Vigeon Post

ASH WEDNESDAY
ST FRANCIS RADFORD 2006

ASHES

Long before modern science was able to analyse matter; to describe what are the raw materials the universe is made of, the imagination of the writer of Genesis hit another target.  God, he said, made man out of the dust of the earth.
So tonight we say "remember that Dust you are and to dust you must return"
Today, if you ask a scientist what you are made of he will tell you that over ninety percent of you is water and nearly all the rest of you is carbon apart from traces of things like potassium and zinc and other trace minerals. And what is ash but carbon ?
So Genesis was spot on.  Little boys are not made of puppy dogs tails nor are little girls made of sugar and spice and all things nice. We are all made of ash; and when we die the body you and I were will return to ash and melt back into that mass of carbon which is mother earth.
When I used to do Ash Wednesday in my church school, I used to get them to think like this.
I would show them a painting; we  would agree that it is made of paper and colour powder and oil.  And that if we set it alight it would end up as ashes.
But we don't do that with a painting because it is far more valuable than paper and powder and oil. Because someone has made it into a pattern which we can recognise and which is trying to tell us something about what goes on in the painters heart and mind.
I would then ask them if they thought if I got a bucket and mixed up carbon and water and other chemicals I would get a human being; and they agreed with me that no - all I would guess would be a horrid mess.
What makes me me is not only the raw material; but the wonder with which it is organised and shaped.  St Paul says somewhere - you are all God's work of art. You are God's poem, you are God's music; you are God's painting. And that is to my mind the most helpful way of thinking about who we are. I am sure god is a great scientist and a great engineer but the wonder of it all is that the end product of all those billions of years since earth took form as a fiery mass of chemicals is that it has created something as wonderful as you and me.
An engineer friend many years ago asked to be prepared for confirmation; having been brought up a Welsh Baptist. We had lots of interesting conversations together but the thing I remember him saying is
"As an engineer myself I cannot imagine God could create such a wonderful thing as a human being and yet be finished with it in seventy years"
Nowadays it is not unknown for a scientist to tell us that we are all made of star dust. The basic stuff of the whole universe is our own chemical composition.  We need to be ever recapturing the simple wonder of that fact. We don't make ourselves  - as the scripture puts it God makes us out of the dust and we become a living being, a living and a thinking and a feeling and a wondering and a calculating and a greedy and a loving being.
To go back to my school ritual; we used to ash all the children in the school but we used a different formula. We would say "Remember this is what you are made of - don't waste it"
I think that is a good way to think on Ash Wednesday. What is the point of Lent of abstinence of discipline of self denial except to be reminded of the wonder that is me and how profligate I am with the gifts that God has given me.
Today tells me two vital things about myself - one is that I am wonderful and the other is that I am nothing. The secret of a good life, it seems to me, is that we learn to live with both truths at the same time; even though they seem to contradict one another. But of course it is far more pleasant  to think I am the bees knees than it is to think I am just carbon. Which is why we are called to concentrate on the carbon today ! For the truth is that if God is the artist who creates me out of raw material; then that raw material can be very stubborn. Within us is that thing we call I or psychologists call ego. The bit of us who wants to do it my way not God's way; the bit of me which knows better than God what is good for me; the bit of me which distorts my god given soul and spoils my life because there is a rebel at the heart of my being.
For a few weeks therefore I am called to learn afresh to say no to myself. Not because I am terribly wicked but because I am ash; and that what that ash may become depends on what |I make of it; depends on me not spoiling it ; depends on my co-operation with that vision that my creator had of me when he made me a living soul.
The old motto about Lent used to be
Remember the Cross is an I crossed out.  
Its rather old fashioned for modern tastes but there is a truth there which will take us to Easter and to the true joy.

ADDRESS

There is an old chestnut dating back from the swinging sixties, that a church in Bristol was holding a special service for young people - and there they were of all persuasions and none shepherded into their pews. The minister stood up to begin the worship and uttered the key text.  Jesus said I am the way the truth and the life. At which an audible whisper from the back row was heard to utter "Bighead !" And the service thus began with a universal snigger.  You might think that shocking - but it is a cautionary tale which reminds us that so much of our Christian faith and practice has in a way domesticated Jesus until we do not recognise that the claims we make for our Saviour are a source of scandal to those outside - as they were in his own days.  
Perhaps the problem of unity for us has something to do with we use the word Jesus as a sort of badge or logo; and each church community will claim to have the definitive version of our brand name. And that is what the world sees - an argument about logos - and it shrugs its shoulders and turns its attention to more worthwhile projects.  
What we all need to re-discover is the real integrity of the Name of Jesus. The Jesus who was a stumbling block in his own days - not least to those who considered themselves religious and god-fearing. The Jesus who was not sent to condemn the world but that the world through him might be saved. The Jesus whose condemnation was primarily for the leaders of church and society - on those whose religious convictions make them convinced that they almost know better than God what God is thinking. The Jesus who looked on the crowd in the wilderness and had compassion for them for they were like sheep without a shepherd. The Jesus who would say that if a thing is good it is good and is not disqualified because the author does not wear the right label. Only this morning in my new testament gospel reading I hear Pharisees murmuring that because the healings of Jesus were not taking place through the official channels then they were demonic. The unforgiveable sin, says Jesus' in riposte, is to sin against the spirit - to make the demonic good and the good demonic.
This Jesus is not the moralistic Jesus which the world thinks it is hearing from the churches. We live in a culture which as it loses its Christian base so it is losing compassion and forgiveness in the name of a headline morality sponsored by the tabloid press. Where morality has been hijacked by hysterical screams - and where the media cooperate in anything which makes a good story .
I have a sneaking suspicion that if we could more drastically recover the true integrity of Jesus Christ then we would come a great deal nearer to that state where in todays Gospel reading Our Blessed Lord prays; "That they may all be one in us; so that the world may believe that you have sent me"  There is little if anything in St John's Gospel which speaks of organisational unity.  There is much about living within that constant dialogue of love and unity between Father and Son, whose power and quality we call the Holy Spirit.  There is a lovely story from very early on in  Christian legend that John lived to be a very very old man. And that when he was no longer able to preach or do anything very much he would just gently murmur over and over again "Little Children love one another".
When Jesus says to us "I am the way" he does not mean "Believing doctrines and teaching formulas  about me is the way". He means living a life within a shared and frighteningly deep friendship with Him. And you will never quite know where that will take you.

EPIPHANY THREE 2001: ALL SAINTS BROMSGROVE
My Vicar when I was a lad must have been a remarkably good and holy man - though one did not think in those terms at the time for he was one of those old fashioned characters who used to  thrive in small towns where people can still be individuals. But I know now he was good and he was holy because I remember an evensong in 1955 at St. Cuthbert's Carlisle on 26th September at which I preached and Bob. another young clergyman, sang the service. The point being that that same morning, he had been ordained Deacon and I a Priest and that we both were members of Harold's flock. I reckon that's quite an achievement for any Priest. There is always something special about officiating in the Church where one has been brought up. They know you probably too well - they remember you making eyes at the girls during the creed - they remember you arriving hot foot only just in time at 7.59 to serve at the eight o'clock mass - they remember you playing Hyde Park Corner at the Youth Club Christmas Party - they have no illusions about you.
So it was that Jesus, so S Luke tells us, came to Nazareth where he had been brought up and went as was his custom to the synagogue on the Sabbath day.  By now, no doubt, he was already marked in church circles as a likely lad, had acquired something of a name since he was baptized by his cousin John and gone off on a prolonged retreat in the stark mountains of Judea.  So he comes home, and as is the custom in a synagogue, he was asked as a special guest to read the scripture for the day. We need to remember that the Jews in those days as we do today had a specific lectionary or list of readings which were appropriate on certain days. So that day the reading was from Isaiah chapter 61.
Jesus takes the scroll , reads it and with it sets out the agenda for his mission. He takes the honoured centuries old words and selects those as representing above all how he sees the charge laid on him by his  heavenly Father. It is a fascinating choice - and if today's reading had been allowed to progress to its real ending, you would hear how what Jesus pronounced caused consternation and indignation and several other kinds of "ations", and it concludes with the congregation hustling him out of the synagogue and turning into a lynch mob.
It is worth then  looking again at the words which were the appointed lesson for that day. They are beautiful words, they sound very good in English - and as so often we are lulled by the beauty into missing the cutting edge, the sharpness of the message. I  keep on returning to the wise saying of the novelist Dorothy L Sayers [of Lord Peter Wimsey fame] who said once;
"the beauty of the Bible lies in its truth not in its language".
So here goes.
"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor; he has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind; to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim the year of the Lord's favour"
It is to Isaiah that we owe this concept of good news - what we call the GOSPEL. The word is a corruption of old Anglo Saxon meaning God's Good Spell or God's Good Message.
Indeed scholars talk about the Gospel in the Old Testament - by which they mean a selection of Old Testament literature [ above all the Psalms and Isaiah] which seem to anticipate the ministry and message of Jesus of Nazareth.
Why do I say this is a remarkable choice that Jesus makes when he says "Today this scripture reading has been fulfilled in your hearing, or more simply "Today it has come true.".  Simply because this is not what religious people tend to expect.  What impression does so much of Christian preaching so often leave in the minds of those who may come in contact with it ? I like the old chestnut of the husband who claimed to be going to church but in fact ended up in the working men's club; and his wife got suspicious at this unusual godliness. So she tested him one day. "What did the Vicar preach about this morning" and with a gallant stab at the likely options he replied "he preached about sin". And what did he say about sin ?: "He were agin it"
There is nothing more terrible than morality without love; nothing more unChristlike than ethics without tenderness to human weakness. We would then tend to think that if Jesus came with a commission from God to the world it would be a message of condemnation, it would tell humanity what a shower it was;  it would threaten the world with a fate worse than death if it did not come into line. I have to admit that there are terrifying words put in the mouth of Jesus in the Gospels. But if you actually look at what Jesus condemned it is quite fascinating.  He says of those who abuse children that it were better for them to be tied to a rock and dumped in the sea. He could not abide the corruption of innocence. That we can probably live with. The other two categories which he condemns are rather more subtle. He condemns those religious people [like Pharisees] who think they know what is right better than God Himself. And he condemns those who deliberately twist values upside down - who like Satan as portrayed by the poet Milton - say Good be thou my evil; Evil be thou my good. He cannot abide those who in the face of  human goodness cannot accept it because the person concerned does not wear the right label.
But these things are not the main thrust of what we might call The manifesto of Jesus. Its all about setting the human race free.  I have a paper back on my shelves by an eminent German professor of theology, in which he asks the question - "Was Jesus a liberal ?" He was not of course talking party politics. Though I did enjoy the quip that was going about some twenty years ago to the effect that the Church of England is no longer the Tory party at prayer but the Liberal Democrats at Family Communion.But the word liberal is in many quarters including some Christian ones a dirty word, a selling of the past against traditional values. The professor came to the conclusion that Jesus was a liberal in the sense that his ministry was devoted to setting people free.  Not apparently just freedom from sin - which is the one we usually latch onto - the religious setting free of the soul from the bonds that shackle you and me and prevent us from living and acting creatively and joyously and powerfully. It is that of course. But Jesus mentions good news for the poor - and in his day the poor consisted of the majority of the population who had no rights, no money and often no jobs.
 I remember myself and my brother in law back in the sixties talking to Sally's Father after dinner in the impressive dining hall of Rose Castle the residence of the Bishop of Carlisle. An election was looming. My father in law was in any case brought up on a small Irish farm where he did not wear shoes until he started school. We tried to corner him. How should a Christian vote in the forthcoming election. And he replied something like this. As a Christian I should remember those in society who are jobless, poor and deprived and ask myself which party would do most to remedy their condition and then vote accordingly even if it conflicted with my own interests.  That's a thought to wrestle with.
    Isaiah's words are essentially about liberation. That is a word which goes relevantly right across the whole gamut of human experience. A few years ago, I was singing  in Verdi's Requiem. And it bore in on me how the words "libera me" keep on turning up in the script of the Requiem Mass.  Yes , it refers in the first place to the plea of those who fear judgment and condemnation and who cry out  "Forgive me - Liberate me - set me free". But in the end  this phrase is right at the heart of the Christian faith. Jesus appropriates these words which promise that he will set the captives free. And if you peer down into your innermost soul you will, I believe, find that this is the cry of humanity faced by its universal predicament. The predicament caused by our  failure and impotence and  weakness and what we can only call our bloody mindedness.
    That was the call of Jesus - to remedy the human race - to remould us - to remove the flaws in our makeup - to heal the aching of our hearts and to release the joy in us that is bursting to come out and yet is inhibited by  our sense of frustration and rebellion.
Set us free Lord - that is the universal prayer of those who recognise Jesus as our Saviour. And every Eucharist we are potently reminded that the price of the liberation he came to offer us was paid for in the agony of the cross.
O Saviour of the World who by your cross and passion has redeemed us - save us and help us we humbly beseech you O Lord.  LORD SET US FREE !

