Theology Everywhere

by Trevor Bates.

Given that the 17^th, 18^th and 19^th centuries saw the European ‘empire style’ outreach in trading patterns enabled the Christian Churches of European lands to establish themselves among people of different ethnic and cultural lifestyles in far-flung lands, some of whom responded to the Gospel of Christ:

And given that the 21^st century of economic globalisation and instability has brought about a movement of peoples to live in communities of diversity searching for safety and security, which are quite unique for Britain:

And given that people of different faiths and varying religious traditions are manifesting diverse patterns of human living – in terms of empathy, caring, endeavour, and celebration, in their new settings, sufficient to hint at an emerging cosmopolitan world:

What is God doing with us?

Where is Christ in the midst of this vortex of change?

What is the living God saying to us as Christians?

WHAT IS GOD DOING WITH US?

Wilfred Cantwell Smith argues that: ‘All human history is Heilsgeschichte (salvation history). Not Israel’s only, either the old or the new, but the history of every religious community. [And] This has always been true: although we are the first generation of Christians to see this seriously and corporately, and to be able to respond to the vision.’[i] This insight should give Christians renewed confidence to proclaim that history should be seen as ‘the arena of divine actions,’ and realise that the Christian communities in Britain and Europe are being prompted to respond in new ways to our present unique time.

In the overall scheme of things have we come to a ‘wind of change’ period in the history of humanity? As we search to blend together as an extended family of peoples, all the faith communities of our time are surely challenged to manifest their spiritual resources by nurturing the basic values and inner resources of resilience, strength and gratitude, and to spell out in everyday living God’s new purpose for our world. Indeed are not all people of faith being invited together to rejoice in God’s passionate and compassionate dynamic initiatives to fashion a new kind of cosmopolitan world?

WHERE IS CHRIST IN THIS VORTEX OF CHANGE?

If, as Clive Marsh suggests,[ii] the incarnate action of God is recognisable in the ‘Jesus patterns’ of compassionate human interaction, forgiveness, reconciliation and mutual respect as the Christian tradition proclaims, should we then be surprised to find these Christlike patterns in ‘communities of practice’ are being lived out elsewhere outside the paradigm of the Christian Church and community? Are they not to be discovered in the ‘everyday world’ and in the communities of other faiths, and therefore acknowledged and applauded as heraldic signs of the Spirit at work in our time?

WHAT IS GOD SAYING TO US AS CHRISTIANS?

However, as long as our diverse and cosmopolitan world cries out for God’s social justice to be given the highest of priorities to counter the evils of prejudice, suspicion, mistrust and greed then the Kingdom harmony of relationships will never be fully realised. Therefore, as family members of the community of Christ is God challenging us to make bold and adventurous moves to invite across the thresholds of our places of identity and belonging the people of other faiths, in gestures of hospitality and welcome? And in turn are we willing to cross their thresholds of belonging and identity, to ‘take off our shoes’ in humility and respect with gestures of namaste (meaning: ‘I bow to the God within you, and the Spirit within me salutes the Spirit in you’) in ventures of loving and lasting friendship?

Can Christians come alert to their contemporary commission from God? Is it possible for the dignity and spiritual worth of the human person to find centre stage both in the world of employment and in the spheres of local and world cosmopolitan community such as Christ longs for and as Jesus proclaimed in his own manifesto, that is Luke 4: 16-19?

[i] ‘Wilfred Cantwell Smith – A Reader – ed. by Kenneth Cracknell (2001), p.200

[ii] : Christ in Practice by Clive Marsh (2006), p22-23

by Andrew Roberts.

Christmas Eve seemed unusually busy last year. Being on a Sunday many Churches had a packed programme of services and community events. Our local Church was one of those making the most of the day. We had morning worship, an afternoon outdoor Carol event in the centre of the community and an evening Carol Service at the Church replete with refreshments beforehand. Then we had Midnight Communion.

Having had so many services that day and finding it harder with the passing of years to be bright and enthusiastic late at night I set off to lead the service fuelled by some strong coffee and a sense of duty. To paraphrase Mr Wesley I must admit to going rather unwillingly. A small number gathered, we began to journey through the liturgy together and a sense of the sacredness of the evening began to grow in the candle lit space.  Then part way through he service two ladies arrived. One had clearly being enjoying the evening already and warmed by an evening of festivities enthusiastically kissed friends and strangers alike during the sharing of the peace. Meanwhile the other lady, who had crept in, sat quietly, head bowed at the back.

