Belonging

Fifth Sunday of Easter , May 22 2011, Acts 7:55-60 Psalm 31:1-5, 15-16 I Peter 2:2-10 John 14:1-14

The story is told of St Christopher

that he searched the world over

for the strongest king to serve

he rejected one after the other

even the devil

and finally he is told to serve God

and to do this by helping people across a dangerous river.

One night a small child comes

and Christopher carries him across the river

he senses the burden getting heavier as he crosses

and it is only as he gets to the other side

that he realises he has been carrying the Christ child.

It is a nice story, and has a good moral.

These days it is regarded as legendary

rather than an account of an actual event.

This does not make it untrue.

It rather points us to the fact

that we are called to serve Christ in the work we do in this world

and that we often don't realise that Christ is there.

It is an Easter encounter

we don't realise at first that Christ is alive and there amongst us.

He surprises us by being in the ordinary place.

The disciples have to learn this.

They are often easily distracted and, well,...just plain 'thick'

Not unlike you and me really!

What is on offer by Jesus is not some fairy tale encounter

nor is it some pious ritual.

It is a glimpse of glory,

it is sharing of the vision of the open heaven and God reigning in power, peace and love.

St Stephen, at his martyrdom, is able to blurt this out.

Things often become very clear to us in the valley of the shadow of death.

For most of the time it is a struggle, like Christopher,

to not insist that God does things in the way that we want them done

and rather to open ourselves to the mystery of what God might be offering us.

Not what we vainly want but what God might be trying to invite us into.

In the halting passage in John 14 again, often read at funerals, Jesus promises a prepared-place.

He is of course speaking imaginally

we are not talking about the Legian Beach Hotel or some Georgian mansion

But rather of the fact that there is a place.

This is a comfort to the dying and the bereaved, I suggest, to know that whether we live or whether we die God has a place for us.

But as we read on we discover that the place is not so much a location as a relationship....

How can we know the way? and Jesus says to you and me

I am the way and the truth and the life

I think once we grasp this we are, indeed, on the way.

This is what Christopher found.

It is not discovery of the answer it is by entering into relationship with Jesus.

This is the relationship which will reveal to us the life of God himself

We Christians believe that this shepherd, this Jesus,

this way, this truth, this life

uniquely draws us into the life of God.

This is not an exclusivist claim it is the promise and hope of relationship.

I will know God, and God will know me.

I will know and be known. It is a glimpse of glory.

This week

• Where is Jesus telling me about himself?
• What do I tell Jesus about myself?
• How does this mutual revelation change us both?
• How do I change my life to better live that experience
• What will I do this week as I live out of this relationship

• .......love.....forgiveness...reconciliation all seek resolution in practice

And grace upon grace....

The Funeral of Molly Carvosso

All Hallows’ Blackwood, 31^st December 2010

1Peter 1:3-6; John 6:35-40

A lot of careless words are spoken at funerals

Often, and almost always, this is done with the best of intentions

We could be pardoned for thinking

that our beloved Molly

will soon rival Mary MacKillop as Australia’s chief saint!

I certainly have something in me that thinks of Molly like this today!

I suspect she would be the first to think this was hilarious

There is a serious side to this

It is not authentically Christian

to try and whitewash a person

at their funeral

so that we can believe

with confidence

that they are going to be with Jesus

in heaven

We must resist at all costs

the temptation to paint Molly in such a light

that God should consider himself lucky

that such a high quality candidate

is deigning to enter heaven.

Yet we often talk like this.

Molly, as I say, would find this hilarious!

With her wry smile and impish look

she would say to me when I would be pulling her leg

“Ahh go on with you, don’t be so silly”

Molly knew, as we should be glad to know.

If we have to be perfect to get into heaven

then none of us ever gets there.

We hear Peter tell us today that it’s not what we have done, but what we believe

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead

It is as the hungry we come to Christ,

and find that he feeds us with the bread of life.

That as we believe in him

so we may have eternal life.

Earlier in John’s Gospel

(which we recall at this Christmas time)

We hear God saves us not because we deserve it

but because God wants it

not because we are so good that we earn merit

but by God’s grace.

Grace is the word of Christmas

it means FREE GIFT

all these gifts that we get at Christmas

are not because it is jesus’s birthday

but to celebrate that our God is the god who gives.

