The Off Switch

A comedian of my youth once quipped, “Radio [he probably said ‘the wireless’] is a wonderful thing – by turning a single knob you can have complete silence!”  The point of his joke was, of course, the fact that, even after the initial surge of enthusiasm for broadcasting had subsided, the wireless was still very popular: everyone stopped their conversation when it was turned on, in order to listen to the programme.

However, the opposite view of this old saw also holds a somewhat obvious truth.  In other words, silence can be obtained by switching the radio (or other music/noise machine) OFF.  Wherever we go nowadays, it seems, we are bombarded by sound.  Background music is found in many workplaces, shops, motorway service stations and so on.  It seems we can only be really quiet in the depth of the countryside – and that is becoming more and more scarce!

Quite apart from the potential for damage to our ears, constant sound around us has the further property of exclusion – it cuts us off from the distraction of our surroundings.  Students today find this useful when revising.  By the same token, unending music can mask important things, too.  We can the more easily shut out unwelcome thoughts, challenges we aren’t yet ready to face, and so on.  And it can separate us from God.

How often, I wonder, does the pressure of what St Paul describes as ‘worldly things’ deter us from seeking time with God?  We’re only just out of the Christmas season; I have found it useful in recent years to think of all the glitz and razzamatazz that goes on in the shops – and now, of course, on line as well – as ‘Xmas’, leaving the word ‘Christmas’ for the real thing, the celebration of God coming to earth in the form of a tiny and vulnerable baby and living the life of a human being.  Somehow, this helps to counteract the potential for the frills, however sacred the origins of some of them, to shut out the real message.

In our quest for silence are we simply yearning for the impossible, trying to turn back the clock to a past age?  I think not.  Only if we overcome all the distractions can we hear again in our hearts the message the angels sang over those hillsides long ago: “good news … of great joy … for all people”  It was true at Christmas and it’s true every day of the year. 

Remember the off switch: use it at least once every day, and allow God to enrich your life.

Holidays

Our vicar is enjoying a three-month sabbatical, and has just returned from a most rewarding pilgrimage to the Holy Land.  This fact, coupled with the time of year, has sent my mind off in the direction of holidays.

Many years ago, I worked for a Christian who had been invited by a friend to take over his holiday business.  The financial arrangements behind this were way above my head, but I took great interest in accepting the challenge to look after the general running of the firm.  It had two distinct activities: one was the publication and distribution of a holiday accommodation guide, where Christian individuals and organisations could advertise their facilities; the other was to arrange flights much in the manner of any high street travel agent.  To these, we tried to add a third operation, the planning of retreats and holidays with a distinctive Christian heritage theme (although, sadly, this met with virtually no success at all).

In its advertising, we found, this firm had been using what it claimed was ‘the Bible’s only reference to holidays’: “Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest” (Mark 6:31).  I’m not sure how justified is any link between that verse and holidays, nor whether the scriptures offer any better alternatives, but there are certainly many Biblical themes that echo holiday scenarios.

Take the Exodus, for a start.  How would you like an extended trek around the Sinai desert, with the personal services of a pillar of cloud as a guide during the day or of a pillar of fire at night?

Maybe you prefer the seaside, or at least the water’s edge.  A number of Jesus’ miracles took place by Galilee, beginning with the healing of Peter’s mother-in-law in the seaside town of Capernaum (Mark 1:29-31).  Jesus was with His disciples on the lake when he calmed a storm (Luke 8:22-25) and no sooner had they put ashore than He healed a man who was possessed by demons and lived among the tombs (which had a disastrous outcome for some pigs!) (Luke8:26-39).  On another occasion, He walked across the surface of the lake to the disciples (Mark 6:45-52).  And, of course, Jesus’ whole ministry was heralded by the baptism of John by the River Jordan (John 1:19-42).

Perhaps your ideal holiday is sightseeing, finding those elusive places of antiquity.  One of the oldest has to be the oaks of Mamre.  They are constantly referred to in Genesis, as the place where Abraham built an altar (13:18), and nearby is the cave of Machpelah, which he bought as a burial place for his wife Sarah (23:17-19).  Jacob’s sons brought his body back and buried him there too (50:13).

If you want to visit friends or family, there is the precedent of Mary’s visit to Elizabeth (Luke 1:39:56).  Whatever you choose, it’s important to travel with a sense of purpose, maybe like Joseph and his family (Luke 2:21:24,41:52) or Hannah (I Samuel 1:1-20).  And don’t forget to make all the necessary preparations and take any gifts that might be appropriate, like those wise men from the east (Matt. 2:1-12).

Of course, in our own day, it’s important – whether as a book or as an app on your phone or tablet – to take the Bible with you.   Remember, God doesn’t take a break from His love for us, so we ought not to take a break in our daily prayers and devotions.

