Amazing Grace

As a priest you don't get to pick your parishioners
nor should you!
But you get gems
(almost everyone is a a gem)

I want to say about Grace that she was Amazing

Unfortunately Barack Obama
stole my theatrics by singing at a funeral
"Amazing Grace how sweet the sound"

He had better press coverage!
None of us who knew her
would doubt that she was amazing
I chose the classic passage from John

         God so loved the world, that he gave his only son

Because it totally characterises Grace's faith.
God is not out to get us.,
God seeks to bring us together.

In the last few weeks we have talked about a number of difficult issues
Issues where human relationships have torn us apart.
Always we have spoken
of God's desire that people should  be
brought together

We don't always get this
One day as I left (as I usually do )
with what ever little prayer I could offer
I prayed for 'reconciliation within the family'
at funeral times this is often to the fore.

I was moved that Grace
in some weakness and physical discomfort
was able to to say something like
"yes Lord"
It was her way
and her desire

Yes Lord
we believe
that you are the Christ
and can and will bring us together

I thank God
that I have known a faithful woman
who was Amazing
so trusting
and who, along with God's  Holy Spirit
invites us to trust
in the  amazing grace
reconciliation, love and forgiveness

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

The way of love

The readings for this week are those for 2n May 2010 the 5^th Sunday in Easter. Acts 11:1-18 • Psalm 148 • Revelation 21:1-6 • John 13:31-35

We don’t live in the same world, either today or tomorrow. So we need to work out how we are going to respond to change, because whether we like it or not we will virtually always find that we have never properly imagined the future, and we almost certainly have distorted the past, for better or for worse.

The story of the Acts of the Apostles reminds us that as the disciples encountered the Holy Spirit, they also found that their ideas and certainties were being challenged to their very core

What we read today (Acts 11:1-18) doesn’t resonate easily with us. It is about the first Jewish Christians coming to the realisation that God’s promise went beyond their understanding of what it meant to be faithful. Was this just about the clearly defined, but small, world of Judaism

Or was something different happening here.?

The first Christians had to leave behind their preconception that God was operating inside their framework and come to understand that they were being called to move outside their comfort zone. This would no longer just be a Jews-only club.

Where, we might ask ourselves, are we being challenged to think more expansively than our prejudices have led us to.

Jesus teaching

Jesus reminds his disciples that they are to be open to the true spirit of love, and not the spirit of legalism, tradition, or the past.

In the end, it will be how Christians love

each other

and those they are called to serve

that we will see the hallmark of the true Christian life

New Learning

Where might Jesus be inviting you to move beyond the comfort zone of the familiar, the traditional, the made up minds of the past?

Is there somewhere where we can love better? Where am I challenged to love Jesus and God better, in my human relationships and the way I live my life. of resurrexion

Eat, Pray, Love- some reflections for Christmas

There are many readings for the services of Christmas have a look for example at Isaiah 9:2-7, Titus 2:11-14, Luke 2.

Also Matthew 1, and John 1 give us the perspective of the other evangelists

One of the popular books doing the rounds is Elizabeth Gilbert's "Eat, Pray,Love"

It is the story of how a woman attempts to put her life back together after a particularly messy relationship breakdown

And she identifies these three components

Eat, Pray, and Love

as key components of the healing

she was able to gain.

It strikes me that this is also something we can think about as we approach Christmas

Because it is a time when we are drawn

To eat, to pray and to love.

These are part of the fundamental invitations to life

that Christmas seems to be about.

EAT

Thrown back on her own resources, Gilbert discovers

that it is in sharing time with other people

over food

that she is able to regain the balance of her life.

Most of us will spend a special time today eating with family and friends.

But we have come to live in a world

that seems to have forgotten that this is not just a convenience

it is a necessity.

To take time to eat together

is an important, restorative and human thing to do.

It is no surprise that as we come to worship

we are reminded of Jesus's eating with us his disciples.

We not only satisfy our bodies but we encounter God

and are fed spiritually.

PRAY

Gilbert also realises that there is a need to take time

to attend to the spirit

to be with God

for her she uses the word "pray"

as a sort of shorthand.

What she is getting at is that each of us needs to attend to

the Spirit of God within us.

To take time each day to be in touch with God.