And John says it’s not just “grace”

It’s “grace upon grace”

Today, Molly would laugh

at being good enough to get into heaven.

But she also knew

that God loves her

because God wants to love her.

She wants each one of us to know that today.

God wants to love you.

It’s grace…and not just grace…but grace upon grace upon grace.

Not just Molly, but each one of us. Today is a good day to turn and receive that free gift

Faith is for now!

Will we get to a point when we don't have to rely on faith any more?

Yes, but it is not now!
St Paul tells us that there are three great things(1)-Faith Hope and Love
and the greatest of these is love
And the hymn writer (2) reminds us

Faith will vanish into sight;
hope be emptied in delight;
love in heaven will shine more bight;
therefore give us love.

Readings for Proper 14 -Year C - 8th August 2010...11th Sunday after Pentecost

Isaiah 1:1, 10-20 and Psalm 50:1-8, 22-23
Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16
Luke 12:32-40

When all things are brought to completion, as God intends
there will be no need to have faith
because we will know
We will see what we have always hoped for
and we will no longer have to have faith
because we will know.

But we are not at that point
so the way we operate is as a person of faith
and we get a definition of that today in Hebrews 11

To illustrate that the writer tells us the story of Abraham
and Sarah
who received the promise of God
That they would be the ancestors of a great people…
they had no evidence of this
indeed rather the contrary, they were both old
and it seemed unlikely.
So the challenge of faith for them

was to believe
rather than to know or to prove
Faith, is assurance without fact
Being convinced of what we are promised even though we don’t have the evidence.
In fact it is the way that the life of God operates.
The criticism that faith is ‘unscientific’ is true
--it is not meant to be
we have faith where we cannot prove.
If we can prove, or see
then why do we need to have faith.
This is not to say that because we do not have evidence
then we are talking nonsense
or we are lying
we are saying we are not in the scientific realm at all
we are in the life of faith.
And we assert that the life of God
is about faith
not of proof.

Love
This should not be a surprise to us
there are a lot of things that are about faith
rather than fact
and most of them are pretty important.
Chief amongst these is love
Love is not about evidence, facts and measurements

---we don’t say if there are three out of five characteristics (faithfulness, children, laughter, sharing pain, cooperation) and/or
--if a relationship has lasted longer than 15 months and/or
--if after three break ups the couple are still together
then they are in love

that would be absurd
The substance is actually not measurable
and is at least as much about what we can’t count
as what we can count.
Our life in God falls in this same sort of area.
Character
More than this, we would say
this is what makes this relationship so powerful;
So the example of Abraham tells us about keywords:
Like trust, promise, hope, vision and aspiration.
The journey of faith is about implementing
these realities.
Indeed these realities cannot be manufactured
(we can’t go to the shop and buy them!)
it is only by a journey of faith
that they can be realised in our lives.

Jesus
We see this journey chiefly in Jesus
It is the journey that will confront everything that destroys us
and will give us the power to be born anew and to come through the experience of death
not just at life’s end
but in every aspect of our life.
So faith is a pretty important journey!!

Is it a journey you are prepared to make?
Where is God inviting you to step out beyond the bounds of certainty
and walk in faith?
It is not an easy decision
but it is the decision that is set before us.
Will we walk by faith and live?
Or will we stumble by our own limited sight
and die?
Where is God inviting you to step out beyond the bounds of certainty
and walk in faith?

YOUTUBE LINK

1. 1 Corinthians 13
2. Bishop Christopher Wordsworth 1862 - Gracious Spirit Holy Ghost

On not being impotent

The readings for this week are those for 25th April 2010 the 4th Sunday in Easter. Acts 9:36-43 • Psalm 23 • Revelation 7:9-17 • John 10:22—30
Today is also observed as Commemoration of ANZAC, and it can be St Mark’s Day.

The resurrection stories tease out for Christians what it means to live life in the light of the resurrection.
What does it mean to see life through the lenses of the resurrection?
What they discovered is that things were rather different.


