Songs of September and Song of Songs

Here's my magazine article for September:

By September the football season is well underway - although some would say the football season never really stops! The number of players changing teams during the summer means that though the names of the clubs stay the same, the actual teams can be quite different. If you follow a club on social media you will get updates on the latest signings, and following my team, Tranmere Rovers, on Facebook I saw the familiar name of a former player who is now returning.

Though I'm not a good enough fan to know all of the players, Connor Jennings, who has also played for both Scunthorpe United and Grimsby Town, sticks out in my mind mainly for a couple of reasons: firstly he was a great player who contributed lots to three consecutive play-off finals, including the winning goal in the 2019 League Two final. But secondly, he has a great fan song!

Sporting chants usually take their inspiration from popular or well-known songs. So we have the general purpose: “You're not singing any more” to the tune of “Guide me O thou great Redeemer”; “There's only one...” to “Winter Wonderland”; and “You only sing when you're winning / fishing / insert other regional stereotype here” to “Guantanamera.” Connor's song is to “September” by “Earth, Wind and Fire” but when I first heard the chant I recognised the tune but didn't know the original song, until it was on the radio a few weeks later.

One of the writers said about it “never let the lyric get in the way of the groove”, meaning that it's a song to dance to not think deeply about, but it does have a general message. Unsurprisingly, it is not about a footballer who “never gives the ball away”. The singer asks his partner “do you remember...dancing in September...never was a cloudy day...Remember how we knew love was here to stay?” Unlike many songs that speak of this first flush of love, the song doesn't then say that this love was great but never lasted. Instead, now in December they still share true love.

These months could be literal months, saying that this was not just a summer fling, or they could be metaphorical months (like they are in Sinatra's “September Song”) describing the human lifespan as a calendar year. But whichever way it's read this is a song about a love that has lasted. Some have suggested that the reference to bells indicates that this is a song about a marriage (possibly on 21st September) that has lasted.

Sometimes the Bible reading at a wedding service sometimes comes from Song of Songs, where all eight chapters are a poetic celebration of the love between a man and a woman, often using spring as a metaphor for young love. I often then say that the 'springtime' of love makes everything seem easy, but the challenge of the marriage vows is to keep that love going through the difficult autumn and winter seasons. A difficult if not impossible promise to keep, unless we have the God who is love (1 John 4:8) filling us with his love. And his love is is a true everlasting love, not just for those in love, but for everyone.

The greatest love of all - but not according to Whitney Houston

Here's my article for the February magazine:

Photo by Jenny Dettrick / Getty Images

It's February so that means that love is in the air, or at least tokens of love are being sold in the shops! Given that our western civilisation grew out of, and is therefore saturated with, the biblical world view it is unsurprising that we value love so highly. After all, the Bible tells us that God is love (1 John 4:8), and that he created the world, and made us in his image (Genesis 1 and 2).

When asked how God wants us to live, Jesus replied in terms of love: the first and greatest commandment is to love God with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength; and the second is to love our neighbour as ourselves (Mark 12:28-34), meaning “do to others what you would have them do to you” (Matthew 7:12). The greatest commandment is usually overlooked in favour of the second, sometimes termed “the Golden Rule”. However, the second commandment is often misquoted as “Love your neighbour as you love yourself” and this radically changes the meaning.

The most obvious consequence of this misquote is to think that in order to love others you need to love yourself first, thus 'self-love' actually becomes the second commandment. We don't need much encouragement to be self-centred, but in misreading Jesus' words this way we manage to make selfishness a moral virtue and a divine command, because if we don't love ourselves we cannot then love others – we are being selfish for the good of others!!

We seem to live in a world where self-love is all around us. For example the popularity of 'selfies' and self-promotion through social media, and it could be argued that fashion, make-up, tattoos and vociferously identifying yourself with a particular group, are also forms of self-love. But as well as being consequences of narcissism they could also be symptoms of the opposite feeling of self-loathing. The desire to control the image that people see of you could be a result of a deep insecurity – we all like to portray the best side of ourselves, and to put on 'masks' perhaps for fear that people will not like the 'true' us.

Loving our neighbour does not require us to first love ourselves, nor does it require us to even like them. Instead it requires us to see them for who they are: people made in the image of God, and treat them as such, which is why Jesus wants us to include even our enemies in the category of 'neighbour' (Matthew 5:43-44). We love them 'as ourselves' because we are also made in the image of God. Self-loathing is a rejection of the God-image within us, but self-love is worshipping the image rather than the God in whose image we are made, so both go against the greatest commandment.

None of us is perfect, but one prayer praises God “who wonderfully created us in your own image and yet more wonderfully restored us through your Son Jesus Christ”. As we look at all the symbols of love around us, let's remember “This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another” (1 John 4:10-11).

How do we stop being afraid of each other?

This is my magazine article for June:

Those of you on social media will have probably seen posts that say that people want to keep socially distancing after the threat of the virus has gone, not for health reasons but just because they don't like talking with people! However, although some people are enjoying not having to interact with others, a lot of people, including introverts, are finding that they are really missing being with people. But as I write this (and I'm aware it may all have changed by the time you read this!), there is a growing sense that the restrictions we face at the moment will gradually lift. The questions then are how? and when?.

