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.”

Advent Reflections: Joy

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 Joy.

 At Christmas we are bombarded with images of joy: the joy of children opening their presents, the joy of families and friends getting together, the joy of a few days off work! And we all have an understanding of what joy feels like: it's like happiness only better; it's happiness that wells up from deep within us and bursts out with smiles, shouts and even singing.

The third Sunday of Advent sometimes has the theme of Joy, which is why some churches light a pink rather than a purple candle on this Sunday. Purple is the liturgical colour of Advent (and Lent) because it signifies a season of reflection and repentance. The pink candle reminds us that although we're still in that penitential season, the joy of Christmas cannot help bubbling up and lightening that purple to pink. Therefore the third Sunday of Advent is sometimes called Gaudete Sunday, from the mediaeval Latin hymn made famous by SteeleyeSpan in the 1970s, whose lyrics are “Gaudete, gaudete! Christus est natus, ex Maria virgine, gaudete!” - “Rejoice, rejoice! Christ has been born out of the Virgin Mary – rejoice!”

But the Christmas joy isn't just the usual joy of a baby being born, nor is it just the birth of a significant person. The angel said to the shepherd “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. Today in the town of David a Saviour has been born to you” (Luke 2:10-11). The joy of Christmas is the joy of a Saviour being born, and it was this that made the shepherds rush to Bethlehem, leaving their flocks, and after finding Jesus they “returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen” (Luke 2:20).

Just like the association of Christmas with joy, we tend to associate Jesus with the word 'Saviour', but to get the true Christmas joy we need to really grasp what it means for Jesus to be Saviour and not just the Saviour but our Saviour. We were created to be in relationship with God, but our sin means that we should be eternally separated from God. There is nothing we can do to put this situation right, because none of us can be sinless. Thus we face an eternity separated from the one person, God, who gives our life true meaning and makes us fully human. The angel's announcement of the birth of a Saviour is therefore truly good news that will cause great joy for all the people – it means that now we can live life as we are supposed to live it, with God.

Jesus is the Saviour of the world, but he is also Saviour for each of us personally, because we each need to allow him to be our Saviour. Each of us needs to decide how we respond to the news of the birth of our Saviour, we can either treat it as another Christmas fairy story, or we can take the opportunity to have the joy that comes from knowing our sins have been forgiven and that God will meet our deepest needs.

One more thing: this is not just joyful news for us humans. Jesus would later say that every time a sinner repents there is rejoicing in heaven (Luke 15:1-32). The angels rejoice at the possibility that we can be saved, but more than that God himself rejoices when we turns back to him, because he longs for us more than we can possibly know.

Advent Reflections: Peace

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 Peace.

The song that the host of angels sang in the presence of the shepherds is almost inseparable from Christmas. Even in the secular celebrations “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom his favour rests” (Luke 2:14) rings out, often shortened to “Peace on Earth” on Christmas cards and decorations. The coming of Jesus is the coming of the Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9:6).

We often think about 'peace' as being the absence of war and conflict, but the Hebrew word 'shalom', which we translate as peace has a much deeper meaning than that. In Jesus' day, and still today in Middle Eastern cultures, 'Peace be with you' is a greeting and a blessing. It expresses not just a desire for the absence of strife but a positive desire for the wholeness and well-being of the person you greet. In this sense an engine 'at peace' is not one that is not going but one that is working properly. So 'peace' describes having contentment, completeness, wholeness, well-being and harmony. 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.

This is a very controversial thing to say. It might possibly be acceptable to say that Jesus is the 'Prince of Peace' because he was a wise teacher who taught people to love each other, but even that might be too exclusive for the non-believing world. However, we only have to look at Jesus' life to see that Jesus didn't necessarily bring peace through his life. He himself said “I did not come to bring peace, but a sword” (Matthew 10:34). Jesus was always a divisive figure: for a while he was popular but in the end he was hated and was so threatening that the only way to deal with him was to kill him.

The message of the angels tells us how peace can be gained: peace will come to those on whom God's favour rests, or as the King James version of the Bible puts it “on earth peace, good will toward men.” It is not, as commonly said, 'peace to people of good will', i.e. if we all get along there will be peace, instead peace has something to do with how God relates to us. St Paul wrote “we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Romans 5:1), echoing Isaiah's prophecy “he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5). The peace we really need is the restoration of our relationship with God that has been broken through our sin. Jesus' death was the punishment we deserved so that by faith in him we can be forgiven; God's favour will rest on us; God shows good will towards us. It was not through his life and teaching that Jesus brought peace but through his death.

Advent provides a time for us to think about our sins that separate us from God and to repent of them, so that we too can have that peace which Jesus came into the world to bring us.

O tidings of comfort and joy!

Here is my December article:

The carol “God rest ye merry, gentlemen” is one my favourite carols, and it is for a lot of others too. Partly it's to do with the traditional sounding tune and partly it's because it expresses the emotions of Christmas- “O tidings of comfort and joy!”