The promises of Jesus seemed to be becoming true.
What are these promises?
Well, there are many. Jesus promised, for example , to be with his disciples always.
What a mind blowing thought!
Jesus is with us all the time. This might mean that any situation we find ourselves in. Jesus is already there.
Whether it be sickness, difficulty, spiritual difficulty.
Or let’s face it when we rejoice at a new birth, walk into a new job, meet an old friend. Walk into Coromandel Primary School to spend an hour mentoring one of our children. Jesus is with us.
We need not fear, nor feel alone. We need not fear as though we do not have capacity to cope.
Because the disciples also discovered that Jesus’s promise to send the Holy Spirit to equip the disciples to do what needed to be done was also true. They could speak the Gospel and people would understand, they could pray and prayers were answered.
What do you believe Jesus has equipped you to do?’
Part of our problem is that we don’t seem to think that we can or need to do anything.
But we see in the lovely story in Acts 9:36-43 where Peter heals through prayer a young girl who is sick, perhaps dead, that the disciples discover another promise of Jesus.
You will do what I have done and greater
Do we have the courage to kneel down and trust that promise as Peter did?
New Learning
Where might Jesus be inviting you to live in the light of the promise?
To put aside the sense of living out of impotence and shallow convention, and rather to live out of the spirit of resurrexion

Beginning the journey again

There is more than abundance of Scripture to read during this season.We begin Holy Week on 28th March with Palm Sunday. The Liturgy of the Palms which is a prelude to the main liturgy of the day ( Luke 19:28-40;Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29) and read as part of a procession before the service begins. The Liturgy of the Passion involves the reading of the Passion Story according to Luke (Isaiah 50:4-9a; Psalm 31:9-16; Philippians 2:5-11; Luke 22:14-23:56 or Luke 23:1-49) Just take it slowly and read what you can /what you feel moved to but try to allow yourself to be drawn into the personal mystery of what God is doing for the world and in your life
Another Palm Sunday Homily is here

Is God so demanding that he will not stop until we are totally destroyed.
Sometimes it feels like that.
As Sunday begins with a "triumphal entry" into Jerusalem
we can spend time wondering what the nature of this event was
It is good to be accurate, but not good to nit-pick.
The truth is that the Gospels offer us variety in the accounts and insights of the last few days.
The Palm Sunday story is one full of hope and expectation
The Good Friday is one of confusion and desolation
The Easter story is one of excitement, uncertainty and expectation.

It is a journey to be travelled
we do not stand still
we are engaged powerfully
because this journey of hopeful expectation, of desolation and confusion
is exactly what our lives our like.
Whether it be our excitement at the birth of a child,
or our desolation when a child is miscarried.
Or a job that is exactly what we hoped for
but is cut short by a cancer diagnosis, or a debilitating car accident.
Even if it is only the hope that we have when we are young
that fails to be realised
when we are old

This is a journey that we all make

We are invited, too, by the Easter experience
to realise that dashed hopes, desolation and confusion
are only a step along the way
They are not the climax or the conclusion.
These stories fill us with a sense of excitement, challenge and expectation
that we are entering uncharted waters.

scrutiny
as we look at our life
where is the sense of hopefulness.
What do we long for, what fulfillment do we seek?
This is Palm Sunday.
We don't need to anticipate Good Friday yet.
What do we believe God is trying to do in our life
what do we want God to do?
What sense of excitement, hope, fear
do we note as we sense what God might have in store for us?
What encourages us forward,
what holds us back.

Allow this week to be a time of challenge and exploration
as we permit God to show us more of what there is in store for us
and pray for grace to respond.

I once was lost

Readings for the 4th Sunday in Lent, March 14th, 2010. Joshua 5:9-12, Psalm 32 2 Corinthians 5:16-21,Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

God's unremitting action towards us is to bring about reconciliation.
To draw us closer
To unite us to each other.
In a world that is at times harsh and difficult
we turn to God
because God is already there showing us the way back to wholeness.
The Hebrew Scripture readings through Lent remind us
that people are slow to understand this about God.
They are constantly wandering off and separating themselves from God.
This indeed is a major theme, almost from the beginning of Creation.
And God moves to bring us back.
So we read one of these accounts in the passages for this week. (Joshua 5:9-12)
The theme is familiar, and recurrent.
We are called back by God, into fellowship with God.
It is not the first time, and it will not be the last.
And we are invited into the story of Jesus, par excellence, often called
The Prodigal Son.
I always note when talking about this masterly story
that it is a story about God
rather than about the two sons.
It would be better called something like The Reconciling Father.
This Father, who is of course God, is always ready to meet us at our lowest ebb.
This is an important point to grasp.
False expectations
We often think that in order to encounter God
that we have, as it were, to be on our best behaviour
but the Bible tells us
both in the Old and New Teastaments
that it is when we are desolate
when we are empty
when we cannot of ourselves
come to God
that God comes to us.

