of praise.’

Alternatively as I scoured the net I also found a wooden nativity scene. It’s made in Bethlehem. Placed down the middle of the scene separating wise men from the holy family is a wall. It is a stark reminder of the 370 km long, 6 metre high, barbed wire topped wall encircling Palestine and which causes hardship to many thousands.

When I did venture out into Hemel I was really struck by the quite frankly facile advertising campaign in the Marlowes shopping centre this year -

love life. love gifts. love christmas.
love life. love style. love christmas.
Christmas, it’s in the bag.

All of that is in stark contrast to the Christmas advertising we have used at church this year which you might have seen. The poster is of a scan of a be-haloed baby - clearly meant to be Jesus. The tag line reads - Christmas begins with Christ. I wonder which of these two visions of why we are celebrating you buy into?Amongst the trivia and the kitsch, the laughter and the celebration, tonight we are reminded that Jesus was born into a world then as now that was a messy place, a place where injustice lives alongside privilege, poverty in the shadow of obscene wealth and where violence so often prospers despite the peace-loving goodwill of great numbers.

It’s a reminder that the world foreseen by Isaiah that we heard about in our first reading tonight, seen some 800 years before the events we recall tonight, is still to be fully realized. Today we celebrate the fact that glorious light does indeed shine on us in the dark times of our lives and in the dark places of our world. But we do also acknowledge that Jesus, the Prince of Peace’s reign of justice has begun, yet it is far from being fulfilled. God’s vision of the world, shared through Isaiah, is a magnificent vision and the child to be born is the gift beyond all gifts, offering us life beyond what life so often is, showing us love deeper and more meaningful than we ever thought possible. It’s that reality that inspires us to let the light of God shine forth in our lives.

When we look into the manger tonight, what do we see? The warm romantic glow of a proud new family unit, or a new family seeking refuge in a stranger’s barn? We see new life, God’s New Life, begun in the depths of our sometimes messy and sometimes frivolous realities and we see the vulnerability of a God who reaches into human life in the most intimate of ways - by becoming one of us.

When we look at this baby, we see right into the heart, into the life, into the purposes and hope and dreams of God himself. And in that heart there are no barriers. It is a heart that isn’t put off by barbed wire, barbed comments, roadside bombs, religious intolerance, environmental abuse. A heart doesn’t waver when enemies want to nail it to a cross. A heart that continues to love no matter how much we might take advantage of his vulnerability.

When we look into the crib tonight at this baby, we see a whole cinema of images, every one which points us to the passion that God has for each of us. Every one of them points towards God’s absolute determination to show us that the messiness and frivolity of human life is ultimately no match for divine extravagance of His vulnerable love.

God’s love isn’t such that offers quick fixes, magical protection or emotional anaesthesia: it isn’t infantile love. God’s love is far stronger because it stands with us when things are at their very worst and holds us when life verges into the intolerable. Through the baby in a manger God offers us a powerful, grown up, real kind of love whose light shines with glory even as it challenges us to give birth to that same birth ourselves in our lives, lifestyles, words and actions.
So what do we see as we look into the crib? Shopping bags crammed with love gifts for those who matter to us? A baby? As importantly though, I wonder what God sees as he looks out at us?

He sees what we don’t expect Him to see - he looks past self obsessed X-factor desire to be famous, and instead sees deep down a longing in each of us to be recognized and loved for who we are. He looks past our self obsessed National Lottery desire to be rich, and instead sees deep down a longing in each of us to be secure and safe. He looks past our self obsessed Apprentice desire to be the best at all costs no matter who gets trodden on on the way up, and instead sees deep down a longing in each of us to know that we reaching our God-given potential.

We don’t like a God who messes with us. This is why Christmas has become about shopping. But there are not enough presents in the world to obscure the God who looks for us tonight. Many of us say things like ‘I believe in God’ but then not allow that belief to touch the sides of our lives and just pass straight through leaving us unchallenged, unchanged. It’s easy to deal with a God who doesn’t deal with us because we don’t have to deal with Him, but a God who come to the muck and mire of our lives forces us to face the fact of the manger we gather at tonight - if this is God’s response to me then how should I respond to Him?

God in the muck and mire of the manger sees our vulnerability and sees each one of us as irreplaceable, precious and lovable, irrespective of what we may feel about ourselves. As He looks out of the manger tonight and recognizes each of us as His own son or daughter because of Jesus. Because of this baby looking back at us, we all children of God and in His heart, there is space for all of us.

love life. love gifts. love christmas.
love life. love style. love christmas.
Christmas, it’s in the bag.

