On being full of grace

The funeral service says (quoting the spirit of the psalm) "In the midst of life we are in death", if not 'death' then we have a fair bit of trouble and mess.
In all this comes a message that God deals graciously with us.

Some Readings for this fourth and last week of Advent...some readings are: Micah 5:2-5; Luke 2; Psalm 80:1-7; Hebrews 10:5-10; Luke 1:39-55
For me this season, whilst not being easy. has been one that is rich in experience
and encounters.
We often have to dialogue with death and dying,
we all have to engage with the complexity of our human relationships
and there is a richness of imagery that abounds
and of course all the wonderful words, spoken and sung.

This is necessary, but not always positive;
some people (research tells us) find Christmas very stressful.

One of the recurring themes of Advent is GRACE
This is a "buzz word", of course,
and easily glossed over.
Grace is about the free gift of God
of life itself.
God gives himself, his life to us
in these and many other ways
all the time
powerfully, intimately, gently, abundantly.

The readings point us to a number of different aspects of this.
God gives his grace to the world
We live in a gift of a world.
As our eyes turn to Bethlehem
we are also reminded how human beings
sometimes are hell-bent [advised use of words!] on destroying the giftedness
we have received from God.
Pray for peace in Bethlehem
that they may know the peace that Jesus bring.

Not easy work
The writer of Hebrews reminds us
that the era of grace in which we now live
is a new era
In theological terms, we are in a new era
because the death and resurrection of Jesus
have put us in a new place.
What this might remind us of is that
grace does not just happen accidently
it is as a response of God's deliberate action
While God's grace is abundant and plentiful

It will not just overwhelm us in in our lives
we need to open ourselves to it
and also be responsive to it.
That is; Grace is given, freely given
do we accept this free gift of God's love.

As you reflect on these last 3 or 4 weeks and the richness of experience
what is God calling you to respond to.
Have you responded? Will you respond?

It is likely that we see the gracious gift of people.
Have we taken time to think on this?
How is God calling us to respond to those who he gives us.
Not always easy, but part of the way that we are called to grow into the personhood that God has in store for us.

The theme character for this week is Mary
It is interesting to hear the classical words
that often refer to her.
They are contained in the angel's greeting to her in that house in Nazareth
as she goes about her daily business.
"Hail Mary full of grace"
Don't let anti-Catholic prejudice blind us to the fact that these words come straight from the Bible themselves.
What the angel says to Mary, Gid says to all of us.
Hail full of grace!!
Each one of us has a life full of grace.
It is not the easy cheap grace that titillates us, or makes us feel tipsy
Sometimes it is deeply sad and confronting,
ALWAYS it is drawing us closer to God
and making us more fully human.

What has God been saying to you this season?
Where are you called to respond more freely to God's giftedness
is God saying, perhaps, ....there is someone you need to forgive, or someone whose forgiveness you need to seek
Does God set before you a lonely person to whom you can be a grace?
Is there a situation that you need to resolve?
Is there a freedom that is summoning you?

Will you take this gift, this offer of freedom and embrace it?

As Mary is confronted by the Angel...Hail full of grace!
and as she responds...saying be it done to me according to your word
so the angel says to her this new promise, The Lord be with you
The gift, the grace, the promise of Christmas
as we open ourselves to the sometimes, often, maybe even usually difficult of grace
we encounter Immanuel- God with us
The gift is here, accept it...full of grace
And May the Lord be with you.

O Bethlehem!

Readings for the last Sunday in Advent. Sunday 21st December 2Sam 7:1-11, 16, Magnificat, Romans 16:25-27, Luke 1:26-38