Some of us find this easy

some of us find this hard or foreign.

Gilbert's advice is good advice...

...I am not sure about this but if I have a need

then let me just put it out there before God...

I have faith enough to know that this sort of process works

not because we pray

but because God is faithful.

As we come to Church today

for a whole range of reasons

can I invite you to "put it out there before God"

As the shepherds come to the stable

they do not really know what is going to happen

the wise men think they know

but they don't fully understand

what we all encounter as we come to God

is that we are moved on

Deepened, changed.

LOVE

What we, like Gilbert, go on to discover

is that if we pay attention to the ordinary stuff of life

(like eating)

if we put it out there before God

(called praying)

then the transformation come through the third possibility

which is Love.

That in the ordinary we find we can love and are loved.

It is what parents, like Joseph and Mary, very quickly discover

they can love their children in a way they never imagined.

We discover that we are capable of taking risks

and allowing ourselves to be vulnerable

and rather than avoiding each other

by fast food with no possibility of human encounter;

or by paying no attention to our inner life

through prayer and drawing close to God.

That if we allow ourselves to challenge those shallownesses

we discover a new depth and meaning of life

called LOVE.

This Christian sacrament, a simple meal

reminds us that

Christ's broken body is shared

not sadistically

but so that we might also be encouraged to break ourselves open

to Eat together and share our lives,

to "put it out there" before God

and allow the possibility of a deeper spirit

through prayer

or however we name it.

And at Christmas to name the possibility of love.

Love which will enliven, strengthen and change us.

May we all eat well, pray well, and love well

this and every day.

A poem for the Celebration of the Feast of Christ the King

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

Stephen Clark
November 2006

The Feast of Christ the King is kepton Sunday 22nd November 2009

Being set free-for freedom

Readings for Sunday 30th August 2009, The 13th Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 22) :Song of Songs 2:8-13; Psalm 45; James 1:17-27; Mark 7:1-8,14-23

It is good to be challenged.
On TV these days we are challenged all the time!
There are endless game shows, Australian Idol, Temptation, Survivor
in which there is challenge.
But these days I often just find the News challenging!
Some days...Iraq, Lebanon, Israel, Al Qaeda, Bombings, bank hold ups
Plane crashes, global warming, petrol, endless political drivel and infighting...... the news comes on and I feel my heart sink.
I often don't want to be challenged with so much stuff that I can do nothing about.

Today's readings remind us that there is about life a sense of challenge
which is good and right
and if we are not to be overwhelmed by it
we need to focus on the meaningful challenges

Right relationships
The curious passage in The Song of Songs
is a an invitation to see that our intimate relationships
are called to be exciting and thrilling.
Many of us settle into a passive neutrality in our closest relationships
as though this is what God intends for us.
At least this passage reminds us that
there may be more that is possible
and we need perhaps to respond to the challenge
to seek depth
than to avoid the challenge and risk of getting close to another person.
This is not always easy!!

Responding to challenge.
James remind us there are certain challenges that we need to watch out for in relationships
and he names some key principles:

• generosity---which he sees as an inspired choice that we make about the character of our life. We choose to be generous


• we need to listen rather than speak---this again is a choice that we make about the way we conduct our relationships


• be slow to anger---another choice.Often we think of anger as something that overtakes us, that we have no control over. But james in suggesting that we be slow to anger is saying . We choose whether or not we are angry.


• Other choices her talks about are : turning away from wickedness, and putting into practice with our lives what we say with our lips
  

It is important to get the force of all this.
The challenge is to make choices in our lives which put the gospel into practice
and not just mouth platitudes.

Jesus puts this another way when he talks about the competing interests
of religion and the heart.
In a major thrust of his teaching he reminds us that it is not the rules and regulations of religion
that is important
it is the affairs of the heart.
In the end the bad and good that we get caught up in
comes about from the decisions of our heart.
This is not popular stuff.
But it is reality.
Wickedness, evil, sin...however we name it..
comes about from choices we make and not accidently.

Accidents do happen!
I hear you say
and the consequences of accidents can be dire.
But what we are concerned with is not what accidently happens
but what deliberately happens.

