Category: Uncategorised

The birth of Jesus starts the story of the New Testament. I've always felt that Christmas is a good time to reflect on the way the Old Testament starts the story of all things. Before there was a world to redeem a world was made.

Long before the birth of Jesus, God made flesh, human beings were formed and wrought by the creative impetus of a Love incapable of self-absorption. That seems to be something of what John's Gospel is saying in chapter 1.

And out of that Eternal Love came all that is made, including human beings, with all the risk and cost that would entail. And God still did it.

Whatever else we make of the omniscience of God, that strangely technical word refers to that universe of deep and eternal knowing that we call the Love of God.

Three Fibonacci Poems on Creation and Incarnation.*

Creation

Let
there
be light!
Creation,
from first to last, an
imperative fiat of love,
as Benign Being invites a universe to be.

Rest

God's
peace!
Sabbath
observance.
God's recreation.
Well done good and faithful God.
Now our harder task. Curators of God's masterpiece.

Incarnation

First
word
becomes
final word.
What else could God do,
but wrap words in flesh, be born as
God whose love exhausts whole lexicons of spelled out words?

(c) Jim Gordon

Fibonacci poems follow the mathematical fibonacci sequence, the syllables counted as follows.

• 1 syllable for first line
• 1 syllable for second line
• 2 syllables for third
• 3 syllables for fourth
• 5 syllables for fifth
• 8 syllables for sixth
• 13 syllables for seventh

You can find out more about it all over here – https://www.writersdigest.com/write-better-poetry/fibonacci-poetry-a-new-poetic-form

I know. It's nearly Christmas and by now we should be immersed in the surround-sound of carols, soaked in images of stars and mangers, keeping company with shepherds and angels, and carried along by the story we know by heart, and most times want to live in, and live into.

The Nativity is the prelude to the Passion. At least the Scottish theologian James Denney thought so: "Not Bethlehem, but Calvary, is the focus of revelation." To be sure, an over-sentimentalised Christmas story that is uncomfortable with the dark shadows of Herod, Empire, swords and the murder of children is hardly good news for a broken world overshadowed by darkness.

When Mary was told "You shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins", that was a statement of divine intent, a recognition of darkness and evil, oppression and cruelty, greed and lust, and the whole Gordian knot of the sin that entangles, invades and occupies God's creation like Japanese knotweed in the Garden of Eden, and in our contemporary life in the world. 

Ironically, a Nativity story without sin erases the reason the coming of Jesus is good news in the first place. Matthew tells of the slaughter of the innocents, the refugee status of the holy family, and the weeping and mourning of mothers every bit as loud and penetrating as the earlier songs of the angels. And if we are not careful, we may well be telling a story of sanitised sentiment, in denial of the dreadful consequences of sin for all those caught up in the misery and suffering of human evil, individual and institutional, personal and corporate, past and present. In words first aimed at those flirting with or embracing such a theology, Richard Niebuhr once warned of the dangers of distorted good news:   

'A God without wrath brought men without sin into a Kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a Cross.'  

Oh, I know. None of us mean to mess about with the story that defines our identity as Christians. We are those who take with utmost seriousness and ridiculously hopeful joy, that promise than in Jesus God comes amongst us, Emmanuel, God with us, Saviour from sin, Light of Life shining in the darkness. 

So let joy be unconfined. The good news is not that sin doesn't exist, or should be airbrushed out of the realities of our lives. The good news is that sin isn't the final reality. Ultimately, sin can't win. God has seen to that. And what kind of God? That is what takes us from Bethlehem to Calvary, and notwithstanding Denney's words above, the Christian story is of the God revealed at Bethlehem, and on Calvary, and early in the morning in a garden. 

So this Christmas, I for one go back to a favourite hymn, a poem that has shaped my thoughts and prayers and theologising for over 40 years. The Good News is that "God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not counting our sins against us", but bearing their full consequence, absorbing their potential for death, and holding within the eternal purposes of Divine Love all that is created and destined for glory when God will be all in all.  

Morning glory, starlit sky,
Leaves in springtime, swallows’ flight,
Autumn gales, tremendous seas,
Sounds and scents of summer night;

Soaring music, tow’ring words,
Art’s perfection, scholar’s truth,
Joy supreme of human love,
Memory’s treasure, grace of youth;

Open, Lord, are these, Thy gifts,
Gifts of love to mind and sense;
Hidden is love’s agony,
Love’s endeavour, love’s expense.

Love that gives gives ever more,
Gives with zeal, with eager hands,
Spares not, keeps not, all outpours,
Ventures all, its all expends.