We experience a lot of Christmas input at this time One good question I heard asked about various school and church presentations was:
Why all these stories and plays with a Christmas theme What's wrong with the story of the stable at Bethlehem.........?
There are of course many representations of that story and it is rich in symbolism, myth (in the finest sense of that word) and cultural nuance
When in doubt we should allow God's Word of Scripture to do its wonderful work in our hearts So take time this week to read the readings and just to allow them to speak to you. As you sit through the endless Carol Services take time too to be a little more open. Remember, as we see in this week's readings, that Christmas is God showing himself to us in human form. It is about understanding who God is, and what God is about.
So we find that Mary, when confronted by the angel has to begin on a journey of discovery because she does not understand what all this might mean
^"29But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be"
And Paul tells us at the end of Romans as we read today
"the proclamation of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery that was kept secret for long ages ²⁶but is now disclosed, and through the prophetic writings is made known to all the Gentiles, according to the command of the eternal God, to bring about the obedience of faith"
The sort of message, that so puzzles Mary, is God revealing in Jesus what has been true for all time. This is the overarching message of the Christmas story.
God is revealed to us in the person of Jesus Christ. He is, what controversialist, John AT Robinson describes as The Human Face of God. This is a description I find really helpful.
God cannot be described...he is indeed "the mystery that was kept secret" our philosophy, our history, even our theology does not come close to fully disclosing who God is if we want to know what God is like then the fullest revelation is Jesus.
So what do we see
We find at Christmas a deeply confronting story. God chooses a young girl about whom we know remarkably little.
In the short passage of this morning's Gospel we know more about Joseph ....
a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David
than we do about Mary herself
In fact we know more about Zechariah and Elizabeth than we do about their cousin:
he belonged to the priestly order of Abijah. His wife was a descendant of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth. ⁶Both of them were righteous before God, living blamelessly according to all the commandments and regulations of the Lord. ⁷But they had no children, because Elizabeth was barren, and both were getting on in years.
What might this say to us?
At the very least we are reminded that God views people differently from the way we do.
We make different choices about what is important so we look for wealth, success, power and prestige ..
God looks differently.
There is an invitation here in the Christmas story to look with different eyes at the world in which we live.
In the reading from the Hebrew bible too, we read of David's desire to build a Temple. This seems like a righteous desire, a good thing.
But it is not what God wants.
We do not always get it right, we are often fixated on the material when God is inviting us to look deeper.
These are two modest insights that we get from addressing the stories of the Bible rather than sidetracking it.

Making room

Part of the frustration for us at Christmas is finding Jesus amidst it all.
Let us not so much complain about what Woolworths and Target do, let us rather see the challenge to point ourselves and others to Jesus.
Ask tricky intelligent questions of your youngsters:
Why did God come as a baby?
What is he trying to tell us by being born in a stable?
Why did the shepherds and the wise men come?
and what do you think they said to Mary and Joseph?
What would we say to them?

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

Oh what a gift!

Readings for Sunday 25th November Proper 29-The Feast of Christ the King (Jeremiah 23:1-6 and Luke 1:68-79) or Jeremiah 23:1-6 and Psalm 46 Colossians 1:11-20 Luke 23:33-43

Two images of Jesus help us think about what it means to call him Christ the King.
They are at different ends of the spectrum.
The first is the king born in the stable at Bethlehem,
and the second is the king enthroned on the throne of Calvary.
The stable and the cross.

To be a king in the tradition of Jesus
is to embrace a fundamental contradiction
That we bring nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of the world.
That true wealth and power
is born out of poverty and humility,
that in order to live as a king
you must first learn how to die.
It is a deep mystery,
It is the mystery of what it means to be a Christian.

Because both stories are rich and profound in content, meaning and symbolism
I won't attempt to cover all bases
but perhaps suggest one idea
and then a couple of thoughts
about how we might understand this.

The idea
The idea is that we should allow the stable and the cross
to speak for themselves.
When you look into the stable
and there see the Virgin Mary giving birth to Jesus
what does that cause you to see about your life
about the state of the world
and about what God is calling us to do.
Where do you stand as you witness the event of
The Word becoming flesh?
Are you detached, are you an observer,
or are you a participant?
Are you shepherd, wise man, Jospeh or inn keeper?
What is God speaking to you
as you witness the birth of the eternal Word?

As we do the same thing at the foot of the Cross
what is the king saying to us from his throne?
Does he speak to me as to his mother, am I a soldier ignoring the demands of justice and cooperating in the torture of an innocent man?
Am I the thief who is speaking to Jesus?

How does the king, whether in stable or on the Cross, speak to your life?
Because that is what is important.
It is not just what these very key ideas and stories are meant to say
It is how they speak to your life, to your hopes, desires and dreams
how the mother of Jesus holds your brokenness in her arms,
or how the love of God enfolds you and nurtures you at the breast?

A couple of thoughts
So, for me, I see the invitation to look beyond the values of the world
and recognise that being born a king is not about the trappings
it is about the transformation and change that the good king will bring to the world
and his subjects
it is not about economic growth
but about quality of life
that the king strives to bring about for his subjects.
Is this how we live our lives?
Is this how our new kings will exercise their government?
But let's not just blame them
because is this, also, how we will live our lives?