It is when we are hanging on the cross
that we are most open to knowing God.
This isn't easy to grasp
though maybe we understand the truth of it
better than we think.
As I reflect on my encounters with God
it is precisely at these points
when I am most sure of who God is for me
and what God does.

Experience
The good thing about the parable of the Forgiving Father
or as we call it the Prodigal Son
is that we don't have much difficulty placing ourself somewhere in the scheme of things.
Whether it be as that young man who desperately runs at life
and is ravaged by it
and ends up desolate and in despair
not knowing what to do.
Or whether it be as that self-righteous one
who sees the waistrel come back after having had a whacko of a good time
and being treated as though nothing had happened.
(This is of course not a true appreciation of the situation)
Well, we often think of ourselves like that.
So we can place ourselves in the story.
And of course as we see the forgiving Father
standing on the hillside
longing for his child to return
many of us know the pain of that too.

Reconciliation played out
As the story of reconciliation is played out
we see it abounds in multi-various forms.
And we note how it happens.

1. Reconciliation happens sometimes when, often in our desperation,
we choose to act differently
The youngest son decided to put his pride to one side
and to come on home.
The opportunity thus created
the Father readily welcomes him back.
But the Father could not do so unless the son provided him
with the opportunity

Is there something in our life that needs us to pay
attention and create opportunity for reconciliation to happen?

It may be as simple as going to see someone,
or ringing, or saying sorry.

2.Reconciliation happens when we make ourselves open for it to happen
That Father stands on that hillside day after day and longs for the son to come home.
This is an image of God, of course, but it is also something of a pattern for us to follow.
Are we ready to let reconciliation happen
when it will happen?
So often we want people to stew in their own misery (and perhaps we want this for ourselves)
we feel hurt and rejected
and often even the prospect of reconciling
seems difficult.
Will we be opening ourselves to more hurt?
will we be rejected once again?
will the reconciliation be short-lived?
will we be exploited?

And yet the Father stands waiting day after day.
In those places in our life where we know there is a need for healing, restoration
for reconciliation
Are we prepared to let it happen?
Can we put aside our own hurt
and allow the greater drama to transpire?

3. Reconciliation is always wider than we imagine
and entices us to greater reconciliation than we immediately conceptualise.
This story is not just about the father and the Prodigal
it is also about the Father and the older son
and the older brother and the younger brother.
Again we resonate in this story
because this is often close to our experience.
Our sibling relationships are filled with fear and jealousy
doubt and insecurity.
I am ever grateful and mindful of the fact that my own parents
tried as hard as they could
to love each one of their children
and not to allow us to say in that childish way
"Love me more!"
The older son is in need of reconciliation
He cannot bear this brother

Hear the bitterness of the words:
"This son of yours..." he says to his father
and the father has to remind him
"This your brother was lost but now is found, was dead but is now alive"
The father, too, I suspect
and the older brother need to be reconciled
Does the father hear the older son's great hurt
at having to stay at home
it is easy to blame him as a caricature
but we can just allow that there is always more going on
and that reconciliation is very much a two way street.

This week

Where is God pointing you to be reconciled?
Where are the places in your
life where we have to say:
This has gone on long enough! Things need to change.

Pray carefully for:
The courage to act differently,

to move away from bitterness towards reconciliation.
Seek to deliberately construct opportunities for openness and healing.
Always be on the lookout for more from God than we asked for or imagined

JESUS, you are more for us than we imagine or deserve

Grant me the courage to live differently
give me opportunity and desire to be made whole
let me live expansively in your Spirit
rather than narrowly in my smallness
for you are my Hope
you are my Joy
you are my Life

The Spirit of Jesus

During Lent we are thinking about the Apostle’s Creed
Traditionally Lent has been a time to prepare for baptism and the renewal of baptismal vows. The Apostles’ Creed contains the basic statements of Christian faith that Christians have traditionally affirmed at their baptism
The Apostle's Creed has three sections and the last one reads

I believe in the Holy Spirit
The holy catholic church
the communion of saints
the resurrection of the body
and the life everlasting

It may seem a curious hodge-podge of materials. Almost as if all of the left-over doctrines are just thrown in to make sure that the ground is covered!