Happy holidays!

Humbug! ... ?

Just when you thought trimmings, tinsel and turkey had gone away for another year, this piece drags out that Dickens classic, A Christmas Carol.  Often at Christmas time I look again at this book, reflecting like Scrooge on my own past Christmases.   It’s also time – as I touched on in my last post here - to peruse some notes I’d collected a few years ago on the original significance of some of our seasonal traditions. 

It’s a chance to consider what Christmas is and what it is not; and also – least we cast out baby with bathwater – what it “isn’t not”.  In pre-Christian times most cultures had a mid-winter festival, to brighten up the darkest season of the year and to look forward to the return of light, warmth and growth.  Some of the familiar trappings of Christmas are rooted in these festivals.  We might prefer to cast aside these superstitions as examples of what the Advent collect calls the ‘works of darkness’, but we can’t deny the truth of God’s love for us from one year to the next, from time immemorial.  Whether we continue to grow food for ourselves in gardens or allotments, or rely on commerce and the supermarket shelves, it’s important to remember that provision for our practical needs is just as much part of God’s love for us as His provision for our redemption from the effects of sin through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

My original outline for this article included an allusion to the Roman god Janus, after whom January is named; he had two faces, one to look forward and one to look back.  Then I heard a talk in which came the idea of seeing the past as a foundation for the future.  So now I feel doubly justified in summarising all this reflection of things historical with a forward-looking exhortation.

Lent will all too soon be upon us; it’s the Church’s second – and most prominent – penitential season.  If you can bear it, I suggest that, before Lent begins, we consider one little detail of A Christmas Carol.  Before he met any of the ghosts, Scrooge was approached by a gentleman raising money ‘to make some slight provision for the poor and destitute’.  Scrooge’s response was to argue for the work of prisons, workhouses and the treadmill.  He was confronted by the challenge that many would rather die than go there.  In response he suggested, ‘then they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.’  It was a tidy and most practical response, but totally uncompassionate, which was the very point of Dickens’ story.

Before too much of our new year has elapsed, let’s consider whether any of Scrooge’s blatantly outrageous philosophies may still be lurking below the surface of our own consciences.  If we examine what we are now in the light of what we recall from our past lives of God’s practical provision for our needs, we might find a new focus that enables us to see whether there is some way in the future that we can respond to His love by caring for others.

I’m reminded of some words from the service of Holy Communion in the Book of Common Prayer.  When I first heard them, I thought them just another prayer; only later did I come to recognise them as straight from the Bible:  “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.” (Matt. 5:16 - KJV).  If you haven’t made one already, they make an excellent New Year’s Resolution.

Aftermath

With the festive celebrations over, it’s time to clear Christmas away and look ahead to 2017.  One of the decisions to make as you do so is what to do with all those cards.  Not that many years ago, I used to analyse mine, sorting them into three piles.

In the first section were the ‘true’ Christmas cards, with picture of angels, babe-in-the-manger, shepherds and wise men, however characterised and simplified.  Next were those with traditional, mostly Dickensian, themes: the carriage and horses, candles, Christmas trees and bells, people in top hats and crinolines going to the church across the snow ... you know the sort.  Last of all were the ‘nothing to do with it’ cards, bearing robins, children dancing, cartoon figures carrying parcels, partridges in pear trees, etc.

In those days, I would mark down those so-called ‘Christian’ friends who had sent anything but ‘true’ cards.  But was I right to do so?

Many of the symbols in the ‘nothing to do with it’ pile, the holly and ivy, the mistletoe and the burning Yule log and the rest, - yes even Father Christmas - have been part of 'Christmas' since before Christmas began.  For millennia, there has been a celebration in the middle of winter for many reasons that have been recorded and explored in far worthier places than this blog. 

It is widely accepted that early Christians in Rome adopted December 25 as Christmas only to supersede a pagan Roman festival, Saturnalia, scheduled at that time.  One commentary suggests that those shepherds to whom the angels told this wonderful news (Luke 2:8-20) wouldn’t have been on the hillside with their sheep in the middle of winter.  In winter, sheep would graze more in the daytime than during the cold middle eastern nights.  Pasturing of flocks at night indicates that this was a warmer season so it’s quite likely that Jesus was actually born at another time of year, making the whole concept of snow and winter as the background to the story completely false.

And is it right to condemn the Victorian theme?  We shouldn’t forget that Victoria's own parents were German; her mother, like Albert’s parents, was from Saxe Coburg and her father only the third generation of the Hanoverians to be born in England.  Much for which her consort Prince Albert is generally blamed was no more than their looking back to how their family had celebrated in the past.  We do the same when we take up our rose-tinted glasses and reminisce about the Christmases of our own childhood.