Aside from the practicalities there is another problem we have to solve as we move towards normality: how do we stop being afraid of each other? One of my strangest experiences at the start of this crisis was talking to someone and thinking “this person may have Coronavirus; they may be passing it to me; this person might be killing me!” The precautions that we are encouraged to take also make us cautious about other people. We stay two metres away from people because we might infect them, but also because they might infect us. We want trolleys and door handles to be sanitised; we want deliveries left on doorsteps; we wear gloves to bring in the bins, all to prevent contamination from others. COVID-19 might be the enemy but the people around us are its agents.

It seems to me that there are two ways in which we can re-learn how to be with other people. The first is to re-assess how we view life. The Government mantra reminds us that we should 'save lives' but why should we? This pandemic could have been used to aid 'social Darwinism' – killing off those who were weakest in society, which would have helped solve the problems of an over-stretched NHS and a pensions crisis. The fact that this would have been unacceptable is due to the deep Christian roots of our society: life is sacred not simply some evolutionary accident, and life is only sacred because we are made in the image and likeness of God himself (Genesis 1 and 2) and because he loves us enough to die for us (1 John 4:9-10).

The second is to re-assess how we view death. We fear COVID-19, and therefore others, because we fear death itself. Christianity, with the death and resurrection of Jesus at its heart, has the antidote to this fear – death has been destroyed (1 Corinthians 15:26). This is why in the Plague of Cyprian (249–262 AD) that, at its height, caused upwards of 5,000 deaths a day in Rome, Christians stayed in Rome to tend the sick. Dionysius, bishop of Alexandria, reported that in doing so they often died 'serenely happy' unlike the other Romans who “deserted those who began to be sick, and fled from their dearest friends. They shunned any participation or fellowship with death; which yet, with all their precautions, it was not easy for them to escape.” (Eusebius 'Ecclestiastical Histories' 7.22.7–10). The Romans died in fear but the Christians died cheerfully, knowing that “that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him” (1 Thessalonians 4:14).

So as we ease ourselves out of this lockdown, let's learn again not to fear people (because the worst they can do to us is kill us and death is not to be feared) and to love them as God's beloved image-bearers (and that includes you!).

How much are you worth?

Here's my February article:

How much are you worth? According to the fount of academic excellence known as Google (although other founts are available and may differ!), the human body is worth anything from just under $1 to just over £1,000,000 for all the body parts (or more on the black market) via $160 for the chemical elements. This month around Valentine's Day many people will be using cards and gifts to express to their loved ones how much they value them, though I doubt that many will express that in monetary terms! A human being is perhaps the greatest example of something being worth more than the sum of its parts.

I hope that you think that you are worth more than £1,000,000, but there are many ways that we can be made to feel worthless. Adverts, even ones that proclaim that “you're worth it!”, are designed to make us feel inadequate or incomplete without whatever product they're selling. Society too gives out the message that you're only worth something if you're popular; or have the right sort of education or job; or have a good background; or live in the nice places; or own certain things; or contribute a certain amount to society; or believe whatever that month's socially acceptable views are. Valentine's Day too plays into this conditional valuing of human life suggesting that you are only worth something if you have a partner, and have had many partners.

So how can we assess how much we are worth? Well, one way we can do think is to think about it in economic terms: something is worth whatever someone will pay for it. For example, if I owned the Mona Lisa and put it on an online auction site, if the highest bid for it is £1 then that is how much the Mona Lisa is worth. But what about us humans? Paul tells us that we have been bought at a price (1 Corinthians 6:20), we have been redeemed or bought back by God. And what did he buy us back with? His own blood (Acts 20:28)! God, in Jesus, bought each of us with his blood. You are worth the life of the eternal God!!

But that then begs the question of what God bought us back from. The Bible reminds us that we have all sinned (Romans 3:23) and Jesus says that those who sin are slaves to sin (John 8:34). As the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23), in order to redeem us from slavery to sin Jesus paid the price necessary, which was his death in our place. Therefore, “In [Jesus] we have redemption through [Jesus'] blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us” (Ephesians 1:8).

But why did God pay such a high price for us? Because our sin separates us from him (Isaiah 59:2) yet because he loves us (1 John 4:9-10), he wants to be reconciled with us (2 Corinthians 5:18-19). To be reconciled with God we need to accept his offer of forgiveness and repent of our sins.

If God sent you a Valentine's Day card its picture would be of Jesus on the cross, and the caption would say “This is how much I love you. This is how much I think you're worth.”

Christmas Songs: "All I want for Christmas is you"

A couple of years ago during Advent we had a series on the four songs of the first Christmas.  This year we're going to look at four popular Christmas songs.  This week it's “All I want for Christmas is you” by Mariah Carey.

“All I want for Christmas is you” picks up on a very common theme as a lot of Christmas songs are about being with loved ones or like this one missing them. Whether they're 'driving home for Christmas', or asking someone to 'please come home for Christmas'; counting 'five more nights' or are having a 'blue Christmas' people can't help singing about loved ones at Christmas. And the heartache of a broken relationship 'last Christmas' or of the 'fairytale of New York' gone wrong seems much worse at Christmas.

