Christmas Playlist. 4: Simeon's song – How did God do it?

Four songs that bring you to the heart of Christmas

4: Simeon's song – How did God do it?

This Advent in our weekly sheets we're going to be looking at the four songs of the first Christmas, which were heard before, during and after the birth of the baby who lies at the heart of the real Christmas. The reflection will be adapted from Alistair Begg's book, 'Christmas Playlist' (buy it here). This week we're looking at the final song, Simeon's song – How did God do it?

Sometimes we're not sure what to say when we hold a little baby, but our fourth and final 'singer' was in no doubt about what he would say when he held the infant Jesus when he was brought to the Temple in Jerusalem for the first time. His name was Simeon and his song is known as the 'Nunc Dimittis' (Luke 2:27-32). He was a devout believer in God. He was patiently waiting for the promises God had made to be fulfilled. Not only that but God's Holy Spirit had told him that he wouldn't die until he saw these promises begin to unfold on the pages of history.

The angels had brought the news that a Saviour had been born. Likewise, Simeon announces the truth that he is looking at God's salvation, lying in his arms. And Simeon understands that this Saviour has come to save not only “your people Israel” - the ancient people of God, the descendants of Abraham – but he has also come “to the Gentile” - everyone else. If you carry on reading Luke's Gospel, you find the adult Jesus living this out. As the angels promised this child would be good news of great joy for all people. There is no-one who does not need Jesus to offer them salvation, and no one to whom Jesus does not offer that salvation.

So this old man is now content to die. He has been waiting his whole life for this one sight, and now he has seen it – the Sovereign Lord's salvation, in the shape of a human, lying in his arms.

But Simeon did not only speak of salvation. He spoke of suffering too (Luke 2:34-35), not just announcing that this child would bring salvation, but hinting at what it would cost him to bring it. He was the child who would cause many to fall, and others to rise. He would reveal the deep secrets, and the true attitude towards God, that lies in every human heart. He would be opposed verbally; and one day, his mother's soul would be torn apart emotionally.

My guess is that Mary never forgot Simeon's words, nor that she really understood them, until the other end of her child's life. Because unless you understand the events of Easter, you'll never grasp the heart of Christmas. Simeon understood that – which is why he pointed forwards to Good Friday even as he welcomed the baby at the centre of Christmas.

In describing the events of Good Friday (Luke 23:32-47), Luke doesn't want you to feel only sympathy for Jesus as a sufferer – because he wants you to put your faith in Jesus as your Saviour. He wants you and me to grasp not only what Jesus suffered but how he saves.

At the crucifixion, Luke describes darkness during the day, which in the Bible is a signal of God's displeasure and God's judgement. Here we see God's Son, punished as a sinner by his Father, even though he had never, ever sinned – never failed to love his Father and his neighbour. Why? Because Jesus was bearing the the burden of the world's sin. He was paying the price to redeem people. He was going through hell so that he could save people from hell. It is what some people call the great exchange. God the Son took on the penalty due to sinful people and so God the Father declares guilty sinners who trust in Jesus as forgiven, guilt-free. I deserve to be on the cross; Jesus hung on it. My sin deserved punishment; Jesus took it.

Luke also describes the 80 foot high curtain in the Temple being torn by God from top to bottom. This curtain was a huge visible reminder of the truth that there is a separation between sinful man and the perfect God. But God tore it to show that Jesus' death opened the way to him so that we need not be stuck with our sin and separated from him.

And this is why the wooden food trough led to the wooden cross, and why you will never get to the heart of Christmas if you don't grasp the meaning of Easter. Christianity is not good advice about what we should do. It is the good news of what Christ has done. Christianity does not proclaim that you are worth saving or able to save yourself. It announces that God is mighty to save.

Luke's Gospel finishes in a very similar place to where it began. We began with angels appearing and we finish in the same way. We began with an angel announcing the presence of life where it is, humanly-speaking, impossible – in the wombs of a woman who was infertile and a woman who was a virgin. We finish with the angels announcing the presence of life in a tomb (Luke 24:1-7)- the resurrection of a crucified criminal to eternal glory.

And between the events of the first Christmas Eve and the first Easter Sunday, simeon's words had come true. Jesus had reached out to those who were outsiders, excluded. He had been opposed. He had revealed what people really believed. Physical nails had pierced his hands as an emotional sword pierced the soul of his watching mother. And, as he hung on the cross, he had redeemed his people – he died the death that tore the curtain and he paid the price that brought the salvation that Simeon had spoken of all those years before.

He died on the cross because Simeon, Mary, Zechariah, the shepherds, you and I are sinners – and because he loves them, and us, anyway.

Christmas Playlist. 3: The angels' song – How did God come?

Four songs that bring you to the heart of Christmas

3: The angels' song – How did God come?

This Advent in our weekly sheets we're going to be looking at the four songs of the first Christmas, which were heard before, during and after the birth of the baby who lies at the heart of the real Christmas. The reflection will be adapted from Alistair Begg's book, 'Christmas Playlist' (buy it here). This week we're looking at the angels' song – How did God come?

There are many ways to announce the birth of a child and these days social media seems to be the most popular. The birth of Mary's baby, however, was announced by an angel to shepherds (Luke 2:8-14)! The angel described the baby's job - “Saviour”: Redeemer. He announced the baby's title - “Messiah”: God's King promised for centuries to his people, promises recorded for us in the Old Testament. And he revealed the baby's identity - “the Lord”.

And that word, “Lord,” is making a staggering claim, because it is the word that was used by Greek-speaking Jews to translate the Hebrew word “Yahweh” - the personal name of God. God's name is Yahweh, and it's what he told his friends, his people, to call him. In other words, here's the deal: good news, great joy for all the people, has come because a Redeemer, the Ultimate Ruler, has been born. And he is God Almighty.

On the first Christmas night – and this is the heart of the Christmas story, and the heart of the Christian faith – God took on flesh. The voice that made the cosmos could be heard crying in the cradle. The hands that placed each star in its place grabbed hold of Mary's fingers. Her son was fully human, and fully God. In this man, divinity met humanity.

Perhaps this is where you struggle with the Christian faith. You are prepared to accept Jesus as a great teacher, a religious leader, or a brilliant philosopher. You are prepared to accept that he spoke for God, perhaps. But you struggle to accept that he is God – that as Mary and Joseph peered into the manger, they were looking at the eternal Son of God. You struggle with the idea of a virgin birth and a miraculous incarnation.