No, Christmas is not in the bag. Christmas is is in the manger, in the crib, because Christmas begins with Christ.

~~~~~

With grateful thanks to Brett Ward's sermon in 'The Preacher' issue: Oct 2010 no. 139

Nativity: God out of the bottle

This post comes originally from Bishop Alan Wilson's blog...

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Tony Jordan knows a good story when he sees one. After twenty years and more scripting soaps, including EastEnders, he has an ear for how ordinary people communicate. Invited to pitch for a BBC Nativity, he tried a Mickeytake. Once he got the job, he buckled down to a bit of serious research, and a personal exploration of the story as a story, and its real background. The result has been mesmerizing — four half hour episodes of the Nativity on BBC1, that Lucy and I have been following avidly.

I notice the way in which a good scriptwriter allows the embarrassing, open-ended, confusional bits of the story that often get skated over in school or church nativities, to have their full weight in the characters’ lives. Joseph’s basic mistrust of Mary’s story lasts two episodes, but no scene takes longer than ninety seconds max. Every part of the story tells us something we needed to know more than we realised. Mr Jordan is no paid-up religionist, but he obviously feels the story’s power and draws us in accordingly.

So what did writing this stuff do for him? I was interested to hear his interview with Aled Jones on Radio 2. As well as challenging secularist complacency and stereotypes, he challenges religious equivalents. It would be worth the religious contemplating Tony Jordan’s comments about what we are communicating and how in the light of Christ:

I still have a hasty distrust of organised religion. I generally do and that’s the thing that hasn’t changed at all. My faith has changed and I have changed as a person because of the nativity, but not my feelings when I look at organised religion and different denominations all fighting about which foot his sandal’s on and blessed are the cheesemakers, I just think of the life of Brian, and it drives me insane and I dislike the thought of somebody saying to me “If you come through those doors and you walk down that aisle, and you sit on that wooden bench, quietly, and you sing these hymns in that order, and I've put the order up so you don't get it wrong, and you listen to what I’m saying, I’ve got God in a little bottle under the pulpit, and I’ll take the lid off and let you have a little look, and then I’ll put the lid back on and then I’ll see you again next week, and if you're good I’ll let you have another look. Christ doesn’t belong to them. I don’t have to go there to get him. And actually he told me to go away and pray in my wardrobe. That’s what he says, in his teachings. He says don't go to the Church to be seen, go and sit in your wardrobe and say “Daddy” because that’s what the relationship should be, and what’s really strange for me is the change in me was a tangible one because I suddenly realised, half way through my research I started arguing God’s corner, which is something I’d never thought I’d do...

O Rex Gentium (O King of the nations)

Some of the titles given to Jesus are awkward to negotiate in a democratic world, let alone a world concerned with political correctness. To call Jesus “King of the Nations” and to allude to his role as the Judge of all needs a bit of thought if it isn’t to sound domineering and overbearing. “The authority rests on his shoulders,” wrote Isaiah (9:6) and, “He shall judge between nations.” (2:4) But can we still accept a God who claims to have authority and the right to judge?

Today’s antiphon reads:

O Rex Gentium, et desideratus earum,
lapisque angularis, qui facis utraque unum:
veni, et salva hominem,
quem de limo formasti.

O King of the nations, and their desire,
the cornerstone making both one;
Come and save the human race,
which you fashioned from clay.

It’s right to demand justice of our authority structures, it’s reasonable to be outraged when election promises are broken, when justice breaks down, when policing favours the privileged and treats the young and the invisible badly. But the fact that we readily insist that “they” should be doing something about it doesn’t suggest a move towards anarchy, but a deep seated desire for authority to be handled properly and fairly, and wielded on behalf of all the people. Authoritarianism is ugly, but authority is good; Judgemental is ghastly, but someone who ushers in true justice would surely be welcomed by the vast majority of people.

Isaiah’s words suggest that the Messiah qualifies as Rex Gentium precisely because only he can handle power and authority without becoming corrupt; only he can be a judge who is unbiased in his concern for true justice, and not open to coercion. He is a counsellor, an arbitrator, the prince of peace, under whose governance war will end and true peace be established. He does not favour the rich over the poor, but lifts up the needy from the ash heap.

“For unto us a child is born us, unto us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulders; and he shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace.”

He shall judge between the nations,
and arbitrate for many peoples;
and they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war anymore. (Isa 2:4)

~~~

This post comes from Maggi Dawn's wonderful blog with thanks for the continued inspiration

winter solstice, lunar eclipse, dawning of love

Just before dawn on the shortest day of the year the eclipse and winter solstice conspired to diminish the light and challenge the dawn. In the freezing darkness of this winter's morning the lunar eclipse brought a startling absence of light, until the dawn broke and the sky brightened into the deep beautiful blue of a new day.

Darkness and light, the solstice of the soul, the joyful dawning of hope; Advent gifts vital themes to the embrace of Christmas. Once again the birth of love melts the frozen denials of secularism, and the radiance of grace illuminates the hard edges of life.

In these darkest times the love-light of Jesus awaits our gaze and our welcome.

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From Dave Perry's 'Visual Theology' blog

A Social Network Christmas

What if this timeless story had been set in a digital age?

Advent 4 - Word as a Wordle

This Sunday's Gospel reading - Wordled!

Matthew 1:18-25...

Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah^* took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. ¹⁹Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly. ²⁰But just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, ‘Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. ²¹She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.’ ²²All this took place to fulfil what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet:
²³ ‘Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel’, which means, ‘God is with us.’ ²⁴

When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took her as his wife, ²⁵but had no marital relations with her until she had borne a son;^* and he named him Jesus.

The Digital Story of the Nativity