Rev elations

I wonder if you can imagine yourself in your daily life. What do you do Monday to Friday? - work at a check out, in a factory, teaching students, cooking the dinner, shopping, gardening, reading a book? Imagine that into your domestic or work space Jesus appears - Jesus is there just a few metres away and he’s calling you ‘Follow me’.   Imagine Mary before she was surprised by the annunciation, what was she doing? Imagine Joseph as Mary came to talk to him to tell him the news, what was he doing; imagine the inn keeper who opened the door; imagine the shepherds as they were out on the fields tending their sheep; imagine the wise men before they saw the star. They all had a ‘normal’ before something strange and mysterious happened to them. And they are judged on how they respond to that mystery and that invitation. -‘be it unto me according to your word’ These narratives tell us, as the incarnation reveals to us, that Jesus/God appears in our normal ordinary world. Jes...

In one of the most extraordinary poems (in the sense that it reveals to me a new way of seeing things), in the ‘Haphazard by Starlight’ collection (Janet Morley)  Denise Levertov reflects on the idea of Jesus as the Lamb of God (see her Agnus Dei). In it she explores the characteristics of a lamb, and by so doing –edges us to the discovery of our own significance in the story of God. For a lamb is unintelligent, weak, dependent – he relies on us ‘cold hearts’ to give him sustenance: -is it implied(?) she writes that ‘we’ must ‘hold to our icy hearts’ a ‘shivering God’? It’s a surprising and enlightening reflection as it turns on its head the concept or idea of God as omnipotent and all-sustaining, suggesting rather, that God depends on us for our love, kindness and mercy – that indeed our ability to nurture God has a real impact on God’s ability to be found and to excel. This sort of discovery relies on Christians being mature grown up ones, who do not suppose that God wil...

One of the issues that the terror attacks in France urge us to reflect on is the ever present threat of hatred and violence. We can align hatred and violence to any number of religious or political ideologies, but the banality of hatred and cold murder comes from the human heart for any number of reasons. It happens in homes and between friends as well as between strangers and supposed enemies. Certitude - moral, political or religious gives power. It enables one to live under the delusion that our supposed version of truth gives us the right to hate and at the worst to take away life. Such certitude gives confidence as it feeds hatred and violence. Of course religious outrage - defending God - gives the greatest veneer of righteous anger that anyone could manufacture. The argument goes: You have offended my highest beliefs, literally my God, so I have the right to hurt you. It is a perversion of religious truth and the exact opposite of the real aims of any religion – love God and y...