God the Son taking flesh is a mystery we will never understand. But not being able to understand how God became one of us is not proof that he did not become one of us. Here is the answer to the human predicament, the solution to our slavery to sin and our separation from God. God bridged the gap by coming from heaven to earth. This is how much the mighty God cares about us.

Then a choir of angels declares what this baby will achieve: “on earth peace”. The peace of God that invades a life is based on the discovery of peace with God. No matter how well we do at trying to establish peace with each other, until we discover what it is to have peace with God, we're not going to discover the peace of God. And since we are separated from God – since we have declared our independence and rebelled against our rightful Ruler – this is a peace that can only be brought about by the intervention of God himself. We may try to find peace without God in our own way – peace through power, possessions or popularity. We may try to find peace with God through our own strength – peace through obeying religious rules or through being “good people”. But the truth is that only God can give us peace with himself.

But it's a peace that so many miss out on because they fail to make room for the one who brings it. Remember why the God of heaven was in a feeding trough? Because there was no room for him anywhere else. He made the entire universe. He came into his universe. And there wasn't a place for him.

Let's be honest; in the lives of many of us, it's no different. We have no room for him either – not if it makes life uncomfortable for us, not if his presence brings any inconvenience to us, not when his actions and words surprise us. But our response does not change the truth. God has visited this world. He has come as one of us, to bring peace to us by redeeming us from our sins. Will you say to him, “No room”?

Christmas Playlist. 2: Zechariah's Song - Why do you need God?

Four songs that bring you to the heart of Christmas

2: Zechariah's Song – Why do you need God?

This Advent in our weekly sheets we're going to be looking at the four songs of the first Christmas, which were heard before, during and after the birth of the baby who lies at the heart of the real Christmas. The reflection will be adapted from Alistair Begg's book, 'Christmas Playlist' (buy it here). This week we're looking at Zechariah's song - Why do you need God?

While Mary's is the first song recorded in Luke's gospel, hers was not the first miraculous pregnancy to be described by Luke. That belonged to her elderly relative Elizabeth, whose husband, Zechariah, sang abut his son, John, as he held him in his arms (Luke 1:68-79). The song has come to be known as the Benedictus. The first line of the song (“Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel, because he has come to his people and redeemed them”) contains two words that lie at the heart of the Christmas message - “come” and “redeemed”. God has come to visit. If you want to understand the first Christmas – if you want to grasp the purpose of God's visit – you need to understand redemption.

Redemption is the act of providing a payment to free someone. And Zechariah is explaining God's work in his present situation by referencing God's work in the past – in the time of the Exodus a millenium and a half before. This was when God rescued the Israelites who had been enslaved in Egypt by Pharaoh. Now, God is redeeming his people all over again. Not form enslavement to an Egyptian king, but from enslavement to their sin – to our own sin. We need, he says “forgiveness of [our] sins.”

Sin is an unpopular word, but it is a word the Bible unashamedly uses, and it is a word which explains both what we see within us and what we see around us. Sin is essentially me putting myself where God deserves to be – in the place of authority and majesty, running my own life, charting my own course. It is saying to God, whether very politely or extremely angrily, I don't want you, I won't obey your commands, I will not listen to your word. I will call the shots.

Sin is our greatest problem because it separates us from the God whom we are made to know and designed to enjoy. But in another sense the truth about sin is also our greatest insight because it explains life as we experience it. There is a mighty, loving God who made us – and so we are capable of acts of greatness and kindness. But we reject that God's authority – and so we are capable of selfishness and evil. We were made to enjoy life with God eternally but we all choose to live in defiance of him. Hence the flatness, the 'blues' that come after Christmas as once again we get beyond the busyness and distraction of the festivities and think deep down, I don't have the answer. None of the gifts, books, music, family or friends can fill the hole in our lives. So, we're really asking God to redeem us from the sin we have chosen – from the slavery we cannot escape and the debt we cannot repay.

At the heart of understanding the first Christmas and why it is such good news is an understanding of the nature of your predicament. And that involves accepting the nature and seriousness of sinfulness – your sinfulness. God did not come down to provide a little religious Energizer battery that would make us nicer people. He came because you were drowning, pulled down by the weight of your sin and miles from the shore. If you're drowning it doesn't help for someone to come along in a boat and say Come on now, thrash a little bit more. Try a little harder. Swim a bit better. You'll be able to get yourself out of that mess. No, you need someone to reach down their hand, grasp yours, and pull you up to safety and take you to shore. And if you know you are drowning, you don't refuse the person whose hand is offered to you. You grab it, and you splutter your gratitude.

And that is what Zechariah is doing. He knows that John will spend his life saying, Hold on. God is coming. And God will rescue you. And so Zechariah sings, just as everyone who grasps what God was doing at the first Christmas sings: “Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel, because he has come to his people and redeemed them.”

I'm dreaming of a hygge Christmas

Here's my article for the December magazine:

Each year the Collins dictionary announces its top ten 'words of the year'. Unsurprisingly this year's Word of the Year is 'Brexit' but also in the top ten was the Scandinavian word 'hygge' (pronounced hue-gah), which they define as “a concept, originating in Denmark, of creating cosy and convivial atmospheres that promote well-being.” Hygge is particularly felt around Christmas when we have images of candles, roaring fires, meals shared with loved ones. Christmas music also, perhaps unconsciously, taps into this concept of hygge: think about chestnuts roasting on an open fire; corn for popping and lights turned way down low; faithful friends who are dear to us gathering near to us once more.

Other cultures have similar concepts to hygge and in Hebrew the word 'shalom' captures some of the essence of hygge. Shalom is usually translated as 'peace' and is commonly used when greeting or saying goodbye to someone, however it also describes a feeling of contentment, completeness, wholeness, well being and harmony. It is this word, shalom, that is meant when Jesus is described as the Prince of Peace and when the angels sang ‘Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom his favour rests’ (Luke 2:14).

To say that Jesus is the Prince of Peace is to say that Jesus is the ultimate, and ultimately the only source of contentment and wholeness. We get a glimpse of this through a concept like hygge – well-being is found not through power, status, money, beauty, productivity or other things we often spend our life trying to achieve, but through relationship. Ultimate well-being is found in a relationship with the Ultimate Being, God himself. As St Augustine famously said, our hearts are restless until the find their rest in God.