Whe St Paul says to early churches
"It is for freedom that we have been set free" (cf Galatians 5)
he is not making the claim of some political manifesto
but rather a statement about God's intentions for humanity
...that we might be free to choose to do God's will
rather than to be pushed about by our own selfishness and sin.
In classical theology
we understand this to mean that we cannot actually do this
without the grace of God given to us through the life death and resurrection
of Jesus Christ.
To be free from anger...we need Jesus
to be a truly generous person...we need Jesus
to be lovign and caring...we need Jesus.

We fail in so far as we think we can do this of ourselves.
One of our Prayer Book collects says...we have no power of ourselves, to help ourselves
we are reminded that we need to allow God to dwell within us
and to reach outside of our inward looking self
if we are to be as God intends us to be

This week
Perhaps this is "tough love" or a reality check.
Stop copping out and blaming others for behaviour:
meanness, hurtfulness, poorly controlled anger, spite, and all other manner of sinful relationship stuff
take ressponsibility and choose to be free.
We cannot do this without Christ.
So our prayer this week?

Lord make us free
as Jesus himself is free.
Free to love you radically
and put aside our sinful ways. Lord make us free. AMEN

Being a Good Shepherd

Readings for today, Easter 4, May 3rd 2009 , can be taken from Acts 4:5-12, Psalm 23 APBA p 243, 1 John 3:16-24, John 10:11-18

This comforting idea of The Good Shepherd

has appealed to countless generations of people.

Even those of us who don’t have a rural bone in our bodies

find it strangely comforting.

St John tells us that the difference between a Good Shepherd and the hired help

is that the good shepherd puts his life on the line for the sheep.

And we know Jesus’s care for us

in that he laid down his life for us.

And the moral point is (John tells us) 

that seeing how the Good Shepherd lay down his life

We ought to lay down our lives for one another

The Character of our relationships 

Is this how our relationships are characterised?

By the fact that we put our lives out there for those we love.

We don’t always get this right.

When we marry for example

we can make the mistake of thinking that our spouse is there to fulfil us.

The Good Shepherd idea would be that it is rather the other way around

We are there to see that our spouse is fulfilled

our life is at the service of those who we are called to love.

Not a recipe for being exploited

(indeed there should be a mutuality about this...it should go both ways)

THIS WEEK

we could give some constructive thought to where 

the Spirit invites us to ‘lay down our life’.

Is there someone whose life is our to care for?

How do we serve the other?

Interesting probably to think about those who we feel we don’t want to serve. What might that be telling us

The Good Shepherd is a challenge not just to a comforting image

but to a genuine disposition of our life.

The Good Shepherd lays down their life?

and 

Jesus, let me not a hired hand

show me 

how to truly care for others

as you do

that I may truly 

lay down my life

A present far too small

Reflection for Good Friday, April 10 2009. Isaiah 52:13-53:12; Psalm 22; 1 Corinthians 1:18-31; Hebrews 10:16-25; John 18:1-19:42

The great hymn of Isaac Watts often sung on Good Friday, When I survey the wondrous cross says in its final verse

Were the whole realm of nature mine,
that were a present far too small;
love so amazing, so divine,
demands my soul, my life, my all.

I am often struck how some "religiously correct" versions change the original word
present to the more religiously correct word
offering
The two words don't mean the same thing, do they?
An offering is something that is required of us
it is our duty, our reponsibility
A present is an expression of love
and is given rather than exacted as a tribute.

Watts, I suspect, deliberately used the word present
and we should not use the word "offering" any more.

What this points us to
is that the story of the life and death of Jesus Christ
is not a remote religious tale
it is about the way we live our life.
It is in the world of 'presents' rather than 'offerings'

It is about how we live outside church
not inside
It is about present rather than offering

So Watts continues not with religious sentiment
but rather with the total commitment of life

love so amazing, so divine,
demands my soul, my life, my all

thus all the things we know about Good Friday
and all the challenge that it extends to you and me
is not about what we do here
in this holy building
it is about what we do at work.
The forgiveness that we seek
is about the sins we have committed in our job.
It is about how we live in our families.
The amazing love that we are called to exercise
is to our wives and husbands, our sons and daughters,
our brothers and sisters.

Being religious is a good way of distancing ourselves
from the realities of our life.
It is an offerng rather than a present.

