christmas rush

Carrots. Turkey. Carols. Funerals. Sad. Preparation. Music. Choices. Praying. Hello! Broad smile. Very tired. Same old story. Breathe new life. How?

Oranges. Candles. Dressing up. Chaos. Cough. Smile. Feeling low. Losing voice. Keep smiling. Another service. Who is it for? Songs. Music. Links. Trying to be interesting. Ideas. Will it work?

Funerals. Smiling. Energy. Big. Dr Who. Let down. Rev. Excellent! Sleeping. Children. Traditional Christmas. Archaic Christmas. Don’t mention Father Christmas. Is a fraud. Afraid. Jesus. Stable. No stable? Bethlehem. Nazareth? What to mention. Grown up message. Children there. Rapid re-think. Tried. Tired.

Cough. Forgot tissues. Weary. Joy! To the world? Christmas Day. Encouraged! Break. Good news. Sherlock! Sleeping. New year. Done. Phew. 

the weakness in [christmas] love

Have I been good enough?

Have I been good enough this year? To receive some presents? I wonder what scale I will use to decide. Maybe comparing myself to others. That usually works well in my favour. I’m no Mother Teresa but I’m no Kim Jong Il either… therefore I am good.

Have I been good enough?

Sometimes to make sure we have been good enough to receive good things we draw up charts and lists. Most of these are good things, or at least they start off that way. We might think of the 10 commandments or the law of the land. I haven’t broken any laws, so I’ve been good. Maybe a little speeding, the odd tax dodge and a Blackberry from the back of a lorry but apart from that I’ve been good.

Have I been good enough?

If that is the question we believe that God is asking us – and for many it will be – then can I reassure you that he is not.  God is not interested in whether or not you have been good. What?!? But surely being a Christian is the same as being a good person, isn’t it? Aren’t Christians goody-goodies? Isn’t that what the 10 commandments are all about?

The Christmas story shows us year after tinsel-covered year that God is not interested in whether we are good. Which is lucky because although we might feel we have ‘kept the 10 commandments’, which a lot of people tell me they do because they haven’t killed anyone or been jealous of their neighbours ass we all fall down at the very first one.

When God came into the world taking the form of a human being, demeaning himself and coming down to our fragile, human level, God was saying the rules and the laws are not working and though I love it when you live well and do good the most important thing is not that you are good but that you are love.

Have I been good enough?

To receive from God? You think you need to be good to receive?

If you are carrying guilt that it has been a bad year and you think you haven’t been good enough to receive from God, then think again. The story of Jesus birth and of his life show us that God consistently surprises and gives to people who least expect it and who represent what the world sees as ‘bad people’ – shepherds, tax collectors, prostitutes, unclean people.

It is not too late to receive from God, to turn ourselves to face him and to receive from him.

If you are carrying pride that it has been a good year and that you have done pretty well, so should expect to receive from God some sort of reward, then think again. The story of Jesus life and birth show us that God consistently surprises people who call themselves ‘good’ and humbles them – King Herod, the Pharisees, the religious scholars, the rich.

It is not too late though to humble ourselves and receive from God, to turn ourselves to face him and to receive from him.

John’s gospel talks of Jesus as being the light that gives life,  a light that changes us because it shines into our darkest places and transforms them from darkness to light, whether our greatest darkness is pride or addiction or self-loathing or apathy or fear or abuse or doubt… Christmas is a time to remember God broke into our world in a surprising and reckless way  not that we might be good but that we might love and be loved.

The sting in the tail is that it is much easier to be good than it is to give and receive love, especially God’s love. Which is why so many of us default to trying to be good, instead of allowing ourselves to be loved. Allowing ourselves to be loved is perhaps the hardest thing of all.  That love transforms us and turns us into the best you and me we can be, but it is not a quick fix and it is not easy. But it is worth it.

The weakness in love is it’s greatest strength.

May we be people of the light, people who love and know love, who give and receive love that comes from God the Father revealed in Jesus Christ and living on through the Holy Spirit, people who turn and face God and receive openly from him; may we be people who truly and openly pray O come to us, Abide with us, our Lord Immanuel.