However, this relationship with God has been broken by our sin, by our turning away from God to follow our own desires. That's why the birth of Jesus is truly worth celebrating because he came to die to take the punishment for our sins, so now we can repent and turn away from our sins and have peace with God. We can be reconciled to him and our relationship with him is restored. To be reconciled with God is to know deep in our hearts his boundless love for us, to feel his favour resting on us, so we don't need to strive for acceptance through material possessions and status, in short we are content and made whole.

“Love and laughter and joy ever after, ours for the taking, just follow the master”

So this Christmas whether you're having a hygge Christmas or not, in the name of Jesus the Prince of Peace, “The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you; the Lord turn his face towards you and give you peace.”

Christmas Playlist. 1: Mary's Song – What is God like?

Four songs that bring you to the heart of Christmas

1: Mary's Song – What is God like?

This Advent in our weekly sheets we're going to be looking at the four songs of the first Christmas, which were heard before, during and after the birth of the baby who lies at the heart of the real Christmas. The reflection will be adapted from Alistair Begg's book, 'Christmas Playlist' (buy it here. This week we're looking at Mary's Song – What is God like?

After discovering she is pregnant, Mary goes to the home of Zechariah and her relative, Elizabeth. While she is there, Mary breaks out into song, the first Christmas song in history (Luke 1:46-55), also known as the Magnificat. This is a song not about herself but about God and she describes God using two words: mindful (nothing to do with the Buddhist-based practice of mindfulness) and mighty.

Mary sings that God has been mindful of her even though she seems to be insignificant (v48). She glorifies – focuses on the greatness of – the Lord because although she may be very little in the eyes of the world, she is valuable in the eyes of the One who made the world. Mary also rejoices that God has been mindful of his people, Israel. Around 2,000 years before Mary sang, the God about whom she sang had made great promises to Abraham saying that his descendants would become a great nation who would be a blessing to all nations. Throughout the Old Testament, God reminded Abraham's descendants again and again that he remembered them and would keep his promises. He said he would do this through a son and Mary recognised that it was her son that was the sign that God had remembered his people and would fulfil his promises to them. Here is the God of Christmas, of history. He is a God who knows you, and he cares about you, and he makes promises to you, and he acts to help you.

Secondly, Mary sings that God is mighty, mightier than all the rulers of the earth. But he sometimes also uses his power to take away from us the things that make us think that we are mightier than we truly are, and that make us forget the God who is mightier than we are. He scatters the proud so that they can become humble. And then he lifts them up. He helps those who are humble enough to say I don't actually have it all together. I don't have all my questions answered. I have struggles that I need help with.

So what do you think about when you think about God? Mary might well have answered that question God is mindful of us and more mighty than us. And the truth that God is both all-caring and all-powerful made her heart “rejoice” - and it's a truth that causes hearts to rejoice still today.

Post-truth and the failure of leadership

Here's the sermon from Scawby's Civic Service yesterday.  The Bible readings were Jeremiah 23:1-6 and Colossians 1:11-20.


I said at Broughton's Civic Service last month that this year has been a very interesting one politically – I think that statement is even more true a month onwards! Whatever your opinion might be of the referendum, the party political leadership elections, the US Presidential election; whatever your opinion might be of these, they've certainly got people thinking and talking about politics in a way we haven't for many years. And this is no bad thing. It's also spawned new words, Brexit is the Collins dictionary word of the year and the Oxford English Dictionary chose 'post-truth' for theirs.

According to the OED 'post-truth' is an adjective defined as ‘relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.’ Some have used this word to describe politicians who they claim knowingly lie or mislead in order to get votes. On this definition, although the word may be fairly recent the symptom it describes certainly isn't. Almost everyone who is putting forward a point of view will at the very least selectively use information to reinforce their arguments. I will probably do it during this sermon!

The OED description of the word as being the influence of emotions over facts perhaps points to a more general feeling of having had enough of experts maybe because there are very few objective facts, only lies, damn lies and statistics. In a situation of contradictory 'facts', the only way to decide seems to be on the basis of what you feel. But even this is not new. The story of the second half of the 20th Century onwards is that story of a gradual decline in a belief in absolutes, particularly in a belief in absolute truth. The contemporary creed and mantra becomes “this is my truth, show me yours.” At its best this encourages us to listen to other people's point of view, but increasingly it is being used to silence anyone who dares to disagree with whatever the current cultural agenda is.

It is debatable how far 'post-truth' explains the political events of this year, but another factor seems to have been an anti-establishment vote, or a protest against the current political elite by people who feel forgotten or ignored. There is a sense among some people that the leaders of the world have failed to lead properly. This finds an echo in our reading from the Old Testament prophet Jeremiah. In it God describes the leaders of Israel as being shepherds who have failed to look after and care for their sheep. Worse than that, they have destroyed and scattered them. God's solution to the problem was to come himself to lead the Israelites, to gather them back, tend them and rule them wisely and with justice.

Fast forward 650 years and we have St Paul writing to the Colossian church about 30 years after Jesus death and resurrection. He describes to them Jesus the Good Shepherd in whom all the fullness of God dwells and who is now king of all things in heaven and on earth having rescued us by that same death and and resurrection. Jesus therefore is the pattern for how all those in authority should behave, whether they are international or national leaders, local officials, parish councillors, community leaders, employers, teachers, sports coaches, parents or anyone else who has responsibility for others. Jesus the king came not to be served but to serve; to gather, to tend, and to rule wisely and with justice but ultimately he came to give his life for us.

If this is a post-truth world where leaders could and should be leading better, the answer is not to to stick two fingers up to the establishment by voting for the equivalent of Boaty McBoat Face. Instead we should look to imitate and follow Jesus the King of kings, the Lord of lords, the Ruler of rulers, the Leader of leaders, the Servant of servants, the only one who is the Way, the Truth and the Life.

What we still need to learn from the Battle of the Somme

Here's my sermon from this year's Remembrance Service at Hibaldstow (the reading was Luke 21:5-19):

Jesus said “Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom” words that are as true now as when he first spoke them, indeed they seem to have been true for the whole of human history. But out of all the many wars that this world has seen, what was it about the First World War that has left such a permanent mark on our psyche and collective memory? Why is it that it is this war that spawned and indeed is still the focus of Remembrance Sunday?