In my last blog, I mentioned Peter’s visit to Cornelius.  Just before he was taken to him, Peter had received a vision from God in which he was offered many things to eat that were considered ‘unclean’.  A voice told him, “Don’t call anything impure that God has made clean.” (Acts 10:9-16).  The same concept applies here, whether we are considering the robins and holly or the fir trees and Father Christmas.  God made them all – perfectly – and, whether they represent Christmas or not, we are not to condemn them.

But if we strip all these familiar trappings away from what we understand as Christmas, what are we left with?  Many years ago, I discovered words that I think sum it up beautifully:

“And is it true ...

A baby in an ox’s stall?

The maker of the stars and sea

Become a child on earth for me? ...

No love that in a family dwells,

No carolling in frosty air,

Nor all the steeple-shaking bells

Can with this single Truth compare

That God was Man in Palestine

And lives today in Bread and Wine.”

from “Christmas” by John Betjeman (published in 1954)

When you clear away your Christmas cards this year, look once more at those illustrations, and the variety of their presentation and content and remember that all these things were made by God for us to enjoy.  Think fondly of the thoughts expressed by the senders of them ... and then recycle them gladly. 

Don't Knock It!

The fact that you’re reading this blog almost guarantees that you will use other social media, too.  It has become almost universal in recent years.  I expect many of you will also know of, if not be familiar with, ‘text-speak’.  Articulate texters, for example, use strange words where a single character replaces a whole syllable.  This tends to appeal to the younger generation – perhaps in this context that's the under-fifties – to some of whom this language has become almost ‘2nd n8r.’

E-mails have also brought with them another, and more gentle, linguistic phenomenon.  This is a whole new generation of acronyms.  I occasionally see SKS, in an appeal for favours from ‘some kind soul’, and an amusing comment may be terminated by LOL.  This could mean either ‘lots of laughter’, ‘laughs out loud’ or - as in an embarrassing political context not long ago - ‘lots of love’!  Someone who is uncertain of his authority, but wishes to join in an exchange of views, might add to his offering FWIW (for what it’s worth); a bolder participant might begin IMHO (in my humble opinion).

As usual, there are two sides to the debate about these, and many critics say they are contrived, a mere novelty, and degrade the rich heritage that is the English language.  Before you condemn them, though, I want to suggest that even these can direct our minds to God.  Let’s focus our Christmas thoughts on those last two items.

‘For what it’s worth’ – Jesus taught that we are of high value to God.  In Matt. 10:29-31 He tells us that we are worth more than many sparrows, each of which is individually precious.  Later in his Gospel, Matthew gives an account of separating ‘sheep’ from ‘goats’.  This decision will be based on the way people have treated each other, particularly those of  a lower level of society, the needy, the sick or those in prison.  Jesus says that the treatment offered or not offered to them is done ‘to Him’ (Matt. 25:32,40,45.)  We should be in no doubt of the worthiness to God of people who, to many, are the dregs of society.  Peter underlined this universality of God in his talk with the centurion Cornelius: ‘... God does not show favouritism but accepts from every nation the one who fears him and does what is right.’ (Acts 10:34-35).

‘In my humble opinion’ is just an embellished form of the more familiar term ‘with respect.’  My dictionary tells me that humble is ‘having or showing a low estimate of one’s own importance’, and respect is ‘deferential esteem felt or shown towards a person or quality’.  In other words both terms imply placing a lower value on oneself than on the other party.

These phrases are rarely used with genuine feeling these days, however.  Often they are no more than a formula, an attempt to excuse an outrageous statement; and the expanded ‘with all due respect’ may well indicate that the speaker has no respect at all for his protagonist, and is by no means humble himself.

So, where do we look for real humility?  It ought to be found in someone whose high rank is in no doubt, but who doesn’t stand on his own importance, rather seeking out the lower echelons of society to join them instead (Phil. 2:6-8.)

Our Lord came to earth, not in a palace fit for a King, but to join common folk, people of equal worth to the king, in the person of the illegitimate child of a carpenter’s fiancée.  He was born in squalor and laid in a manger because there wasn’t a place in the inn for ‘people like them.’  We shouldn't really be surprised that true humility was found in an animals' feeding trough ... and soon was to live the life of a refugee!

Falling Leaves

Last weekend, we had a leaf-clearing morning at my church.  Tools were brought and shared, paths were swept and the grass was relieved of a generous covering of leaves and twigs.  Bags were filled and taken for disposal and donuts and coffee were enjoyed.  Aching backs were soothed later in the weekend.

Now that the leaves are all down from the trees, passing motorists get a far better view of the mock-gothic of the church building, and all around can see the trees in a new, naked splendour with the branches twisting and almost dancing around each other as they reach up to the autumn sunlight.  We can see the underlying structure that forms the basis for the familiar green shapes that will once more greet us next spring.