When it came to the sharing of the bread and wine both ladies came to the rail. As the Steward offered the wine the quieter lady looked perturbed before Jane kindly put her at her ease by saying the wine was non-alcoholic. The lady received the proffered wine with gratitude and drank her cup slowly and tenderly. At the end of the service she returned to the rail and asked if she could light two candles explaining that she had come to Church that night because she wanted to make a new start. We shared conversation and prayer until it was time to go home.

As I drove home I continued to pray for the lady and reflect on how important simple acts of inclusion are. That evening we had used gluten free bread so that all could share of the one loaf. Someone very close to me has coeliac disease.  She has stoically gone without bread if only bread made with wheat was offered at Communion services or gratefully received the gluten free bread offered as an alternative on other occasions. At one Christian Festival she was moved to tears when gluten free bead was offered to all in the celebration of Holy Communion. The experience of being fully included was overwhelming and we long for the day when gluten free bread will be the norm on the Communion table. To not be so seems to make a nonsense of the liturgical pronouncement that we are all one because we share in the one loaf/bread.

Simple acts of inclusion can be so transformative, pastorally, missionally and evangelistically. In the famous encounter between Jesus and the plucky insightful woman at the well (John 4.4-42) a simple sharing of human need – the need for a drink of water – opened up conversation, revelation and resulted in someone, who in the culture of the time could so easily have been ostracised, being included and blessed. With her worth and dignity affirmed she returned home to be an exemplary evangelist (bearer of good news) to her own community.

Sharing non alcoholic wine, gluten free bread or a drink of water are simple acts of inclusion that make a world of difference. Being evangelistic doesn’t have to be difficult.

by James Dunn.

The beginning of the Christian year is always a bit confusing.   Straightforward is remembering the circumcision of Jesus, following naturally a week after the commemoration of his birth (January 1).   And Epiphany, the manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles as represented by the Magi (Matthew 2:1–12), comes naturally six days later.   But we also have to fit in the baptism of Jesus (January 7) and the conversion of Paul (January 25), which can make us feel the year is rushing ahead far too quickly – or at least, the religious commemorative year.

So it is good that we slow back down to celebrate Candlemas (February 2), the purification of Jesus’ mother Mary, but remembered by Christians more for the presentation of the infant Jesus in the Jerusalem temple (Luke 2:22-38).   Very moving are the encounters with the two elderly individuals, Simeon and Anna.   Anna speaks encouraging words about the child ‘to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem’ (2:38), tapping into the political as well as the religious longings of many.   And Simeon gives the first utterance of what became known as the Nunc Dimittis (2:29-32), anticipating Luke’s own concern to narrate how the ‘light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel’ steadily spread.

But the concluding words of Simeon to Mary should not be passed over lightly.   ‘This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed – and a sword will pierce your own soul too’ (2:34-35).   In the midst of the celebrating and rejoicing comes the sobering reminder of what the readers of Luke’s Gospel would already know was a much richer and more austere story.

Which should further remind us of a commemoration which is also part of the season of Christmas celebration, but all too often overlooked – the massacre of the (holy) innocents (Matthew 2:16-18) – as Matthew tells it, king Herod’s attempt to eliminate any possible threat to his reign by slaughtering all infants in and around Bethlehem.   And now, a further doleful memory, we also have the commemoration of Holocaust Memorial Day, just passed (January 27) – so much like the massacre of the innocents, but so much more horrific.

It is good and right that we remember all these together.   For at Epiphany and Candlemas we celebrate not just the dedication of the child Jesus by his mother Mary, and the early recognition that God would do something wonderful through this child.   But we also remember how the story unfolds and how it climaxes – in the betrayal, suffering and death of Jesus.   We remember how resurrection and new life is not achieved except through suffering – the suffering which says No to self and expresses readiness even for death in dedication to a higher goal.