This year, let us go beyond that narrow formal duty...the offering
and instead be a present to God
committed in our life, where we are, where we live.

Love, so amazing so divine, demands nothing less.

No condemnation

Readings for The Second Sunday in Lent, 17th February 2008 can be taken from Genesis 12:1-4a Psalm 121 Romans 4:1-5, 13-17 John 3:1-17. [ Matthew 17:1-9..(if not used two weeks ago) features in the older lectionary]
NOTE: Non Australian readers may like to follow up on the Apology to Indigenous Australians offered this week by the Australian Prime Minister and Parliament (here) which is referred to in this week's homily


During this early part of Lent we focus on the need to REPENT.
Christians talk about this a lot.
Turning away from sin,
asking forgiveness
saying sorry: to God and to those we have sinned against.
It is an important idea.
More than an idea, it is something that needs to happen,
we all know this
and we have seen it played out in very public view for us this week.


We could make many observations
and no doubt will.
I want today, however,
to just put together this idea
with what the Bible readings offer us,
because today the Scriptures are filled with hope
and we have the most famous bible verse
for Anglicans, and indeed all Christians, which reminds us of this

God so loved the world
that he gave his only Son
so that everyone who believes in him
may not perish but have eternal life
John 3:16

These words that we know so well
contain in a nutshell
all that is good, true, hopeful and profound
about what God is doing in our lives and the world.
At the heart of it
we are reminded that our God is the God who LOVES
that everything is done out of love, because of love
in order that we might be loved and that we might love better.

Jesus invites Nicodemus to be 'born again from above'.

This process of being "born again"
is difficult for Nicodemus (and us) to understand.
What is interesting about it
is that although we often see ourselves
as passive receivers of God's grace
of this 'being born again'
[that is, we sit back and God does it to us]
there is more force in it than that
"You must be born again", says Jesus.
We have to submit to it, to desire it, to want it!
Repentance is like that
it requires that we invite its cooperation
that we want to repent
we want to be born again.

It will not just happen.


Now we have observed the events of this week,
clear in our own minds
are like that too.
They will not just happen
we need to invite cooperation
we need to decide that we are going to make this happen.

This is not neat and tidy,
and maybe we would like it to be more so
but that is what sin, repentance, prejudice and reconciliation
are like.
They are not black and white
but grey and less grey,
grey and greyer.

And the mystery of reconciliation, being born again,
repentance
is not so much bought and sold
as entered into
and lived out.
It is this that Abram is invited into
when God says:
Set out from your country. to a new land that I will show you
I will bless you , and in you all the earth will be blessed
This great message of hope and promise
is the journey of faith
which we are called to as individuals
but now also as a nation.
But it does not
and will not
just happen.
We have to set out and invite it.
We have to be born again
We have to repent.

This week

• Where does God call you to make a new beginning
• -----by rejecting what you have done wrong in the past (repentance)
• -----by opening yourself to the Spirit of God (being born again)
• -----by embracing the new national spirit of apology (reconciliation)
• Is there one thing I can do this week to make somethign happen to unfold God's working in my life?

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

Two types of love

Post for Sunday 6th May: John 10:22-30

John 13:31-35

13:31 When he had gone out, Jesus said, "Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him.

13:32 If God has been glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and will glorify him at once.

13:33 Little children, I am with you only a little longer. You will look for me; and as I said to the Jews so now I say to you, 'Where I am going, you cannot come.'

13:34 I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.

13:35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another."

Anyone who has studied another language knows that words don't translate uniformly.
We had an experience in Indonesia recently of wanting to work out how to ask for a milk shake to be "thicker".
My wife asked the taxi driver "What is the word for 'thick'?"
He had some difficulty understanding what she meant, but after she had gesticulated the word she was talking about he finally gave her a phrase.
I realised that he seemed to have understood 'thick' to mean more 'wide' than 'viscous'
so, when Sue next asked for a milk shake she asked them to make it 'wide'!

The point of that diversion?
Well the word that we translate as 'love' is often a number of different words in the Gospels.
There are 5 or 6 Greek words agape, eros, philos...etc several Latin words caritas, amor...and so on
And we often just call them ...love.
John plays around with these words a bit, and we don't always undersstand the subtlety of it.