…

**this is an edited version of my Christmas Eve Midnight Communion talk**

… [ waiting ] …

I wonder what your symbol of waiting is. The bus stop, train station, school gate; red brake lights, red traffic lights; the egg timer on the computer, the slow-boiling kettle, the long-winded preacher…

We spend a lot of our time … waiting.

I struggle to enjoy waiting. Some might take the opportunity whilst stuck in a traffic jam to pray or worship or something equally holy. I just get cross and put the Foo Fighters on.

Advent is about waiting.  Advent isn’t just ‘that bit before Christmas’, like the check-in desk is to a holiday. And advent isn’t Christmas itself, whatever the shops would have us believe.

Advent is when we remember that the people of Israel waited for their expected Messiah for a very very very long time. And we remember that we are waiting for that Messiah to return again and finally and once and for all sort everything out. So advent is definitely not just the bit before Christmas.

There’s a lot of biblical precedent for waiting. Noah waited. Abraham waited. Moses waited, Joseph waited, Ruth and Naomi waited. David waited, the prophets waited. All these different people pleaded and begged and bribed God to do things at their speed, rather than his, and all failed. Because God will not be rushed.

As we wait for Jesus to come again, I wondered which biblical characters we might find ourselves behaving like.

The story of the golden calf tells us a lot about waiting. Moses had gone up the mountain and had been gone ages. Aaron and the people got fed up with waiting. Things were better in Egypt, at least there we could do things to make the gods work for us – rituals and sacrifices and we could touch and see the Egyptian gods because they were made of real stuff. So instead of waiting for God, they made their own out of gold.

A lot of people have got fed up with waiting for God and decided to make their own. Or to go back to their old ways. Or make church like the golden calf – familiar things, familiar rituals, that feel like they are achieving something. But God will not be bribed with ritual.

Maybe we find ourselves waiting like the zealots or Pharisees of Jesus’ day. Two very different groups that both wanted to make the Messiah come quicker because he would overthrow the Romans. So they busied themselves with forcing God to act quicker – the zealots with violence and the Pharisees with holiness.

It can be very tempting to try and rush God. How many times have you heard people say that once everyone in the world has heard the gospel Jesus will come; or if we all say the right prayer;  or return the Jews to Israel; or believe the same things about Jesus or moral and ethical issues… then Jesus will be forced to return because we’ll have done our side of the bargain. I’ve done a, so will you do b. Bargaining with God. We always try it, but he doesn’t do it.

The prophets had a lot to say about waiting. They were constantly addressing a people who were waiting. And their message I think is the same as the message to us as we wait.

Wait patiently. And while you wait, be faithful. And by faithful I mean worship God even when he doesn’t work at your speed; submit to God even when he doesn’t do what you want when you want; and serve God even when it feels like a waste of time. 

There is hope.

Jesus will come again. That is our hope. We will meet him and welcome him here to earth where he will renew all things. In the meantime we live lives in which we do not get distracted into making our own gods or bribing or bargaining with God but in which we wait expectantly, live hopefully, and serve faithfully.   It won’t make him come any quicker, but the waiting will be much better, and allowing God to break into our lives like he did at Christmas is the best type of waiting there is.

still.born.lament

Designing Christmas flyers. Planning Sunday’s service. Taking the funeral of a still-born child. Helping at the youth club. Just an ordinary day in vicar-land.

One of the privileges and responsibilities of being Anglican is the funeral ministry, which goes largely unseen by the majority of people. A funeral can contain a variety of emotions, most of which we British attempt to stifle in an attempt to show some decorum and not upset Aunty Rita.

Generally speaking we the public don’t know what to do with funerals. We have a picture in our mind that they should be ‘proper’, sort of ‘churchy’, i.e. straight-laced and a bit dull, and preferably cold. But if mentions of God could be kept to minimum because we’re not really religious, please.

Last week I took the funeral of a still-born child, and there isn’t much that sums up sadness like a mum & dad grieving for the loss of a child they were never able to parent. There isn’t much that sums up hopes being dashed than the death of a child before it is born. Usually in a funeral you can at least call it a celebration of life, you can remember some good things even in the bleakest of lives; but not here. Only hopes, never to be realised.

