Christmas

One of our songs for Christmas Day and not a church, candle or carol in sight!

But there is a mother and a family . . .

Welkin

Just a slight adjustment.

Charles Wesley wrote a hymn about Christmas beginning

Hark how all the welkin rings,

Glory to the King of Kings

On the face of it the editor who gave us, instead, Hark! The herald angels sing! (complete with exclamation mark) made it a whole lot more understandable, fun and even Christmassy. Didn't he?

Not necessarily so.

In the Christmas story the heralding angels said rather than sang. That seems trivial until we think how much more carefully we pay attention to said words than sung words. Maybe if the angels had sung 'Glory to God in the Highest' the shepherds, like the audiences at a thousand Christmas shows, would have politely or even ecstatically applauded. And then carried on sheep-watching. But Christmas wasn't a performance, it was a proclamation!

And losing the welkin isn't such good news either. In the ancient mind it was the roof, the imagined dome, of the sky where the stars were the decoration. Like any good roof it could ring if the volume was great enough. A new-born king wouldn't be enough to impact the welkin, but the King of kings, God in the Highest?

Oh, yes. He's well worth a shuddering welkin of praise. He always was and always will be, whether in a manger, on a cross or more properly on a throne.

I don't expect I will ever sing about the welkin. I suppose I will always Hark to imaginary singing angels. But, please God, may Christmas never be for me a performance, but a message that heaven is shouting.

Have a very Happy Christmas!

(You can join in a rendering of the original by clicking here, but in my view the tune is enough to make the welkin weep!)

Indescribable

Laura Story's amazing song, Chris Tomlin's worship passion with a great pictures as an accompaniment.

Rome

With encroaching winter - and yes, it has already snowed over an inch in High Wycombe - it is time to look longingly back at heady summer days. This year we were in Rome.

There was too much for a blog. But I like this picture of the first 'sight' we saw in the city. The Spanish Steps (138 of them!) were built to link the Spanish Embassy to the Papal City. But it's much more interesting than that because the Bourbon dynasty that ruled Spain also ruled France.

There at the top of the steps is a Church, Holy Trinity (in English), but a French Church in nationality. When I visited it there was an African priest speaking to a visitor in French.

Africa is also represented outside for the great obelisk on the steps was built (long before the steps of course) by a Roman governor from the wealth he had made from his North African province.

What I really loved about these steps however was the bizarre extra ingredient added to the French Church and its African priest, the Spanish dynasty and its grand staircase, the Roman obelisk with African connections and the blue Italian sky and fountain gushing fresh water.

For at the foot of the steps on the left is the English contribution. Babington's Tea Rooms. http://www.babingtons.net/en/history.php Not being blessed with the equivilant a lottery win we couldn't afford to go in and have afternoon tea! But what struck me was that although it touted itself as typically English such Tea Rooms are hardly to be found in the centre of most English towns and cities. Far easier - and certainly a great deal more economical - to go into a Costa Coffee or Starbucks.

As Church I pray that we might never be a Victorian quirk - a sugar and china cup escape from the reality of 21st century life rather than salt and light in it.

Altogether more down-to-earth is Trajan's Market. For in this ancient Roman ruin of a Shopping Mall, many of the first church members would have been bought and sold as slaves. This seems to me to be a gritty lesson in true churchmanship for all of us.

Peru

Great to read the blog of our Church's link missionaries the Williamson family. You can find it here:

http://williamsonsinperu.blogspot.com/

WD-40

Amazing stuff, WD-40.

The mystical name simply means Water Displacement, 40th formula.

That's how many times it took Norm Larsen to achieve a product that claims to have 2000 uses and is found in probably most sheds and garages!

40 attempts though.

It's too easy to think that the formula for prayer is P-1.

Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up. He said:

"In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared about men. And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, 'Grant me justice against my adversary.'
"For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, 'Even though I don't fear God or care about men, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won't eventually wear me out with her coming!' "

And the Lord said, "Listen to what the unjust judge says. And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night?