How can we celebrate Epiphany and Candlemas without remembering too what we call so lightly ‘man’s inhumanity to man’?   We don’t celebrate Jesus’ resurrection without remembering his intense suffering and crucifixion.   So, can we celebrate the presentation of Jesus in the temple without recalling also the massacres of the Holocaust?    And not just the Holocaust of the 1940s, but the Pol Pot massacres in Cambodia in the 1970s, the massacres of mainly Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994, the murders of Bosnian men and boys from the town of Srebrenica in 1995, the Darfur genocide which began in 2003, and the Rohingya refugee crisis of recent days.

The intervention of Simeon and Anna is a stark reminder that the good news of Jesus includes uncomfortable self-revelation, not to mention the prospect of suffering and death.   A stark reminder that the good news of the gospel is not really good news if it does not include the recognition of how to deal with the bad news.   The gospel gives much cause for hope and rejoicing, but it does not promise freedom from anguish and pain.   The individual suffering and loss may at times be unbearable.   The shock of hearing about the persecution and massacres of whole peoples and villages cannot be softened by easy words.   But the good news is that the sword piercing the soul is by no means the whole story, and is not the end of the story.   The suffering and death of Jesus by itself would be an unspeakable tragedy, not unlike the many tragedies, individual and corporate, which have besmirched human history.   But the gospel absorbs the tragedy and turns it into good news.

by Gill Newton.

“I willingly offer all I have and am to serve you, as and where you choose.” 

Covenant Prayer, Methodist Worship Book

Although some Methodist congregations celebrate their Covenant service at the beginning of the Connexional year in September, for many, this month of January, provides the opportunity for a renewal of our commitment.  Having served in churches where both options have been explored, it has always struck me that, whilst any opportunity to renew our commitment is wonderful, there is something timely about holding this service at the beginning of the calendar year.

The commercial Christmas season with all its glitzy advertisements and tempting offers encourages us to focus on what we want and to spend more than we have in order to obtain it.  So, it’s perhaps no bad thing, early in the New Year to have this opportunity to place things back in perspective and for us to be reminded of the sacrificial nature of our commitment as followers of Jesus.  After all, it is the time of resolutions, so here’s the chance to include some spiritual resolution at the beginning of the New Year.

This Covenant Service is treasured and valued by many Methodists, coveted by many of our ecumenical colleagues.  However, like me, you may have observed that many seem to consciously avoid this annual opportunity to renew commitment.  Why?  And what does this say to us about the nature, language, context and value of this service each year?

It was back in 1755 that John Wesley originally created a service which has evolved into the Covenant Service as we know it today.  He based the words of the Covenant prayer, which is at the heart of the service, on words from the Puritan tradition which had been so important in the lives of his parents Samuel and Susanna.  He included in his original covenant prayer phrases that we would recognise from our marriage service, “for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, for all times and conditions ….” suggesting that Wesley saw this covenant relationship between God and his people as being like a marriage, an image reflected in Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. (1)

Wesley seems to be suggesting that through this covenant relationship, we are, both individually and corporately, partners together with God in his mission in the world.  The words of this prayer, in both its traditional and modern forms, offer us a clear description of what it might really mean for us to be disciples of Jesus.  We could suggest that it offers a practical description of what Jesus was suggesting when he said, ““Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.” (2)  So, sharing in this prayer helps us to remember what living as Jesus calls us to live really looks like!

There is no doubt that this is demanding stuff, so perhaps people avoid the Covenant service for fear of failure?  However, as I reflect upon the words of the covenant prayer in preparation for a Covenant service that I will lead this week I am reminded of the context in which Wesley developed this service.  When he and the other early Methodists prayed this prayer, there would have been an expectation that they were all part of a class meeting or band.  In that way they were supporting one another and holding one another to account for this challenging way of living and loving – a way of life that is surely only possible in a community where you know you are loved, supported and being upheld in prayer.

Research also suggests that the Covenant service was not some stand-alone event that came around once a year.  A whole series of gatherings were held in the run up to the Covenant service so that through study, prayer and sermons, everyone could understand more fully what the Covenant was all about.  Then after a day of prayer and fasting, those who chose to, would participate in the Covenant Service, but that certainly wasn’t the end of the matter for another year!  From then on, everyone was encouraged to think about what the implications of having prayed that prayer might be in their own situation, and through their class meetings were given all the help and encouragement that they needed to sustain this way of life.