    This is a selection of sermons which I have preached between Christmas Eve and Epiphany.  Every year the challenge of saying something fresh at the season looms up but perhaps one of the miracles is that there are always new facets to ponder. Sometimes,  events overshadow Christmas - like the "Lockerbie Pan American disaster" when a transatlantic jet blew up over southern Scotland. The pain was increased by the knowledge that our village was on the same flight path to America.

     MIDNIGHT MASS  CHRISTCHURCH CATSHILL2002
"Glory to God in the Highest and Peace to his people on earth" .
    "Glory to God" is at the beginning of the Christian story; Glory to God is our song now ; and "Glory to God" is the purpose of the whole of God's creation.
    So let us have a right merry Christmas; a merry heart is essential to our understanding of this merriest of feasts. Easter is the season of Joy; but Christmas is the season of laughter and merriment. For even from Heaven we can hear what suspiciously sounds like Divine laughter. In the topsy turvy world of the Gospel, the King is born in a stable; the incarnate Word of God cannot speak; the Divine nature of God is demonstrated in his humility; the power of God is displayed in his weakness.  Nothing is as seems proper by the worlds way of thinking - and this is the wisdom of God and the humour of God - God's great joke which is to be the salvation of the world.
So GLORY TO GOD IN THE HIGHEST ! Glory in everything - in birth and death and everything in between. But what is this ?
PEACE TO HIS PEOPLE ON EARTH..
What is this PEACE ?
Peace is the "in word" to use at Christmas. Popes and Archbishops of Canterbury always seem to preach about it in their Christmas Day messages to the world. But to my mind they only succeed in making it sound like a tired old cliche.
Our carols help us to sing  
"PEACE ON EARTH AND MERCY MILD:
GOD AND SINNERS RECONCILED."
Is PEACE just a word ? Does it just make us feel better to say it, make us feel a little safer when it is on our lips? For what does it mean ?
If it simply means the absence of wars, then obviously the promise of the Angels song is a deceit and a lie. For it has never happened; and we are mistaken if we imagine that things have never been as bad as they are today.  Danger and violence are the norm of the human condition
PEACE however, rightly understood is men and women at ease with themselves and with one another.
PEACE is a sense of completeness and wholeness and wholesomeness.Those of you who are parents will understand what my mother used to say when my sister and I returned home together for perhaps the Christmas holidays. "I feel a whole woman again - now that my family are around me." For her that was Peace.
    Or take another example. An engineering friend of mine used to say that the most peaceful thing he knew was a Rolls Royce car engine ticking over. All that power contained in the smoothest of engineering operations - all the parts accurately fitted together to the nth degree,with the minimum of friction,with but the whisper of a noise. Peace he said was not the absence of activity - but a powerful life  going on with no stress or sense of aggravation.  At the end of this service I shall be at Peace for I will  have just lived out the meaning of my vocation.
What DO we mean when we say Peace on Earth ? Surely that the secret of Peace is to be found in the life of the Child born to be Prince of Peace.
Peace is not something we want because we are afraid of an impending war.It does not start on the outside and work in - it begins on the inside and works out.
What matters to you and I this Christmas Night is  not so much our concern about world events and international strategies;
The reality of what actually matters at this moment to you and me is what it is going to be like at home tomorrow. How do we feel about the prospect of the family being thrown together continually for forty eight hours or so,and being in each others company from the excited squeals of our children opening their  presents too early in the morning  until we drag ourselves away from the tele in twenty four hours time from now.  
So three quick things about the Peace of God which may be of practical help to you on Christmas Day - and indeed on any day.
1] We tend to talk about "KEEPING THE PEACE".
Peace (we think) is something we have to try to cling on to by the skin of our teeth. This is not the Peace that Christ brings.The Bible tells us that
"THE PEACE OF GOD SHALL KEEP YOUR HEARTS AND MINDS THROUGH CHRIST JESUS". It is not we who are to keep the peace - the peace is to keep us.It is already there within us, Christ's Christmas gift to the world. That perhaps is the real meaning of receiving your christmas communion.  You hold out your hand, and Christ gives himself to you. He comes into your life to save you. Never mind saving your soul at the last judgement; but more immediately  perhaps saving you from that flash of temper, the moments of frustration; the effects of tiredness on an overworked wife mother and cook.  All the things which threaten the peace of your home. You could really call it God's healing power within us, ready to be at work in making us whole human beings - it is there just waiting for us to let it out into our hearts so that it can keep and protect us. Down there in the secret chamber of your heart, the Peace of Christ waits. Give yourselves to it; let it flow around you - warm, strong and lifegiving. Relax, flop from your efforts to keep the peace and let God's peace take over.
2] We can only be at Peace within ourselves if we stop worrying about ourselves - by which I mean we really DO have to say to ourselves - "I don't matter".
There is always a lot of stress caused by unfairness at Christmas. Those who get on with the washing up - while others enjoy their cigar and whisky.Or those who get the present they really wanted, and those who feel disappointed.  Those who slave their guts out to provide a smashing Christmas day - and those who sit back and enjoy what is provided. And if we are on the receiving end then we feel aggrieved and one way or another it comes out in the sharp word which leads to an argument.
Perhaps this shows us what Christ meant when he said that the one who is servant of all is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. He did not suggest that it would be fun!. Indeed it may well hurt. He himself said "I did not come to sit about being served - but to serve and give even my life." There can be no peace where people are asserting themselves; confrontation,envy, rivalry are not part of the Kingdom of the Prince of Peace. That is true of your family and it is true the world crisis that faces the world today.
3]And my third ingredient for Peace is that we accept one another and love  others as they are - not as we wish they were. Do not fall into the trap of imagining that people  were falling over themselves to like Jesus never mind love Him ! For many he represented a real threat to their status and security.We really have to face the possibility that WE might have been counted among those of whom it is written - "He came among his own people, and his own people rejected him".
There is in most of us ,perhaps all of us, a part of us  that doesn't really want the Peace of God. For to live in His peace requires an awful amount of forgiving of others.
Jesus seems to have felt this was of supreme importance. He actually said [puttng his thoughts into our own terms[ "If you are going up to the altar to receive Communion and on the way remember that you are not at peace with someone, go back, first make your peace with him and then come back to the altar. Perhaps there was peace in that dimly lit stable in Bethlehem so long ago,simply because Joseph had said to himself:
"My neighbours may think me a silly old fool for accepting her child as my own and  not divorcing my wife - but if that is what God wants then I accept it. And because Mary had said to the angel;
"See; I am God's servant God - let him do with me as He wills." There wasn't really much talk about human rights or political correctness in Bethlehem that first Christmas night.
But remember that the babe lying in a manger would in due time  say to his friends;"Peace I leave with you, my Peace I give unto you. Not as the world gives, give I unto you. In the world you shall have trials and  tribulation - but be of good cheer, for I have over come the world" - and how did he overcome it ? not by hitting back with the worlds weapons, but by going on loving it even to the end. He seems to have thought that you and I were worth the effort.

    


CHRISTMAS DAY ALL SAINTS BROMSGROVE 1999

Hide and seek is one of those good games where anyone can play whatever their age or condition . I'm not sure which is the best way round. Is it where John hides and Grandpa seeks. Or is is perhaps even better when Granny hides and Janet seeks ? The important thing about hide and seek is that children can never lose - at least they oughtn't to. Grown ups may hide very well - but if there are problems then its likely Grandpa will move a bit so that John can find him a bit more easily. And if Janet STILL can't find Granny then Granny will start to look for Janet. Because its no fun when someone can't be found - its just rather dreary and it spoils the game if we make it too hard.
Isaiah in the Bible once complained: "The trouble with you God is that you are always hiding yourself away."
Ever since people began using their heads to think with, they have looked around them at the world and the sun and moon and the stars and they have said something like "What is behind it all ?" Or they put it in another way and say "Where can I find God".
Perhaps God plays a sort of hide and seek with us. In fact we believe that God organises the game. So that when we think we are looking for him - that is really his way of letting us find Him.
So we could look at our world or look at the universe through that wonderful Hubble telescope when it is working. We could say "Perhaps God is hiding somewhere in there ?"
And yes - sometimes we can glimpse a little bit of his glory in a lovely sunset; or a bit of his mind as we study the mysteries of his creation. You could say that God hides himself in creation. But we really want to find out more than that.
Then we can look inside ourselves and perhaps inside people we know and love well. Is God hiding inside me ?
Well yes - we can see more glimpses of God, especially when we see somebody doing a beautiful kind action; or giving a comforting word or hugging us with a generous heart. God is there - for it is God who inspires everything that is good in us. But of course we know we are all mixed up creatures. We are far from all good. God is hidden in us and so often we are so busy looking for what WE want that we can miss him altogether.
When I look at your Christmas Crib it reminds me that if there was Jesus there was also a donkey; if there was Mary there was also a big ox; if there was the song of the angels there was also the stink of the manure and the dirty straw. When I look inside myself I find I am a mixture of Good and Bad ; beautiful and ugly; sinner and saint. God is hiding there inside me - and often it is difficult for me to find him there.
But on Christmas morning we say
Once in Bethlehem - Royal David's City - stood a lowly cattle shed where a mother laid her baby in a manger for a bed.
And we sing because that is the moment above all, so we believe, when God came to look for us because we were making such a mess of looking for him. He was still hidden in a way - because you don't expect to find God in a manger. But perhaps he is like Grandpa hiding in a way so that John can't really miss him unless he wants to.
If you are simple and down to earth like the Shepherds you will recognise him. If you are very wise and humble with it you will find him. If you a re deeply sorry for the way your life has turned out - you will recognise him because he will hold out his tiny hand to you. If you are one of those who spends all your life loving everyone in their path and rarely thinking about themselves you will see who he is.
Of course if John insists on looking for Grandpa where he knows Grandpa is not then he will never find him.  And if you think you know better than God then you too will never find him.
But we are here this morning because there is a carol in our hearts - because we have played hide and seek with God and we have found the God who hides himself. Because God is playing too and wants us to win.