I told someone I was taking the service, and they said “I wouldn’t know where to start. What on earth do you say?” That is an excellent place to start, I said, because the Bible is not a textbook of trite answers to life’s problems and we are not inadequate if we have nothing to say. That is when we lament.

So I thought I would offer what I did say in my address to this young couple grieving the loss of their first child and so much more. Maybe it’s not what you would have said. It’s not a treatise on death and maybe it’s too simple. But it’s a start. I began by reading Psalm 139.1-18. 

I wonder what you might want to say to God at a time like this. And I wonder what God might say back to us. Much of the Bible is a record of people’s conversations with God, and you may be surprised to know that there is an awful lot of ranting at God, and an awful lot of lamenting. Lamenting when things have gone wrong, grieving for things that have been lost. The Psalms are full of people opening their hearts boldly before God. This shows us that this is a good thing. God is not fragile, and God knows that you are hurting. And he encourages us to get those feelings out into the open.

The bible also tells us God’s response to our lament, which isn’t to tell us to ‘pull ourselves together’, ‘deal with it’ or ‘move on’. No, God’s response is one of love. God’s response is what we remember at Christmas – that God is not a distant God who remains distant, but God became a human, yes even a fragile human baby – so that he could dwell with us in amongst our pain and our sorrow.

When Jesus grew up, we read about him at the grave of his friend Lazarus, where Jesus wept. Jesus knew sorrow. Jesus saw pain and sorrow all around him and Jesus knows that not every story has a happy ending. This is how realistic our faith is. There is no escapism in trusting Jesus. As Jesus wept at the grave of his friend Lazarus, so he weeps with you.  

But as Jesus stands with us in our pain Jesus also leads us through the pain of death to the hope beyond. As Jesus died and was raised to life, so we believe that we die and we are also raised to new life. Baby x has gone from this life, which is what we are here to mark and that hurts; baby x is with God. But may it be some comfort for you, and give you some hope, that God is with you right now. There is a hope for you two, for your lives together and for your love for each other which baby x will always be part of; hope that comes from Jesus who is the way the truth and the life, and who offers us life in this world and the next.

So there we are. I’m big on lament. One of church’s lost disciplines.

default.setting.version2011

I like new things. From new phone to new iPod running pouch, from new Christmas jumper to new CDs.

I forget new things. Being a creature of habit and not quite the spontaneous radical revolutionary I sometimes pretend to be, I forget i have them. I discover halfway round my run I haven’t used my new iPod pouch. Because I got my old one out. When choosing my clothes in the dim light of morning i get out the ones I always wear. After all, I know where they are. I load new CDs on the computer and promptly forget to listen to them again.

I like new ideas. They excite me, invigorate me, unsettle me, challenge me. I love new ideas about God especially.

I forget new ideas. No sooner have I read or heard or even preached a new idea or a new thought, I often forget about it. My mind resets to default factory settings like a computer. I think it easily happens to us all. The trouble is, our default settings about god are not always right. Nor are our new ideas of course, but to always default is never to think. And think we must, because that is how we discover.

this is not my new jumper

Maybe our default setting is that God is like an impatient father or a distant king, an effeminate uncle or a petulant child, a nagging wife or a boring Christian.

Our default setting rarely includes the patient sacrifice of the passionate heart, the intimate danger of the incarnate child, the intriguing story-telling of the questioning teacher, the broken heart of the abandoned lover, the shining magnificence of the dusty and humble cleaner of dirty feet.

What is truly great is when the new things become part of normal life, in a way that we don’t forget them but neither do we take them for granted. We treasure them, nurture them, love them, live them. Getting dirty from the dust of of Jesus’ feet was an important idea for our church in 2010. I hope we keep that one.

May 2011 bring fresh challenges to our default settings, may it keep us beautifully fresh, and like the love of God may we be new every mourning.

the holy naiveté

the holy naivity

If only Jesus told harmless stories  that didn’t cut to the heart of power and poverty and sex and anger and lust and arguments and family and truth and pain and hope and death and how to be truly, madly deeply in love.