This passage however gives us a pointer...Jesus says "You should love as I have loved"
We do not need so much to understand the words as know the quality of life

How has Jesus loved?
The love of Jesus is shown in two related ways.
First he gives up his godly status to be born as a human being
(see my reflexion on Philippians 2 here which explains this).
This character of his life is humility
He doe not use his power to manipulate or to get his own way
but rather lays it aside.
We often simply want to bludgeon our way to success,
whether it be at work or at home
maybe we are sometimes more subtle than this
and try not to look like we are doing this
BUT if we take these passages seriously
then the way we are to love
is by emptying ourself!

The second way we see Christ loving
is by giving up his life.
This is really hard for those of us who live in a world that says
look after yourself and take care of your own life
There is almost a reckless abandon
wo Christ's gift of the life that is lived at the disposal of others.

It is such a radical gift that it transforms not only his own life
but also the life of others.

There is a promise that living one's life with such radical obedience
will bring new, resurrected life to bear.

For thought and prayer
Where do I use my life to manipulate and how do I need to stop doing this?
Where is God calling me to put aside my giftedness, my authority and to live out of the risk of not using it?
Where can I lay down my life for others?
Pray for the courage to do this!

Auld acquaintance!

There are many readings for today these include: 1 Samuel 2:18-20, 26; Psalm 148;Colossians 3:12-17;Luke 2:41-52 Take 10 minutes each day to read one of the passages and listen to the God who speaks to us through the scriptures

This is a rich time of year. The Church's calendar invites us to keep this as a range of Festivals: The Holy Family, The Sunday after Christmas, even the feast of the Epiphany...and of ocurse it is New Year's Eve!

All of these have about them the sense of new beginnings.
So we naturally are drawn to reflect on how we respond.
What might be our resolutions?
Most of us are not particularly good at keeping these,
so much so that they are the cause for laughter.
What if we were to take our reading today from Colossians 3
and see hat here there are a whole series of new beginnings being set our for us to act upon

As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom; and with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

And so there a range of things we could focus on as our resolutions...not just for the New Year but for our Christian life.
clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other;
The image of putting on new clothig is a popular one that Paul uses.
It is about the outward appearance that we project to others
and also about the way we keep ourselves secure and intact!
Paul sees kindness, humility, gentleness and patience
to be the hallmarks of the Christian.
I had a very intellectual friend once who was really too smart for his own good.
But he also had a great sense of priority
and he would say...if it was a choice between being intellectual and being kind
then being kind was the way to go
We often forget that.
We justify unkindness, impatience, intolerance
in all sorts of rationalistic ways but we hear the Gospel point us elsewhere.
This year can we we see that it is kindness, humility, and patience
that are meant to draw us and lead us on
as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.
New beginning will also need to be about forgiveness
We all carry a burden of the unforgiving heart
of those who have hurt us recently or a long time ago,
the Gospel tells us that in order to be free ourselves
we need to forgive
where are you being called to forgive at this new beginning?
And will you do it?
Above all, clothe yourselves with love,
It comes as no suprise to us that the Gospel points us towards love as the key.
Not the mushy sort of slush, or the sexy kind of imaginary stuff that is often exploiotative
and may even steer us to sinfulness
but rather the self-giving love
of a mother towards a child
of one who gives themself for another
We see in Jesus the ideal of love that we are called to.
it binds everything together in perfect harmony.
Finally Paul reminds us that we are called to be in relationship with Christ.
The fruit of this will be peace, stability, harmony...who of us does not want this?
let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts,
and Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly;
Here Paul would appear to be talking both about that word that we read
which teaches and admonishes us in all wisdom;
and fills our hearts with praise
but it is also about whatever you do, in word or deed,
we are to do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.
All this might seem a tall order but it is the way of the true disciple
the way we are called to follow.
It is not so much...new resolutions
as ongoing resolutions
The character of the life of faith
that we seek to form in ourselves and in each other.

