Ding dong merrily on high (and on earth too!)

 It's going to be a very different Christmas this year, and as I write this (mid-November) we're not sure how different it's going to be, but we do know that it is going to be unlike any Christmas we've had before.  But despite whatever restrictions will be in place, there is a general desire to make Christmas a happy and special time.  One of the ideas is to ring bells outside at 6.00pm on Christmas Eve, which seems very appropriate as bells, especially of the jingle variety, are almost synonymous with Christmas.  If you're in any doubt about that, try listening to the most summer-like song whilst shaking bells and you will think about Christmas!!

But why are bells associated with Christmas?  The association probably goes back to the ringing of church bells to celebrate one of the great feasts of the church year and their sound of joy contrasting with the dark and miserable winter weather.  This link has been solidified in the popular imagination by the use of bells as a warning on coaches and sleighs in the poor winter visibility, and of course no Christmas chart song is complete without bells!!

Surprisingly, there is no mention of bells in the Biblical accounts of Jesus' birth, although often they are mentioned in re-tellings of the story as the bells of heaven ringing in celebration or of the angels' songs sounding like bells.  Indeed there is almost no mention of bells at all in the Bible, but cymbals are often included in lists of instruments used to worship God.  However, one place where bells are mentioned are in the clothes that God instructs the High Priest to wear.  In Exodus 28 God tells Moses to anoint his brother Aaron as the first High Priest and that at the bottom hem of a blue robe he should make pomegranates of blue, purple and scarlet yarn with gold bells between them. There are many different explanations of the purpose and symbolism of these bells, so we may never know for sure, but there are a couple that seem plausible to me.

Verse 34 says “The sound of the bells will be heard when he enters the Holy Place before the Lord and when he comes out, so that he will not die” and verse 43 repeats the warning.  The bells then are possibly an audible reminder to the High Priest that he is entering into the special presence of God and therefore should put aside the 'worldly' clothes of sinfulness and put on the 'heavenly' clothes of holiness.  Repentance is a pre-requisite for a relationship with God.  But the bells are also a reminder that as the High Priest leaves that special presence of God, he doesn't leave that holiness behind but brings it out into the world – the soft sound of the precious gold being the wonderful message of God spoken into a cacophonous world.

The Bible tells us that Jesus is our Great High Priest (Hebrews 4), not just coming as a messenger from God but, as we celebrate at Christmas, 'God-with-us'; God himself in human form.  And the wonderful message that he brings is that he has made it possible for all of us to enter into God's special presence because Jesus is not just the great High Priest but also because “we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all” (Hebrews 10:10).  So grab your bells or anything else to celebrate the good news that makes Christmas worth keeping whatever our circumstances!!

"I'm not as bad as Hitler"

Here's my article for the November magazine:

This year marks the 80^th anniversary of the start of World War Two and also, perhaps, the start of a new way to personify pure evil. During WWII, the person of Adolf Hitler was unsurprisingly used by the Allied nations in their propaganda to illustrate the immorality of the Nazi regime. However, this association of Hilter with evil continues to the present day in a way that isn't true of Kaiser Wilhelm who was used in similar propaganda in WWI. Hitler continues to be used to personify evil; perhaps because in our secular world that cannot acknowledge a supernatural realm, there needs to be something to replace the devil.

Hitler has also indirectly contributed to the field of logic. A reductio ad Hitlerum is an attempt to invalidate someone else's position on the basis that the same view was held by Adolf Hitler, e.g. he was a vegetarian and against smoking. In the world of the Internet, Godwin's rule asserts that “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1”. This has the unfortunate side-effect that making any reference to Hitler or the Nazis, however justified, is now seen as a reason not to listen to that argument. This is particularly dangerous when it comes to issues of censorship and restrictions on freedoms of speech and belief, which were used by the Nazis to quash any opposition or disagreement and are also increasingly used today to stop any questioning of the cultural zeitgeist.

There is another way that Hitler is used in arguments. Again he is used as the embodiment of evil, but this time people use him to compare themselves with: they say “I may not be perfect, but I'm not as bad as Hitler.” This has particularly dire consequences when it comes to the subject of sin and judgement. The Bible teaches us that one day Jesus will return to judge the living and the dead (1 Peter 4:5). It reminds us that we have all sinned and fallen short of God's standard (Romans3:23) and that we all therefore need to repent in order to be forgiven (Acts 3:19) and enjoy eternal life with God (Revelation 21:27).

Now I doubt whether anyone considers themselves to be perfect, but the problem is that when we compare our sins to other peoples' sins we will always be able to think of people who do worse or more sins than us, and if we can't, we can always rely on the argument that “I'm not as bad as Hitler”! When we do this we minimise and trivialise our sins to such an extent that we don't feel the need to repent. But if we look at this from God's point of view rather than our own we see that “the person who keeps every law of God but makes one little slip is just as guilty as the person who has broken every law there is” (James2:10 The Living Bible), because Jesus tells us that the standard is to be as perfect as God himself (Matthew 5:48).