CHILDRENS ADDRESS CHRISTMAS MORNING  1991
Christmas is really important because it is about a revolution.It is a revolution which God began himself.
The revolution is the idea that God is our friend. Instead of having a picture of God as an old man in the sky ; or a thing from outer space; or a stern boss or a cruel slavedriver, we are told to think of him as being a new born baby in his crib.  Christmas day is the day that God first showed us that he is our friend. You can't really be afraid of a baby.Babies are things we like to have close to us - not a long way afar off.
If you want to know very simply what it means to call yourself a Christian; then the answer is that you live with God as your friend. So you can be quite at home with him.
    A friend of mine told me a story of how he went into his big church one Christmas day and found to his horror that the baby was missing out of the christmas crib. He couldn't think why anyone would do that. The he heard a voice at the other end of the church. He looked and there was one of his sunday school children, Margaret, wheeling her new dolls pram up and down the aisle. And in the pram was the baby out of the christmas crib - and he heard Margaret saying something like this "Well there you are Jesus - I told you that if I got a dolls pram for Christmas you could have the first ride in it didn't I - and here we are."
    Thats a good way of understanding what it means to be a friend of God - you just treat God for real and treat him as you would your best friends.
    People often forget that . They think that God is like the man who sells leather belts and handbags in the market - 'Him wi't beard". Only much further away. A bit distant; a bit cold even cruel at times; a bit fierce and certainly not very interested in ordinary people.
    About eight hundred years ago St Francis was very concerned that people didn't love God as a friend but were afraid of him like a boss or a slavedriver. One Christmas Francis was staying in a village called Greccio. And he said to Brother John - This Christmas I would really like to show the people of the village what the birth of Christ at Bethlehem was like. They ought to see how poor he was, lying there on the straw with the ox and the ass beside him.
    Francis was by this time rather ill and weak = so the other brothers got things organised. They put up a crib outside the church and brought in a real donkey and a real ox. And they put a big doll to represent the child in the manger. And they invited people from all around to come and see what it was like on that first Christmas day so long ago.And someone who was there said that when he first saw the doll it looked as if it was dead - but when Francis came to the crib the doll Child seemed to come to life. People flocked to see that crib for they had never seen anything like it before. You and I are so used to the idea that often  we don't even bother to look.
    When everyone came to church on Christmas morning, Francis preached the sermon - and told them how the first Christmas was the happiest day that had ever happened, the time when God showed us he was our friend by giving us his Son Jesus to be born at Bethelehem. Someone else  who was there said that Francis was so happy that when he said Bethlehem it came out sounding like a lamb bleating !
    Christmas day says to you - if you can love a baby then  you too can love God. And if you love God as your friend, then like Francis  you too can help other boys and girls, other men and women to come alive and to love God and know how to be really happy.




CHRISTMAS MORNING 2005
ST FRANCIS PARISHCHURCH COVENTRY

And all the angels sang "GLORY TO GOD IN THE HIGHEST AND PEACE TO HIS PEOPLE ON EARTH"
Christmas day is a glorious day. Glory is one of those lovely warm words which sound wonderful but its very difficult to say just what it means.
Someone said that you have glory if people speak well of you - if you have a good reputation. And certainly Christmas day is a day on which we speak well of God.
But I think that  GLORY means something more exciting than that.
And the GLORY OF GOD is not like the glory the world about us knows. When there is a war, the side that is winning talks about  its GLORIOUS ARMIES. But Christmas Glory is not like that.
If you are a  lover of sports and games then you know what GLORY means - because you have seen your football team winning an important game against the odds; or you have cheered and cheered because we won the Ashes test. Thats another kind of glory. But it often does not last all that long and  Christmas glory is not even really like that.
Perhaps one of the best ways to understand Christmas glory is to listen to some of the legends which have grown up about Christmas. Legends are stories which probably never happened but which tell us something we would find it hard to understand in other ways.
    In Mexico they tell the story of Maria who was a little girl and also a very poor little girl. On a cold and rainy Christmas eve she was standing outside her parish church, and watched as the church ladies arrived to decorate the church for Christmas day. There they  came all with large bunches of beautiful and expensive flowers; competing with one another to provide the most startling and beautiful and expensive floral displays.
How Maria longed to join them - but she had nothing to bring. She wanted so much to give something beautiful to the baby Jesus at Christmas but she knew she couldn't take anything that would be any use.  She so wanted to have some nice flowers to put in church to show the baby Jesus that she loved him - but she didn't even have these.
As she stood in the churchyard, she found she was standing by a stone statue of an angel; and she realised how sad and neglected it looked. It was nearly hidden by tall grass and weeds. And the rain ran down its face so that it looked as if it were crying. Then to her surprise she thought she heard the angel talking to her. She knew it couldn't be because it was made of stone.  But never mind - the angel seemed to be saying  to her " Maria darling. Why don't you tidy me up ?  A bit of weeding would help for starters"
So Maria began to weed the ground around the stone angel. At last she finished and there was a great pile of dead leaves and stalks.  
"I wonder what I can do with all these weeds ?" she thought. And then she seemed to hear the angel talking to her again
"Take them into church, Maria, and give them to Jesus."
So she picked up the pile and walked straight into, the church.
    All the nice ladies busy with their vases and their flowers looked on in horror. Whatever did that scruffy child think she was up to ? What on earth was  she going to do with that pile of dead weeds ? But Maria took no notice of them; she walked straight up to where the Christmas Crib was and gently laid the stalks in front of Mary and Joseph and theOx and the Ass and the shepherds and the baby in the manger..  
"I'm sorry baby Jesus [she said] I wanted to give you something really lovely and all I have are these old leaves; but here they are and I give them to you because I love you."
As she did so, a miracle happened. The old weeds burst into the most glorious  fiery red leaves.  Just like this. And that is why  people in Mexico have a different name for what we call a Poinsettia. They call it  the "Flower of the holy night".
Did you notice what I called the red leaves ? I said they were glorious. And so they are.
But like most good stories, this story is trying to tell us something more . I will try to tell you what that something is. But if you don't like it then do your own thinking, you may come up with a better answer.
1] Its a story that reminds us  that at Christmastime poor people can feel close to God, because they can feel that Jesus is one of them. One of the funny things about Christmas is that we all think that to enjoy it we have to be able to spend lots of money on food and drink and presents.  We hear these days of how people are spending £500 or £1000 or even £2000 on Christmas presents . But what we Christians actually believe is that Jesus became poor so that we might be filled with all the glory and richness of God.  Maria couldn't afford expensive Christmas flowers; but she had a kind and loving  heart and she gave Jesus what she had.  A great French Christian who spent all his life looking after children who nobody else wanted because they were handicapped once said
"Love means doing ordinary things with kindness".
The best thing we can do on Christmas day is to be kind to one another; and that is what God wants.
2] Its a story that tells us what we ought to do with Christmas. Maria thought of Jesus in the manger and she wanted to do something for him because she loved him. All Maria had to give to Jesus were the weeds she had collected from the churchyard; but because she gave Jesus everything she had, He showed what a glorious present she was giving him by turning the weeds into gorgeous flowers. Anothere great Christian, Mother Teresa of Calcutta used to say
"Make it your business to do something beautiful for God every day."
3]   Its a story about what God can do with you and me when we love and serve Jesus.
I think it means that Jesus can turn even the most ordinary people in to rather glorious people.  The story is saying; if Jesus can turn a pile of weeds into a poinsettia - then just think how perhaps he can make you into someone rather wonderful and glorious .


EPIPHANY
 ST MARYS WALSGRAVE  HOLY BAPTISM AND EUCHARIST.
(I preached this on the occasion when I baptised my third beloved grandchild Caroline Elspeth.  )
In a few minutes we shall baptise Caroline.  Very simply, what is a baptism ? It is the moment when someone is adopted into God's family. When I have baptised my granddaughter I will hand ber back to her parents - and that is saying to them "Remember that this is not only your child, but she is also now God's child, and Jesus is her elder brother -  and so you must do your very best for her in every kind of way".
We have just heard the story of the Wise Men who came to find the baby Jesus and to offer him the best gifts they could find for him. Not that a baby - even a baby Jesus - would be very thrilled about being given gold and frankincense and myrrh !  
But as I thought about this I remembered a story which comes from Moravia in central Europe. A story not about wise men but about the animals who came to Jesus in the manger. Perhaps it will help us to remember what our elder brother Jesus was like. And then remember that Christians believe that God is like Jesus and Jesus is like God.
They say that when the animals in the stable at Bethlehem saw how the shepherds and wise men came to worship the baby Lord Jesus and brought him gifts; that they too decided they would like to make their own offering. They had quite a problem deciding what each of them could say and what sort of present they could give.
First came the OX
My Lord and Master I am your humble servant. I am not very clever but I am very strong. So I give you my strength because you will need all the strength you can find. For one day you will be driven as men drive me. They will give you a great cross to carry and they will lash you with whips and goad you on with spear points as they do me. So I offer you my strength.
And the child in its mothers arms smiled and accepted the strength of the ox.
Then spoke up the DONKEY.
My Lord and Master [hic !] I too am your humble servant. I may not be very clever but I am very humble. There are not many things more humble than a donkey. For see how ugly and odd I look - no wonder people think I am funny and laugh at me when I try to sing. So I give you my humility. You will need all the humility you can find. For people will laugh at you as they laugh at me. And just as men place on my back burdens too heavy for me - so they will lay on you burdens almost too heavy even for you. For you will bear on your shoulders the weight of all the world's sin. So I offer you my humility.
And the child in its mothers arms smiled and accepted the humility  of the donkey.
And a COW wandered in to the byre thinking it might be milking time.
My Lord and Master I am your humble servant. I may not be very clever but I am very generous. Day by day, twice a day my farmer milks me and takes the milk I give him to sell, and so he makes a living .So I give you my generosity. You will need all the generosity you can find in your soul. Day after day men and women in all kinds of trouble will come to you.
    They will expect you to make the lame walk, to make the blind to see and the deaf to hear and the dumb to speak; they will expect you to bring their children back to life; to heal their broken hearts and to mend their broken lives. And you will have to go on and on and on and even when you are worn out they will take everything you can give and never give you anything in return. Yes Master accept my generous heart - you will need it.
And the child in its mothers arms smiled and accepted the generosity of the cow.
And there was a COCK scratching around in the straw who cried out.
"Cock a doodle doo !My turn - my turn now !! My turn now !!
My lord and Master I am your humble servant.   I cannot say that I am not clever; for you know that I am. I cannot say that I am humble because you know I like to show off. So I have decided what I can give you. I give you my voice. You can be sure of one thing that when I decide to speak everyone hears me and everyone listens. Day must be breaking, they say, we can hear the cock crow.
So please receive my voice as my special present. For when you become a man you will want to share the wisdom of God with everyone; and so with my voice they will hear you and they will understand. The only thing I am very sorry about is that one day you will hear me crowing and when you hear me you will know that one of your very best friends has turned his back on you. And the child in its mothers arms smiled and accepted the voice of the cock.
There were many other animals who came to the stable to offer the best gifts they had to the little King of all the world. And there is not time to tell you all. But I must just tell you about the fox. The FOX came in out of the cold.
My Lord and Master I am your humble servant. Like my enemy the Cock nobody could imagine that I am stupid  like some of your other friends. So what can I give you ? I have decided that the best thing of mine that I can give you is my cleverness and my cunning. Depend on it - you will need every scrap of cleverness you can muster. For like me you will have lots of enemies; and they will try to trap you.
Oh they won't use snares or guns - but they will try to trap you with clever questions - and you will need to hold your own and give them the right answers. I think you will agree that that is a good present for me to give you. Alas I have another gift which goes with it , which I wish I did not have to give. I give you my loneliness.
For the time will come when like me when I am being pursued by a pack of hounds, you will be hounded by your enemies; you will have no-one to save you; even your friends will run away and you will die like I will die, friendless and alone. I am sorry - but I fear that you must receive that gift, and you know that there is no other way.
And the child in its mothers arms smiled and accepted the cleverness and the loneliness of the fox.
Then in return spoke Mary the Blessed Mother.
My children, I would like to reply on behalf of my son who is your Infant King. He wishes to thank you for all your gifts - and especially for all the care and time and consideration you have given in choosing them. It makes me sad to hear of the hardships which my baby will have to face when he grows up. But for now let me just say how much He and I value your kindness and friendship. And in the name of Jesus your Lord and Master I now wish you a very very happy Christmas