Christmas for a lot of people is a time for joy: when you get together with loved ones for feasts and celebrations. Christmas is also a time that is often characterised by images of comfort: the sense of 'hygge' associated with candles, fires and lights shining in the darkness. These are of course all part of Christmas, but the 'tidings of comfort and joy' that Christmas brings go much deeper and are for everyone, including (and perhaps especially for) those who will be lonely, or in pain, or sorrowful this Christmas.

The carol is very clear about why the message of Christmas is one of comfort and joy: “for Jesus Christ our Saviour was born on Christmas Day.” Well, that sounds a very obvious thing to say about Christmas, (although you might struggle to find references to Jesus sometimes!) but it then goes on to remind us why this is good news. He came “to save us all from Satan's power when we had gone astray” and “to free all those who trust in him from Satan's power and might.” The reason Jesus' birth is special is because of his death. Christmas is only worth celebrating because of Easter.

This is truly joyful tidings! Sin is rebellion against God's authority; when we sin we ally ourselves with his arch-rebel, Satan, so we are under Satan's power. Once there, we can do nothing to free ourselves. However although we have rejected God, he never rejects us. So he showed his love to the world by sending his Son, Jesus, so that through his death our sins could be forgiven and we could be freed from Satan's power. For all those who keep trying to be good and failing, Jesus' birth is a reason to be joyful.

These are also comforting tidings, especially for those who feel burdened by guilt. Jesus' death comforts those who mourn as it assures us that God understands what grief is like, but more than that, Jesus' resurrection reminds us that eternal life is offered to the world. However, the comfort that Christmas brings is not just a consoling feeling, as 'comfort' is used in it's original meaning of 'strengthening'. By freeing us from Satan's power, Jesus strengthens us with the knowledge that God thinks we're worth dying for. As we've been freed from Satan's power and influence, with the knowledge of God's opinion of us and the promise of his Holy Spirit to help us, we are strengthened to live as children of God.

It is with these tidings that God will 'rest' (in the original sense of 'keep, or cause to remain') all of us, whether we're gentlemen or not, merry both at Christmas time and throughout the year. So in the name of Jesus, whose birth the angels announced and made shepherds rejoice, I bless you and your loved ones with knowing the true comfort and joy of Christmas.

The uncomfortable truth about 'hate'

Here's my sermon from this morning's Remembrance Sunday service:

Hate is a word that we hear a lot these days. And I don’t just mean when people say they hate sprouts or that they hate getting up early. Nor am I talking about hate speech which is what people tend to call any opinion they don't agree with.  The hate that I'm talking about is the hate that the news and commentators say is responsible for most of the atrocities they report. When someone kills or attempts to kill many people this is often labelled a 'hate crime’. And if we are to believe the media, this 'hate' is on the increase.

To say that these acts are motivated by hate is convenient in a number of ways.  Firstly it means that we don't have to look any deeper for the reasons, as this might mean that we have to face the uncomfortable fact that some ideologies and cultures are incompatible with our values and societal norms.  To say the perpetrators are filled with hate is to destroy the link between their beliefs and their actions.  This has a second benefit that in questioning their mental state, for they claim that no sane person would be that controlled by hate, they become a special category of people that used to be labelled psychopaths. Therefore they can be dismissed as rare exceptions. The third benefit of this is that the rest of us, who are obviously sane and tolerant, can feel comfortable on our moral high ground, satisfied with our superiority over these 'extremists'.

It seems to me, though, that the reality isn't quite so simple and is a lot more uncomfortable.  The root of these actions is not, I don't think, hate but rather seeing other people as less than human, as sub-human.  If people are human they have an inherent dignity but once they are seen as not human they can be treated as disposable objects.  Pope John Paul II said that the opposite of love is not hate it is 'use'.  To use someone like an object for your own purposes is the opposite of loving them, because loving them means treating them with the dignity they deserve. In its most extreme form, loving someone means putting their needs before your own.

Much of 'man's inhumanity to man' has its roots in seeing other humans as being less than human: this was the basis of the slave trade and the Nazi holocaust.  It was also what enabled the soldiers on both sides of the Wars to keep fighting and killing, and also fuelled the efforts of the Home Front.  The purpose of war propaganda is not only to establish the rightness of your cause, but also to portray the enemy as so evil and wicked that they deserve to be wiped out.

If this analysis is correct then what makes it even more disturbing is how easy it is to think in this way.  People who treat others as less than human are not just a few isolated extremists or psychopaths.   They are all around us; they are you and me. Every time we treat someone else as if they didn't have as much worthiness as we do, every time we feel and act as if we are better, we are like those that commit atrocities.

Our Gospel reading comes from the Sermon on the Mount and not long after Jesus said the words we've just heard, he said that the commandment “Thou shalt not kill” includes being angry with someone else, and more than that it includes calling them an idiot, or stupid, or scum.  And that's something we're all guilty of.  That's what makes the standard of living that Jesus sets out in the Beatitudes that we've just heard so difficult.  To be poor in spirit, to be meek, to be merciful, to be peacemakers means that we have to acknowledge that we are imperfect, and more than that that we put the needs and welfare of others before our own.

But this wasn't just wise and difficult teaching that Jesus came to bring.  He lived it himself.  In the most extreme form of love there has ever been, he left the glory of heaven to be born as a human; he lived a perfect life so that he could die as the punishment for our sins and failures. And he rose from the dead so our humanity could be restored.