It seems to me that the answer may have something to do with the Battle of the Somme, the centenary of which has been commemorated this year. The Somme features many of the common images of the First World War: trenches, mud, barbed wire, machine guns and so on. But it also highlights some of the themes of the war: industrialised mass slaughter; tiny gains at a massive cost; conscripted young men, promised glory but sent to their deaths by old commanding officers. By the end of the four and a half months of the offensive, the Allies gained 12km of ground at an estimated cost of 620,000 casualties (420,000 British, 200,000 French). The Germans lost around 500,000 men.

The Battle of the Somme also seems to represent another feature of the First World War that has made it so outstanding, and that is that it was the end of the idea of human progress, that humanity is getting better and better, that the world is improving. What the First World War demonstrated was that history wasn't inevitably improving, because so many civilised nations ended up fighting each other - the only progress that was made was our ability to kill more people, more efficiently.

The destruction of the view of the inevitable progress of humanity has had bad consequences for us all. Since then, without the feeling that we're working for a better world, we've become self-centred, out to get the best for ourselves no matter what it takes and no matter who suffers as a consequence. With no hope for the future we become people who live only for the present.

Remembrance Sunday is a day to recall the consequences of war, not just in terms of the people who died, who were injured or who lost loved ones, but also in terms of its effect on us as a society. More importantly, remembering the past must lead to learning from it, otherwise our remembrance is pointless.

We no longer share the naïve optimism of the Victorians and Edwardians that humanity is marching to a glorious future by its own efforts. But that shouldn't mean we should only think about the present and what we can get out of it for ourselves. The First World War reminds us that we have an almost limitless ability to be cruel to each other especially when we believe we are in the right. Our present time reminds us that we will do almost anything if it makes us happy, regardless of its effect on others.

There is a hope for the future but it lies outside of humanity. Yes we should do all we can to make this world a better, more peaceful place, but ultimately only God will bring a lasting kingdom of true justice and peace. Jesus came to announce the coming of that kingdom, but he also came to die so that those self-important and self-centred desires can be forgiven and changed. And he promised that one day he will return to make all things new and those who believe in him will share in that glorious future.

God, Guns N' Roses and November Rain

Here's my article for the November Magazine:

 As the nights start drawing in and the air turns from the autumnal crispness to the early winter dampness, I often have going around my head the lyrics “Nothing lasts forever even cold November rain,” from a song by Guns N' Roses.

Axl Rose, the lead singer, explained that “November Rain is a song about not wanting to be in a state of having to deal with unrequited love.” In the song the singer says to his girlfriend “It's hard to hold a candle, in the cold November rain”, in other words that it's hard to keep loving when that love isn't returned, with the 'cold November rain' being a metaphor for that unreturned love. The song is however hopeful that one day she will stop having affairs and love him back; “Cause nothin' lasts forever, even cold November rain.”

It's sometimes said that the whole of the Bible is like a love letter written from God to all of humanity, and to each of us as individuals, to tell us that God wants to be in a relationship with us. Indeed, all the way through the Bible, the relationship between God and his people is described as a marriage. And this marriage isn't always easy. The Old Testament prophets, and particularly Hosea, describe the marriage relationship between God and his people going through a very rough patch. God tells Hosea “like an adulterous wife this land is guilty of unfaithfulness to the Lord” (Hosea 1:2). Indeed God's chosen people, the 'wife' he loves, is behaving more like a prostitute (read Ezekiel 16:25-26 for a graphic description!) The whole of Ezekiel 16 lists all the things God has done for his people, which only makes their rejection of him more hurtful.

But despite the 'cold November rain' of his people's rejection of him, God doesn't abandon them but still holds a candle for them. More than that he forgives them! “ 'Return, faithless Israel,' declares the Lord, 'I will frown on you no longer, for I am faithful...I will not be angry for ever. Only acknowledge your guilt – you have rebelled against the Lord your God, you have scattered your favours to foreign gods under every spreading tree, and have not obeyed me' ” (Jeremiah 3:12-13). God also says “I will heal their waywardness and love them freely, for my anger has turned away from them” (Hosea 14:4).

God doesn't overlook his people's unfaithfulness but he acknowledges it and provides a way for them to be forgiven. “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless” (Ephesians 5:25-27). Jesus' death takes the punishment for our rejection of God so we can be reconciled, restored and renewed.

As we venture out this month into that cold November rain, let us remember God's longing for each of us to know him and to be in a relationship with him. Whatever your past or present, he holds a candle for you and is waiting for you to return.

Halloween: Harmless fun? Trick or treat?

Here's my magazine article from October 2013.

“It's just harmless fun” is a phrase that we'll be hearing a lot over the next few weeks as people defend the activities around Halloween, but is it true?

The origins of Halloween are in the Druid and Celtic feast of Samhain which celebrated the end of harvest and the beginning of the dark period of winter. The boundary between this world and the world of the dead was thought to dissolve and the dead returned to earth and created havoc by playing tricks on people and damaging crops. When Christianity arrived in Britain, it attempted to 'Christianise' these and other similar celebrations around the world by talking instead of the 'hallowed' saints who have died. 1^st November became All Hallows (Saints) Day, and the day before, 31^st October became All Hallows Eve or Hallowe'en. However, despite this the pagan and occult origins of the celebrations never went away.

Today the celebrations of Halloween have little to do with Samhain, for many it's just a laugh, an opportunity to dress up and perhaps to get some free sweets. We might possibly object to Halloween because of its celebration of fear, and of causing fear; the anti-social problems and potential risks for children through 'trick-or-treats'; or the overcommercialisation of it. But there is something a lot more dangerous about Halloween than these.

Christianity teaches that the supernatural exists and that there are evil and malevolent spiritual forces in the world. Halloween celebrations both underestimate and overestimate the power of those forces. By trivialising their power and making it the stuff of funny costumes it may encourage people, especially children, to 'play' with ouija boards, tarot cards, horoscopes and other occult practices. This connects people with sinister forces beyond their control, forces whose only aim is destruction.