EPIPHANY 2003  DODFORD AND CATSHILL

A Happy New year to all my hearers ! as editors of magazines tend to say to us.  And so we look forward to another twelve months of which we know nothing in particular except that we will all be older by the end of them.  The truth is of course that though we make a great fuss of the New  Year, yet  when it happens we soon forget that we ever wrote 2002 on our cheques; all this imagination about looking forward to what the New Year may bring gets subsumed by the daily routine and the rough and ready needs of real life and real living.
But perhaps it is no bad thing anyway just to stop and get a Christian perspective on these things; and no better opportunity than on this day when we tell again the story of the Wise Men.  For consider - the story is all about a journey; about escapades on the way , the following of a star and the culmination of the journey with the worship of the Christ Child.  And this ties in with one of the great Christian themes that has come to the fore in recent years - the theme of pilgrimage.  It is a theme which is fundamental to the whole scope of the Bible. We might remember that the story of our salvation begins with Abraham, citizen of Ur of the Chaldees - one of the great founding civilizations of the great Euphrates valley in what we now call Iraq. He hears a voice in his head saying "Follow my directions.; leave home and I will make you a great nation"  and scripture comments "And he set out not knowing where he was going". Well usually those on a pilgrimage do have some idea of where they want to end up - even if it is that young man who reached the South Pole last week. But the point is that nobody ever really knows what will happen on the way. The poet Tom Eliot in one of his better known pieces writes about the journey of the Magi "A hard time we had of it" begins the narrator; and he goes on to mention the
" the camel men cursing and grumbling
and running away and wanting their liquor and women
and the night fires going out and the lack of shelters
and the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
and the villages dirty and charging high prices"
The whole vista of  Tolkien's Lord of the Rings sagas is a tale of Frodo's pilgrimage and all the adventures which happen on the way which continually frustrate his mission to save the universe from the power of evil.
Pilgrimage stories are the very stuff of best sellers down the ages..
So perhaps this is a moment to think again of our own personal pilgrimage. For these great yarns are not there just to enjoy as a visit to the cinema, they are there to give us guidance as to how we see ourselves on the way from the cradle to the grave.  Perhaps there have been few times when it has been more difficult for us to see our lives from this perspective. For we live in an age when the larger vision tends to be swamped by  a public philosophy which seems to be governed by what we may call ledger morality - where the great question is ' is it financially efficient? '. One of the quotations I cherished recently were these words in a letter to the Times was "we should realize that what is financially efficient is rarely professionally effective."
In other words value for money does not guarantee satisfactory results. We live in an age when there is an increase in the desire for greater individual autonomy - to do our own thing - but which is increasingly frustrated by centralized thinking and ordering of our lives. Choice of direction is limited . It seems to me that while the political angle is to offer greater choice in public services like education and health. the reality is rather like Henry Ford's dictum about his famous Model T  car. "You can have any colour you like so long as it's black !"  The choice is often an illusion. So perhaps its not so strange that our cinemas are booked up weeks ahead by patrons wanting to see the sequel to the Lord of the Rings. For we long to be able to live our lives with imagination; to have some purpose in living rather than experiencing life as tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow till the last syllable of recorded time - as Shakespeare so memorably puts it.
    As I hear - as we all do - the interminable reports on young criminals, gun law, drug abuse and all the rest of our list of contemporary miseries, I wonder if I am the only one who wants to ask the deeper question Why ? and then not to look for it in the nostrums suggested by sociologists and other intellectuals. But rather I say to myself - the general reason must be simply boredom. Many of our young can perhaps see no point in their lives so they have to make what their limited imaginations can make of them.  Society in its determination to ever improve its productivity and its prosperity creates a very boring product; and the soul of the young has always longed for excitement and glamour and adventure and a holy grail to pursue. And the church is also implicated in this. I shall always remember a lady at a diocesan conference which was earnestly debating for the umpteenth time as we have been doing since the 1950's saying this. "We want to encourage our young people to pursue their Christian vocation, and we speak to them of the privilege of serving Jesus Christ, and what do we offer them ? membership of the Parochial Church Council!". Unfair perhaps but most acute observations are unfair.  I suppose the problem basically is that you and I have also become boring souls no longer lit by the flame of devotion and enthusiasm .  As the years go by the temptation always is to settle, quite reasonably, for a quiet life.
    Let us then, at the beginning of another year, contemplate the quality of our pilgrim life. Has the journey become boring for us ?  does it mean what it used to mean to us ? to walk through life in the company of Jesus Christ who will encourage us when the going is hard and pick us up and dust us down again when we too often fall down on the job ?   For that matter, is Jesus a reality for us ?
And let us think of the nature of our pilgrimage. We may be like Abraham in that we do not know where we are going - even tomorrow - but we may also be like him in that he knew what he was looking for.  We are told that he left his home city and "he looked for another city whose builder and maker is God".  He did not know where it was but he was determined to keep on looking - and that is the secret of all worth while pilgrimage.  Has our imagination lost its grip on the image of the new Jerusalem - the city whose road we travel on now but which beckons us one even further beyond this earthly existence.  There are two questions which human beings have always asked since they became thinking and feeling and imaginative animals - they are How are we to live ? and How are we to die ? I submit that contemporary western religion is not answering those questions with the kind of authority which people instinctively recognize. And so we will enjoy Harry Potter and the Lord of the Rings and wistfully think how good it would be if life could be as challenging and rewarding as it is told to us in story and legend.
    As we sing our offertory hymn, I suggest you note again those well known words. Beginning with the wise men following the star, it reminds us of how the star led them to the lowly bed at Bethlehem, so we too make our pilgrimage. Then we remember how they offered gifts. So may we offer Him the best we have to give. And at the end we ask the Lord to lead us home where we need no star to guide and where no clouds his glory hides. 25 years ago my Bishop conducted a teaching mission for our parish which he called Moments that Matter. Each evening we considered one moment from our Baptism through to our Death via confirmation, holy communion, sickness, sin and marriage.  Each night he had a theme hymn. On the night he taught us about Christian facing his death he took this hymn as his theme song. It was so unlikely that the idea has stuck with me ever since and I will probably ask for it at my funeral. Let us lift up our hearts, let us pick up our step, let us gaze firmly into the future and cherish in our hearts the Christian hope in that heavenly country bright where we need no created light. There for ever may we sing Alleluia's to our King! And if that language sounds a tad dated, then let us earnestly pray that the Spirit in her own way may refresh our hearts and minds, so that what we say with our lips we may truly believe in our hearts and demonstrate in our lives.
Come Holy Spirit of God
fill our hearts which without you are cold and hard
illuminate our minds which without you are dull and blind
fill our lives which without you are without direction or meaning
fill your church which without you is but an empty shrine
and teach us to pray
AMEN

SUNDAY AFTER CHRISTMAS :  which is also the Feast of St Thomas the Martyr of Canterbury
On this day, 29th December,  in the year of our lord 1170, Thomas a Becket,the then Archbishop of Canterbury was murdered in His cathedral. Probably on the order of the King. This item of history helps me to draw your attention to a strange fact - the Christian church surrounds the Christmas festival with suffering and martyrdom.
As if to say to those who care to think about it - look! -  since the birth at Bethlehem people have thought that Jesus was worth living for and dying for.
There are three categorise of martyrs;1. Those who are martyrs in will and in deed 2. Those who are martyrs in will but not in deed 3. Those who are martyrs in deed but not in will. That sounds a bit complicated. So let me explain .
On Boxing Day we remember Stephen the deacon and first person to be killed because he was a follower of Jesus Christ. He knew very well what he was doing when he was called to account by his national court on a charge of speaking blasphemy against the temple. Stephen defied the court - he said "You leaders of my people you have always got it wrong. You always take the wrong side. You always stop God doing what he wants done. You always fight against the Holy Spirit. First you persecuted the prophets and now you have put Jesus on the Cross".
At which they threw him out and stoned him to death. He knew he took his life in his hands when he spoke as he did. He was a martyr in will and in deed.
On Friday our calendar remembers John the Apostle. By tradition the other eleven apostles died as martyrs. But John the beloved disciple lived on to a very great age. He was spared martyrdom even though he stuck to Jesus through thick and thin. The other apostles ran away but John stood at the foot of the cross with the mother of Jesus keeping vigil. He was arrested; he was tried but he was not sentenced to death but to exile on the island of Patmos in the Aegean sea. He offered his life to Jesus. Doubtless he would have died a martyrs death if death had come his way. He was the second kind of martyr - one who was willing to die but who was not in fact put to death.
Yesterday, our church calendar spoke of the Holy Innocents. You know who they are. They were the children who were killed by the soldiers of King Herod when they were searching for the Christ Child.
They did not know why they died - but in their innocence they still were killed. Martyrs who died in deed but not because of their belief. They simply got in the way of evil men. We see holy innocents on our news programmes almost every day.  Children and other innocent people who get in the way of the gunfire or are killed no less really by starvation because there is famine as a result of politics and war. Martyrdom is always the suffering of the innocent at the hands of the violent or the ruthless or the fanatic or the uncaring. These are  martyrs who suffer in innocence  without any choice at all - martyrs in deed but not in will.
St Thomas of Canterbury was very much a martyr in the Stephen mould. He knew what he could expect if he stood up to the king and the powers that be on behalf of the church and the poor. Life does not change much - only our ways of doing things. The media delight in sticking the knife in to people they don't like; or whose opinion they disagree with.  Archbishop Williams may be the flavour of the month at the moment; but just wait till he sticks his neck above the parapet once too often.  
I would like to read to you from  Tom  Eliot's great play "Murder in the Cathedral" He writes a sermon for Thomas a Becket to preach on Christmas morning.
"Is it an accident do you think that the day of the first martyr St Stephen follows immediately the day of the birth of Christ ? By no means. Just as we rejoice and mourn at once in the birth and in the passion of our lord when we celebrate Mass on Christmas Day; so also we both rejoice and mourn in the death of martyrs. We mourn for the the sins of the world that has martyred them; we rejoice that another soul is numbered among the saints of heaven, for the glory of God and for the salvation of men.
Beloved we do not think of a martyr simply as a good christian who has been killed because he is a christian - that would be solely to mourn. We do not think of him as a good christian who has gone to heaven - for that would be simply to rejoice. And neither our mourning nor our rejoicing is as the worlds is.  A Christian martyrdom is always the design of God for his love of men - to warn them and to lead them and to bring them back to His ways. It is never the design of man; for the true martyr is he who has become the instrument of God, who has lost his will in the will of God, and who no longer desires anything for himself.
That is strong stuff indeed ! You may well ask if there is anything in all this for you and me ? Just simply the reminder that our baptism as Christians commits us to continue Christ's soldiers and servants unto our live's end.
The importance of Christmas for Christians does not lie in how enjoyable it is but in what difference it makes to our lives. Martydom after all only means being a witness. Being a Christian is among other things looking at the babe in the manger and offering him the worship and loyalty of our hearts and lives. The IMPORTANT thing is that we do not alter our offering when the mood takes us or our circumstances change. Church congregations generally speaking have something of a reputation for grumbling. Theres always something we don't like; something we don't agree with. Theres always a bit of pain about, when we belong to the family of God.
     We know we are just at the beginning of being a follower of Jesus and a Christian when we have realised that pain is there to be born for Christs sake.
 Jane was a youth club leader of mine back in the seventies.  I was delighted when she found a vocation to ministry and went to Lincoln Theological College to train as a Deacon.  After ordination she  worked  in a Lincoln parish while she waited for her new husband to complete his course a year later. She wrote me a sad letter at that time; sayinig how painful it was when male priests would not let her walk in with the clergy because she was a woman and she was relegated to the choir vestry.
Why are they like that ? she asked. I had to reply that just by turning your collar the wrong way round does not protect you from being hurt. Laypeople have the burden of pursuing their vocation in the workplace; and the clergy are largely protected from that. But somehow God still makes it possible for us to suffer at the hands of our brothers and sisters in the ministry or the church's administration. Jane is now Chaplain to Poole General Hospital, President elect of the Society of Carers and is a wonderful priest. But she has known pain - as many of us have; and you can't really be a priest properly  without that experience.
Here is another story to end with from further back.
Canon Peter Green of  Manchester was recognised as being perhaps the best parish priest of his generation. He gained a national reputation for the quality of his pastoral ministry; and what's more was a regular columnist for the  Guardian.  He told how Jimmy, a young man in his congregation helped him run the little mission church in the slummier part of the parish. They had no organist nor pianist. So Jimmie who had had a few piano lessons practiced really hard till he could play a hymn tune passably. Not well but passably. And he played every sunday evening for three years. So as time went by. Canon Green could not fault Jimmie. He did everything right. He seemed too good to be true.I must find out the truth about him, said the canon to himself. Either he does everything so well because he gets a kick out of it,or else he does it as as his offering to Christ. So as they walked back together one sunday night after evensong; Canon Green said to Jimmie ;
O by the way, Jimmie, we have a new member of the congregation who is an excellent pianist and she has offered to play for our mission church services and I've accepted her offer. Jimmie could well have replied But Vicar thats not fair ! after all the trouble I've gone to to learn to play the hymns. But in fact Jimmie replied "Super ! now you won't have to put up with my playing any more - I'll find something else to do instead". And Peter Green knew that Jimmie was on the way to being a saint. His love of serving Christ quite overwhelmed the hurt feelings which could have soured his faith. He was called to be a martyr in will though not in deed. And so I guess are you and I. For as I said at the beginning; ever since the first Christmas day there have been people who have believed that Jesus Christ is worth living for and some have even found he was worth dying for.