But of course that is not what is going on.
Indeed the whole of the third section follows on in Trinitarian form.

I believe in God the Father
I believe in God the Son
and now
I believe in God the Holy Spirit

this church, communion, the promise of resurrection and the mystery of life in God
all flow out of the fact that we are born again (as Jesus promised) of the Holy Spirit


This third section is telling us about what God is doing now

and what God is looking to do in the future.
God is creating a universal community
(this is what the expression catholic church should be taken to mean)
open & inclusive
God is drawing together a community of chosen people the communion of saints
this is not an exclusive community, but an inclusive community (catholic)
of people who are chosen to be
what God wants them to be
the sign of this community is the resurrection of the body & everlasting life

At funerals I remind people that the Christian view of God and death
is not reincarnation, or oblivion, or meaninglessness
It is not that we somehow become a part of a universal spirit, and are assumed into God or the universe
We believe that we continue to have meaningful, unique and distinct life.
And just as God has cared for us and loved us since our conception (and perhaps before)
so, that care will continue into eternity
unique, distinct, personal.
this is The Life in the Spirit
It is what God is doing in us now and in the promise of the future

THIS WEEK

Take a little time to ask God to show you more about what the Spirit is working in you
What is it that God is calling you to be and do?
Can we pray to put aside our own limited view of life and embrace the vision and promise that God has for us?

Who is Christmas about?

One of the disarming things about a baby
is that it grabs our attention.
My daughter and I were sitting in a shopping centre the other day having lunch
and there next to us was a sleeping baby.
We both admired and smiled at said infant.
This is the universal experience of people
and is a reminder that Christmas
is about something other than ourselves.

We're disarmed by this baby
for a few moments.
our self-interest
and narrow focus on our own little world
is challenged.

Then we discover
that coming together in this child are two things
the eternal Word of God
and the human race.
While this concerns us
and indeed affects us
WE are not the centre of this story.

To remind us of the fact that this is God's story
in which we are caught up,
and not OUR story
in which we might deign to allow God a place
there is that focus which grabs our attention.
It is a baby.
The one thing in human life
that serves to remind me
that life does not revolve around me alone.

If we latch on to this point
if we understand that life is about God
then things will work rather differently.

Perhaps this is why we so often feel
that things are out of control.
Or why we have no purpose.
We are looking at ourselves,
when we should be focussing on God.

How might God be trying to grab your attention
at this time,
and what might God be saying...
..it might indeed be by a baby
..or a particular concern...
..an opportunity, or sickness....
...a challenge, a failure or a success...
Very often it will be about another person
and we're challenged to understand that there is more going on in life
Than my narrow wants or wishes
The language of Christmas
is rather of hope....
The Prince of Peace, the Wonderful Counsellor,
reconciliation between enemies

the invitation is to shift the perspective from selfish wishfulness
which is almost always about me and what I want
to HOPE
and what God wants for me, and you.

The baby reminds us.
This is not about me.
It is at the very least about a baby,
it is in reality about what God's hope is for you and for me.

Hoping

Readings for Sunday December 7th, 2008: Advent 2 Isaiah 40:1-11; Psalm 85, 2 Pet 3:8-15a; Mark 1:1-8