If the stable reveals such depth
how much more the mystery of the Cross
which says that it is in dying we are born again.
Where do I need to die to self, to embrace the suffering,
to see that kingship is not about fame and fortune
but about character, leadership and sacrifice.

They are the same story.
Contradictory in a way.
But both invite us to see beyond the outward guise of kingship
and embrace the challenge
of humility, service, and sacrifice.

Where does this speak to your life today?

Aeterni Christi Munera

The eternal gift of Christ our king
invites me to tie my child's sandal
and to encourage her
to leap small buildings

The eternal gift of Christ our king
invites me to dare to love
badly
but to dare to do it any way

The eternal gift of Christ our king
invites me to step into the traffic
with a body of one my friends
following in a hearse

The eternal gift of Christ our king
invites me to accept myself with love
not with indulgence
but with love, and perhaps a little care

Such is the eternal gift of Christ
who doesn't seem to think of himself
as a king

written by Stephen Clark , November 2006

You Tube (click below...or at side)

Gratia plena-full of grace

Only one day in this last week of Advent...some readings are: Micah 5:2-5; Luke 2; Psalm 80:1-7; Hebrews 10:5-10; Luke 1:39-55

For me this season, whilst not being easy. has been one that is rich in experience
and encounters.
I have had to dialogue with death and dying,
we all have to engage with the complexity of our human relationships
and there is a richness of imagery that abounds
and of course all the wonderful words, spoken and sung.

This is necessary, but not always positive;
some people (research tells us) find Christmas very stressful.

One of the recurring themes of Advent is GRACE
This is a "buzz word", of course,
and easily glossed over.
Grace is about the free gift of God
of life itself.
God gives himself, his life to us
in these and many other ways
all the time
powerfully, intimately, gently, abundantly.

The readings point us to a number of different aspects of this.
God gives his grace to the world
We live in a gift of a world.
As our eyes turn to Bethlehem
we are also reminded how human beings
sometimes are hell-bent [advised use of words!] on destroying the giftedness
we have received from God.
Pray for peace in Bethlehem
that they may know the peace that Jesus bring.
Not easy work
The writer of Hebrews reminds us
that the era of grace in which we now live
is a new era
In theological terms, we are in a new era
because the death and resurrection of Jesus
have put us in a new place.
What this might remind us is that
grace does not just happen accidently
it is as a response of God's deliberate action
It will not just happen in our lives
we need to open ourselves to it
and also be responsive to it.
That is; Grace is given, freely given
do we accept this free gift of God's love.

As you reflect on these last 3 or 4 weeks and the richness of experience
what is God calling you to respond to.
Have you responded? Will you respond?
It is likely that we see the gracious gift of people.
Have we taken time to think on this?
How is God calling us to respond to those who he gives us.
Not always easy, but p[art of the way that we are called to grow into the personhood that God has in store for us.

The theme character for this week is Mary
It is interesting to hear the classical words
that often refer to her.
They are contained in the angel's greeting to her in that house in Nazareth
as she goes about her daily business.
"Hail Mary full of grace"
Don't let anti-Catholic prejudice blind us to the fact that these words come straight from the Bible themselves.
What the angel says to Mary, Goid says to all of us.
Hail full of grace!!
Each one of us has a life full of grace.
It is not the easy of cheap grace that titillates us, or makes us feel tipsy
Sometimes it is deeplky sad and confronting,
ALWAYS it is drawing us closer to God
and making us more fully human.
What has God been saying to you this season.
Where are you called to respond more freely to God's giftedness
is God saying....there is someone you need to forgive, or someone whose forgiveness you need to seek
Does God set before you a lonely person to who you can be a grace?
Is there a situation that you need to resolve?
Is there a freedom that is summoning you?

Will you take this gift, this offer of freedom and embrace it?

As Mary is confronted by the Angel...Hail full of grace!
and as she responds...saying be it done to me according to your word
so the angel says to her this new promise, The Lord be with you
The gift, the grace, the promise of Christmas
as we open ourselves to the sometimes, often, maybe even usually difficult of grace
we encounter Immanuel- God with us
The gift is here, accept it...full of grace
And May the Lord be with you.