If only Jesus was more like Santa and we could pretend he existed for a few days a year and then ignore him because he’s made-up just like Winnie-the-Pooh or the Ninky-Nonk.

If only?

There is a hope I have, a naive hope, that all this holy nativity stuff isn’t just the quaint children’s story it often seems. That it isn’t a quaint story at all.

There is a hope I have, a naive hope, that kingdoms shaking and the powerful quaking cannot just be reduced to 3 wise men, some fumbling shepherds and a pantomime Herod.

There is a hope I have, a naive hope, that peace on earth actually means, well, peace on earth. On actual earth!

I hope that you hold to this naive hope with me. I hope that this Christmas has more meaning for you than it ever has. I hope that it sparkles with love and glitters with the reality of mind-and-body-soaking love.  I hope that the love  and the hope of Jesus fills us and our aching hearts, fills us and our fragile families, fills us and our beautiful communities.

I hope that the holy naiveté of the holy nativity touches you, as I hope it touches me.

A very Happy Christmas, and thank you for reading!
God bless, Kevin

many of horrors. many of love.

So Matt Cardle’s shabby soft-pop croony karaoke X Factor song is number 1. Some people will settle for anything. We really will. Pale imitations of the real thing. Either because we’re lazy, or don’t expect to receive anything better, or don’t realise there is better out there. Of course this can apply to lots of things, from Tesco’s water-filled chicken to cheap chocolate to, of course, music.

biff this

No-one expects the X Factor to work miracles; nobody really expects the X Factor to be about music – it is after all a pantomime entertainment show on which contestants and performers and judges are scripted, guided and if there’s a danger they might get it wrong, they are auto-tuned or made to mime. But it’s good fun (at times!), and it keeps people who made flashy lights and ‘cheer spontaneously now’ cards in business.

What really gets me though is the lack of effort at the end. The song is always, and without fail, awful. A damp squib, a pathetically lazy, badly thought-through pile of poo. What should be the climax of 6 months of being taught to sing by Sinita and to dance by an aerobics teacher ends up as the most bland and boring performance of the lot. It shouldn’t happen. After all the effort that goes into different song styles, into finding the ‘unique’ thing – shall we say the X Factor – of the winner, all they do is a cover version. This year at least the cover is of a decent song, but they might as well say Matt Cardle has won, now go and buy Many of Horrors by Biffy Clyro to celebrate. As soon as he has won, Matt Cardle is pointless. An irrelevance.

biffy clyro

Even so, maybe we can turn this into something good each Christmas. Maybe we can use the disappointment of a feeble unimaginative cover version every year as a reminder that Christmas isn’t about being feeble and unimaginative at all but is about wonder and beauty and creativity. Maybe we can even find ourselves at the point where we thank the X Factor for showing us each year that there is another way to live, another way to do Christmas; we can thank them for being all that we don’t want to be in order that we can be who we are meant to be.  Beautiful. Orginal. Unique. No pale imitations, no shabby cover versions. Us, and our creator God.

No longer many of horrors, but many of love.

Maybe, just maybe.

the santa clause

Father Christmas came to our church toddler group. At least, one of our wonderful ladies in her 80′s dressed up very convincingly! It was fun, the children (and adults) loved it. But how thin the ice we skate on, how thin the line between truth & lies, between story &  myth… How thin the line between harmless fun stories and giving confusing mixed messages to everyone… How thin the line we walk as followers of Jesus as we ponder How To Do Christmas About Jesus Without Ignoring Father Christmas, telling the revelation of God through JC without violating the unwritten cultural Santa clause and spilling the revelation that FC is a myth, a story, a made-up nonsense.

Should we try to shoehorn Jesus in to the event; or have Jesus giving out presents? Or ban Father Christmas? Some would, probably Christians who would ban any sort of fun. So what then?

father son christmas

I was thinking about how Jesus would handle it. He was well known for taking themes and ideas from his culture and transforming them, changing them. Ritual cup-cleaning became cleaning our hearts. Cup cleaning wasn’t in itself bad.  Fishing for fish became fishing for people. Fishing wasn’t in itself bad. Wealth became not a sign of blessing to hoard but an opportunity to give. Wealth wasn’t in itself bad.  Paul took the idea of an unknown god and made him known. Way back in the Old Testament, prophets challenged the idea of trusting fallic fertility poles for crop-growth to instead trusting the creator god; they challenged sacrifice for self-interest or ritual’s sake to instead  sacrifice as part of worship of the living god.