On the other hand, Halloween is the celebration of evil over good, of darkness over light. Christianity teaches that through his death on the cross Jesus defeated all evil powers, although they won't be finally destroyed until Jesus comes again. In the meantime, they are active in the world and although they are more powerful than we are, they are nowhere near as powerful as God is. In Jesus, good has triumphed over evil and light has defeated darkness. As we say in the baptism service as we give the person their baptism candle: “God has delivered us from the dominion of darkness and has given us a place with the saints in light. You have received the light of Christ; walk in this light all the days of your life.”

The 'treat' of Halloween is really a 'trick' to make us both forget the power of evil and also to think it more powerful than it is. Fun it may be, but harmless it most definitely is not.

"If these walls could speak..."

Here's my sermon for Broughton's Civic Service this year:

I think that I can say without fear of contradiction that this year has been a very interesting one politically! Whatever your opinion might be of the referendum, the party political leadership elections, the US Presidential race; whatever your opinion might be of these, they've certainly got people thinking and talking about politics in a way we haven't for many years. And this is no bad thing. But one of the consequences of this is that it has caused, or at least highlighted many divisions in our society and even between family and friends. So we gather today aware of our differences and perhaps wondering whether we do share much in common with our neighbour at all.

But what better place to gather at this turbulent time than here in St Mary's?  This year, as many of you are aware, we are celebrating our 950th Anniversary, although as Dr Kevin Leahy reminded us in his lecture here last night the church is certainly older than that.  Just think about the history that this church has been around for, as the old saying goes “If these walls could speak...”

The Norman Conquest, the Magna Carta, the Reformation, the Civil War, the Agricultural Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, two world wars, one world cup... the list goes on.  Loads of times of turbulence, loads of eras of uncertainty, loads of periods where communities and families were divided.  Yet this place has been a constant.

It's been a constant reminder that there is something bigger than us, something more stable and reliable.  Sometimes when the school children come in to look around this church we think about how big it is and how much bigger it would have seemed when it was first built and people lived in small single storey houses, perhaps made of wood.  We think about how extravagant and unnecessarily high it is and we think about two reasons for that. Firstly it was big enough to hold everyone in the village, everyone could find a place here.  But secondly, and most importantly, it reminds us of how big, strong and secure God is.

This year we've been able to help people rediscover their place here.  Last academic year the school children  and some of the staff each made a square or a leaf that have been put together to form the two banners either side of me.  They now have a very visible place within the fabric of the church, that will hopefully be there for many generations to come.  This weekend we had the parish registers out so people could find themselves and their family in the history books – part of the life of this church.  This is their church, this is our church and we all have a place in it.

When the children are thinking of words to describe this building they say things like 'welcoming', 'like home','peaceful', like another world', 'safe'.  This is partly because for almost a thousand years people have been worshipping and praying here and the presence of God can be felt here.  God, who is the true firm foundation for our lives; God, who loves us even if we think we're unlovable; God, who believes in us even if we don't believe in him.

In these uncertain times, we need places like St Mary's to remind us that although there have always been difficult times, both in our national and international life and in our community and families, even though there have been difficult times, these times pass.  We need places like St Mary's to remind us that despite our differences we can come together as a community because we are all welcome here.

But also it reminds us that especially in our darkest times we need Jesus the light of the world; in a time of confusion in leadership we need Jesus who is the truly wise King of kings; in our broken world we need Jesus who reconciles us to each other and to God; in our divided world we Jesus who is the only Prince of Peace and ultimately the only answer to humanity's problems.

Dabble, dabble, game or trouble?

Here's my article for the October parish magazine:

There's a fine line between vigilance and paranoia and between caution and hysteria and it's a line that I'm going to attempt to tread in this article.

This summer's gaming sensation has been Pokemon Go – a smartphone game where imaginary creatures and accessories are looked for and captured in real life locations.  Some have praised it for getting coach-potato gamers out of their houses and walking around, whilst others have pointed out the dangers of people walking onto roads or into streams; causing accidents or making themselves vulnerable to crime by playing the game.  A few people are warning of the spiritual damage that Pokemon can do.

This latter group look at the 'worldview' of the game. Pokemon is short for 'pocket monsters' and the Pokemon have different abilities, for example reading of minds, use of poison, mimicry, taunting, teleportation and hypnosis. The concept of the original game of Pokemon is that you capture these Pokemon, 'train' them and then 'summon' them to fight against other people's Pokemon.  This, they say, is very similar to the practices of summoning and trying to control spiritual beings and forces that are found in witchcraft, Wicca, shamanism and spiritism, all of which the Bible warns against.  They also point to the testimony of former witchdoctors such as Bautista who, with no prior knowledge of the game, identified some Pokemon with demons they had encountered.

However, whilst some of the underlying themes and concepts of Pokemon are based on unChristian and potentially dangerous worldviews, it is after all just a game.  The same can't be said, on the other hand for those who 'dabble' in witchcraft, Wicca, mediums, psychics, spiritism etc.  These are very real attempts to summon and control very real spiritual beings and forces.  The problem with these practices, apart from the dubious techniques used by some of the practitioners, is that although the spiritual forces are real, only demonic forces would use these means.  This is because God has forbidden these practices so no force for good would use them, despite them seeming to be harmless or even caring.  St Paul warns us the “Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light. It is not surprising, then, if his servants also masquerade as servants of righteousness.” (2 Corinthians 11:14-15).

There is no such thing as good magic, the dead cannot be communicated with and spiritual forces are beyond the command of humans.  What will respond if you call on these things are evil spirits that we are unable to control.  However, the Bible records loads of occasions where Jesus demonstrated his power over evil forces, and ultimately “God defeated the spiritual rulers and powers. With the cross God won the victory and defeated them. He showed the world that they were powerless” (Colossians 2:15). If you have opened the door of your life to evil influences, the good news is that through Jesus that door can be shut and you can be set free from every evil force that wants to control you.

Christianity Explored and the Olympics

Here's my magazine article for September:

“One Life. What's it all about?”

That's the strap line on the posters for the Christianity Explored course, which we'll be running again starting on Monday 5^th September. And it's a very important question - because how we answer that question has a huge bearing on how we live our lives.

I'm writing this at the middle of the Olympic Games and in interview after interview the medal winners talked about how their preparations for the last four years had been focussed on competing in these Games. Their whole lives; their daily routines, their food and drink, their social activities, their family lives had been dictated by the aim of doing the best that they could in their event. They had to ignore or avoid anything that would distract them from their goal and certainly not do anything that would make them unable to achieve their potential. And standing on the podium with an Olympic medal around their neck made all of those sacrifices worth it.

