Happy Christmas. But get real about it . . .

Christmas is a very stressful time . . .

 

Happy Birthday Edith



Today we celebrate various birthdays - including Edith Piaf's.

Edith, short on height (several inches short of five foot) but with an amazing voice, was plucked to fame from the back streets of Paris.

Born during the First World War, she was famed before the Second.  Edith was not noted for her Christian devotion (to the extent that the Catholic Archbishop refused to take her funeral in 1963).  She died at 47 years after a depressingly (literally and metaphorically) familiar story of broken relationships and addictions brought to an early conclusion by a liver that could take no more.

On the plus side, in this famously iconic song Non, je ne regrette rien she hit on the Gospel (admittedly accidentally).

. . . No I regret nothing
It's paid for, wiped away, forgotten . . .
. . . swept away my love stories
And their troubles
Swept away for good
I'll start again from zero . . .

Ah, Edith. 

Your liver was lost but your soul did not need to be.  This is the Christmas joy - Year Zero, a unique opportunity for the human race to start again, no longer in the line of Adam (or the apes - for the benefit of Mr Dawkins) but in the Last Adam, Jesus.  Every life can have no regrets, its debts paid in full, its hope come alive!!

Anyhow, a great 20th Century song, eh?

Except that Piaf's recorded bitter deathbed words (expletives deleted) were something like, "Everything you do in this life, you pay for."

Which seems to show that she was not convinced by the song she made famous.  I suppose the liver drowned out the song.  May God grant us that understanding of the love of God in Jesus that washes away all the regrets in the blood of Jesus. His Son and Mary's Son.
 

Gathering

We used this call to gathering from the Iona Community at Morning Communion.  It touched us.

 Gather us in,

the lost and the lonely,

the broken and breaking,

the tired and the aching

who long for the nourishment

found at your feast

Gather us in

the done and the doubting,

the wishing and wondering,

the puzzled and pondering

who long for the company

found at your feast.

Gather us in

the proud and pretentious,

the sure and superior,

the never inferior,

who long for the levelling

found at your feast.
 

Gather us in

the bright and the bustling,

the stirrers, the shakers,

the kind laughter makers

who long for the deeper joys

found at your feast.

 

Gather us in

from corner or limelight,

from mansion or campsite,

from fears and obsession,

from tears and depression,

from untold excesses,

from treasured successes,

 
Gather us in

to meet, to eat,

be given a seat,

be joined to the vine,

be offered new wine,

become like the least,

be found at the feast. ©

 

The Census

In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world.

So the Christmas story was enabled by an Imperial Roman census.

The UK Government takes censuses too.  The one taken in 2011 disgorged some of its results just in time for Christmas.  Christian leaders have been hurrying to reassure the world that the results pertaining to the Christian Religion are really not bad at all despite appearances.

 

On TV a Venerable Lady from Norwich decried the statistic that it was the most godless place in Britain by beamingly reporting hundreds of people coming through the cathedral every week.  (In a misplaced cliché she added, "If this is the most godless city I dread to think what is happening in the others".  A sound bite that went a bit wrong I think).

 

A fellow Baptist or two have rejoiced that this indicates 'the end of Christendom'.  This is a little unfortunate as Christendom means something like 'where Christianity prevails' but I think they mean it is good that the country does not think itself Christian when it isn't.

 

You may want to look away now because what follows is going to be long and not pretty.

 

Detail from The Census in Bethlehem - Pieter Bruegel

My view is that these census results are appalling and nationally frightening. I want to love my country but this makes me very, very sad and ashamed to be British.  Yet it makes me even gladder that the grace of God reached me in this increasingly godless mess and has given me hope and a future.  It makes me ever more despairing of the prevalent evangelical idea that if we just change the morning service Tescos will empty and heaven will be filled with Britons.  We wouldn't have to pray, or weep, or do anything too heavy.

 

Rejoice at the end of Christendom? It is hard for me to understand how people that are consciously distancing themselves from the word 'Christian' are more fertile Gospel soil than those who do own the name.  I am not tee-total so I am a nominal drinker of alcohol.  In practice I go through many a year without drinking any alcohol at all.  If I now announce I am tee-total would that make me more likely to become a genuine drinker? 

 

Baptists should be careful of scorning these stats for another reason.  In the same ten years as covered by the census the Baptist Union reported that its total members, young people and children fell by - you've guessed it - 10-11%.  The census is telling our non-Christendom story too.

 

Hundreds visiting the Cathedral in Norwich? This hopeful anecdote seems to me to be a failure to grasp the significance of a fall of four million self-named Christians (11 percentage points) in just one decade.   Four million is half the population of London (or nearly all the population of Scotland).  Four million is way more than a normal national Sunday morning's Church attendance.  Numbers shuffling round a cathedral or dancing at a clappy conference are neither here nor there in comparison to this. 

 

Perhaps, like the Jerusalem temple in Jesus' day, the grand stones of the cathedral gave the Venerable woman a sense of unchanging confidence.  In which case (and before she becomes a bishop) she had better wake up.  59% is a truly amazing statistic.  When was the last time that less than 60% of Britons would have identified themselves as Christians?  We don't know.  But it was certainly well before Norwich Cathedral was built.  Maybe when Augustine began his Gregorian mission in the late 500s Celtic Christianity had not permeated to 60% though it certainly would have done in many localities.  And ever since those mid- to early first millennium days most people on these islands have, rightly or wrongly, said of themselves that they are Christians.   It is hardly an appropriate response to the turning back of a 1500 year identity in just ten years to celebrate hundreds of Cathedral visitors.