Our faith has always taken cultural norms and ideas and turned them into a way of talking about God, Yahweh, Jesus. So back to Father Christmas…

Maybe Jesus would say that Father Christmas sounds good, but how Jesus is even better. Maybe he would say Father Christmas is based on Santa Claus who is based on St Niklaus, a Turkish bishop who left presents for the poor so they could enjoy Christmas,; and that he (Jesus) is even more generous than that. Maybe he would say Father Christmas just brings pieces of stuff that don’t last, but he brings peace in the heart that lasts forever. Maybe he would say that Father Christmas sounds like a parental bribery method to reward or punish children for behaviour based on old religion, whereas he is full of grace and his foremost concern is not our behaviour, but our hearts. He gives us grace, whether we are good or not, because none of us deserve presents. Or his presence. Maybe he would say that central heating and subsequent lack of chimney’s put an end to the Santa’s impossible deeds but all manner of cultural and technological shifts cannot put an end to Jesus’ impossible deeds.

Maybe he would invite us to take all that is good about Father Christmas and increase it, build on it, grow it.

Maybe he would find a way to tell the Christmas story, including the Santa Claus clause, and it would work.

Maybe he would even dress up and make the children laugh.

Now there’s a thought.

taking the epiphany

So you’re on the edge, an observer. Watcher. Waiter. Intrigued,  hopeful, suspicious.  Wondering. This whole Jesus thing. Just what is it? You know people who live by him. You know people who say they do. You know people who couldn’t give a monkey’s blue hat about him. You… you’re on the edge. Jury’s out. You’re mind is not made up.

You do know you’re not one of the keen ones. You’re not ‘in’. You’re not a churcher, a Jesus freak, a happy clappy. You’re not begging to carry the cross, wear the robes, swallow the funny bread. But you are almost convinced there something… something.

it was nothing like this

If so, Epiphany is your day. It’s the day for you on the edge, you of another faith who see Jesus and wonder, you of unexpressed faith who simply wonder. Epiphany is when we keen ones remember the wise men travelling to Bethlehem to worship Jesus, who they called the King of the Jews. They were not Jews. They were not from Bethlehem. Their gentlemanly’s hadn’t had the Hebrew chop.  Why did they come? They were trying to explain the world, what they had seen. They had had an epiphany. It is possible that they had seen Saturn (planet of royalty) and Jupiter (planet sometimes representing Jews) in alignment and came to the conclusion: a king of the Jews was coming. Who knows. But they came. Thankfully, for us who search and get things wrong, they got it wrong at first. They went to the palace. You would. They did.

When they found the one, the baby/toddler/young boy, in his (home-town!) of Bethlehem, they worshiped. They, the ones on the outside, the fringe, the watchers, the searchers, the non-believers; they, suddenly at the epicentre of God’s story. Briefly, wonderfully, centrally. Then they go, who knows where. But they found what they were looking for. And they were there.

it was nothing like this (why is so much Christian art so bad?!)

If the Magi (the educated, the wealthy, the intelligent) were the first to say King of the Jews, yet were not Jews, at the end of Jesus’ life, another group of outsiders have an epiphany moment and play a unique and unexpected role.  This group were the opposite – rough men, uneducated men, the Roman soldiers at the cross guarding this ineffectual and very dead Jewish nutter. And yet these men, maybe not even searching or hoping, simply living and intending to stay that way, they exclaim “Surely he was the/a son of God!” Again, outsiders, the dangerous and the unclean, placed at the centre of God‘s plan, seeing things the ‘religious’ don’t see, exclaiming aloud things the in-crowd are too interested in ‘staying safe’ to utter.