Olympic athletes are perhaps an extreme example but many people are similarly driven to achieve goals in their personal lives or careers and make similar sacrifices. On the other hand many people don't really have a clue where they're going or what they want to achieve and their lives are subsequently purposeless. So we need to ask ourselves the question of what our goals are and more importantly whether those goals are good ones.

Jesus said he came to bring us life in all its fullness, so when we're reassessing our own life goals one of the important factors to think about is if and where Jesus features in our lives. The Christianity Explored course gives the opportunity to discover who Jesus is, what he did and what that means for us by reading through and discussing Mark's gospel.

St Paul often uses the analogy of sport to describe what it's like to follow Jesus. He wrote “Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last; but we do it to get a crown that will last for ever. Therefore I do not run like someone running aimlessly; I do not fight like a boxer beating the air.” (1 Corinthians 9:24-26). Paul contrasts the fleeting and ephemeral nature of sporting prizes such as laurel leaves, titles, records etc. with the permanent prize of everlasting life promised to all who believe in Jesus and who live with him at the centre of their lives. And unlike Olympic gold, this everlasting prize is for all believers who run and complete the race, not just for those who come first.

Gardening and life

Here is my article from the August parish magazine:

If you've seen the garden at the Vicarage you'll know that I'm not a particularly good or industrious gardener. However, to misuse a quote from the Bible “the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak”! (The original quote is about falling into temptation, see Matthew 26:38). In my head, I have lots of ideas of things I'll do with the garden but a short supply of time and inclination means that that is as far as my ideas go! I can just about keep on top of the lawns and even occasionally attempt to plant something!

Having said that I do listen to Gardener's Question Time on Radio 4 whenever I can, even if I don't always understand what they're talking about! As well as answering questions from the audience and listeners, each week the gardening experts give their 'topical tips' on things keen and not-so-keen gardeners should be doing that week. These tips often include things like pruning and planting or even preparation for future work but one year, around this time I heard a different topical tip. The expert advised the listeners to get a chair and a drink, sit down in the garden and enjoy it! They were suggesting that it was too easy to be so engrossed in 'doing the gardening' that people forget why the garden is there in the first place- to enjoy!

Of course, this is true not just of gardening but of life in general. We can often be so busy running around doing all the things we do that we don't stop to question why we are doing them or indeed to enjoy the fruits of our labour. We find it hard to slow down, to reflect and to reconnect with the world and the people around us.

That's why rest, holidays and 'downtime' are so important, in fact they're so important that God made them part of his guidelines for life. One of the Ten Commandments instructs a Sabbath day of rest each week, and every seventh year was to be a Sabbath year where the Israelites were not to sow or prune (Leviticus 25:1-7) so presumably GQT was also off-air for a year! But God didn't just want people to rest from work, he wanted them to enjoy life. So in Deuteronomy 24:5 he says that “If a man has recently married, he must not be sent to war or have any other duty laid on him. For one year he is to be free to stay at home and bring happiness to the wife he has married.” And in Psalm 128:2 those who love and obey God are promised that they will eat the fruit of their labour, and Jesus himself promises that those who are saved by him will have live, and have it to the full (John 10:10).

So my topical tip at this time is to look at the world and the people around you, thank God for them and make the time to enjoy them!!

Nongentiquinquagintal-istic celebration focus (even though the sound of it is something quite atrocious!)

Here's my July magazine article for Broughton:

We're now well into our celebrations for our 950^th Anniversary, although we haven't yet decided whether we should call it our Nonsemicentennial or Nongentiquinquagintal; perhaps we'll just stick with 950^th Anniversary! We started the year with our Anniversary Songs of Praise, our Sunday School wrote a special prayer for the year, we celebrated Broughton weddings, we had our friends from Regia Anglorum set up their Anglo-Saxon Living History camp around the church and Broughton Primary School have made two fantastic banners to commemorate the year. This month is our Anniversary weekend, with a Summer Fair on Saturday 16^th July and our Service of Thanksgiving on Sunday 17^th July, both of which you're all invited to join us at. And there'll be more events later in the year.

Broughton Primary School's production this year is Mary Poppins, the well known story of a Victorian nanny with magical powers and the adventures she has with the Banks family. One of the most moving themes of the story is Mr Banks gradually realising that there is more to life than work. The tuppence that he wanted his children to invest in the economy and industry in order to drive forward the technological revolution and create wealth, could also be spent on feeding the birds or on paper and string to make a kite. More importantly he realised that his obsession with work had meant that he'd neglected his family. His reconnection with his wife and his children seems to be the reason Mary Poppins comes.

When Regia came in May, as well as looking at the fantastic camp many people spent time wandering around inside the church. For some it was the first time they'd been in the church, others had been in occasionally for services but had never really looked around. One of the best things I heard during that weekend was the amount of people who felt reconnected to the church, they found a new sense of pride in the building and I think many of them began to see it for the first time as being 'their' church. This was a theme that Bishop David and I picked up on at the unveiling of the banners at school; the reason we asked the school to make the banners was because St Mary's as the parish church is their church and now, through the pieces that each of them contributed to the banners, they have become part of the church too. In the future people looking around the church will see the children and staff's handiwork.

But St Mary's exists in the first place to point to a greater reconnection. The Christian message that St Mary's was built to celebrate and proclaim is that even though our sin separates us from God, Jesus died so that those sins could be forgiven and we could reconnect with God. Our fathers, like Mr Banks, are not perfect, but our heavenly Father God loves us more than we can imagine and longs for us to reconnect with him. Maybe this is the year for you to do just that.

The EU and the CofE

Here's my magazine article for June:

On Thursday 23^rd June, voters will be able to have their say over the future of the UK's relationship with the EU. This will be, and indeed is already being, preceded by lots of comments from religious leaders about the issues, followed by lots of criticisms of religion 'meddling' in politics.