The peace this world longs for will only become a reality when people have been forgiven and restored by Jesus, the Prince of Peace, and see the rest of humanity as he does.  People made in his image and likeness that are worthy of love and respect.  And that can start with each of us.  Look at the people around you.  They are priceless.  Tell them that.  And when you leave here today, let everyone you meet know that they are priceless too, not only with your words, but in the way you treat them.

My Advent Hope

Here's my magazine article for November:

Starting on 23^rd November our Advent talks have the title “My Advent Hope”. We're blessed to have some senior figures from the Diocese and the Methodist District coming to offer their thoughts on this topic, but I thought I'd throw in my two penn'orth on the subject!!

I went to Liverpool Hope University College and so 'hope' was a much used word. The tagline for the college was taken from a book by Cardinal Suenens: “to hope is not to dream but to turn dreams into reality.” This was a slightly more poetic way of saying 'if you want something you need to work for it'. Apart from the overuse of the word 'hope', there was always something that niggled me about it, and I only realised what that was when I learned more about the Biblical use of the word.

When we use the word 'hope' we tend to mean a vague wish that something will happen, and it is usually uncertain. In contrast when the Biblical writers use the word 'hope', they are often talking about something that is certain. This 'hope' is something that is yet to happen but it definitely will happen and it mostly refers to salvation. So Paul writes about “the hope of eternal life, which God, who does not lie, promised before the beginning of time” (Titus1:2) and “the hope stored up for you in heaven” (Colossians 1:5). God has promised eternal life to all who die trusting in Jesus, and as he can't lie, all those who die trusting in Jesus will receive eternal life. That means that those who have faith in Jesus can put their hope in a certain future and can therefore face death with confidence. So Paul writes “Brothers and sisters, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death, so that you do not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope. 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.” (1Thessalonians 4:13-14).

This certain hope is based not just on the promise of God but also in the fact that Jesus died and rose again. So Peter writes “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” and “Through [Jesus] you believe in God, who raised him from the dead and glorified him, and so your faith and hope are in God” (1 Peter 1:3,21)

November is traditionally a time when Christians remember the saints - all those who have died in the faith of Jesus, whether well-known or not - who now enjoy the eternal life for which they hoped. The focus for Advent too is on the future; as we prepare to celebrate the first coming of Jesus as a baby in Bethlehem, “we wait for the blessed hope – the appearing of the glory of our great God and Saviour, Jesus Christ” (Titus 2:13).

Luther, The Reformation and the rejection of superstition

Here's my magazine article for October:

On 31st October 1517, a German monk called Martin Luther nailed a piece of paper to a church door in Wittenburg. So began what has come to be called The Reformation. Luther's petition, although initially against dubious methods of fundraising by the Church, grew into a much wider protest against the doctrines and practices of the Roman Catholic Church, which lead to the formation of the 'Protestant' churches, including the Church of England. For most people the 500th anniversary of this event will pass unnoticed and unmarked, unlike the 20th anniversary of the death of Princess Diana or the 100th anniversary of Passchendaele. Yet the Reformation had a profound effect not just on the religious beliefs of millions of people but also on the the way the world is today.

It has been argued that without the Reformation, the technological and scientific advances of the Enlightenment would not have occurred. Ironically for some atheists the Reformation's rejection of some of the superstitious religious practices of the Mediaeval world has enabled the modern world to rejection all religion as superstitious. This is often the way that the relationship between religion and science is framed: superstitious religion vs rational science. The truth however is more complicated. Many aspects of Christianity in particular can be verified, and conversely some scientific theory is based more on ideology than fact. But also religion and science are actually on the same side when it comes to superstition.

The philosopher Roger Scruton has recently spoken about religion and science in contrast with the magical worldview of the Harry Potter books. Superstition and magic, Scrutton says, are rooted in the belief that we can control the universe, whereas religion and science acknowledge that we can't. A magical outlook arrogantly asserts that anything is possible if you know the right spell, whereas religion and science humbly admit that there are gaps in our knowledge and abilities. Scrutton argues that although this magical view is alright in fiction, it is a problem when it also becomes the outlook in real life. From a Christian perspective, the magical worldview is not only contrary to reality but also spiritually harmful.

31^st October is associated more these days with Halloween than Martin Luther, and I have written in previous years about the dangers of celebrating Halloween (here and here). Not only does it open people up to attack from malevolent spiritual forces but in normalising witchcraft and magic it perpetuates this magical outlook on life. In a world of magic, Scrutton explains, there is no need for God because we are god: we can control everything. Genesis 3 tells us that Satan tempted Adam and Eve not just to disobey God but to want to be God; that was the original sin and is the defect in all humanity.

Magic promotes the idea that evil can be overcome simply by knowing the right spell. Christianity teaches that evil can only be defeated by God himself: as a prayer from the Book of Common Prayer puts it: “we have no power of ourselves to help ourselves”. What Martin Luther reminded us was that God has defeated evil through Jesus' death and resurrection, all we have to do is receive that salvation as a free gift.

(For more on the Reformation, see the magazine from Church Society)