Perhaps it's really P-40?

Vacation

Holidays, vacation times, are great. And one of the joys is seeking out churches at which to worship. Though I must confess that has been a disappointment more often than a joy.

Never more so then when, on a visit in Catholic Europe we finally traced the location of an English-speaking and Protestant church. Or at least the place where it was to meet. After a long walk we met this notice in the window.

The Priest in Charge of this church has resigned without warning or due notification. The Bishop of the Diocese has suspended the Parish without warning or due notification. For those reasons Anglican Church Services are no longer held in this church.

We were not the only ones on vacation! It was very vacated indeed.

I figured the following;

• Now I know why I don't believe a Priest is essential to a church, still less a Bishop. After all, whatever their issues they had conspired to deny us a group of believers with whom to share worship in our language. If a congregation had turned up, I'd have happily led the service!
• If you are going to put a notice in the window it either needs to say more than this - something positive perhaps? - or less. I thought this was probably the most woeful church notice I had ever read. And THAT is saying something!

Meanwhile, the world continued to pass by the busy street while the ecclesiastical wheels remained stuck in the ecclesiastical mud.

May God grant us some vacationing fellowship to celebrate.

Fathers' Day

So what? Very many voices declare that fatherhood is simply a poorer version of motherhood which is where true parenting happens. A man - maybe even two men - who behave like a mother are ‘supportive assets’ to children but so might be a single mum’s circle of friends. Parenting and supportive assets are in, fatherhood is history.

History perhaps, but also divine history. In the Bible’s world the pinnacle of relationships was that of a father with his son and it is one of the key pictures of God’s internal being.
What does fatherhood do? A father-son relationship always has a generational future and past whereas a marriage belongs only to one generation. Where there is true fatherhood and sonship these are the questions that are more often and widely asked; ‘How can I shape the future?’, ‘What can I learn from your experience?’. A world where these questions are asked less is a lesser world.

Fathering lacks the bodily intimacy that creation grants to marriage and motherhood. But fatherly love is manifested, among other ways, in a wide and wise strategic interest. At every strategic high point in Christ’s ministry a father’s voice is heard: This is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased. It sounds to us like a joke but it was a profound old saying that while mother and daughter work in the kitchen, father and son look out of the window. If no relationship gazes beyond, many journeys will never begin.

Mayor

Wycombe has little to distinguish it from any other English town these days. Except that it weighs the Mayor!

The idea is that by being weighed at the beginning and end of the year it can be established whether he/she has become fat at the expense of the townsfolk.

It's a fun tradition.

Yet there was a king who was weighed by God.

The writing was certainly on the wall for Belshazzar! And Daniel explained it.

Tekel: You are weighed in the balances, and are found wanting.

For all of us who lead, for all of us who live, that's not funny at all.

Scripture

This month we celebrate the translation of New Testament into the language of the Gabri people in southern Chad.

Our church has sponsored this translation by supporting the couple who have devoted ten years to the task. 138,000 words later the people of Kimri and its surrounds can now read, in their own tongue, the ancient words that resound with God's own heart, words of life, words of hope.

Ten

Today is the Tenth Anniversary of my first Sunday as Pastor in my current church. Alarmingly this is my second Tenth Anniversary! But time is not the issue, is it?

A few days ago I heard an interview with a professor who had researched the effects of trees on the human spirit. Apparantly the good professor’s research revealed that if you drive down a tree-lined highway you arrive more relaxed, less stressed, than you do if surrounded by concrete. This effect is more pronounced in heavy traffic. And it works in walking too.

But the interviewer came up with a devastating question, "Do trees have the same effect when their leaves fall off?"

And the answer was no. Without their leaves they are essentially useless to changing the passer-by. Like the Christian church really. It doesn’t do any traceable good by just being there. It must be seen to be alive..

I have come, said Jesus, that they might have life, and have it more abundantly..