Preserve your church O Lord from the hands of evil men;
and as your holy martyr Thomas of Canterbury died in her defence so give her always the protection of faithful leaders who shall guard her freedom and guide your people in the way of holiness through Jesus Christ our Lord



CHRISTMAS EVE MIDNIGHT MASS 1990
You and I cannot really understand Christmas.
Christmas words should sweep through our hearts with the force of  of a  revolution. But we take it for granted that the normal way for humans to live is to live in peace and tranquillity, we presume it is  normal to live with peace on earth and goodwill towards men. So the news media always assume that the newsworthy items are reports of the disturbance of our peace; locally nationally or on the world stage.
    We are accustomed to believe that the most precious thing on earth is the value of the individual man or woman.  Do we realise how very strange and out of the ordinary that is even at the end of the 20th century never mind at the beginning of the first ? But - you see - Jesus was born in a time when life was cheap. It was not an age which knew much about human rights. Those who rebelled or rioted agains the army and the police would end up being nailed to wooden crosses and left to die. Do not think that Jesus was special in this. At times the countryside of Galilee was littered with crosses.
    We don't really know why everyone was expected to travel to their home town for the census that took Joseph and Mary to Bethlehem - it seems a strange and inefficient carry on. But thats civil servants for you.There seems to have been no option whether you went or not; and certainly the penalty for not paying that would have been much more painful than anything the Benfits Suport Agency would impose,
    So we -  with all our background of liberal sentiments and human rights however imperfect -  find that the message of Christmas is a bit wishy washy, a  bit stale, a bit we've heard it all beforeish. Yes - there is some relevance. We do pray that we shall get through the next forty eight hours cooped up at home with the family without a stand-up blazing row. Sadly, the experts tell us that Christmas is one of  the best breeding grounds for divorce.
But if we look further afield ,we may see hints of how important Christmas is. Christmas is a time for people who walk in darkness. This time last year, we could not have imagined how the situation in South Africa could have begun to change. Its a long way off being sweetness and light; but perhaps the flags of dawn are visible on the horizon.
     For Christmas is a message of hope. To you and I in our comfortable homes it can sound like mere wishful thinking.To those in real darkness it is the only thing they have to cling onto. And that is hope. Hope means you hang on when there is no longer any real reason for hanging on except that to let go would be even worse.
    There are plenty of places in our world today which are no better or even worse than Palestine in the year dot. There are a lot of King Herods around today. At least, both the Romans and the Jews had a strong sense of law which regulated their behaviour. It did not stop them attempting to kill off Jesus of Nazareth.  But respect for the law does not apply in countries like Mozambique where there is no order and pillage rape and killing goes on in a state of complete mayhem.
 It is a fearsome thought that only in perhaps europe, north america and the commonwealth would anyone today imagine that violence as a means of getting your own way is wrong. In the majority of the world there is no argument - to be proud to  fight and kill and be killed for the glory of their country is what is expected of young men .
    So coming to worship God in the middle of the night is more than a romantic imitation of the shepherds who went to Bethelem in the nightto find the  Babe lying in the manger. It is deeper and more important than that . We are truly acting out the truth of the Christmas Gospel that it was into a dark world that Jesus the Light of the World was born. A world as dark - even darker than our world today. We come down High Road and Low Road into the candlelight of our parish church. And in doing so we are sharing our faith and our hope that somehow love will conquer the darkness.  It does not seem a very likely hope; or a very sensible faith.  The importance of Jesus is that HE MAKES IT SEEM POSSIBLE AGAINST ALL THE ODDS.  The light shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot overwhelm it, the darkness cannot defeat it, the darkness cannot blot it out.  All the powers of darkness tried to blot it out when he was nailed to the cross.  And the one fundamental belief which Christians must share - however they express it - is that the darkness failed to blot out the light.
Which is why, beloved, when we gather in the candlelight to escape from the darkness outside, we celebrate the birth of Jesus at Bethlehem by doing this and remembering Him as he commanded us to do.
When we meet a baby for the first time, we love - don't we ? - to say "May I hold him ?"
Later in the eucharist you will hold out your hands. You can think of yourself saying to Mary ;"Can I hold him please ?" And your hands receive the body born of Mary and broken on the cross; your lips touch the blood shed for you upon the Cross; and you share in the sacrifice which defies the darkness and leads you to the everlasting light.


SUNDAY AFTER CHRISTMAS     "NO ONE HAS EVER SEEN GOD"
        "Mummy what is God like ?"
That is one of the questions which always embarrasses the well meaning parent. Simple questions are not the same as easy questions. Usually the reverse. And it is very hard for any of us to get away from the picture of a very old man with a beard.
The Bible doesn't pretend that we are being stupid if we ask that question. In fact St John told us in very simple but blunt words tonight:-
        "Noone has ever seen God"
But he doesn't leave it there.He goes on to say that Jesus has shown God to us. This of course does not mean that God looks like Jesus did. It does mean that if we can use our picture of Jesus as a picture of what sort of God God is.
At Christmas-time we are asked to look at a pictrure of a baby in his mothers arms - and are asked to believe tht God is like that. It sounds very simple - though it is in fact a quite staggering thing to believe. But then you and I would hardly traipse out on a cold winter evening to sit here and worship that babe if we were not prepared to believe even though we feel our faith to be weak and faltering.
Let me try to fill in this idea tht God makes himself known to us in Jesus.
The first thing is this ;
God through Jesus is saying to us; "Don't be afraid of me.". One of the enjoyable things about looking at a baby is that you feel quite safe. There is nothing at all to be afraid of. Perhaps this sounds almost too obvious.But consider this. Most of our lives we spend looking at other people and wondering what they may think of us. Other people can be a bit of a threat. Even people who are quite close to us. Even members of our family. If we do something hurtful to someone we love we are afraid,and say, "I just couldn't bring myself to face him."
And perhaps we are something like that with God. We call him Father - and at the back of our minds we can just hear mother saying
        "Wait till your father comes home."
It is too easy to classify God with all the other authority figures we know - schoolteachers, policemen, judges  - perhaps even vicars ! All the people who we think of as waiting to catch us out. We don't often classify God as a baby - for a baby is  no threat to us at all. We should all be far better Christians if we  would really get it into our noddles tht God is not a threat but a promise. For until we do recognise this then our religion is based on fear rather than love.
The second thing to consider is that God through Jesus is saying "I am here for you to love me". A baby is essentially something easy to love. At the centre of our religion is the commandment "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart." How often do you and I buck out of that one ! As a retired Colonel was heard to remark - Can't do with all this love stuff Vicar - duty is what I understand.
We can understand something of what "Love your neighbour as yourself "means - even if we are not too good at putting it into practice. But all this talk about loving God may seem  hard to understand. Yet it is really the simplest thing of all. To love god is as simple as loving a baby in its cot. Bethlehem assures us in the most powerful of pictures that God is immensely loveable - and perhaps that is more than we can often say of our neighbours. In all my Christian reading down the years few sentences stick more in my mind that the words of the very eminent scholar, St Thomas Acquinas. But he summed up all his learning when he said
        "The more you get to know God the more loveable he becomes".
The third thing that God is saying to us through the Jesus of Christmas is: "I am one with you ; I am solidly behind you" The Gospel is never "Be a good boy and you may go to heaven" Our message to others is never - all you need to do neighbour is to try a  bit harder. The Gospel really is "Unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour who is Christ the Lord." We cannot get to God: God can come to us.
Let me try to put this as easily as I can. Ask yoruslf - is there a gap betwen me as I am an me as I think I COULD be ?. If there is (and I would be very suprised if there isn't) then why don't I just close the gap and be my very best self all the time ? It doens't sound very difficult when you say it like that.All I have to do is to go ahead and do it.
But we know that it doesn't work like that. St Paul, you remember, looked deep into his heart (and he was a saint and a hero) and he said " I find there are two people inside me.So the good tht I want to do I don't do - and the things I know I ought not to do, I find myself doing.God help me."
In otherwords, if I  try to pull myself up by my own bootlaces I will only come crashing to the ground. God help me !
And that is precisely it. God  help me.
Unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour who is Christ the Lord. Instead of God being up there and me desperately but to no avail trying to reach him, He comes to me. Christmas is God expressing his solidarity with us.God making our human cause his own; God identifying himself with us.
He comes to liberate us, to set us free so that we may rise to the heights for which he created us. Like a diver trapped in the wreckage on the sea bed, we need to be set free so that we can rise to the surface.
Why Christmas ? asked a great Christian thinker. Why did God become man ? And he answered the question  in these words: God became man in order that man might in turn become divine. Those words were used in today's collect.
Christ is our ikon; our image of God showing himself one with us,
He shows his oneness with us in his birth; content to experience the vulnerable weak existence of a human baby unable to care for itself, wholly dependent upon his mother; Oneness with us in his experience of living in a human family; oneness with the poor and the outcasts and the misfits that we are. He was granted no privileges because he was Gods son - he made himself one with the unprivileged. He showed us Gods oneness with us in human pain and grief, in human death. God's oneness with everything that is human
And so we give him that great Christian title  "Emmanuel" - 'God is with us'. Not then but now. Christmas is so much more than just telling us about  shepherds and wise men 2000 years ago.It is  story which invites you and me to look for the God who is with us.
And we shall look within us to find Him. For in each of us there are (as Paul saw) two little children. One little child wants attention, wants to be loved, the "dear Fathr Christmas Child" please give me what I want - concerned for his own comfort and status,
But look carefully and you will see his twin; the Christ Child. And that child says "I want to love, I want to like you, I want to serve you,I want to fulfil your deepest needs. The trouble is that that child, becasuse he is not self seeing is too easily overshadowed and drowned by the noise of the clamorous child . But he is there. And he is god with you ; the Christ child who is with us. He is there in your heart, content to be there - as Jesus was content to be born in the smells and the draughts of the stable. Let us rmember that child with us; and cosset him just as we should so dearly have loved to have the privilege of taking the baby Jesus in our arms and to nurse him and cherish him with our love.      

