New Christmas readings?

Christmas with its same old readings can sometimes seem a bit of a slog for those of us that have been doing this church “thing” for a while. In an effort to bring a new perspective on things can I suggest that we add in Isaiah 61:11a from the ESV translation?

For those of you not familiar with this translation you can find it here

Now all we have to do is find readings for the rest of Christmas dinner – any thoughts?

treading carefully...

As someone who can't even manage to run on a treadmill without nearly falling off several times I stand in awe of these four!

The building blocks of life?

Clearly a priest with too much time on his hands – for lo – he has illustrated all the bible stories with Lego!

You have got to check it out, it’s a phenomenal piece of work (but beware some of the illustrations of Leviticus are very graphic – though highly amusing!!)

Homecomings…

Coming back to London and my sending church after a term away was a strange experience.

On the one hand everything is very familiar and I all too easily fall back into the old familiar routine and found myself filling in as sidesman, selling cookery books and generally being treated as one of the locals…. And yet there is also the sense that I am not really part of it any more, there are unfamiliar strands of conversations continued on from the weeks that I wasn’t there, new faces in the back row and the surreal experience of visiting the houses of friends and seeing my ex-possessions in new places…

But for all the surealness it was good to go back – to find some sense of the comfortable past among the myriad of the new… and not least to see my gorgeous Julia and know that she has really settled in her new home – a heaven on earth where she can sit above a warm radiator and stare out of the window at the same time – life is so full of simple pleasures when you are a cat….

Topsy Turvey Advent…

Apologies folks for the interruption in your blogging service from up here is chilly Cambridge. I had some serious procrastination to do which was rather time consuming :o)

The good news is that 1 essay is now handed in, I am well on my way with research for the second and I am trying to ignore the third for the moment as it’s really hard! Given that the hand in deadline is still 3.5 weeks away I don’t think, given my Phd level procrastination skills, that’s too bad?! And at least as part of the procrastination I have completed all my Christmas shopping which is a record for me so early in the season…

The last few weeks have been rather liturgically strange. As college terms finish so early we began our Christmas celebrations prior to advent Sunday with a mulled wine and carol singing evening. … I tried not to squirm in church on the advent Sunday following when the preacher was quite firm in his conviction that there should be nothing Christmas in Advent, though I have to say I thought the stern words about simplicity and the church being stripped of its decorations until Christmas eve were somewhat diluted by being given by someone dressed in the most sumptuous purple advent robes I have ever seen!

Things got even more muddled on the following Thursday when we had our last college worship of the term which included both Christmas carols and advent antiphons as well as the gospel choir and a robed church choir performing very different styles of music at various times. This was followed by the lavish Christmas banquet, in the magnificently decorated dining hall (complete with 7 foot glowing santa!)

So I have decided there is nothing for it but to say to heck with the liturgical year and declare Christmas well and truly started – Merry Christmas everyone!

Narrative Preaching...

We have been looking at how to preach in one of my classes and this week we looked at how to preach a narrative sermon. Though these are not something you can do all the time, occasionally turning the message into a story can be a really effective way of getting the message across, especially at Christmas and Easter when you may well be treading a well worn path of readings that everyone has heard many times before. I have never done a sermon in this way before as quite frankly there were some absolute masters of this form of preaching in my sending church and I would never have dared to put myself within range of comparison. With this in mind I rather panicked when we were sent away with a bible passage and 20 minutes to put together a sermon. But you know, it was rather fun and my fellow classmates came back with some absolutely stunning work. Mine was less so but nevertheless for a first attempt I was quite pleased. You can judge for yourself below….

Matthew 28:1-10

I go down to the graveyard ever week. I wish I could go more often but there is just no time. I seem to be endlessly busy trying to make ends meet these days. It’s been 9 months since my Joseph died – 9 months I can’t believe it’s been so long. It still feels like it happened just yesterday,

It was different going there today, well for a start there were the guards. Guards, I ask you! Did they think anyone was going to escape from there? “We’re guarding the tomb of Jesus” they said, “There are rumours people are going to steal the body” they said. They were all set on keeping me out but there was no way that was going to happen! That preacher Jesus had already prevented me from coming to see Joseph last week, I couldn’t get through the city the crowds were so big. Well he was not stopping me again, I just pushed my way through, the guards didn’t stop me.

I had been there awhile , just chatting away as you do. Not talking about anything in particular. Joseph always used to say I rabbited on to much, he would laugh that I still am doing it…still he has an excuse not to listen now.

Anyway I had been there awhile when I became aware of a group of women who had come in. It was hard not to be aware to be honest, they were wailing and sobbing so much, holding each other up as if they would collapse any minute. They must have lost someone very recently. I know that kind of grief, so raw its as if you can’t breath, so fresh that the world has ceased to make sense.

Well I was watching them, remembering what that was like, re-living a little the days after we buried Joseph and then – you will never believe it, there was this massive earthquake, here in Jerusalem! The ground was shaking every which way I though the tombs themselves where going to collapse and yet in the middle of this came a man, calm as anything, and rolled the stone away from in front of a tomb. I say a man but I am not sure. I couldn’t look at him properly because he was so bright, the light poured out of him. I know it sounds stupid but its what happened. The guards where terrified I can tell you. They think they are such big men but they were crying out for their mums I can tell you!

The women though, they had stopped wailing and were standing there enraptured, the man was talking to them. I strained to hear, I thought I had misheard. Jesus wasn’t dead, he was alive. How could that be! I had seen him die, most of Jerusalem had seen him die, his body beaten and bloodied taken away. No one could have survived that, could they?

The women ran off so quick as the message ended, they dropped the herbs and bundles they had been carrying. As they ran though they stopped short for there on the path ahead of them stood a man, a man who greeted them. It couldn’t be, could it? That voice, that face, it can’t be! I saw him die!

The women knew though, they fell at his feet, clutching at him. They knew… I then I knew. “Don’t be afraid” he said and you know something I wasn’t. For the first time in 9 months I was without fear. Jesus wasn’t the only one to come to new life that day. I realised truly for the first time that death is not the end, just a point on the continuing journey.

I had new life that day – do you?

quirky...

I was browsing photo sites on the web and came across this photo...

Something about it really appealed to me. I think it’s the sheer quirkiness of it, it looks so innocuous and yet when you really look at it and read it its bizarrely strange.
Also in the bizarrely strange category I also came across a wonderful series of photographs at by Julia Fullerton-Batten here

She has created some startling images by placing young models against a backdrop of miniature villages. The oddness of relationship between the people and the buildings is really accentuated when the relative sizes are reversed. I think its definitely worth a look.