This is Epiphany. The outsiders being in, the insiders taking a step back; God’s open-hearted plan taking precedence over our expectations. You, the watcher, the observer, the hopeful and the suspicious. This is your day. Claim it, take your epiphany, that which God has revealed to you and you don’t know what to do with. Whether you are a Magi or a Roman soldier, or something else. You can be at the centre of God’s plan. You are at the centre of God’s plan.

I’m not taking the Epiphany. Do it.

be on the edge. not on this Edge.

the biggest, most divine total blunder (’twas the night before Christmas)

’Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there;

The children were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads;
And mamma in her ‘kerchief, and I in my cap,
Had just settled our brains for a long winter’s nap,

When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter.
Away to the window I flew like a flash,
Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.

The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow
Gave the lustre of mid-day to objects below,
When, what to my wondering eyes should appear…

But stories of angels telling virgins not to fear?

I saw visions of angels shining in all their glory
As they told the shepherds their role in the bizarre story
I saw wise men and babies and cattle and sheep
And I wondered if maybe I was still asleep.

Angels and shepherds and babies in hay
It sounds less like reality more like a school play
And what can it mean for me right here and right now
That a baby was laid on the dinner plate of a cow?

You see, On the night before Christmas there was no baby yet
Just tossing and turning and probably regret
“If only we had stayed somewhere better than this,
I hadn’t fallen for Mary and sought marital bliss”

I saw the scene not from idyllic Christmas cards
That make a night out in a stable seem like Mardi Gras
But I saw feelings of fear and anticipation
As Mary and Joseph contemplated not the future of their nation

But their predicament, their fragility, their ridiculous plight
How to give birth in such a dirty place on this night
Pardon the pun but it’s the most pregnant of pauses
This time for waiting, holding, that nature enforces

Frustrating, painful, it must have been that last night
Before Mary was mother and Jesus the light
After visits from angels have promised them wonder
Has it really been the biggest, most divine total blunder?

Not long before shepherds will be woken from slumber
Not long before wise men will travel from yonder
Not long before Herod will notice Bethlehem
Not long before he will massacre to try and destroy them

Such a gift, such a treasure, such an unusual ploy
For God to deem it fit that he should be born a boy
With the risk of illness, mess and a wee sprinkling
The question is really “God what were you thinking?”

On the night before Christmas did you have second thoughts
About this plan for salvation with such danger fraught
On the night before Christmas did you wonder again
About entrusting your Son to fickle women and men?

Did you think that maybe there was a better way to do it?
Did you consider someone stronger than a baby to go through it?
Did you know that we would wish you had done it all yourself,
Instead of trusting us with the world’s spiritual health?

On this night before Christmas maybe there’s a bitter flavour
The earth groans with the birth pangs of painful labour
There’s suffering and troubles there’s little peace on earth
Nothing much changed by such an insignificant birth?

Or… if closely we look through the open sash window
And see truth glinting on the fresh snowfall below
Can we look and see the Christmas story sparkle
Like the embers of a fire than suddenly glow and crackle

It’s not empty stories from imaginations gone wild
It’s not fat men with beards and reindeers that fly
It’s not myth invented to tell stories at bedtime
But it’s the truth of when God threw mankind a life-line

When God re-created as when he created the world
When God’s banner of love was so truly unfurled
Life was created and death was defeated
Evil was told “get back, and be seated!”

‘Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care
In hopes that Truth soon would be there

‘Twas the night before Christmas when all this I saw
And I realised, I recognised what I had not seen before
And I hope that you see him, that you truly see Jesus
On this precious, this holy night before Christmas.

© Kevin Lewis 2009

I know it has been re-written many times, but it is Christmas when we tell the same things again and again! I hope you like it and it helps you think, as it has me. It’s not meant to be brilliant poetry, but who knows, maybe it is. I somehow doubt it…!

May I take this opportunity to thank you for reading this blog since I started it in August, and helping me to think, reflect, practice ideas and grow. I have found it truly valuable, so I know it at least helps me! Thanks to those who have commented – your thoughts are always welcome, as I hope to start discussions, not end them…

May God bless you richly in 2010, and a very happy Christmas to you all!

Kevin