To have a right view of ourselves is to say that we are just as bad a Hitler and that we don't deserve eternal life any more than he does, no matter how many good things we do in our lives. But the glorious good news is that even though we are that bad, Jesus died to take our punishment so that through belief in him we can enjoy eternal life with God and with no more pain, suffering or war.

A journey with a watery start

I suspect that not many people will remember their baptism.  I was baptised at the age of 16 so I do remember mine – it was a full immersion baptism in a pool that had been erected in the church for that occasion but the water was cold as the heater hadn't worked!  I remember how great it was to be able to affirm my faith publicly in front of my Christian family.

Those who are baptised as infants don't get the chance to affirm their faith for themselves at their baptism, but that is why we have godparents.  In the baptism service the Godparents not only declare that they believe the Christian faith themselves and that they will bring the child up as a Christian (by praying for them, being an example to them and bringing them along to church), but they also declare the faith on behalf of the child.    They answer for themselves and for the child.  In one version of the baptism service the minister says “At baptism we promise to reject the devil and all evil, constantly to believe God's Word, and to obey his commands. Children should make their own response of faith and obedience towards God, but as this child is at present too young to answer for himself it is proper that this commitment be made in his name until he is old enough to take it upon himself.” The rôle of the godparent is to bring the child up in the Christian faith so that the child is able to affirm their faith publicly, usually in the presence of a bishop at the Confirmation service.

It is sometimes said that children should be free to choose the faith for themselves and it is true that no-one is a Christian unless they decide for themselves to repent and to believe and trust in Jesus as their Lord.  However, infant baptism reminds us that Jesus invited children to be brought to him for a blessing and rebuked those who keep them from him.  But it also reminds us that a child is not 'done' when they've been baptised, rather it marks the start of their Christian journey where they will be guided and taught the faith by their parents and godparents, in the hope that one day they will choose it for themselves.  They cannot of course choose it if they have not been taught it!

Lent is a season of reflection in the Church year and those reflections sometimes centre around our identity as baptised Christians.  One of the prayers in our baptism service asks for God's help to “keep us faithful to our baptism” This involves three things: first, repenting of the things we do wrong; secondly, believing all that the Bible teaches about the doctrines of the Christian faith; and thirdly, keeping God's holy will and commandments all the days of our life.

At your baptism, your godparents prayed that Jesus would receive you, forgive you, sanctify you with the Holy Spirit, and make you an heir to heaven and eternal life. They also heard that Jesus promised all these things in his gospel and we know that he keeps his promises.  You started your Christian journey then, perhaps you need to restart that journey now, and if so you're always welcome at church – you are a member of our family after all!!

How to end all wars

Here's this month's magazine article:

On Sunday, 4^th August 1918, the fourth anniversary of the declaration of war, King George V and Queen Mary joined members of the House of Commons and the House of Lords for a special service at the Church of Saint Margaret, Westminster. The King had asked that 4^th August 1918 should be observed as a National Day of Prayer: 100 days later the war ended.

This year we commemorate the centenary of the end of World War I and our remembrance is particularly poignant as we consider how we have failed all those who died or whose lives were affected by the war. In Peter Capaldi's final episode in Doctor Who, a WWI soldier gets lifted out of time and the Doctor says that he is a WWI soldier to which he replies “Yes, but what do you mean, 'one'?”

For those who fought or suffered in the Great War, the only thing that made the hardship and slaughter bearable was the belief that it was the 'war to end all wars', as H.G. Wells wrote in 1914 “This, the greatest of all wars, is not just another war—it is the last war!” They were told that their sacrifices would make the world a better place, indeed in the new world there would be no war. The reality of the trenches probably put paid to the idealism of the first few months of the war, but it probably also confirmed in them the horror of war that we find in the war poems of that time.

We have failed those all those who died or whose lives were affected by the war because we have failed to learn that war cannot end war; that violence only leads to violence. And if this seems to be an inevitable vicious cycle, that's because it is – at least humanly speaking. The root cause of violence and war is our sinful nature. All human beings are pre-disposed to evil and this affects us individually and collectively. The worse news is that we cannot put this right ourselves, but the good news is that if we truly repent of our sins, God will forgive us and give us his Holy Spirit so that we can live as his children.

And like our sin, this salvation affects us individually and collectively. One of the prayers for Remembrance Sunday is “Almighty Father, whose will is to restore all things in your beloved Son, the King of all: govern the hearts and minds of those in authority, and bring the families of the nations, divided and torn apart by the ravages of sin, to be subject to his just and gentle rule.” It reminds us that we are divided and torn apart by the ravages of sin, and that the only remedy is the just and gentle rule of Jesus, the King of all. Jesus died so that we can be forgiven; he rose from the dead to give us new life; and he will come again to rule over all things.

If we really want to see an end to all war, we need to follow the example of George V: come before God in repentance and with prayers for help; for ourselves, for our nation and for the world.

Check out Glen Scrivener's video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2&v=StuOWU4b1to