SUNDAY AFTER CHRISTMAS

On Christmas day the human race came of age. The coming of Jesus Christ into the world signified that men and women could now lead grown up lives. That is the message that comes to us this morning. If Jesus was not the most mature human being known to mother earth then however many titles like Son of God we might load on him he would not be the Jesus that the Gospel proclaims. He came, says our collect, so that he might share our humanity and that we may share the life of his divinity. In other words the gift God gave us when Jesus Christ was born was the possibility, thea potential to be godlike.
    St Paul draws for us a picture of a child unable to be the inheritor of his father's estate until he comes of age. His was not quite the same kind of inheritance law that we have, but we see the point. We have come of age. We have been set free from the constraints which shackle us to the past, to the slaves of custom and convention. Whatever the humanists may say, I believe ,  it is not mere coincidence that the society of western europe, the home of ancient Christendom, has been the cradle of modern science, and has seen more changes than any other civilisation known to history. And though we may feel that the centres of world politics have swung away from western europe ; yet the fact is that other civilisations however envious of us also want what we can deliver in the form of education and technology .
    But it is deeper than this, of course. St John tells us that Jesus was the incarnation of all that we know of as  divine. Moses, he says, gave us the Law of God. What the Law of God required was that you keep it and obey it, and if you obey it then you may be acceptable to God. But the new testament folk knew that for sensitive and discriminating souls this was not enough. There is something within us which baulks at being obedient. So from God through Jesus Christ comes grace and truth.
    How can we explain this ? Perhaps by reminding ourselves of Aesop's fable about the wind and the sun who argued which was the more powerful. They agreed that the one who could rid a traveller of his cloak was the winner. The wind blew hard, but the harder he blew the more the traveller hugged his cloak around himself. Then the sun had his turn and beamed down on the weary traveller. In a very short while the traveller had thrown his cloak away in the warmth of the sun's welcoming smile.
    What St John is saying is that with the birth of Jesus, the God's sun beamed out onto the world. How best can we rid ourselves of that sinful wrongness that spoils the lives of even the best of us ? By being battered by the law ? Strangely the more we are told to obey the law, the more likely we are tempted to break it. The Grace and Truth of which he speaks is God's sunshine. It makes us WANT to reach out to Him, to throw away what is hampering us and to turn our faces towards his beauty. God is not cold but warm. God is not harsh but inviting. God does not command us to go to him - he comes to us. That is the picture of God that is given to us by the Gospel of Christmas.
    God in other words is a God who treats us as adults and not as naughty children. This is good news - but of course it is more demanding news. Children we can excuse by saying they don't know any better. But someone who has become an adult is going to be treated as one. He is going to be held responsible for what he makes of himself. And that is an awesome prospect. It is what you accept when you come to Confirmation; it is what is affirmed every time you come to this altar to receive the most Blessed Sacrament of the Body and Blood. Because you are joined and made one with the Jesus whose life revolved around his constant prayer "Father - my Father". Jesus was the most grown up human being that lived simply because he depended at every moment on God his Father. It is a paradox. He was free because he chose to live as an obedient Son to the Father of all. We are not free because we let ourselves become slaves to our own desires and wants and ambitions.
    But the gospel shows us Jesus. And if we see him rightly then we will want to hold out our hands to him and desire to live as he did - most courageously, most lovingly, most generously, and indeed most royally.

EPIPHANY
A RETELLING OF A FAMILIAR STORY
I
"And when they had worshipped him they presented unto him gifts."
    Once upon a time there were three kings, Caspar Melchior and Balthasar. They were respectively the most wealthy, the most powerful and the most wise of all the rulers of the world.
 Caspar's kingdom was the financial centre of the world. More than anywhere else, money was the yardstick of everything; his people spent their days dealing in stocks and shares and currency transactions of all kinds. And it was indeed a profitable way of life.  Caspar was the financial king of the world; money flowed into his country like water; and his people had the highest income per head on earth; they knew the price of everything; but whether they knew the value of everything was another matter. Their national motto was  "MONEY GETS THINGS DONE"
     Melchior possessed absolute power.Everything that happened in his country was directly under his control, and that of his tightly organised civil service, and behind that, his secret police . Efficient centralised government made his state the most efficient and politically powerful in the world. When Melchior spoke, then all other heads of state jumped. And in his palace he held court sitting upon a magnificent throne, and worshipped as King of Kings,Lord of Lords, the only Ruler of Princes. Superb choirs sang anthems of praise, courtiers in magnificent robes bowed to the ground before him, and priests burned incense to their God-King Melchior and worshipped him in due humility.
    Balthazar was neither as powerful or as wealthy as his two friends; but perhaps on the world stage he possessed the highest reputation. For he reckoned that real power lay in the mind, and so with his wonderful and brilliant brain  he had devoted himself to the study of the wisdom of the ages. He was a master of all the philosphies; and in turn this was reflected in the quality of his kingdom - for Balthasar's country was renowned for the quality of its scientists and its artists. In terms of human achievement nothing on earth could hold a candle to it. Balthasar was sufficient of a philosopher to realise that earthly pomp and show, or the pursuit of wealth were in the end delusions. For in the end, said B. we all die, and everything we achieve on earth ends up with us being put in a box and buried. His great project was to build in his lifetime a tomb of great magnificence in which when he died, his embalmed body could be laid to rest and so form a fitting monument to the greatest mind that had ever lived.
    So he spent his time pondering upon the mystery of human  existence, and became very very wise indeed, so that when he spoke everybody listened.Even his two friends Caspar and Melchior. For Strangely enough they all got on well together in their own peculiar way .
     And because it can be a bit boring being the best of anything after a while, they were in the habit of taking an annual bachelors holiday together when for a few weeks they could escape from their positions of eminence and play at being ordinary human beings.
    One year, Balthasar whose favourite hobby was astrology, wrote to his friends and said: "Look there's something interesting happening in the heavens; there's quite an intriguing and novel conjunction of the stars and according to my calculations it means that a King is about to be born who will be greater than any of us. I know that that sounds quite ridiculous, and of course I may be wrong, but I think it might be fun to follow this up as our project for this year's holiday.
And in case I'm right don't forget to bring along an appopriate present - if this new king is all the stars crack him up to be then it will be as well to keep on the right side of him."  The idea that there might be someone who was wealthier and more powerful and wiser than the Three Kings amused them all; but they agreed with Balthasars idea ; and so they set out on their safari; and after many adventures they found themselves in a rather grotty little market town in Israel,outside a very ordinary little house."This can't be the right place can it ?" asked Caspar and Melchior. "It doesn't look very promising,"replied B."but I've checked and re-checked all my calculations and this seems to be it. Anyway,I've made enquiries and it does seem that there is a family living here with a young child born at the time the stars foretold."
    They decided that they would each seek a personal audience with this child who was born to be King; so each in turn took his gift and entered the house where the Holy Family were now staying.
    Caspar went in first. From such a country what other gift could Caspar bring but the symbol of wealth. In his casket he brought a nugget of pure gold, gleaming with that soft seductive quality which has mesmerised so many ambitious people in history. So into the room where the Christ child was receiving his guests entered Caspar. It was not an audience chamber such as he would have imagined. Simply all he saw was a  plain room with a young mother cradling her baby in her arms with her husband by her side; all very unpretentious, and without any of the signs of status Caspar would associate with kingship.Still the stars could not be wrong; this was the place and the time and the occasion. So he knelt down before the child and offered him his gift of gold. And as he did so, something strange happened. For a moment he was not in that plain room; he was on a hillside with a crowd of others listening to a young man dressed in simple clothes and with no visible signs of authority or power, yet he was holding the crowd with absolute attention.
    Caspar found himself looking at that young man and being irresistably attracted by those penetrating eyes; and hearing his voice speak with an authority that could not be gainsaid. And to his horror he heard the words: "Do not amass for yourself treasure on earth where  thieves break in and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasure in heaven where thieves cannot break through and steal.For where your money is there is your heart also. You cannot serve God AND money." And Caspar came to himself and bowed low and went out and thought long and hard.
    Into the audience chamber then came Melchior.  In his gift casket he brought a box of frankincense of the highest quality. The kind that was burned before him when he was worshipped as a God on earth in his royal palace. He presented his gift and as he did so he too was taken out of himself, and he found himself at a dinner party in a large room with a group of men. They were all sitting around looking vaguely embarrassed as their leader knelt before each of them in turn and washed their feet. And he seemed to hear a voice saying " You call me Master and Lord, and so I am. So if I your Lord and Master have washed your feet, so you too must learn to wash one anothers feet. For I did not come to sit around giving orders to my slaves, I have come to be your servant. He who wishes to be greatest in my Kingdom must become the Servant of all."
    And Melchior bowed and went out into the darkness and HE thought long and hard.
    Lastly. Baltasar followed him into the house bearing his gift. In his casket he had brought a strange gift; a philosopher's gift, a pound of myrhh. Myrrh the spice used by undertakers to embalm a body for burial. So he presented his gift, and he in his turn had a strange vision. He saw a garden; and in that garden a tomb with  the stone rolled away from the entrance; and inside the tomb the graveclothes neatly folded and no body.And he heard a voice saying "I am the Resurrection and I am the Life; whoever believes in me though he were dead yet shall he live; and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die."
And Balthazar bowed low before the child and went out - and he thought longer and harder than either of his friends - for after all he was very wise.
    So their holiday project accomplished the three friends went back home; Caspar to be again the wealthiest man in the world, Melchior to be the most powerful man in the world and Balthazar to resume his reputation as the wisest man in the world. But they were never the same again. Caspar realised now that true riches do not consist of money; Melchior that there was a power that was beyond anything his armies could maintain; and Balthazar ? well when he got home, he halted work immediately on his great tomb, and I think he began to read the Bible again - for he was, after all, a very wise man.