Advent, as we journey towards Christmas is filled with hope
as we look forward to the presence of Jesus in our lives.
We have thought in the last few weeks
about some of these big words, hope, faith, trust and belief
what is it that we hope for
It seems important to get this right
as the language of faith
is about what we hope
Faith, the writer to the Hebrews tells us,
is the assurance of things hoped for
...and
So it is not unreasonable just to try and think about what we hope for.
We confuse, I suspect, the words 'hoping' and 'wishing'
Something that is not hard to grasp as we are very wish list focussed at Christmas.
But even the dimmest of us realises that our hopes are deeper than our wishes.
The new car that we wish for pales into insignificance
beside the hope that we may live a meaningful life, or that we might have trust in our relationships.
To help us understand this,
God has given us in the Christmas revelation a profound insight into the difference between wishing and hoping
Our hope is not founded on 'stuff', not even on that much bandied about phrase 'infrastructure' (or what we might have called in the past...institutions),
our hope is not even in the Bible or the Church
Hope is founded on Jesus.
So getting in touch with hope in advent is about getting in touch with Jesus
one of the great Anglican Archbishops, St Anselm wrote this (here)
Little man, rise up! Flee your preoccupations for a little while. Hide yourself for a time from your turbulent thoughts. Cast aside, now, your heavy responsibilities and put off your burdensome business. Make a little space free for God; and rest for a little time in God.
Enter the inner chamber of your mind; shut out all thoughts. Keep only thought of God, and thoughts that can aid you in seeking him. Close your door and seek God. Speak now, my whole heart! Speak now to God, saying, I seek your face; your face, Lord, will I seek.
And come you now, O Lord my God, teach my heart where and how it may seek you, where and how it may find you.......
Reveal yourself to me when I seek you, for I cannot seek you unless you teach me, nor find you unless you reveal yourself.
Let me seek you in longing, let me long for you in seeking; let me find you by loving you and love you in the act of finding you.

1. Let Advent be a season when we take the time to be in touch with God. If we do not take time to combat the busy-ness then it will take over.

Where else might be in touch with Jesus? A couple of weeks ago we were reminded that we find Jesus not in some high mountain shrine, or even in heaven...but in the lives and service of the humblest and the weakest (see Matthew 25).
Our hope will be discovered as we care for the sick, help the poor, feed the hungry, house the homeless
Far from being an exercise in despair we discover as we touch the lives of others
that we too are touched and filled with hope

2. Let Advent be a season when we find Christ in the needy

And lastly we all know that this frenzied season is about Giving and Generosity, not harding and selfishness.
It celebrates that our God is a Giver.
Giving his Son, in human form shows us that
being in touch with our own hope
is also about an invitation to us to be generous.
We sometimes lose the focus of this
it is not about getting the biggest pile of presents
(how often we teach this to our children!!)
It is about being challenged to become givers ourselves.
Is there not hope in the idea that we can do better than just lock ourselves in our tiny world

3. Let Advent be a time when we are challenged to be givers

1. Advent: the season when we take the time to be in touch with God.
2. Advent :the season when we find Christ in the needy
3. Advent: the season when we are challenged to be givers

Making room

Some thoughts for Christmas Day.There is a lot of scripture that we can read to enliven Christmas Day: Luke 2:1-14, Luke 2:8-20, John 1:1-14, Isaiah 9:2-7; Isaiah 62:6-12; & Isaiah 52:7-10 are some of the lections set for that day.
No doubt if you have been to a Christmas Nativity Play this year
you have seen Mary and Joseph
trudging, looking for somewhere to stay.
It can be quite a frightening thing
I had a brief time earlier this year when on holiday we were without somewhere to stay, and it would have been easy to panic.
Of course it would have done no good!

The Primate, Archbishop Philip Aspinall writes this year

Two weeks ago I was in Bethlehem where Jesus and Christmas were born. A Palestinian man said to me ‘2000 years ago we made a mistake saying “There is no room at the inn". Today there’s plenty of room.’

This is one of the aspects that we naturally think about at this Christmas time.
The little town of Bethlehem
Can we encourage our government to actively work for peace in the Middle East?
rather than promoting the selfish warring policies of self-interest
which so often seem to characterise our western interests.
In a complex world it is not always possible to feel that we can affect the affairs of the world
so maybe we have to focus more intently on making room in our small lives.
Can we simply "make room for Jesus"?

It is one of the threads of mystery and poetry
that runs through the birth stories.
We all know well the catchcry....no room at the inn.
This casual observation is also a hint at the real human problem
No room for Jesus in our lives.