Drained is love in making full;
Bound in setting others free;
Poor in making many rich;
Weak in giving power to be.

Therefore He Who Thee reveals
Hangs, O Father, on that Tree
Helpless; and the nails and thorns
Tell of what Thy love must be.

Thou are God; no monarch Thou
Thron’d in easy state to reign;
Thou art God, Whose arms of love
Aching, spent, the world sustain.

For the I don't know how many times, I took this book down this morning. I've had it since it was published in 1981. It's my first port of call when I'm looking for some good warm Arminian correctives to the hard to argue with theology of the Reformed tradition! More seriously, this is a book I've read through more than once and consulted time without number.

It's by no means the most complete Wesley anthology, but it has several outstanding features. The 5 page Preface is written by Albert C Outler, who was an outstanding Wesleyan scholar and one of the driving forces behind the Bicentennial Edition of The Works of John Wesley. This is a succinct apologia for Wesleyan theology.

The Introduction by Frank Whaling is a sixty page essay covering biography, the rise of Methodism as a movement, the hymns, the sermons, the letters, and some of the theological controversies. It is a succinct summary that does what it says; introduces the reader the the people who wrote the texts contained in the anthology. More than that, it is a superb account of the spirituality and the lived experience of Wesleyan Christianity with its emphases on a free gospel, a universal atonement, the call to Christian perfection, and the experiential chain of conversion, justification, sanctification and assurance as a lived process of salvation enabled by grace and imparted by the Holy Spirit.

The chosen texts are arranged in three sections. Section I includes several extracts from key documents of Methodism, letters of spiritual counsel, John's translations of some German hymns and the Wesleyan Covenant Service. Section II has over 100 pages of representative hymns of Charles Wesley; these are well chosen and touch on the major themes of Charles hymn output. Section III contains the main texts relating to Christian Perfection, the most controversial of John Wesley's doctrines, and along with the brothers' insistence that Christ died for all, the focal points of the fiercest arguments between the Wesleys and Whitefield, Toplady and various other Reformed protagonists.

My copy has three splits on the spine, caused by frequent use. This is a good thing! What's more, there are pencil notes on most of the pages, and some of them enhanced by frequent underlinings, marginal notes, and cross references.

Opening somewhere near the middle I found these verses, their theological optimism one of the reasons my own spirituality has strongly coloured strands of Wesley woven through:

Thou lov'st whate'er thy hands have made;

     Thy goodness we rehearse,

In shining characters displayed

     Throughout our universe.

 

Mercy, with love, and endless grace

     O'er all thy works doth reign;

But mostly thou delight'st to bless

     Thy favourite creature – man. 

I mentioned A C Outler above. Here's a sentence from his Preface:

"Wesleyan spirituality carries within it an implicit theory of social revolution that is non-violent and conservative, a faith in the human future based on an unfaltering optimism of grace."

And I guess when push comes to shove, that's where I hang my theological bunnet too!

Yesterday was a day of several highlights: Nativity play and service at Montrose, the best World Cup final for a long time, an evening Carol Service in our home church in Crown Terrace. In both places good music, traditional and new carols, obvious and careful preparation, candles and atmosphere, Scripture and prayer. All of that, and all good.

But it was one of the readings of scripture at the evening carol service that opened me up to the recurring miracle that we celebrate by doing all that we do on these days leading to Christmas.

I've spent a lifetime fascinated by John's first chapter, especially chapter 1.1-14. I've studied it, exegeted it, read the theologians who went diving into it, learned it by heart (in the RSV version), designed a tapestry around one of its verses, and have come to think of this text as the distilled truth of a mystery beyond all our capacities, except perhaps worship in humility and wonder.

I've found faith and hope and love in phrases like:

"The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not extinguished it.

"In Him was life and the life was the light of all people."

"The Word became flesh and dwelt among us…full of grace and truth."

The passage is obviously deeply familiar to me. But last night I heard it read by an Iranian friend I've come to know in recent months. He read it in his own language of Farsi, with the English text on the screen for us to follow. The coincidence in my mind of a text I know thoroughly, read in a language entirely foreign to me, but by someone who is my brother and not 'other', in the context of worship and our shared love for Jesus, whose birth we were celebrating – that was a moment of profound realisation of what it is that joins us in our humanity.

"In him was life, and the life was the light of all people." My Iranian friend and our community, we share faith in the same Light, the same love of life, the same faith in the Light of Life. Same words in different languages, same Word that transcends all difference and draws us together in a light that shines in the darkness, and cannot be extinguished – not by hate  and not by complacency, not by difference and not by indifference.

