Rev elations

The Presentation of the Christ-child in the Temple Within the Christian tradition we do a lot of looking – we look at Jesus all the time – we tell the stories about his life, we enact out the dramas of his birth, adult ministry, death and resurrection; and today’s story is about Jesus being looked at again – presented in the temple, taken, blessed and recognised as the light of the world. Looking at Jesus is a vital part of Christian life – we learn everything from him, but the gaze is not one way – Jesus also looks back at us. Timothy Radcliffe writes that Joy begins by letting ourselves be looked at by Jesus ( What’s the point of being a Christian?) Jesus knows intimately about the ways in which humans look at one another – being a part of our world he was exposed to the range of human emotions – he was looked at with love, with gratitude, with fear, with hope, with mercy, with compassion, with hatred, with judgment and with condemnation. On the Cross he was naked and...

They came bearing gifts, Gifts of numinous tone, Less than £30 a week And there they came With gold crosses and chains, Calendars, clothes and keepsakes. They spread them out around the room Across the tables and chairs They hung them on the walls As they prepared food and drink Blew balloons and laid out flowers. A feast prepared A celebration To remember Their frequent steps Across thresholds Into life

This summer, I took part in the week of guided prayer, which we organised here at St Andrew’s. 2 priests from another diocese came to be with us for a week and each participant committed to praying for half an hour a day as well as meeting their guides for half an hour each day. We were encouraged to pray with scripture, to choose our own passages, or to be given one from our guide. I prayed with the story of the woman at the well. Almost immediately at the beginning of that week I was presented with an image, in prayer, of a plant in the desert that had completely dried up. In my imagination the roots of this plant desired to grow towards the oasis to be fed – they were desperate for water. For me this powerful image perfectly summed up how I felt inside, the state of my spiritual life. I felt that my spirit was drained, that it was literally dying of thirst – I urgently needed my spirit to be renewed with the life-giving water which comes from God: God was there and ready to give me...

God is rejected, forgotten, ignored, blamed and abused; the same can be said, oftentimes, for his followers. Our job as Christians is to call people to worship the living God and therefore to honour and glorify the one to whom all honour and glory is due. At Christmas we have a particular opportunity to divert people’s attention away from what is of fleeting value, to what is of eternal value. Contrary to popular thought, people are hungry to be fed and eager to pray and those of us who have seen the living God must share in the joy of pointing the way to others. We do not control or contain the glory of God; we do not know where he is or isn’t at work; but we do know what we comprehend together as faithful Christians and to that we must be true. Being a Christian has never been simple – there is no golden age of Christianity when everyone believed and everyone went to church. Faith is a narrow road and only a few walk it – but nonetheless, at the same time, there are always those who...

‘He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him’. Corporately and individually humans persistently and consistently reject God. We are pretty good at choosing what is bad for us- being tempted by any number of false desires. We can become addicted to all sorts of bad behaviours, like alcohol, social media, pornography or self-hatred. The simple ways that we choose to spend our time every day determine the sort of people that we become; the minor details of our lives matter to God – he has given us each moment of every day. As a modern poet, Malcolm Guite puts it: O king of our desire whom we despise, King of the nations never on the throne, Unfound foundation, cast-off cornerstone, Rejected joiner, making many one Take the Biblical tale of the rich man at his gate. He ignores the daily pleas of the poor and sickly man, Lazarus, and after a life of selfi...

Many of us do something, not because we make a choice everyday to do it, but because it’s become part and parcel of our lives, one of the things that we do. Church going can be like that, but then Advent turns up in the church year to unsettle and challenge us; to wake us up and out of our routines into some serious re-engagement with the fundamentals of our existence. Advent reminds us that all this ritual, prayer and worship isn’t just a routine that we’ve gotten used to and quite enjoy, but actually is about our eternal destiny and about the things that matter most: truth versus darkness; goodness versus evil; judgment and end times. Wake up we are told, be watchful, get ready, be alert! Jesus might have left but He will come back; the things that you have been taught and promised are realities; God is not some dream that was imagined a good long time ago; the search for truth, the work of goodness is real. John the Baptist is a serious prophet – not one to allow us to fall...

This week has been one full of the conflicts and tensions of o ur contemporary world, for example: the continuing aftermath of the Paris shootings and the war in Syria; the re-occurrence of Black Friday; the Lord’s Prayer advert ban; more child sex-abuse investigations and further revelations about racism in the police force not to mention the upcoming climate summit in Paris.   All of these complex problems define our contemporary world – how we respond to them as faithful Christians is a matter of debate and concern. Take the Lord’s Prayer advert-ban – questions have rightly been raised about its impact upon the right to freedom of religious expression.  It also reflects the way that religion and prayer has become highly politicised – which isn’t just about a secular, political-correctness.  We are faced with jihadist terrorism, which uses Islam for its own violent ends. Should we then bomb Syria ? What of Syrian refugees and the radicalisation that happens in the UK...