Those who don't approve of religious leaders speaking out on political issues (although they tend only to disapprove if the religious leader holds an opposite opinion!) often make two mistakes. Firstly they assume that faith and politics are separate; that one's faith is a private matter whereas politics is about public issues and never the twain should meet. This is a false division as any faith worth its salt has an outward dimension and has a view about how humans should interact. Indeed, Jesus taught us to ask our heavenly Father “thy kingdom come” and Jesus himself was executed because he represented a threat to the political and religious authorities of his day. The second mistake that is made is to think that a discussion about politics can be held in a neutral, value-free, completely 'rational' environment. We all have a world-view that shapes our thinking about society: for a lot of people that world-view is influenced by their religious beliefs for others it is influenced by their secular beliefs.

So I offer my ha'p'orth on the referendum, two reflections both based on the experience of the Church of England, but on different sides of the argument. Firstly, one of the founding principles of the Church of England was that it was not subject to Rome. Henry VIII reasoned that as he was appointed by God, he was answerable only to God, and therefore that he, not the Pope, was the head of the English church. As the Church of England spread around the world, this principle went with it, so that each national church had the authority to decide matters for themselves without looking to England. Therefore, all the churches of what is now the Anglican Communion have different liturgies and different views on certain issues. Thus the principle of each nation being in supreme control of its own area is central to the history of the Church of England.

On the other hand, the Church of England makes no grand claims for itself, it simply states that it is “part of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.” It doesn't claim to be the true Church, or the Church in its entirety but just a part of the Church. There's a recognition that it is part of a larger whole and so that it is dependant on, and in partnership with, the rest of the Church

These two reflections show that it is possible for a Christian to be on either side of the debate, and indeed www.reimaginingeurope.co.uk is “a space for Christian reflection and debate on Britain’s future relationship with Europe” with views on both sides. However you decide to vote, and whatever the result, the Christian prayer to God remains the same “thy kingdom come on earth, as it is in heaven.”

Non angeli, sed sancti

Here's my article for the May magazines:

The first day of May is often said to be the first day of spring, where the blustery April showers are left behind in favour of fresh spring breezes. Spring, like Easter brings with it thoughts of new life. May is also the month when the church remembers St Augustine of Canterbury, a missionary who came to the British Isles in 569 AD to help spread the message about Jesus, and subsequently became the first Archbishop of Canterbury. Both these events have been in my mind in the last couple of weeks and have linked together.

Although Christianity was practised in Britain before he came, Augustine brought a new vigour to the task of spreading the gospel. He was sent by Pope Gregory the Great, who according to Bede, saw some British slaves in a Roman market and on seeing their pale faces and blond hair asked who they were. He was told they were Angles, to which he responded “non Angli, sed angeli” - not Angles but angels! It was this that inspired him with a desire to send a mission to the Angles.

The new life of spring echoed a new chapter in my family's life as we anticipated the birth of twins in September. Unfortunately there was a complication with the pregnancy and, despite an operation, both twins died at 18 weeks gestation. But the expectation of new life was fulfilled in a more complete way than we imagined as James and Jacob, as we named them, entered the new life that is a central part of our Christian belief. “For we believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him...And so we will be with the Lord forever” (1 Thessalonian 4:14, 17b).

We have received many messages of support and prayers, for which we are most grateful. However there's one message that we occasionally hear which strikes an odd chord, and that is words to the effect that James and Jacob died because God needs more angels. This springs from a folk belief that when people die, and especially babies, they become angels. My thought on hearing this said to me was a version of of Gregory's aphorism: “non angeli, sed sancti” - not angels but saints! James and Jacob, like all human beings, are made in the image and likeness of God. The angels are God's servants but through faith in Jesus humans can become his children and his children are saints.

The comments about our 'angel babies' are well-intentioned, and we are grateful for the love that inspires them, but there is surely a greater comfort in the truth that they are saints; they have the eternal life with God that we also can receive by faith in Jesus. Whereas it is almost impossible to know for certain whether or not someone who has died will have eternal life, babies who die will, in God's mercy, inherit eternal life. So if you have lost a baby in whatever way, either before or after birth, take comfort in the truth that they are not angels, but saints.

[see also my Advent blogposts on The Four Last Things: death, judgement, heaven and hell]

The Servant Queen and the King she serves

On 21^st April, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will be 90 years old. From this date until her official birthday celebrations from 10^th-12^th June, people in this country and around the commonwealth will be organising and participating in a wide range of activities and events. Although the celebrations will be similar to the Diamond Jubilee celebrations of 2012, this occasion gives us the opportunity to look not just at how she has fulfilled the rôle of Queen but to think about her as a person.

Any objective account of the Queen's life would give a prominent place to the rôle of her Christian faith in her life, which is illustrated by the title of a book published by the Bible Society, churches' group HOPE and the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity to mark her birthday. The book is called “The Servant Queen and the King she serves”. Jesus, the King of kings, said that those who wish to be great should be the servant of all. The Queen has embodied this way of being great; she could have revelled in her position and abused it for her own purposes, but instead she sees it as her duty to serve the people the God had made her monarch of. In the Book of Common Prayer Communion service we pray that the monarch, knowing whose minister they are, may above all things seek God's honour and glory, and the Queen is an example of just that.

In her 2014 Christmas broadcast the Queen said “For me, the life of Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace, whose birth we celebrate today, is an inspiration and an anchor in my life. A rôle-model of reconciliation and forgiveness, he stretched out his hands in love, acceptance and healing. Christ’s example has taught me to seek to respect and value all people of whatever faith or none.” In her 2002 Christmas broadcast the Queen said “I know just how much I rely on my faith to guide me through the good times and the bad. Each day is a new beginning. I know that the only way to live my life is to try to do what is right, to take the long view, to give of my best in all that the day brings, and to put my trust in God … I draw strength from the message of hope in the Christian gospel.”

The message of hope in the Christian gospel is that we are more sinful than we ever imagined, but more loved than we ever dreamed. So even though we mess things up God still loves us and will forgive us and help us to change if we ask him. In the foreword to the book, the Queen writes “I have been – and remain – very grateful to you for your prayers and to God for his steadfast love. I have indeed seen his faithfulness.” Perhaps you need an anchor in your life or freedom from past mistakes and the chance to start again. The Queen has found these in the King she serves, Jesus Christ, and the Christian gospel; I pray that you will too.

The importance of dating Easter

Here's my article for the March magazines:

“When's Easter this year?” is a question I often get asked (Sunday 27^th March in case you're wondering!). The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, is in talks with the leaders of other churches to try to fix the date of Easter, but until then it will vary considerably year after year. This is because Easter is the original 'moveable feast', with the Council of Nicea in 325AD deciding that Easter would be celebrated on the first Sunday after the first full moon occurring on or after 21^st March (the Church's approximation of the vernal equinox). This means that Easter can be quite disruptive, especially to the school calendar where the length of the school terms are affected by the date of Easter.