The lead up to Christmas isn't joy for everyone. Not everyone is, or wants to be, included in the often forced jollity. Not everyone is prepared to be implicated in the conspiracy of festive positivity, which easily becomes a denial of the uncomfortable realities of a world in which exclusion, indifference and hostility to 'the other' is an encroaching darkness. But.

"The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not understood it,

and

"The light shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot extinguish it."

There are two possible translations and I don't doubt John knew what he was doing when he chose his words. An older translation tries hard to reproduce John's deliberate double meaning: "The light shineth in the darkness, and the darkness comprehendeth it not." Darkness can neither understand nor overcome the persistence of light. What God is about in Jesus is beyond human comprehension and defies human conquest. 

Last night, listening to the Prologue to the Gospel of John, originally written in Greek, first translated into English six centuries ago, read in Farsi, by a friend who in his life experience has found the Light of Life who shines in the darkness, and who goes on believing that the darkness shall not overcome – that was a moment when translation moved from semantic equivalence to human embodiment and personal faith experience. 

At that moment, "The Word became flesh and dwelt amongst us….from the fullness of his grace have we all received one blessing after another."

God of Light and Life

In the buzz of this place as we get ready to hear the Christmas story,

And in the quietness of Advent when we are told to wait and see;

Like Mary, help us to hear your voice speaking to us.

Like Joseph open our minds to the incredible and our hearts to your truth.

So that:

Like the Innkeeper we will find room for Jesus in our lives.

Like the shepherds we will come to the manger to see for ourselves.

Like the Wise Kings we will come with our gifts, and kneel in worship.

Like the angels we will sing and tell the good news;

That Jesus is born, that God is with us,

That the light of the world has come,

And that God’s love for the world is to be found

In the gift of the Christ child.

It's been snow and frost for nearly a week up here, and likely to stay that way for a while yet. Braemar was more than -17 degrees last night; we were a mere -11 degrees at 7.00 am this morning.

It stayed below zero all day, and when I came out the door to clear the windscreen and go to the shops, looking down the street there was the most golden sunset. It lasted only a minute or so, but long enough for a photo.

I know ever square foot of this street, having lived here for 12 years. The small pointed tree is in memory of my neighbour. The wheelie bin is left out because the there has been no bin collection. At the bottom of the street a window is lit up by the reflection from the window across the road, of the golden sunset.

Sometimes you have to be prepared to be surprised. I know. That sounds like a doesn't-make-sense sentence. How can you be surprised if you're always prepared for it. A surprise takes you unawares. True enough. But life can become so preoccupied that we are unaware as a chronic way of being in the world. Until something heightens our awareness. 

Advent is a time of heightened awareness for Christians. Oh we know Christ has come. The nativity story stays the same no matter how it's dressed up. Christmas day accelerates towards us and our preparations become the focus, more than the fact, the reality, the truth, that Advent is the time when darkness and light take on deep significance. "The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light…the Light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it."

Advent gate-crashes our pre-occupations. Advent prepares us to be surprised, again. I sometimes wonder if that's what wonder is – the readiness to be surprised by something we already know is too good to be true. "Arise! Shine! Your light has come, the glory of the Lord has risen on you."

So I come out the door and turn to lock it, and in the turning I see, I accidentally notice in the turning, a sky ablaze with splendour. It's so cold I'd turned quickly, in a hurry to get on with whatever it was I thought so important. And was ambushed by beauty. Advent does that, surprising us with reminders that God is about, and what God is about.

Something as banal as a wheelie bin, sits there in the afterglow of sunset. A window facing the opposite direction from the light, glows with borrowed radiance from the window across the street. And a wee pointed shrub, looks for all the world like a Christmas tree lacking only lights. All visible from my doorstep – if I have eyes to see and inclination to look, and longing enough to be prepared to be surprised.    

Thought for the Day – Praying the Carols.

Monday

2 Corinthians5.19 “God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not counting men’s sins against them.”

The Christmas story is told in Luke and Matthew. But it reverberates throughout the life of the first Christian communities. Charles Wesley had no difficulty linking angels and shepherds to the deep and eternal truth of God’s love for sinners. “Hark! The herald-angels sing ‘Glory to the new-born king’, Peace on earth and mercy mild, God and sinners reconciled."

Tuesday

Galatians 4.4-5 “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons and daughters.”

Jesus, born of a woman, in God’s good time. Christmas is about the Holy Family, and God’s invitation to all of us to be adopted into the family of God. “Christ, by highest heaven adored! Christ, the everlasting Lord, late in time behold Him come, offspring of a Virgin's womb: Veiled in flesh the Godhead see, Hail the incarnate Deity! Pleased as man with man to dwell, Jesus, our Emmanuel.”