• kindness and humility
• forgiveness
• love and peace
• relationship with Christ

A prayer for the New Year

In a stable in Bethlehem, Lord, you show us a humility that we find overwhelming and wonderful
In the gift and mystery of human life togetther, you show us kindness, love and peace
And you invite us to live creatively in harmony with you and with each other.
Let this year be the year when we will dwell richly with Christ
and Christ will be born anew in our lives. Amen

Love- hate

There are many readings as listed below which are used over the Christmas services; a selection of some is below:
Isaiah 9:2-7; Psalm 96-98; Titus 2:11-14; Titus 3:4-8; Hebrews 1:1-4; Luke 2; John 1:1-14

5 things I hate about Christmas
1.I hate that Christmas is a season that comes round once a year
and that it reminds us how we should behave all the year round
and yet we don't!

2. I hate that Christmas is a season when people get killed on the roads
in ways that could so often be avoidable

3. I hate presents that are given because we feel they have to be given
and which show no thought and no care.
So this might include scented bath salts and exploding fizzy things
that you put in a bath to make you feel good
and they only succeed in making you feel gritty

4. I hate the fact Christmas is about God's eternal love for us
about generosity, love and reconciliation
and we seem to make it into something else...about commercialism, exploitation, about gluttony
and about carelessness and recklessness

5. I hate the fact that Christmas should be about everything good and noble
and we really do settle for midnight shopping!

Tension
This tension that we feel is an important thing to understand
because it is the tension of living in a real world
A world that is flawed and sinful,
which could be better
and should be better
but which we find to be something of a struggle.
It is this tension that Christmas is all about.
St John reminds us in that most famous verse (John 3:16)
that : God loved the world so much, that he gave Jesus so that everyone who believes might not perish but might have eternal life.
That despite the tension and the temptation
to diminish human life
there is also the possibility
that things can be and are better than this.
While we, if left to our own devices, might scrub around in the dirt
and constantly get it wrong
because God desires more for us than that
there is a better way.
Which is why there are also:

5 Things I love about Christmas
These things largely represent a tension
between this struggle to get it right
and our tendency to get it wrong
and God's unremitting care for us
in bringing us back time and time and again
to give us the opportunity to get it right.
In a way, we have an eternity to get this right,
but we also discover that we want it to be right now.

1. I love that Christmas is about our human relationships
that it helps us to cherish those who God has given us to care for
and to realise that we don't have to be petty and backbighting
And so there is the tension that we should rightly hate
that we can be shallow and forget
that we almost manage to achieve
relationships which try to tolerate each other's failing and difficulties
in a spirit of forgiveness.
2. I love that Christmas is about quality time spent with family and friends
As we get older we realise that this is the heart fo Christmas
and that we should treasure what we have.
Take time to appreciate these curious presents that we all have
which is the people who will share Christimas with us.
I hate the fact that some people will feel aloneness
and maybe we should all recognise
that we can help people to not feel alone
by giving them the present that Jesus himself gives to us
That is the present of presence.
Being with others.
3. I love that Christmas is about generosity
While we live in an insane culture in which we are bombarded
not with the spirit of generosity but of greed (which we all hate)
let us do what we can to combat selfishness
and we do that by giving.
God loves the world so much that he GIVES his most precious gift.
We find it hard to be that generous.
But remember that just as loneliness can be broken by our choosing to do something about it,
so selfishness, poverty and greed can be addressed by us choosing to do something about that!
This is good for us.
It is redeeming.
It saves us.
This is, I think, what God is showing us.
This is what Christmas celebrates.
4. I love that at Christmas there are intimate important moments
Times that we look back on and fondly remember.
This is really what we remember about Christmas...how we enjoy each other.
I hate that for some people this will be their last Christmas.
Some of us will actually be very sad this Christmas
because this Christmas will be the first one without their mother or father,
because this Christmas will highlight who is not there as well as who is there
This might serve as a reminder
to pay attention right now
to those who we are called to love
and not assume that we have the next decade, the next year
or even the next day.
Make the most of these intimate important moments.
5.Finally I love that at Christmas there is this tension
That if, and when we penetrate all the hype
and we get frustrated that we don't always get it right
that we remember
that it is about what God is doing for us and in us
that it is not about the tinsel
and Fr Christmas
it is about living and experiencing the tension.

Take opportunity this Christmas
to enter into the mystery
of the things that we are called to love
and not get so distracted
by the things we find frustrating and hate.

Eternal Gifts

A poem for the Celebration of the Feast of Christ the King

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