How much of that kind of nurture and support is really being offered in our churches today I wonder?  Is the lack of gathering together regularly for support and accountability one of the reasons why so many people find this prayer so difficult to say?  What difference might it make to our individual and corporate sense of identity and vocation if we really helped each other to live out this prayer?

The Covenant prayer is an extremely important part of our Methodist tradition.  It helps us to know who we are and to whom we belong.  It reminds us that being a Christian is a way of life which demands much of us, but only in response to the self-giving love of God in Christ.  As we share in this prayer again this year, perhaps we could reflect not only on what living out the prayer might demand of us individually, but what it might demand of us as a church, if we are to really help one another to truly share in this covenant.

1. Ephesians 5 v 21-33
2. Luke 9 v 23

by Andrew Lunn.

There is an etymological link between ‘hospitality’ and ‘hostility’, linking back to common roots in a variety of Indo-European languages.[1]  Jacques Derrida reflects philosophically on a contradiction he identifies embedded in the idea of hospitality in his lecture titled Hostipitality.[2]

That contradiction, he says, is faced in every situation of hospitality.  It takes shape practically in a conditionality in all hospitality which lies in the host’s power–in the unspoken rules of the household—but also in the guest’s or stranger’s unknown difference—the unexpected values or ways of behaving which they bring with them.  We never know what we are going to get when we invite someone in, or when we turn up as a guest at someone’s door.  The guest, or the host, may be generous and open; but there is always the potential for something other, which could lead to hostility.

Derrida is not arguing against the practice of hospitality.  He sees it as a significant human practice, but one in which we always confront the possibility of its opposite which can paralyse us.[3]  So there is always a need for a ‘going beyond’.  ‘We cannot know’ he says ‘what hospitality is.’ (6)  ‘Hospitality … gives itself to thought beyond knowledge.’ (8) It ‘holds itself out to its chance beyond what it is.’ (14)

That contradiction, or we might say ambivalence, which we face when we consider the possibility of hospitality, requires a leap of faith—a readiness to make ourselves vulnerable, whether as host or as guest.  Often we might find a cheap hospitality, when we limit it to close friends and to those who are like us; in such circumstances we do not allow ourselves to become aware of the ambivalence.  Costly hospitality is different, because it involves that going ‘beyond’ what it is.  (Is there something eschatological about it?)

God-in-Christ’s presence as both host and guest[4] reflects that ‘going beyond’ inherent in hospitality.  As host Christ teaches of God’s banquet.  We are guests in God’s created world, vulnerable before the One we fear, subject to God’s grace, even while we celebrate God’s inclusion of us—and of many who are not like us.

Yet also Christ comes through incarnation to take the role of guest, becoming vulnerable to those who ‘did not accept him’ (John 1:11), even to the point of the hostility of the cross.  His practice was to repeatedly take the role of guest, with Matthew, Simon the Pharisee, Martha and Mary.  Openness to hospitality here becomes a trope through which we can understand the self-giving of Christ.  In this divine interchange[5] God allows hospitality to ‘go beyond what it is’.

This should help us to consider the way we should relate to hospitality as a missiological church.  This understanding of hospitality as costly, and always involving vulnerability—hospitality which ‘goes beyond what it is’—always risks hostility.  It requires of the church two things:

First, a truly radical hospitality, which doesn’t invite people into church just to accept our rules and to become what we are.  The guest to whom we are open in a costly way will change us, and change our practices.  Hospitality of this kind involves inviting people to come, but at the same time this must not be a hospitality ‘paralysed on the threshold’ (as Derrida puts it) which delimits and restricts what the guest can be and bring to us.

Second, that missional reversal in which the church itself comes to be guest.  Emulating Christ in this way means we should recognise that the most potent possibilities for mission lie where we are able to step into the spaces which others own and define.

Both of these take courage, and the second perhaps more than the first.  Would it be true to say that the contemporary church will only grow, spiritually and numerically, when it is able to accept the costliness of hospitality as a nexus of costly grace?