Wednesday

Romans 5. 6-8 “You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.  Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

Bethlehem was the beginning, Calvary was the end. Well actually, a garden with an empty tomb was the end. “How silently, how silently, the wondrous gift is given! So God imparts to human hearts the blessings of his heaven…O Holy Child of Bethlehem descend to us we pray. Cast out our sin and enter in, be born in us today.”

Thursday

Titus 2.12 and 3.4-5 “For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all people…and when the kindness and love of God our Saviour appeared he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done but because of his mercy.”

This spells out what we love to sing at Christmas: “Love came down at Christmas, love all lovely, love divine; love was born at Christmas, star and angels gave the sign.”

Friday

2 Corinthians 4. 6 “For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ.”

No wonder we sing “Shine Jesus shine, fill the land with the Father’s glory.” All the light and lights of Christmas, from Christmas tree to Advent candles to street decorations, they are all reminders and reflections of the light of the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ! “God of God, Light of Light…O Come, let us adore him.”

Saturday

Colossians 1.15 “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation…He is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything He might have the supremacy…For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him.”

The infant of Bethlehem is the Author of Creation. All that is in the heart of God is revealed in the gift of the Christ Child. “Still the night, holy the night! Son of God, O how bright. Love is smiling from thy face, strikes for us now the hour of grace, Saviour since Thou art born – Saviour, since Thou art born.”

Sunday

Philippians 2.5-9 “Christ Jesus, who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in human appearance, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross!

This too is a Christmas text. In the shadow of all our Christmas lights is the shape of a cross. But that shadow is cast by the Light of Life, radiating from the face of God in Christ. “Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him, nor earth sustain; heaven and earth shall flee away when He comes to reign. In the bleak midwinter a stable place sufficed the Lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ.”

Taking a bag of clothes and some other no longer needed stuff into the charity shop.

There's that kind of sleet that falls like wet snowballs and the pavements  are rutted with slush.

I walk in and say in a not too cheerful voice, with intended irony "Joy to the world,"

The volunteer lady looks at me calmly and says "The Lord is come."

I handed over the bag, we both smiled, and off I went.

Did you notice? She had the quotation exactly as Isaac Watts wrote it.

The present tense. "The Lord is come."

Oh, I know Advent is all about waiting, anticipation, expectation.

That inner tension we all feel when we know something big is going to happen.

But we celebrate Advent, Christmas and Epiphany because the coming of God is in the present tense. "The Lord is come."

He has come, and he is here, and yet year after year we re-enact those first longings.

We wait, anticipate, expect – not because it hasn't happened yet, but because it has.

"Joy to the world, the Lord is come! Let earth receive her King."

What started off as an ironic complaint was reset by an answering truth.

Advent is the season when God's time intersects with human longing; the long wait for justice, the long patience awaiting peace, the long sorrows of hearts that have waited too long for comfort, the long darkness that no matter how long it takes, will give way to dawn.

The photo was taken from inside a furniture shop in Inverurie. I'm starting to enjoy photos taken through windows, the reflections doubling the lights.

On a gloomy morning, some of it passed sharing a rather large freshly made pancake, and following my encounter with a charity shop angel, those two lines came together:

"Joy to the world, the Lord is come." Yes, indeed he has – sorry, is!

  

 

Yesterday two beautiful creations came together in my mind.

The sketch for 'The Head of the Virgin, by Rogier Van Der Weyden is, I think, the most beautiful depiction I know of Mary at the moment of the annunciation.

I hadn't realised the poem 'Annunciation', by Denise Levertov complements the awe and serenity of the face, by imagining the inner life and mind of Mary at the point of receiving the words "Hail Mary, full of grace."

Take time to look, to read, and to sense the miracle. I may write a piece later on sketch and poem. Not today. Look, read and wonder – these too are prayer.

   

She had been a child who played, ate, slept

like any other child — but unlike others

wept only for pity, laughed

in joy not triumph.

Compassion and intelligence 

fused in her, indivisible.

 

Called to a destiny more momentous

than any in all of Time,

she did not quail,

                          only asked

a simple 'How can this be?'

and gravely, courteously,

took to heart the angel's reply,

perceiving instantly

the astounding ministry she was offered:

 

to bear in her womb

Infinite weight and lightness; to carry

in hidden, finite inwardness,

nine months of Eternity; to contain

in slender vase of being

the sum of power —

in narrow flesh,

the sum of light.

                         Then bring to birth,

push out into air, a Man child

needing like any other,

milk and love —

 

but who was God.