Follow that Star!

 

Just when you thought you were done with Christmas for another year, along comes the church season of Epiphany, running for five Sundays between 6^th January through to 4^th February.

During these weeks the lectionary asks us to think about the various ways God ‘reveals’ himself to us. It’s a season all about our search for wisdom.  Or, put poetically, what star we are following?

I suspect many of us have embraced Christianity because deep down we sense the Bible offers us ancient, yet relevant truths that bless our lives with wisdom.

So, here are three ‘stars’ I’ll be following in 2024…

The star of prayer.  And by that I don’t just mean the prayers we say, although these are important and helpful, but the sort of ‘prayerful’ attitude we try to foster.  The type of understanding that welcomes the spiritual alongside the material.  The mindset that leaves room for God and something deeper.

Then there’s the star of liturgy, and by this I mean especially the hymns and songs we sing together in church that not only bind us together as a worshipping congregation but also teach us, reassure us and even provoke us with deep truths.  Us preachers know a secret that we don’t often speak about and it’s this…our congregations have probably learnt just as much from the hymns they sing as they do from the sermons they hear. But don’t tell anybody I said that!  As a hymnbook title says, these hymns can be Ancient and Modern, and once again our lives are blessed through us having such a wonderful treasury.

And finally, there’s the star of fellowship.  I’m not called to live out my faith or cope with the challenges of a New Year alone.  God is with us, and his light, love and strength are often made real to us when we come together in worship, counsel and service. We need one another, for where two or three are gathered in the name of God we again find blessing.

So, Happy New Year and keep following that star!

Advent Four: Happy Christmas

 

Thought for the Day: Radio Christmas: Christmas Eve 2023

Good Morning.

I’m delighted to be at Radio Christmas on Christmas Eve and offer this Thought for the Day on this, the final day of broadcasting for 2023.

On that first Christmas night, which we celebrate today, another form of broadcasting echoed from the skies above Bethlehem as the angels sang the message Glory to God in highest heaven and peace to all on earth.

Ancient words that never grow old – with our prayers for peace in the world central to all our liturgies tonight and tomorrow.

Just like that angelic choir, Radio Christmas has, since the 1st of December this year, been singing God’s praise, broadcasting a message of hope and goodwill.

And for us at Amersham Free Church, it’s been a real privilege to have their studio in our tower room.

Yet, the singing and music of Christmas is just half the story.  For at its centre is the idea that God, in Jesus, came among us and shared life with us.

The funds raised through this year’s Radio Christmas will be used wisely and lovingly in the ongoing ministry of Street Kids Direct in Central America.

Duncan and his colleagues really do live out their faith alongside the young people Street Kids tries to help.  This is love incarnate – a down to earth love with practical compassion, and all of it is a wonderful reflection of God’s down to earth love for us in the gifting to our world that first Christmas night of the Christ Child.

Christmas – a time to sing God’s praise, a moment to share God’s love, in fact it’s a way of life for every day of the year – and thank you Radio Christmas for reminding us of that during these 24 days of inspiring broadcasting.

So, Come, let us adore Him, Christ the Lord.

May God’s blessing and joy be yours this day.

Happy Christmas!

Blog holiday nest week

Advent 3: You're in the right place!

 

You might have noticed that I never miss an opportunity to ‘dine out’ on an experience that comes my way.

Well, on Monday of this week I had some emergency eye surgery for a retinal tear. The day started with a 9.30am appointment at Stoke Mandeville but after countless people had looked into my right eye saying phrases like: ‘Oh, I see’, or ‘Well, it’s a bit bigger than we expected’! I was sent off to the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford and by 1pm I arrived.

Actually, I got there quicker than my notes, so for a while I was something of an enigma to them.  Having been sent to the walk in eye clinic I found myself in a waiting room bustling with over a hundred patients all being triaged.

I was so taken by the helpful and encouraging receptionist who clearly saw my anxiety that having spent all morning at Stoke Mandeville I might have to start the process all over again at the John Radcliffe.  He words resonated with calm assurance when she said: Don’t worry, you are in the right place…

Sure enough, 30 mins later she found me out, said all the notes had now come through and I was whisked upstairs.  By 5pm I was having surgery and having been picked up by our youngest son, Jonty, was home by 7pm.  I can’t see through the eye yet, it has a gas bubble in it now, but the hope is that in a month or two things will be back to normal.

I received such wonderful and skilled treatment on Monday at both hospitals, and I’m truly thankful.  I’m also very grateful to that receptionist who reassured me that I was in the right place.

What is, I wonder, the right place for us? 

It's difficult to answer such a question at times and maybe we often want to be somewhere else.  Days of bereavement or health issues are not easy places to be.

My right place was only made possible because at that moment when I was very vulnerable, I found myself surrounded by people who cared.

Our right places might have moments of essential solitude, yet often these are so helpfully balanced by other moments when life is tempered by being in community and walking with others in companionship.

So…bringing it back to the stories of Advent and Christmas…I wonder if those shepherds scratched their heads as they arrived at the manger wondering Is this really the right place for us?  Although the gospels don’t say it, we get the impression that something of The Spirit stirred in their hearts as they knelt before the Christ child reassuring them that this was absolutely the right place to be that special night.

Advent Two: Light from the tower

 

It was a great joy to present a show on Radio Christmas this week.  I was well looked after by the production crew and had just a small insight on how hard everyone is working on this year’s project.