This is because there is something about Christmas that makes us focus on what truly matters. Unlike the superficial singer of “Santa Baby”, the singer of “All I want for Christmas is you” won't be made happy by presents, toys or even snow. Her only wish is the presence of her loved one for Christmas. And when we reflect on what truly matters in life the answer is often loving and being loved.

It's no surprise that this is a major theme of Christmas given that the reason for the season is, as Christina Rossetti wrote, that 'love came down at Christmas'. News of the birth of any baby is usually a cause for celebration and feelings of love, but that can't explain the enduring appeal of Christmas which can't even be completely obscured by all the glitz and commercialism. The birth of Jesus is on a completely different scale to any other birth because it is a sign of God's love for us: “This is how God showed his love among us: he sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him” (1 John 4:9).

But Jesus isn't like a Christmas present that is just a token of love that is greatly appreciated when it is given, but soon becomes ordinary. The gift of Jesus is not just God-with-us but God-for-us: Jesus came not just to be a wise teacher and an example of how to live, but so that he could be “an atoning sacrifice for our sins” (1 John 4:10) by his death on the cross. Through his teaching and his example we see how far short of God's standard we fall short, and that our failures mean that we deserve eternal punishment and eternal separation from God: but that's not much of a present! “God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him” (John 3:17). So after showing us the depths of our sin, he showed us the heights of his love: “For God took the sinless Christ and poured into him our sins. Then, in exchange, he poured God’s goodness into us!” (2 Corinthians 5:21 TLB).

Christmas songs and films often describe of the lengths that people will go to and the sacrifices they will make to be with their loved ones at Christmas. This is a small reflection of the lengths that God went to so we can be with him for eternity. All God wants for Christmas is you. So, if you want to be truly loved this Christmas come to God, confess your sins and receive his forgiveness through Jesus' atoning sacrifice. It's a Christmas present that will last for eternity!

Advent Reflections: Love

A couple of years ago we looked at the four traditional themes of Advent  Death, Judgement, Heaven and Hell ('The Four Last Things'). This year we're going to look at another set of Advent themes: Hope, Peace, Joy and Love. As the theme of this year's Advent course is Hope (and it was the theme of my November magazine article!), we'll look at the other three. This week it's Love.

To say that Christmas is a time for love seems unnecessary as it's very hard to avoid sentiments of love at Christmas. Love for our nearest and dearest shown by cards and presents, love for our fellow humans shown by charitable giving, Christmas adverts speaking of 'real love'. This is unsurprising as, in the words of Christina Rossetti: “Love came down at Christmas...Love Incarnate, Love Divine.”

This is the acceptably religious side of Christmas: celebrating the birth of someone who had a God-given mission to teach the world that we should love one another; someone who could be said to have been the most loving person that ever lived; who embodied love and practised divine love. But if this is all that we believe about Jesus, we've only grasped a tiny part of the significance of his birth. Yes, he was a loving person, and yes he was the most perfectly loving person there has ever been, but he is so much more than that.

The Bible tells us that God is Love (1 John 4:8), and that in Jesus God became human, he was literally (Divine) Love Incarnate. That's what's so amazing about Christmas! As Paul writes: Jesus although “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” (Philippians 2:6-7). The worship song writer Matt Redman put it this way, “The voice that said 'Let there be light' is heard within a newborn cry” ('The Name of Emmanuel').  Another worship song writer, Stuart Townend wrote this: “the mighty Prince of Life shelters in a stable. Hands that set each star in place, shaped the earth in darkness, cling now to a mother's breast, vulnerable and helpless” ('Joy has Dawned').  Read those words again to yourself slowly and let the mind-blowing truth sink in!

The miracle of Christmas is the miracle of God becoming human. But he didn't become human just to give us a good example to follow, he came to express his love for us. In his earthly ministry Jesus healed the sick and lifted up the weak and vulnerable, but these demonstrations of his love were limited to that one area of the world at that one time in history. God had bigger plans than that! He wanted to do something that would demonstrate his love for all people, from all times and all places, and what he would do would be achieve the restoration of our relationship with him that has been broken through our sin.

That restoration required reparation for the punishment that we owe because of that sin. We can't pay that price because we are not perfect, but God could because he is perfect. So “God expressed His love for the world in this way: He gave His only Son so that whoever believes in Him will not face everlasting destruction, but will have everlasting life” (John 3:16 The Voice Translation). And “[t]his is how God showed his love among us: he sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins” (1 John 4:9-10). And “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).

So our Advent theme of Love prepares us for the Love that came at Christmas; the Divine Love Incarnate in Jesus, which also reminds us to “Celebrate the cradle to the cross, celebrate the gift, celebrate the cost. For one without the other, the significance is lost. Celebrate the cradle to the cross” (Karl Berg - 'The Cradle to the Cross').  And our response? “Love so amazing, so Divine, demands my soul, my life, my all.”

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.”