 

Thank God that these statistics came out in Advent.

 

I am part of a nation whose numbers shame us and our Redeemer.  I am also, by grace I believe, part of a number that cannot be subjected to a census.  Abraham couldn't do it when he looked up at the stars (Genesis 15:5), John couldn't do it in his heavenly vision (Revelation 7:9).  Even if not one single Briton followed Christ (as was once the case) the Church continues to be built until the Day.  I must not let my nation shape me.  I must pray and work for the glory of Another Country and a greater King.

 

Think of it like this.  Today the traffic in Wycombe was awful.  Roads that I familiarly purr along were clogged with the busyness of Christmastime and heavy rain.  Sometimes progress was OK, often it was very slow, occasionally no progress at all for a minute or two.  But I never went backwards.  And home was in no way diminished by the slowness of the journey.

 

Day by day, the Lord is building his Church to its completion, its homecoming.  It would be wonderful to progress quickly.  It is frustrating, almost despairing, to see progress stall to a halt in my particular district.  But day by day, year on year God fills more places and the Great Homecoming nears.

 

As I often think on my holiday journey to Cornwall in the summer - I'm fed up of this road  - but I'm not going to give up until I get there, because slow progress to vacation in Cornwall is a whole lot better than fast progress round the M25 to nowhere in particular. 

Darkness and Light

Today we had the Annual Service of our local Hospice at Home.

It is a service full of deep emotion. 

[Extracts]
It is fundamental to the human experience that Light and Darkness go together even though they seem to be mutually exclusive.  Good and Evil, Rejoicing and Mourning.  In almost every book and film and sporting event these appear together in some way.

Light and Darkness. Today is so much about this as we reflect on our story and the story of others.  Stories that had dark times.  People looking into our stories from the outside – at least those parts of the story that bring us here today - thought it was one long dark time.  But it was not.  There were lights along the way.

People looking in from the outside to the work of hospice care probably often think it is a very dark area of service. There is no point in pretending that hospice work resembles a character at a Disney Theme Park where every day is light and bright.  It works with a backdrop that is often darker than we would choose if we could choose.  But with that backdrop hospice nursing helps people to paint in the beautiful colours of love a light in the darkness.

The essence of Christmas is similar here in Northern Europe - little lights against the backdrop of darkness.  This was the model that was deemed wholly appropriate to represent the real story of God’s love coming to us in Jesus of Nazareth.

In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.  The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

The exceptional quality of this Gospel light is that it can offer something that no other organisation, way of thinking or kind friend can offer . . .  What is the true story?  Does it all end in darkness or does it all end in light?

All the evidence, sadly, points toward it ending in darkness: the edges of the universe, the end of the sun, the experience of life.

And that is what makes Christmas, and the advent of a Saviour, Good News for us all.  Soon after his birth the baby Jesus was presented in the Temple at Jerusalem to a man who was at the end of his life.  The man’s name was Simeon.   Having held the baby he said,

Lord, now you let your servant depart in peace; Your word has been fulfilled.  My eyes have seen the salvation You have prepared in the sight of every people, a light to reveal you to the nations and the glory of your people, Israel

 The end of the Gospel story is Light . . .

 

 

Eternal God, source of all light and life . . .Further from us you could not be, yet nearer to us you could not have come.  Thank you that light has come into the world, and love, and hope.  As we reflect and remember may we grasp more firmly the Advent of hope and the brightness of future glory . . .Through the love you have shown to us in Christ that is stronger than death 

 

. . . We thank you for the wonderful work the [Hospice staff] do and the special blessings that so many continue to receive from them. We give thanks for their patience, their empathy, their kindness and for the giving of themselves to ease the pain, the fear and the uncertainty of others.

Lord, help them to love their work and to feel that they are really doing your work . . . Grant them sympathy with the frightened and nervous; to never neglect those who are quiet and uncomplaining and to have a steady nerve when difficult things have to be done and tough decisions made.  Give them efficiency; but make them kind. Make them firm; but always understanding too. Bless them with gentleness in their hands and sympathy in their hearts.

In the name of Jesus, the Saviour of the World, Amen

The 64 Million Pound Question

Last night the deadline passed and the Great Prize remained unclaimed.  Someone a few miles East of me missed out on £64 million. 

But there is good news of course.  First, the money will go to good causes which has to be better than the overseas property market and upmarket car dealerships where it would have gone.  Secondly, there must be many very tidy houses in Hertfordshire as a result of corners being swept clean in pursuit of June's imagined lottery receipt.

 

 

One glaringly obvious possibility is that the purchaser is inconveniently dead.  Becoming dead has many disadvantages when it comes to money and an inability to claim lottery prizes is just one of them.

 

Overwhelmingly more likely is another category: a living person who didn't expect to win.  Maybe they bought the ticket on the way to a distant destination and never checked back; maybe they bought so many tickets that week that they cannot remember which tickets they did or not have;  maybe they never check their tickets but just buy them on impulse assuming they will be found if they ever win.

 

In other words, either the person died or their dream died.

 

Somewhat the point of Advent is that, although the wait for God may be very long, it is not snatched away by death.  And that everyone who dreams hope wins.