Radio Christmas is broadcasting from 1^st to 24^th December, and this year it is from our Tower Room at Amersham Free Church. It’s been a real joy to have Duncan and his team around the place this month and we do hope the station will raise valuable funds for the ongoing work of Street Kids Direct, working in Central America.

Churches have traditionally been built with spiers and towers as a way of, architecturally speaking, pointing to God.  AFC has just a small tower, built in the somewhat austere architecture of the early 1960s.  On its top storey is a boiler room, the one below has, at various times, been used as a Youth ‘Den’ and more recently as a storeroom.  So, how wonderful that during these days of December it has become a vibrant and bustling centre of activity, set up with all the latest technology, enabling a radio station with a Christian foundation, to broadcast.

And all of that seems to me to be wonderfully appropriate.  On the outside I’m always pleased to see out tower has a large cross on it.  Now, on the inside, through Radio Christmas, it is broadcasting the love and light we all need to tune into at this time of year. Enter the studio on any day of the week and you’ll hear laughter, prayerful concern, supportive conversation, and uplifting music.  Indeed, something of God’s love and light is pulsating everyday this Advent from the tower of Amersham Free Church!

Advent 1: A walk rather than a drive

 I don’t know about you but I sometimes drive the car and end up at my destination without any detailed memory of the journey I’ve just done, especially if it’s one I do very often, like driving to church.  It’s as if I’m on automatic pilot.  Maybe I’m listening to the radio as I go along, or perhaps I’m planning next Sunday’s sermon in my mind.  So, I get to my destination, the church car park say, and I’ve barely noticed my journey. I can almost hear Rachel, my wife’s reaction to that confession: Well, that just explains your driving!

When I walk to church it feels so different.  I start off at the Manse and notice the neighbours, I cross the road and go over the railway bridge looking at the tube trains making their way to Baker Street, I’m now outside Tescos Express and if it’s lunchtime 150 students from our local Grammar School will also be there buying lunch, it’s then a walk up the high street, a nod to our neighbouring church of St Michael’s, make my way over the Zebra crossing, trying to always remember to be polite to the car drivers who have stopped, especially if I’m wearing my clerical collar, and then in, via the back door of Amersham Free Church. A ten minute journey in which I’ve probably met, noted and encountered 10 different people or events taking place that have made an impression on me. 

Such a different journey walking to driving, because I’ve noticed so much more.

Advent, these next four weeks is often thought of as a waiting time, and in many ways that’s a good understanding, especially in our impatient society.  Yet, the idea that Advent is primarily about waiting can imply that nothing of too much importance will happen between Advent Sunday and Christmas Day.  Maybe viewed like one of my car drive experiences, just a journey of convenience, no more than just getting me, perhaps rather mindlessly, from A to B.

I’d rather look forward to the gift of these next four weeks and Sundays as a walk, instead of a drive.  A journey when much might, and probably will happen.  And in that sense, I tell myself this morning that Advent is just as much about watching as it is about waiting.  Watching is active.  Watching is being open to the whispers of God.  Watching is about becoming engaged and available.

So, today we start our Advent journey.  And rather than ask Sunday by Sunday ‘Are we nearly there yet’, let’s take time to notice the journey and enjoy the discoveries found round every corner along the way.

Black Friday/Good Friday

The adverts are awash telling us it’s Black Friday at the end of this week. Everywhere I look on the internet there are deals to be had, all pressurising me to buy a product on Friday and save probably at least a quarter on last week’s price!

Apparently Black Friday is always the day after Thanksgiving in the United States and signals the first day of the Christmas shopping period.  It’s become the day when shops have the biggest footfall and takings of the year, traditionally pushing them from being in the red, to being in the black.  Hence, its name.

I’m conscious of the Sydney Carter hymn we sing to an old American Shaker tune, The Lord of the Dance.  One line goes: I danced on a Friday when the sky turned black. Yet we call it Good Friday.

At the heart of the Christian story the death of Jesus speaks to us of a dreadful day, full of so much injustice and pain, yet one on which love triumphed over hate, light over darkness and goodness over evil.  None of this came about through brutal power but through self-sacrificing love. 

As we approach and prepare for the season of gift giving, maybe even taking advantage of a Black Friday bargain or two, let’s pause and find our greatest inspiration in the message of Good Friday and the greatest gift ever given, of Jesus, who in love, gave us his all.

Encounter

 

One of the great pictures we have of Jesus in the gospels is that of him encountering so many people on his travels and engaging with a significant number one to one. My favourite account is of him meeting up with the Syrophoenician woman who, through their conversation, seems to change his mind.

A characteristic of living in a Liberal Democracy like ours is that everyone seems to have an opinion about everything, and many are not shy in sharing theirs!

Within seconds of browsing the internet anyone can read a thousand and one opinions on everything from the conflict between Hamas and Israel to whether or not different Churches offer to bless or marry same-sex couples.

By and large I’m grateful for the majority of these internet articles and the insights they offer.

However, there is a particular perspective I value more than any other and that is encounter. 

For example, I’m aware that all the views I hold, and most of what I read about, regarding the current crisis in the Middle East are essentially theoretical views rather than personal experiences.  Yet, if I actually lived there, or even if I knew someone who did, I know these theoretical views of mine would be challenged.

The same has been true for many of us in church life when it comes to issues such as women’s ministry or same-sex marriage.  My views on these issues have been formed mostly, I think, not through what I’ve read, but rather by the people I’ve met. Encounter is wonderfully powerful and definitive and, I believe, that’s how it should be.

My hope and prayer is that in meeting another person the space between us might be occupied by God.  A space that makes all the difference in the way we encounter each other in our lives.