Services
God is contrary: always choosing the least expected places and people. Micah 5:1-5, tells us not to look for God amongst the great and the good but in the little and the overlooked. God chooses Bethlehem, the littlest clan of Judah and he chooses Mary, the littlest of the littlest clan. Today, in Luke 1:39-56, Mary is running for the hills, apparently unaccompanied. When she arrives this unmarried, pregnant young girl finds welcome with an old, married woman from a well-respected family. It is a meeting of opposites and yet Elizabeth finds something familiar in Mary: the child in her womb leaps for joy in recognition of the child Mary carries. The word Greek word used to describe this leaping is only found in two other places in the Bible: both times to describe the joyful reception of the presence of God symbolised by the ark of the covenant. Mary may have no place to call home, but the Elizabeth’s baby recognises that God has made a home in her. From the hills Mary will travel back to Nazareth and onto Bethlehem from where she will run away again, this time to Egypt. On her journey Mary will struggle to find a safe place to be at home in the world, yet, when Elizabeth affirms it, she finds herself at home in God and God in her. Together they, and their unborn children, create a community which will continue to grow, gathering in many who do not find themselves at home in the world but discover that God wishes to make them a home in them. To find her true home, Mary makes a journey, she leaves the familiar and the everyday and risks the reception of others who are not like her. Are we too prepared to journey outwards from ourselves, to discover others where God is making a home and allow our own lives and communities to become a dwelling place for the divine.
On Sunday 22nd December at 6.30pm, make a bee line for church for a traditional service of lessons and carols.
There is no better way to be reminded of the importance of the Nativity than through this familiar selection of readings and music.
What could be more festive than carols by candlelight?
Bring the whole family down to church on Sunday 15th December at 4pm and prepare yourselves for the celebrations ahead.
No previous carol singing experience required!
Just you wait! Today John the Baptist, (Luke 3:14-20) and Zephaniah (Zephaniah 3:14-20) are keen to let us know that the day of Lord IS coming and when it does it will be a day of calling to account.
They each offer their share of doom: For Zephaniah that day “will be a day of wrath … distress and anguish … ruin and devastation (Zephaniah 1:15–16);
and for John, “the wrath to come” will involve: “axes”, “winnowing forks” and “unquenchable fire”.
But we don’t need them to prophesy doom, we’re pretty good at it ourselves: we despair about whether global warming can be halted;
whether there can be peace in Ukraine without it ceding territory; whether there will be peace in the Middle East and so on and so on.
We don’t need the prophets to tell us we’re in mess.
What we do need them for is hope. Not the passive kind but an active hope that we can put into action, hope that might actually change our world.
Zephaniah (in what is stark change of tone to the rest of his book) foresees a time when judgement will be lifted and we will no longer fear disaster.
John offers more practical advice: live justly, love mercy, act with integrity. If we want a different outcome, do things differently.
The day of the Lord is not to be feared: the day of the Lord is today and every day.
Whenever and wherever people live generously and courageously, offering reconciliation, working for justice, there is God in the midst of them.
Judgement is not a punishment: it is the inevitable consequence of living lives that separate us from God and others.
And hope is not empty optimism: it is a discipline. When we live this hope we prepare the way for God to dwell among us.
In this morning’s readings three different prophets promise us a new future: one in which God’s glory, healing and wholeness will be offered to all people and the world will be reordered and renewed. The promise comes with a task: we are ones who are to prepare for this future and the work will be hard to endure. Malachi 3:1-4 describes it as a refiner’s fire, that will burn away everything unnecessary, everything that hinders the coming of God’s kingdom. All that is crooked and rough, both in the world around us and within ourselves, is to be set straight. In Luke 3:1-6 we hear John repeating the promise made by Isaiah but he gets the grammar slightly wrong: Luke tells us of “The voice of one calling in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord.” Whereas Isaiah has “The voice of one calling, in the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord”. The little comma makes a big difference: is the wilderness the place where the voice cries out from? Or is it the place where we are to prepare God’s way? Are we just to hear those calling from the margins of our society or are we to head out into the margins? Luke makes a point of comparing John in the wilderness to those who are at the centre of things: Tiberias the emperor, Pilate the governor and Annas and Caiphas the high priests represent earthly authority: they are the holders of financial, political, military, religious and cultural power. John, in the wilderness, has no such power but it is he who hears the voice of God. Each of the prophets ask us a question: whether, in the midst of the busyness of this season, we will take time to listen to the voices of those living on the margins of our world and whether we will respond to the call to join them there and prepare the way for God?