This week’s scripture readings are all about reading scripture: in Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10, the word of the Lord is interpreted for the people and they weep. This is sometimes put down to remorse at their previously less than ideal behaviour, but it could be that they are weeping because the scripture has been interpreted so harshly. In the previous chapter they have been told that keeping the word of the Lord necessitates them divorcing their wives and dispossessing their children if they had any “foreign” blood. In contrast Jesus, in Luke 4:14-21, does not interpret the scriptures, instead he fulfils them. His scripture is a word of liberation. It is challenging. Yes, it questions existing structures, but in a way that leads to inclusion not exclusion, the widening not the narrowing of God’s welcome. When our faith leads to harm to human wellbeing and relationship we maybe need to question how we are interpreting God’s word. When our lives and communities lead to human flourishing and liberation then God’s word is fulfilled and Christ becomes present.

Evensong on Sunday 23rd January at 6:30 pm.

January is always a hard month for me; the excitement of Christmas is over, the days are short, the nights are long, energy and bank balances are low. So the super abundance, resources, and the excess of joy in our readings this morning feels hard to connect to. In Isaiah 62:1-5 the people of God are told of a future time when they will be a crown of beauty, renamed My Delight is in Her. But for now they are desolate and forsaken. They cannot envisage how they will get from desolation to delight and this is really the point: In John’s gospel (John 2:1-11) Jesus performs his first ever miracle by turning water, gallons of it, into the best wine, but the jars start out empty, they do not even contain water. It is often only when we have run dry, when our own resources have been exhausted, that we allow God the space to do anything at all. And that anything at all is so often more than we could ever have hoped for.

'Epiphany’ is a Greek word meaning ‘manifestation’, ‘appearing’, or ‘revelation’. Each week in this season we have a story which reveals something more of the meaning and purpose of the Incarnation which we celebrated at Christmas.

As the festive season draws towards its end and a new year begins, we reflect upon the meaning of the Epiphany. Twelve days after the birth of Christ, God revealed Himself to the Gentiles in the form of his only son.

This year the first Sunday of Christmas falls on Boxing Day. We will not be holding our usual Sunday services but we shall celebrate a short said mass in church at 10.30am.

In our last Sunday before Christmas we are given a glimpse of something truly radical. Our texts are still facing doom and disaster: in our first reading, Micah 5:1-5, the little nation of Israel is under siege, humiliated and oppressed by its mighty neighbours; in the Gospel, Luke 1:39-55, Mary, poor, disgraced and possibly in fear of her life, is running away. Yet here is hope in the face of hopelessness. And the hope comes not from the strong and the powerful but from the poorest and the weakest. In response to Elizabeth’s welcoming embrace Mary lets loose a song of revolution: if God is in her womb, then the world is truly turning upside down. A future of justice and peace will be brought forth by the little and the lowly, and Bethlehem, the most insignificant town in the most insignificant nation, will be the birth place of a new way of living with power to transform our world.

Good news? What good news? We are now well into Advent and the themes of judgment and repentance are growing louder. John the Baptist, Luke 3:7-18, starts by calling us a brood of vipers and ends with a warning that on the day of judgment the chaff will be burnt with an unquenchable fire; which doesn’t sound very good newsy to me. But judgment always comes joined with the assurance of forgiveness. The word of judgement is always a word of salvation, it shows us where we are going wrong and how we can change for the better. John gives specific advice to his hearers: share with one another, do not abuse your power, use your position to the benefit of those around you. Judgment is hard to hear but it is ultimately liberating, bringing with it the chance of being restored into a joyful relationship with God, one another and the whole of creation, poetically imagined by Zephaniah 3:14-20.

In Advent, the season of looking forward, the season of hope, we hear of a time when the people of God, like us, were longing for change and the word of the Lord came to them. Our reading, Luke 3:1-6, begins with a list of all those who held power and authority: an emperor, a governor, three tetrarchs and a high priest. But the word of the Lord does not come to any of them. It comes to John in the wilderness. John has left the centres of power behind searching for god knows what. It is here, in the middle of nowhere, in a place of vulnerability and uncertainty, that John hears God’s voice. The voice tells him that God will come, that God is coming, that change is possible, and asks him to prepare the way, to call for change. In a world of vulnerability and uncertainty change is often the last thing we want yet is the one thing we can count on. Are we ready to embrace it?