But all this is quite appropriate because Easter, like the Christian faith, is supposed to be disruptive. At the beginning of February we celebrate the time when, as a forty day old baby, Jesus was taken to the Temple in Jerusalem by his parents and dedicated to God. They were met there by Simeon who, full of the Holy Spirit, declared that Jesus would cause the falling and rising of many and would be “a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed” (Luke 2:34-35). Right from the start it was clear that Jesus' work would be disruptive, most of all by shaking the establishment out of their cosy religious traditions by exposing their hypocrisy of saying they believed in God but not letting it affect their lives. Jesus' message was also disruptive because he said that God loves everyone and that all are of equal value in his sight.

But Easter is most disruptive of all as it marks the beginning of a whole new reality. By rising from the dead Jesus defeated the power of death and opened the way to everlasting life and so the old order of life and death is disrupted. No longer can we live with the philosophy of 'eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die' because our death is not the end. If death were the end then life itself would be pointless so we might as well make the most of it, but this too would ultimately be meaningless. Richard Dawkins says in his book 'River out of Eden: A Darwinian view of life', "In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice”. But Jesus' death and resurrection have changed everything and have disrupted our cosy worldview.

And that is what Lent is all about – allowing the voice of Jesus to disrupt our assumptions, our innermost thoughts and our lives, and opening ourselves to receive God's love so we can be re-shaped to be more like him. However, this is not a meaningless or self-indulgent exercise because the choices we make in this life will profoundly affect what happens to us after death. But Easter reminds us of Jesus' promise that whoever listens and responds to his voice will have eternal life.

Confessions of a bad football supporter

This is the February article from Scawby magazine:

We're just over half way through the football season and I have been to three matches. That may not seem like very many, but it's about the same as my total for the previous four seasons put together – and unusually two of those matches were to see my team play! I'm a Tranmere Rovers supporter and so since they dropped out of the same league as Scunthorpe, I've had limited opportunity to see them play until this season when they joined the same league as Grimsby and Lincoln.

It's often said that football is a bit like religion. Aside from the tribal nature of supporting teams, the matches themselves share similarities with religious services. Both the players and supporters have match-day rituals, the supporters tend to sit in the same place (and would do so even if they didn't have allocated seats), there is adulation of players past and present and there tends to be a rose-tinted view of 'glory days' in the past, when everything was much better. Then of course there's communal singing and the friendships formed between fellow supporters, and you can probably think of other similarities.

If supporting a football team is similar to being a religious believer, then I am a football supporter in a similar way that a lot of people are believers. The Roman poet Horace described himself as “A remiss and irregular worshipper” (Odes 1.34) and I feel the same about being a Tranmere supporter. If people ask me I'll tell them I support Tranmere, but I don't follow their progress closely, I don't know where they are in the league, and sometimes can't even remember what league they're in. I don't often go to see them play and when I did go to see them play this season I realised I didn't know any of the players and I didn't even know who their manager is! I used to be a season ticket holder and went to most home games and the occasional away match (especially if it was at Wembley!), but even then I wasn't really an avid fan. I'm a Tranmere supporter, but I do very little that would count as 'support' and it hardly ever affects my life.

And a lot of people are the same about Christianity: if asked they would say they are Christians, but aside from occasionally coming to church it hardly ever affects their life. But perhaps worse still are those who come to church most weeks but it still doesn't affect their lives – that's like going to watch Tranmere on a Saturday but wearing a Liverpool shirt for the rest of the week!

Lent is a good time for us all to reassess where our priorities and loyalties really lie. It's a chance for us to explore and deepen our faith, however 'remiss and irregular' we are. It's a chance to reaffirm our identity as Christians and take seriously the need for it to affect our whole lives. Like being a Tranmere supporter, being a Christian isn't always easy and attracts a lot of ridicule, but unlike being a Tranmere supporter the future is certain and it's glorious!

[The motto on the Tranmere crest above means "where there is faith, there is light and strength"]

950th Anniversary of St Mary's, Broughton

This is Broughton's Parish Magazine article for February 2015:

You will hopefully know by now that 2016 is the 950^th Anniversary of St Mary's Church and that we are planning a number of events to celebrate. Indeed the celebrations have started already with our Anniversary Songs of Praise on the first Sunday of the year.

One of the readings from that service was Psalm 84, which contains the words: “How lovely is your dwelling-place, Lord Almighty! My soul yearns, even faints, for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh cry out for the living God...Better is one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere” (verses 1-2, 10). The Psalmist speaks of his love for the Temple in Jerusalem as it is the place where he can meet with the living God. For the Jewish people the Temple was very important as is was the place where God was present in a special way. However, by Jesus' time it had become a place to make profits and also the seat of political authority dressed as religious authority; Jesus opposed both of these abuses.

But what made Jesus really radical was that he taught that the Temple itself was no longer needed, and this was one of the themes we looked at in our Advent course on the biblical letter to the Hebrews. The sacrifices that were made in the Temple would be no longer necessary after his sacrificial, once-for-all death and resurrection. And the true location of God's presence with us was not a building but the person of Jesus himself.

As we celebrate the 950^th anniversary of St Mary's it is right to give thanks to God for the building. It's right to thank God for those who have designed, built and paid for it. It's right to give him thanks for all those who have looked after it and beautified it over the years, as well as those who continue to do that today. But in all our celebrations of such a fantastic and historically important building, we should not be like the people of Jesus' day, who forgot why the Temple was there in the first place.

St Mary's is first and foremost a place of worship, a place for people to come to meet with the living God. Centuries of prayer and praise have soaked into the walls of St Mary's giving it the very tangible feeling of being a special place of God's presence. The size of it reminds us that God is strong and lasting, and it's position in the town reminds us that he wants to be right in the middle of our lives. But God is not limited to St Mary's, he is everywhere and can be found anywhere at any time. Jesus says “Listen! I am standing and knocking at your door. If you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in and we will eat together” (Revelation 3:20). May this year be a special year not just for St Mary's but for you, as you meet with the living God through Jesus his Son.