        SECOND SUNDAY AFTER CHRISTMAS
    Ian is a retired distinguished Doctor who was my best friend at school. His amibition was to be a surgeon. Then when he was a student he contracted Polio and lost some use of his limbs.  But he went back to his studies and became a Physician and later a reseearch scientist.  It is a mark of his character that he had the spirit to resign from the government department he worked for on the grounds that he disagreed with the ethics of what he was required to do.
I remember that when I was thirteen, I went to Ian's birthday party.I ended up being initiated into the mysteries of playing poker. I found it fascinating. So much so that Ian's mother left us to it and went to bed. At about half past one in the morning the phone went; and it was my rather worried and very irate father. So I understand today's gospel all too well, for I have lived out the same situation on a different occasion. Indeed it helps us to understand in what way we are to believe  in the perfect humanity of Jesus Christ. It  does not mean he was goody goody - even though he had a precocious interest in theology - it means that he was everything a healthy young lad ought to be. When you are twelve, being home in time for tea isn't very important unless you happen to be hungry - and perhaps not even then. Jesus at twelve shows us a boy who is beginning to assert his independence as a person in his own right. Most of us who were brought up on the authorised version remember the words of Jesus as being "Wist ye not that I must be about my father's business." In modern translations it tends [as today] to be in my father's house. The original greek and the early latin versions are both ambivalent and literally seem to be saying  "I must be among the things of my Father."
    But hidden behind this well known story,  we are being told some rather startling ideas about what it means to be a Christian. Put very simply, it is this - that a Christian is someone who lives with God as His Father. That may not sound very revolutionary at all. In fact we are so used to praying "Our Father", that it has become for us a  form of words we simply accept without hardly thinking.
    But when Jesus told us to pray to God as Father, he did not [as we tend to assumme] say 'God is LIKE a father'. When you think of it, that is a rather disastrous thing to say. Because it immediately means that all those many people, whose experience of their father was a less than happy one are going to get quite the wrong idea of God. There are some to whom the whole idea that God is anything like their father would put them off religion for life. A consultant pschiatrist handed over Christine to me because - as he said - she  needed God more than him. She was a young married woman, a very talented artist  with a wonderfully kind and understanding husband; but she was compulsively anorexic, and in danger of ending up terminally ill. But her natural father and  her old-style Catholic parish priest Father X had left her without any real sense of self worth. For her, the title Father simply meant criticism, harsh discipline and fear. It took a long period of counselling and friendship to bring her back into the land of the living God. No: Jesus did not say 'God is like a Father' - he actually talked about YOUR HEAVENLY FATHER.
    It would seem that from childhood, Jesus had this deep sense that His Father,that is the one who was his constant point of reference, the One who was the authority to whom he always turned, was not Joseph who was like a father to him, but God himself.And not only Joseph - but Mary too. Once,when someone said to Jesus,'Your family are waiting outside to see you.'  Jesus replied," Who are my mother and my brothers and sisters ? " and answered himself with the words "Whoever does what my Heavenly Father wants them to do - they are my mother and my sisters and my brothers." Christ was calling men and women to a new life. It was to be a life in which HIS point of reference is to be OURs too. It was to be a life more demanding than a life lived according to normal human nature. When St Paul writes to us this morning about 'living according to the flesh', he meant rather more than following your bodily urges. It included that, but it embraced much more. "Flesh" in the sense he used it meant "ordinary human nature". This does not mean that ordinary human nature is rotten to the core - cry out to God "Daddy Daddy !", then you know that  the spirit of God is dwelling in you.'
    In other words you will turn to your Heavenly Father to seek the answers to the question,'How shall I live my life ?' We can see Jesus demonstrating this in practice. Not for him just to be a good son in the conventional idea of the word. Not for him following his earthly father's family business in the carpenter's shop.
    It can't have been easy for Joseph and Mary to watch their boy growing away from them, drawn to his Father's house and his Father's business. And later watching helplessly as this son became a revolutionary teacher, accumulating enemies on every side. But it is an experience which in some small way is recognised by any of us who have watched our children grow up.To be a Christian in some deep sense of the word, would seem to mean that you are someone who is no longer content just to do what comes naturally; but to live as someone who seeks constantly to know your Father's will for you, and then doing it to the best of your God-given ability.
    Perhaps some of you may have heard of that remarkable Dutch Christian lady, Corrie ten Boom.  During the last war,she and her family were responsible for rescuing and hiding many Jews who were trying to avoid being carted off to die in the infamous concentration camps. They themselves were caught by the Nazis and ended up at Ravensbruck Camp, where she had to watch her elderly father die, and then see her beloved sister, weakened by disease and beatings die also.
    After the war ended, she went to Germany to speak about Christian peace and reconciliation. As her audience dispersed; she noticed a man coming towards her. He was in fact there is a lot of good in it, and it is the bedrock from which we all start.
But ordinary human nature is something biological which  we have inherited from our parents and has been moulded by our upbringing. Can we escape out of the pattern we have been given ? In defiance of much worldly wisdom, the Christian faith holds out the promise of escape; it is one of the great themes of the Christmas message . There IS a way by which we can be lifted out of the inevitability  which traps  us  in our human nature. That way is to accept God's offer to us to live as HIS children. It is not enough to simply say that if God is our father then we are all his children.
That can be just a  glib theory; just a nice idea; or just a political statement. But it is surely much more real than that. Paul suggests to us that we know if we are the Children of God by our prayers.'If,' says St Paul,'you one of the more brutal of the prison guards she had known in Ravensbruck. She didn't want to meet him - she didn't know how she could speak to him - she suddenly realised that  all her fine words were going to be put to the test.
The man introduced himself, and went on to say that since the war ended he had been converted and become a Christian. Now, more than anything else, he said, I want to be forgiven for the past. And it needs someone like you who suffered under me to say " I forgive you." And he held out his hand for Corrie to take. Inside herself, all kinds of strong feeling welled up - how could she forgive this man who had been resposnsible for the death of her sister and so many other innocents and good people ?
    She wrestled with all the anger bitterness and hurt that she felt inside her while the man stood there holding out his hand. Then she remembered that forgiveness is not an emotion - it is an act of will. "Jesus help me" she prayed."I can at least lift my hand and take his. I can do that much. You must supply the feeling. " She lifted her hand to his and as she did so, a warmth spread through her so that she was able to say "I forgive you ,brother, with all my heart."
     Tom Lomax was one of those who survived the horrors of the Burmah railroad as a Japanese prisoner of war. He wrote a book called the Railway Man which got into the best sellers list a couple of years ago. In it he tells the story of how, many years later, he encountered by a strange co-incidence one of the hated Japanese officers. He goes on to tell how as a result of getting to know that man he was able to put his natural feelings behind him. "Somewhere, somehow, (he writes), the hating has to stop." Such examples give us some insight into what a revolutionary thing it is to live as a Child of God and not according to our human nature." Living a good, decent life is living according to your human nature. Living as followers of Christ involves a quite extra dimension to that. After all, Jesus did tell us that when we pray we should say
OUR Father in Heaven, Hallowed be YOUR name, YOUR kingdom come, YOUR will be done on earth as it is in heaven.For the kingdom and the power and the glory are YOURS
And like Jesus, you and I are this morning in our Father's house and we are about our Father's business.

INTERCESSIONS FOR CHRISTMAS EVE
LET US PRAY 
Almighty God you have promised to hear the prayers of those who call upon you in faith; on this cold winter's night, we are so glad to be in the company of those who find warmth and  welcome in the stable. Remember all those who will be cold in body, cold at heart or cold in spirit at this time. We pray for the world into which our Lord Jesus was born to save it from itself; and for the church which he came to found as his witness on earth and to Him we pray
Jesus born in a manger , (R) HEAR OUR PRAYER
We pray for all those who will be homeless on Christmas day. For those in every place where there is not enough food to live on or shelter to protect them . Bless those who are working to bring relief whether it be aid workers in the trouble spots of our world or in the Christmas refuges in our own land
Jesus born in a manger , (R) HEAR OUR PRAYER
Let us pray for the homeless people of our own cities ; and indeed for those in our own district who have nowhere to go tonight. Jesus born in a manger , (R) HEAR OUR PRAYER
We ask your blessing upon all those who work to bring relief and joy into the lives of those in danger of losing hope and faith.
Jesus born in a manger , (R) HEAR OUR PRAYER
We ask your blessing on all those who are working for peace and goodwill among men - we remember particularly  those who continue to promote and look for peace between Palestinians and Israelis; for the people of Iraq and those who are working to find a settlement in that unhappy country. We pray for those who act as negotiators between people who don't want to talk to one another; and for soldiers who enforce a peace where  there is no peace.
Jesus born in a manger , (R) HEAR OUR PRAYER
We pray for those who are hungry ill or frightened;
for those for whom Christmas will bring little cheer;
for children whose families are broken or divided; for families where there is violence and abuse in the midst of all the merriment
For servicemen who are far from their loved ones at this time - especially those living under danger in Iraq
for those watching by the sick bed of someone they love;
for those who are lonely because their partner is in prison;
for those who are sad because someone very dear to them has died this past year
Jesus born in a manger , (R) HEAR OUR PRAYER
We pray for all our family and friends - those who are with us this Christmas and those who are separated from us by distance of time or space.
Jesus born in a manger , (R) HEAR OUR PRAYER
We pray for all those who are celebrating the festival in other ways; for those spending this evening in pubs and clubs and parties; and  as our Lord Jesus was recognised as one who came eating and drinking, so may he make his presence known through human happiness andmerriment. And save us all from over indulgence at the feast.  
Jesus born in a manger , (R) HEAR OUR PRAYER
As we remember the ingenuity and hospitality of the inn keeper who found room where there was no room;; so we pray for all the inn-keepers of our parish and district as they preside over the merry making
Jesus born in a manger , (R) HEAR OUR PRAYER
We remember with gratitude, all who must work over Christmas to amuse us or to keep us safe. For the inn keepers of our parish  and those who are providing  food and good cheer in  pubs and restaurants.  All those who are manning the emergency services and hospital wards.those who work in radio and television.
Jesus born in a manger , (R) HEAR OUR PRAYER
Help each of us to celebrate the feast well. Fill our hearts this Christmas with the love that cares and understands and gives. Show us how best we can share your love with others.  May we know you more clearly, love you more dearly and follow you more nearly; and in the fellowship of the Blessed Virgin Mary, St Joseph, the shepherds and the wise men,  and all the saints; Merciful Father
ACCEPT THESE PRAYERS FOR THE SAKE OF YOUR SON OUR SAVIOUR JESUS CHRIST







  

                    FOURTH SUNDAY IN ADVENT
(preached at St Barnabas Dudley 2002 . This was a farewell address to a church which I had been "helping out" in the absence of a Vicar of their own.  It was one of thos heroic little churches in an unfashionable area of a run down industrial town.  Its lay minister was a Ward Sister at the local hospital.  Its Churchwardens [also ladies] kept everything up to the mark very efficiently; and they so wanted to be able to maintain their Anglo-Catholic eucharistic tradition .  It is a blow to such communities when they are told they do not rate a minister of their own.. But I would rather have ministered there than in many another church with greater resources)

