Rev elations

Text version- Hello from St Andrew’s Church in Rugby , where once again I’m surrounded by Christmas trees. This year there are a couple that pick up the WW1 remembrance theme using poppies as decorations. 2014 has been a significant year for the UK and for Europe as we’ve reflected on the significance of the first and the second world wars. The not uncontroversial Sainsbury’s advert reminded the nation that the story of Christmas can do extraordinary things; even in war it can unite enemies, as in the famous Christmas Day truce in 1914. At Christmas we do enter a mystical moment, a moment of opportunity, where the message of God’s love and care for each one of us comes really close. The vulnerable child, the nativity scenes, the bringing of gifts, they tell us that we can still believe in the power of love to transform human experience. At Christmas 1914 on the Western front, some soldiers dared to look their enemies in the face and wish them happy Christmas. In our soci...

We all have experiences of the announcement of pregnancies: ‘Mum I’m pregnant’; ‘we’re having a baby’, or in our case a step further on the sonographer saying, ‘one head and another head’….. But, the simple announcement is not often straightforward; human lives and relationships are complex and fraught with difficulty as well as with joy and frustration and even tragedy. We all have knowledge of the complications too; for some the inability to have children, or a miscarriage, the loss of children; for others the joy and challenge of adoption or fostering children. Bringing children into the world, let alone bringing them up, is an exercise in experiencing the pains, sufferings, joy and delight of God’s relationship with his people. It should perhaps be no surprise to us that at the heart of the story of God’s relationship with us, his people, is the announcement of a birth. For there is no greater metaphor, no more complex and demanding role, no more poignant or dangerous mome...

As we journey through life we gather experiences, old certainties may disappear, rocks that we had come to rely on may literally be taken from us. These experiences, particularly of loss, can enlarge the heart’s capacity for kindness, for showing and receiving mercy and compassion. A heart made vulnerable by experiences of loss, made fragile by suffering, is a heart that can also become more compassionate, kinder, and able to show itself, greater mercy and love. It is one of the paradoxes of human experiences. A heart untouched by its own vulnerability will have little patience or compassion for those who have sunk deep into the heart’s vulnerability. As we journey through life then we have an opportunity to grow in compassion and mercy, to see differently and respond differently to those around us. Once where we might have blamed or accused, we now get alongside and see it from their perspective. The Christian story is a story of the vulnerability and tenderness of Go...

God’s absence is part of our common, in fact normal experience: ‘O that you would tear open the heavens and come down!’   – O that you would demonstrate your power; make your reality known in a way that we cannot ignore. Because we forget you, we misbehave, we ignore you, because you do not impose yourselves on us! (Isaiah, 64.1-9). It is perhaps this experience of absence that makes most people assume that belief in God is foolish, contrary to experience. But, an evident, loud, noisy God, going around demonstrating Her power, would be one that impinges on the freedom we have been given in creation. God has given us self-determination and freedom. F aithfulness is about living hopefully with the seeming absence of God and the silence of God. It is about living as though God were with us all the time, watching us and guiding us. Remembering a God who is silent, inconspicuous and gentle is the spiritual discipline supreme. It is only an absent God that requires faith. Fo...

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle? Only the monstrous anger of the guns. Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle Can patter out their hasty orisons. No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells; Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, – The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells; And bugles calling for them from sad shires. What candle may be held to speed them all? Not in the hands of boys but in their eyes Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes. The pallor10 of girls' brows shall be their pall; Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds, And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds. Wilfred Owen, September - October, 1917 Wilfrid Owen’s poetry introduced me to the reality of war as a student at secondary school, along with Siegfried Sassoon and Robert Graves these were the writers that helped me see the sacrifice that we ask others to make on our behalf when we send them to fight for us. These writers showed us wh...

All Christians have a calling to be saints. Each one of us as a Christian is a saint, one of the blessed ones of God – that is our inheritance and the hope that we have. Child or elderly, man or woman, whoever we are, we are God’s holy children, made blessed. Jesus’ teaching in the beatitudes* is a description of the lives of Christians, of saints. Our blessedness is to be found in certain qualities; qualities that mark us out, that define us and that enable us to live in God’s eternal kingdom. And they are surprising. They challenge us. We have lived with these ideas in the Western world for a long time, generation after generation, and they have left their mark on our society. But they are challenging and demanding as well as being a gift. The Christian life is a life held in tension, a tension between blessedness and trial. Jesus’ life is the perfect example of blessing – the healings, the miracles, the relationships and the peace. But on the other hand the extraordinary tr...

Halloween takes it's name from All Hallows' Eve, the Eve before the Festival of All Saints, when the church remembers those who are hallowed, literally 'blessed': -the saints. Christians sometimes get worried about what Halloween has become, but probably for the wrong reasons. A bit of glorification of things that frighten us is probably harmless enough. But what really matters perhaps is that as a culture we are losing the ability to cope with death. Death is thought of as something threatening and frightening, it becomes about witches, devils and satan; but death in the Christian tradition has been transformed by Jesus' Resurrection. We no longer fear death even if we still experience the pain and loss of death. The Feast of All Saints' and All Souls' is an annual reminder to Christians that we are connected with all the faithful departed who live on with God. We remember those in the past who have truly shown something of God's love by their lives. We...