[1] If you’re interested in the etymology there’s a good OUP article by Anatoly Liberman here: https://blog.oup.com/2013/02/guest-host-word-origin-etymology/

[2] Jacques Derrida (2000) ‘Hostipitality’, Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities, vol. 5, no. 3, 3-18 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09697250020034706.

[3] Derrida’s hostipitality neologism has been picked up by a number of people writing about Britain’s asylum and immigration practice.

[4] Luke Bretherton has set out the way in which the roles of ‘host’ and ‘guest’ are simultaneously part of Christ’s presence to the world.  Luke Bretherton, Hospitality as Holiness, (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010), 135.

[5] ‘Christ is identified with the human condition in order that we might be identified with his.’ Morna Hooker, From Adam to Christ: Essays on Paul, (Cambridge: CUP, 1990), 26.

by Ian Howarth.

This Christmas we made the usual adjustments to our lifestyle to welcome Mark, our barely verbal adult autistic son to stay with us over the Christmas period. We have to have a clear, written timetable that accounts for every hour of every day to reduce his anxiety, and a written order of service that he can see the day before means that he just about copes with worship on Christmas Day. Predictability, doing things the same every time, no surprises, are all essential to his wellbeing.

Given what I know about Mark’s pathological resistance to change, and the growing realization that autistic traits exist in a greater proportion of the population at large than used to be thought, I wonder if I need to temper my frustration at the unwillingness of so many churches to embrace change.

At a deeper level, we have had to confront the question of what personal responsibility a person like Mark has for their challenging behavior, and to what extent it is the ‘fault’ of his condition.

When he was younger and we took him to the shops, he would frequently lie on the floor screaming when things were not going his own way, and people would look at us, and occasionally call us to task for having such a naughty child, to which our response was: ‘He’s not naughty, he’s autistic.’ [1]

On bad days, even as an adult, the challenging behaviour can return, when expectations are not met, and we recognise again that this is behaviour to be managed and understood, and Mark is not to blame for it.

While the issues are clear for us in regard to our son, they lead to interesting questions about where personal responsibility begins and ends. To what extent is Mark personally responsible for his behaviour, leads to the question, to what extent is anyone personally responsible for their behaviour?

Current thinking on autism is that it is a ‘spectrum condition’, and that people exist on that spectrum from those like Mark, who are non, or barely verbal, with learning difficulties, to people who can be highly-intelligent, very verbal individuals, who display their autism through social awkwardness, but still with the same need for order and pattern in their lives. Some autistic people develop the self-awareness to manage their condition, but others, even some highly able ones, really struggle. Writers who are themselves autistic, talk of the need for the community at large to adapt to those who have autism, not the other way around, and it is important that we hear that, although it is not without its challenges, and the question of personal responsibility for one’s behaviour is never far away.

And where is God in this? In our Protestant/Wesleyan tradition we have emphasised personal responsibility before God, making the personal choice of a commitment to Christ. This month many of us will be remaking that commitment in our Covenant services. ‘I am no longer my own but yours,’ we say, and that personal promise of commitment remains immensely important in my own Christian journey.

But such a commitment would be meaningless to Mark and people like him. I know that the God I try to commit to, the God revealed in Jesus, is also committed to Mark. Any understanding of salvation being conditional on a personal relationship with Jesus as defined by a usual understanding of relationship would exclude Mark, and so is inadequate.

There are no easy answers here. I would like to be able say that it is in and through an accepting, inclusive community that we find a way forward, and I think that is an important starting point. However, many of those with autism struggle with community. In Mark’s supported living six individuals live individual lives, hardly relating to each other, except through their wonderful carers.

However, the questions raised by autism that relate to personality, personal responsibility and relationships can be seen as a gift to challenge us to reflect more widely and deeply on what it truly means to understand and express God’s all-embracing love.

[1] I know that in some circles, it is frowned on to say someone is autistic, and felt better to say that they have autism, or an autistic spectrum condition. However, the fact that Mark’s autism so defines who he is, and is not something he has in addition to his personality, and that those who are verbal are happy to describe themselves as autistic, means that I feel it appropriate to say, he is autistic. The phrase: ‘I’m not naughty, I’m autistic,’ comes from a badge issued by the National Autistic Society.

by Roger Walton.