First the Joke you have come to expect.
There was a meeting of Bishops and one of them made a long speech which went on and on to no great purpose. Over coffee another Bishop said to a friend.  What did you think of Algernon's speech. Oh said his friend it reminded me of the peace and the mercy of God - like Gods peace it passed understanding and like his mercy it  endured for ever.
    As you know, this looks like being the last time I shall be with you though I do hope it will NOT be the very last time. So it is an occasions for some farewell words - and this mornings readings are full of them. We are only a few days  from Christmas and this means that for most people we cannot see further than next weekend. What then may the Holy Spirit have to say to our hearts as they swing from eager anticipation to wondering how on earth we are going to fit every thing in and how we are going to cope. It is a terrible thing to read that more marriages break down during the Christmas holiday than any other time of the year - simply because of the stress of families being thrown together sometimes in times of awful weather and are unable to do anything except get on one another's nerves ! so let us  try to make something of the words we have heard this morning and that may get things into proportion.
        The Gospel is showing us that eager mood of anticipation with which the people of his time awaited the coming of the Jesus the Messiah, the liberator, the saviour.
We see his cousin John conducting his mission of preparation. His message is a fierce one, a tough one, not what we would call a very Christmassy one. But then we have romanticised Christmas. we have turned it into a sort of fairy tale in which so much of the typical nativity play conveys facts that are not to be found in the Bible ! John on the other hand is telling his audience that the turning point of history is about to break into their lives. So lets stop day dreaming and thinking that it's going to be all right because God is on our side. In our terms John is saying to the crowds, when the day comes it will be no use you saying that you were baptised when you were a baby, that you were confirmed at St Barnabas , that you went regularly to Sunday school and to church in the expectation that that alone will get you a good clap on the back from God ! No the  question will be are you in a fit state to be a citizen of God's new world. When John says that if you have two coats you must share with someone who has none, we are not just talking literally - we are hearing him ask those of us who have any more than we actually need how we are going to respond to the needs of the homeless and the hungry of this world today. In fact the three encounters which Luke tells us of are all concerned with the morality of money. Share your coat; be honest in your business dealings, and don't throw your weight about but be satisfied with what you have.
    In a word, as we come up to Christmas I suspect the Holy Spirit is reminding us forcibly that no amount of Christmas carolling is any substitute for practical Christian help for those whose Christmas may be very different from ours. The Good News that John preached was not a glossy message saying that everything is going to be all right - it is saying the Good News is that God is going to put right the world's injustices. An old lady once said to me "I am so looking forward to the Day of Judgement ; I'm sure there will be things I will have to pay for but won't it be grand to see so many wrongs put right." That is far nearer the good news of Christmas night than what most people think and we rejoice and are merry precisely because that IS  the good news.  So what are you going to do about Christmas apart from running your family party ?
    That's the tough side. But turn to St Paul's set of mottoes for his friends. These words have been traditional for centuries as part of the run up to Christmas.
Rejoice in the Lord always and again I say rejoice. [so we are picking up where we left of with St Luke and his good news]. The Lord is at hand. Christmas is at hand. Do not be put off, do not be apprehensive; do not be asking yourselves how on earth your are going to cope with that very long weekend. What we must NOT  be doing is to be worrying.  The old translation said "Be careful for nothing" .
So listen to the saint's advice. "In everything by prayer and supplications with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God"   In our simpler kind of language perhaps we would simply say "Put all your busy ness into the Lord's hand"  That is the secret that those who day in and day out spend some quiet time with Him.  We all suffer from panic stations from time to time - and there is a terrible temptation for Vicars to be rather like Corporal Jones and to go about in a very stressful way shouting  'DON'T PANIC ! DON'T PANIC!'
I always remember some forty five years back at a Mothers Union rally, Sally's mother - at that time a Diocesan President -  telling the tale of how once she was beginning to panic  about something and telling her husband "But Tommy I don't have the time !" and Sal's father said "Marjorie, God will give you all the time you need."
    So here is the promise - perhaps even better to say the assurance - that the Spirit delivers to us this morning. They are words which you hear each week of course - and you are so used to the words that you probably never realise that they are words from the Bible rather than some nice sentiments that somebody thought up with which to end our service.
"The peace of God which passes understanding shall guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus"  You cannot grab that peace of mind and heart which you long for; the more you try to capture it the more it will elude you.  But live with the promise in your heart and there will be a moment when its truth steals gently into your thoughts. Yes, the peace of God is keeping guard over my soul. Peace doesn't mean doing nothing. Though overworked housewives will often think sympathetically about the 19th century farmers wife who had on her tombstone "Don't grieve for me now, don't grieve for  me never;
 I'm going to do nothing for ever and ever."  
A priest friend of mine who was also an engineer used to say that the most peaceful thing he ever knew was a Rolls Royce are engine ticking over - all that power and yet seemingly so gentle and stress free. That is the peace that passes understanding. Not as the world gives, said Jesus about his peace. But it is always his gift and when we have received it it surpasses any other gift we may receive at this Christmas season.
So as I take my leave of you, dear Friends, perhaps you may remember something which I think I have been trying to say in all sorts of ways in my sermons here. That to be a Christian is to know two great things
One is that God's good news challenges us all radically to the very depths of our being
The other is opposite - that God's good news is exactly what each one of us really wants to hear deep down in our hearts - for in this overcrowded and stressful world of ours it truly is
"GLAD TIDINGS OF COMFORT AND JOY

    ADVENT 4 ALL SAINTS BROMSGROVE
Many of us here, including of course myself, know what it is like when your wife is nearing the date on which she is expecting her child to be born. You will have seen that BT commercial on Tele where a young husband urgently phones a taxi, gently helps his wife downstairs and puts her into the back seat of the cab; and then sends her on her way to the maternity ward while to her horror he goes back to watch the soccer match on the tele. That's quite a good parable of the way the nation observes Christmas. It spends endless time and fortunes getting ready for the festival; but on the day it ignores the birth and goes back to what it is comfortable with - Father Christmas Turkey and booze.
    But for you and me, it is not a tv commercial; we now face 36  hours of expectancy till we rejoice in the birth of Jesus our Saviour. Not any old saviour, not any old baby; my baby, your baby, your saviour and mine. So we wait. Our religion is very often a waiting religion. Advent is a waiting season. It reminds us of the very important factor that you cannot DO very much about your wife's giving birth unless you take Granny's advice and suggest a double gin and a ride on the big dipper.  You have to wait for things to happen. And usually they will if you are patient and the body's wonderful chemical reactions are working normally.  You have to wait and leave it to God. And Advent has been telling us that in the big sense we always have to wait and leave it to God. For in his good time he will speak to us; in his own good time he will judge us; in his own good time he will save us from destruction and the disintegration of our lives.
    So today is a quiet day, a sort of brooding and expectant day; because to us Advent Four is nowhere near important as Christmas Eve. But I always feel there is a certain magic about it - if only because the devoted core of our congregation are here. Hangers on don't come on Advent four!
    Our scriptures today are provided so that we can know what we should be looking forward to; so that we should know who it is whose birth we are about to celebrate .  The OT and Gospel you probably can relate to. I doubt if the epistle of Paul to the Romans is as familiar. So let us stop there for the moment. Paul is writing to a church community he has never met; but he expects to visit them so he writes this letter, the most closely argued and cogent of all his letters; a veritable theological tour de force. And here he begins to introduce himself to these Christians in the capital of the world empire. He is, he says, a servant of God, called to be a messenger of God's  good news about his Son. It is what he says about God's Son which is fascinating. Bear in mind that these words were written perhaps twenty years before the publication of St Luke's Gospel and perhaps Matthew's too.  He was, Paul tells us, as a human being descended from King  David.
If we  were listening carefully enough we would then immediately switch to the gospel reading where Matthew tells his version of the story of Jesus birth. St Luke tells us of angelic visions to Mary and the shepherds; Matthew tells us of dreams to Joseph. And how does God address Joseph in his dream. "Joseph you son of David, fear not to take unto you Mary your wife."  As you savour those words you might be led to take on board some remarkable things. For our Christmas Story, our Nativity plays have had all sorts of layers added to them.  There is a lot of spin in them. Nowhere are we told there were three kings, only an undisclosed number of astrologers and magicians. Nowhere are we told of a brusque unfriendly inn keeper and his kindly wife.  No harm in these spin-offs at all. but there are things which are hidden.  We romanticise the Bethlehem story. Countless authors, and carol writers have emphasised the deep poverty of the holy family, they tell us that Joseph and Mary were one with the poor and the dispossessed. But Joseph we are told was a member of the Jewish royal family - he was an aristocrat. Yes a carpenter in deed; but it was then as it is generally now the fact that all Jews had a trade to ply. It is one of the secrets of how the Jewish nation has survived down the centuries. They all had a skilled trade which they could take with them wherever they went. Typically the Jewish tailor needs no more equipment than his needles and thread and more reacently his hand sewing machine. Paul was a tent maker and earned his living as he travelled. Joseph was a carpenter. And if you think for a moment; in the old fashioned village community anywhere, the aristocrats of village society are the skilled tradesmen.Wheelwrights, carpenters;blacksmiths and the like. They need not be wealthy - but compared with the farm labourers working on a small days wage they are far more prosperous.  The same thing goes for the Galilean apostles. People who should know better talk about the ignorant rustic fishermen eking out an existence on this inland sea. The truth is that the family fishing firms had a prosperous international trade . Their salted dried fish was exported all over the Roman Empire and was considered a delicacy. Peter and James and John and the others were far more like your typical Round Table small business man than a primitive fisherman. And they would be educated - for all Jews were educated in their synagogue schools. Perhaps the roots of our Christian faith are more nearly middle class than we have been led to believe.
    That may be interesting - but even more important , do you see what we are finding out ? what St Paul is telling us ? After the flesh - by which he meant in human terms, as the world saw him, Jesus was regarded as the son of Joseph the descendent of Israel's hero king. Jesus was in other word seen as a sort of Crown Prince. Not just a fancy theological title; not just a character imagined by theological spin doctors; but in a real sense someone qualified to be the Christ, the Messiah who comes to liberate his people.  When Dorothy Sayers wrote her series of  broadcast plays fifty years ago about the life of Jesus, she gave them the title "The Man born to be King". And so he is. At the human level, at the historical level that was what Jesus was when he was born in Bethlehem the city of his ancestors. He was a candidate for kingship, he was a born leader  and he loved his people. But the real wonder is how Jesus was revealed to be so much more - so very much more. For the campaign which he led as Messiah was not what so many of his fellow Jews were looking for - that of a political revolutionary leader who would set them free from oppression of a foreign race and power. His resurrection from the dead after his execution was , Paul tells us, the way by which he was recognised as so much more than that. He was declared to be the son of God with power. His reign, his regime was not that of a political power, his kingdom he would say is not of this world. But he came to release humanity from the thrall of  human power and the disobedience which rejects love and the evil which betrays and infects even human motives at their best. For if the human race would not only listen, but endeavour to follow the Jesus way our world would be transformed. The kingdoms of our world, (thunders the last book of the bible), shall become the kingdom of our God and of his Christ and he shall reign for ever and ever. Jesus was a King among men. He really was.  They knew that at his birth. Shepherds and Magi knelt before the infant child and instinct told them this was what was right and proper.
    So now we have been informed about all that was significant about Jesus as a human being. But on Christmas Eve we shall remember that his early identity as a man Jew of royal stock is now irrelevant, For we shall be singing:-
God of God, Light of Light, Very God begotten not created. And that is the true mystery of Christmas  -  that the Christmas Child is the very embodiment of God. In Church we frequently use the word "Incarnation"  - but I think there are many times when it would be helpful to use the word "embodiment".  For in fact it very nearly means the same - only Incarnation is a Latin word and English speakers understand what "embodiment" means.
So now - 36 hours away from the deadline - all anyone could do - all we can do is to look forward in hope that we may share in the blessedness of this time; and that we may be able to rejoice with glad hearts because the baby once born in Bethlehem is born again in the depths of our hearts.
To wait for the birth of an eagerly expected child to be safely born is one of the deepest human experiences. Nor is there anything more divine.