Preparing for Christmas

In Advent we are presented with the great figure of John the Baptist. So humble and so sure of Jesus’ greatness – a short life lived solely to prepare the way for Jesus Christ. As we wait for Christmas this year, in what ways can we truly prepare ourselves?

I’m reminded in this idea of preparation for pregnancy: the nine long months of growing a child within you – with the necessary preparations, practical, emotional, spiritual, medical etc. I remembered thinking one very key thing about being pregnant and that was it took such little effort – unlike other things that I had prepared for in my life - exams, job interviews, ordination - it was my body that grew this child and did the work. I just had to let it. And perhaps God’s relationship with us, could be a little more like this: this sense of gift or grace if we let it be. Because I know that good things require a lot of work and commitment, but I have a sense that God’s love is something we are asked to receive rather than work for. So, the obvious metaphor for Advent, pregnancy, as we think of Mary growing the Christ child within her, is perhaps a very fruitful one. For Mary had only to listen to the Angel and say ‘ I will’ for God’s astonishing will to be done. So, perhaps, this Advent we can learn (I can learn) to accept God’s wonderful grace – to stand before Him in simplicity and say ‘yes’, and receive Him and let him do the rest.

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Radical Story-telling?

Public Domain The Flight into Egypt File: Adam Elsheimer - Die Flucht nach Ägypten (Alte Pinakothek) 2.jpg Created: 31 December 1608 Which of the Gospel writers include an account of the birth of Jesus? When were they writing, for what audience? Mark’s Gospel is almost universally considered to be the earliest Gospel and it’s understood that both Matthew and Luke used it as a source text. But Mark has no account of the birth of Jesus, he begins with John the Baptist and Jesus’ baptism. Only Matthew and Luke have birth narratives and they are different whilst sharing some common features: Mary and Joseph are to be married and there’s a miraculous virgin birth in Bethlehem. But that’s about it. Jesus is born in a house in Matthew’s account whilst he is placed in a manger in Luke’s because there’s ‘no room at the inn’. Mary’s thoughts and feelings are not mentioned in Matthew at all, whilst from Luke we get the story of the Visitation, Annunciation and the wonderfu...

Rest in Christ

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War and Religion

St Paul is a man who experienced a seismic shift in his understanding of how God relates to His people and to him as an individual. That shift in thinking is dramatised in the road to Damascus episode, which as a story has become synonymous with the experience of dramatic conversion. Paul provides us with a paradigmatic example of the effects of conversion on an individual. His passion for and evangelical zeal for his new found understanding is second to none. Yet with the advantage of hindsight we know that the division between Judaism and Christianity has led to some pretty awful consequences. Paul’s continuing comparison between what he used to believe and what he now believes necessarily casts the Jewish comprehension in an unfavourable light. So much of Christian history has been about casting the Jewish faith as one that has been superseded by the superior Christian one. What can we do about this? We can’t read Paul’s words innocently after the holocaust and we can’t speak...

Rev elations

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