Making room for the God of hope
Because at Christmas we hear a story about a baby
and babies' lives are filled with hope.
They are about what is yet to happen,
the promise that is to come.
We understand this pretty well,
when we visit a newborn
our words to that baby,
are strong and hopeful
...he looks like a footballer,
she has strong lungs
what a fine head of hair
As they grow
the hopes become more substantial, and complex
as children become adults we see that there is hope for independence
that there is great potential
that there is uniqueness.
We muck this up quite a lot
but at Christmas we need to take time to realise
that this struggle to make all this work
is what God intends for us.
It is how we become what God intends us to be.
So I say to you
encourage the hope in your children.
ENCOURAGE do not criticise
but rather voice the hope and offer the support
that babies demand and deserve.
When Jesus is born as a baby this is one of the things that God is showing us.
Fulfillment, maturity, growth
are like the growth of a baby
are what God intends life to be like.

Making room for the God of peace
For most of us Christmas is stressful
as well as joyful
for the lonely and the sad
it can be incredibly depressing.
We love the closeness that it means to family and friends
yet it also exposes
the very lack of peace that the season proclaims.
We are more conscious of soldiers in Iraq
of difficult community tensions
of family pressures.
Peace demands that we address these issues
and Christmas is for us a sign that what we articulate today
needs to pass into reality in our day to day lives.
We can easily say "no racial prejudice", "no war",
on Christmas Day
but we need also to put it into practice from day to day.
Peace will mean simple day to day application
of forgiveness
at home
at work
at school.
Do you want peace then practise it.

Making room for the God of love.
It is a commonplace to say that Christmas is about love.
The carols say it.
Love came down at Christmas.
We are at our most vulnerable in the face of a baby.
We are disarmed, most of us,
and just want to hold it and love it.
Even arrogant and tough young men
have been known to melt.
Do you want to love?
then love,
do you want to be loved
then allow yourself to be vulnerable?

There is much, much more that could be said.
If we want to know what Christmas is about.
Look not at Santa.
look at the baby.
Make room for him
in your life.
It may be that you cannot
put him at the centre
but is there a stable somewhere in your life.

Do you want Christ?

The Christ who is hope
The Christ who is peace
The Christ who is love.

Then make room for him in your life

Beginning the journey

There is more than abundance of Scripture to read during this season.We begin Holy Week on 28th March with Palm Sunday. The Liturgy of the Palms which is a prelude to the main liturgy of the day ( Luke 19:28-40;Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29) and read as part of a procession before the service begins. The Liturgy of the Passion involves the reading of the Passion Story according to Luke (Isaiah 50:4-9a; Psalm 31:9-16; Philippians 2:5-11; Luke 22:14-23:56 or Luke 23:1-49) Just take it slowly and read what you can /what you feel moved to but try to allow yourself to be drawn into the personal mystery of what God is doing for the world and in your life
Another Palm Sunday Homily is here

Is God so demanding that he will not stop until we are totally destroyed.
Sometimes it feels like that.
As Sunday begins with a "triumphal entry" into Jerusalem
we can spend time wondering what the nature of this event was
It is good to be accurate, but not good to nit-pick.
The truth is that the Gospels offer us variety in the accounts and insights of the last few days.
The Palm Sunday story is one full of hope and expectation
The Good Friday is one of confusion and desolation
The Easter story is one of excitement, uncertainty and expectation.

It is a journey to be travelled
we do not stand still
we are engaged powerfully
because this journey of hopeful expectation, of desolation and confusion
is exactly what our lives our like.
Whether it be our excitement at the birth of a child,
or our desolation when a child is miscarried.
Or a job that is exactly what we hoped for
but is cut short by a cancer diagnosis, or a debilitating car accident.
Even if it is only the hope that we have when we are young
that fails to be realised
when we are old

This is a journey that we all make

We are invited, too, by the Easter experience
to realise that dashed hopes, desolation and confusion
are only a step along the way
They are not the climax or the conclusion.
These stories fill us with a sense of excitement, challenge and expectation
that we are entering uncharted waters.

scrutiny
as we look at our life
where is the sense of hopefulness.
What do we long for, what fulfillment do we seek?
This is Palm Sunday.
We don't need to anticipate Good Friday yet.
What do we believe God is trying to do in our life
what do we want God to do?
What sense of excitement, hope, fear
do we note as we sense what God might have in store for us?
What encourages us forward,
what holds us back.

Allow this week to be a time of challenge and exploration
as we permit God to show us more of what there is in store for us
and pray for grace to respond.