Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from December, 2018

A Missable God

Detail, The Census at Bethlehem , Pieter Brueghel the Elder, Mary and Joseph The Census at Bethlehem , Pieter Brueghel the Elder, 1565 By Pieter Brueghel the Elder - The Adoration of the Magi, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=20714243 Brueghel's masterful paintings of religious stories, set in the hustle and bustle of 16th century Flemish life and landscape, are a fantastic reminder that God doesn't tend to show up in our lives by the announcement of golden-halo wearing angels . Religious story-telling tends to go in for gold and glitter, for God's incontrovertible presence. Perhaps, it would have been better to tell the story in the way that Brueghel has. To recognise that God appears gently and quietly into our lives, if at all. This Christmas, the reality is that the overwhelming majority of people will celebrate Christmas without even thinking about Jesus Christ. As a priest, I wonder, what's the point in the church having its l
What does it mean to live in the kingdom of God? I would like to contrast 2 attitudes. Self-righteousness versus Humility To live in the kingdom of God is to have our hearts transformed from arrogant self-righteousness to humble compassion and mercy. We are invited to live in the kingdom of God, but it takes all of us to make it and create it. Christianity is a social (and therefore political) religion. What is self-righteousness? The self-righteousness person thinks that he or she has earned and deserved his/her own success and good fortune. The self-righteous person refuses to understand the poverties and inequalities of our world and equates success with personal gain. It involves judgment (and condemnation) of others. Self-righteousness is the primary sin of the Pharisees and Jesus is forceful and swift with his condemnation of it. They claimed the love and favour of God as being due to their own personal worthiness, rather than seeing that it is God who is worthy. Such an a

An Advent Poem

Why bother opening the doors to madness? A church can't pay the bills, we have No  Business We offer care and tea Prayer Candles Whilst God enters unheard but noticed into a humble, maiden soul silently becoming unravelling sin

The Pilgrim Way

Journeying in Expectation and in Hope Lectionary Readings,  Advent 1 Jeremiah 33.14-16; Psalm 25.1-10, 1 Thessalonians 3.9-13, Luke 21.25-36 Looking towards the East End Reredos and window Christianity is a future-oriented religion ; standing at the back of St Andrew’s Church, Rugby (William Butterfield, architect) we notice how our hope is written in the stones of the building, in the way it tells its story. We look at Christ (as the one who is ascended into heaven) above the high altar. Our eyes are drawn to this image through the architectural sight lines – everything in the building’s bones draws us to this spectacle of Christ ascended into glory. William Butterfield resisted the tradition of displaying Christ on the cross on the reredos of the high altar, as is seen in so many examples of religious iconography across churches in the west. Rather, he prefers to show this in the glorious east end window. In so doing he places the suffering of Jesus on the cross within t