This weekend has seen the start of a new church year, a year that traditionally begins with the first Sunday in Advent.  Advent means 'coming', and that's a good way to start the year: reminding us what belonging to a church and being a follower of Jesus really means.  When Jesus left this earth at the end of His ministry here, his disciples were gazing after him; suddenly, two men in white - angels - were beside them and told them, "This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way ..." (Acts 1:11).

From that moment until now, and beyond, history carries us with it towards this specific point, the return of Jesus in glory, to judge and rule over the earth.  We don't know - any more than did those early believers to whom Paul wrote in Greece - when He will come.  However, we do know that it will be sudden (I Thess. 5:2) and we're told to be ready for his return, working to share His gospel so that others, too, can share in the blessings to come.  That's what the church is all about.

Like Lent, Advent is known as a 'solemn season', a time when we pay special attention to looking at ourselves, reviewing how we spend our lives, and trying to move closer to God's ideal, the way He wants us to live.  Just as we can see and measure the structure of the trees, now they haven't any leaves, so we can measure ourselves in this period of thoughtfulness.  We can examine the structure of our lives and see how they fit into that eternal structure, the blueprint for which we were created.

The verses in Paul's letter that follow the one I've quoted above  - indeed the whole of that first letter to the Thessalonians - are a good guide to living the Christian life.  Thessalonica was the chief city of Macedonia.  It lay on the Egnatian Way, the principal highway of its day, stretching from Rome to the Orient.  As such, it was very much the centre of an international, cosmopolitan culture, and thus presented the infant church with a whole range of glamorous worldly temptations.  Paul was well aware of this, and sought to encourage the members of that infant church as each tried to deal with all these threats to a new life as a believer in Jesus Christ.

As the preparations for Christmas dominate your life in these coming weeks, you may be looking for a 'breathing space', some relief from all the commercial pressures.  I invite you to read this letter - it will only take half an hour or so - and ask yourself whether your life reflects what you say you believe ... or not.  Paul, and his friends Silas and Timothy, had a great influence on the Thessalonians because they not only talked the talk ... they walked the walk.

Does your life do the same ... or is just masking the view, like the leaves on the trees?

Coming

Regular readers will know that, in the years since his death some thirty years ago, I have gained an increasing respect for my father.  As I look back, it seems there were often disagreements – even arguments – between us but, as I get older and learn more about people in general, and the age through which he lived, I have come to realise (in modern terms) ‘where he was coming from’.  Although he paid no regard to formal religion, and went to church only for weddings and funerals, he left me a worthy example of right living, and a number of wise sayings.  There were many occasions, for example, when I chose to ignore his instructions or advice; sometimes he would say, with an air of irate finality coupled with desperate resignation, “There’ll come a time, my boy, ...”, and the sentence would remain unfinished, for me to add whatever fate my imagination might provide.

I was reminded of these words recently when I read from Peter’s second letter, “The day of the Lord will come like a thief” (2 Peter 3:10).  Peter had just issued a warning about ‘scoffers’: people who alleged, in effect, that religion is rubbish, that Jesus would never come back.  They claimed that life would go on unchanged as it had since the creation, conveniently ignoring the matter of the flood, when God destroyed all but a handful of his creation because of the evil that it had embraced (verses 3-6).  

In just the same way, Peter wrote, the new generation would also be destroyed on the day of Judgement.  But when will that be?  We don’t know.  What we do know is that it will be when we least expect it (Matt. 24:36-41). 

Peter was writing to a generation for whom Jesus’ life on earth was recent history.  His words are just as applicable in the twenty-first century.  Today, as then, we are tempted to listen to the ‘worldly wise’: people who tell us that, in this post-modern age, we’re wasting our time being ‘good’.  According to them, any chance of a Second Coming has elapsed: after all, it hasn’t happened in 2,000 years – it just won’t happen now.

However, God doesn’t work to our timescale (see Psalm 90:3-6); we shouldn’t confuse what we construe as His bad timekeeping with His patience. He wants every last one of us to come to Him in repentance (v.9).  Peter teaches that God’s patience leads to our salvation (v.15).  It is vital that we are always on our guard against temptation, as Peter says in his letter (v.17), but it’s not a matter for undue apprehension.  I invite you to use a prayer that, many years ago, I used to hear every week as I attended Mass with my young family.  Somehow it seems particularly appropriate for the season of Advent, which begins in a couple of weeks.

“Deliver us, Lord, 

from every evil, 

and grant us peace in our day. 

In Your mercy 

keep us free from sin 

and protect us from all anxiety 

as we wait in joyful hope 

for the coming of our Saviour 

Jesus Christ.”

I wish you a worry-free Christmas when it comes!