‘Go always, not only to those that want you, but to those that want you most.’

I laboured for several years under the belief that John Wesley’s 12 Rules for a Helper contained the words ‘Go always, not only to those that need you, but to those that need you most’. [1] I don’t know who first quoted this in my hearing but the word ‘need’ was definitely there and it stuck.  It was a bit of surprise, to discover that the word Wesley used is ‘want’ rather than ‘need’. I had always interpreted the instruction to be about attending to the most extreme needs first, where the needy might mean the disadvantaged, the marginalised, the voiceless, the dying.  In the light of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, it also carried the idea that one attends to the most basic needs first – food, shelter, warmth, safety and only later to the ‘higher order’ needs such as meaning and ethical living.

The word ‘want’ gives it a different feel.  Rather than a way of prioritising competing needs, is it really about discerning where the desire for help is most ardent, most open, most eager?

On the surface ‘need’ is a more acceptable word.  If we attend to what people want, are we not just pandering to human whims and desires, which in our consumerist society are relentlessly tickled and stimulated by slick advertising and draw on our base desires to own things, to keep up with Joneses and to be better than others?  What human beings want and what they need, we regularly tell ourselves, are very different things.

On the other hand, deciding what others need and how to help them is a very tricky business, as the history of the poor laws and other ways people have tried to help those ‘in need’ demonstrate.  Well-intentioned interventions have often exacerbated rather than eased conditions.  The mantra that Rachel Lampard drew to our attention last year, ‘nothing about us, without us, is for us’ should, she suggested, guide our approach.  People in need are not objects or problems to be solved but subjects, people made in the image of God, to be respected and able to contribute to finding solutions.   That is why the work of Poverty Truth Commissions always includes the voices of those in need, so that their wants as well as their needs become part of the conversation.  This has been a significant dynamic in the aftermath of the Grenfell Tower fire.  Those most affected (most in need) want certain things to be addressed and rightly campaign for their desires.

Wants and needs may not be as easy to separate in human experience as we imagine.  That does not mean that every want must be met, nor every attempt to discern need abandoned but the way forward is surely through dialogue, engagement and genuine encounter.   Rather than a technique for ministerial efficiency, Rule 11 may be an invitation to deeper human relationships.

But there is something more to be said.  The purpose of the 12 Rules is to give instruction to the growing number of itinerants, helping Mr Wesley to spread the good news and to order the societies for the disciplined pursuit of holiness.  The Rules are concerned with character, conduct and responsibility, so that the helpers may be both effective in their work and carry something of the message in their personality. The full text of Rule 11 is somewhat longer. The words above are prefaced with this solemn reminder: ‘You have nothing to do but to save souls. Therefore spend and be spent in this work.’ They are followed by the reminder that it is not about how many sermons you preach or about the number of societies you take care of but rather about calling people to repentance and holiness of life.  In this context, the meaning of those in want (or need) is squarely in the arena of evangelism and discipleship.  Preachers are urged to awaken desire for, and work with those who seek the life of faith.  Within an Arminian framework for evangelism, the instruction ‘to go to those who want you most’ may well mean going to where there are signs of openness and deep yearning for spiritual life. This is a timely word for us as we prioritise evangelism in our Connexion. But Wesley’s instruction also reminds us that we are to form relationships with those to whom we go and discover together with them God’s amazing salvation.

[1] This rule was not in the original 1744 version but was added at 1745 Conference and appears as Rule 11 in 1753 version.

by George Bailey.

Christmas Day is a Monday – will we be thinking about theology everywhere? One would hope so… whether or not by reading this blog post. I have been thinking about this for the last few weeks, and finished the final draft on Christmas Eve – but by the time it is posted at 08.30 on Christmas Day, I will be having festive breakfast ahead of the rush to get off to a celebration service.

What are we doing with all this celebrating of Christmas? Why are we generating (manufacturing?) a festival? There’s no scriptural root for Christmas, and it’s not really Jesus’ birthday, but a day to suit the needs of a distant time when Christian relations to the Pagan calendar were of vital importance – and, of course, the incarnation which the Church proclaims at Christmas is the bedrock of our grasp of reality every day, not just on 25^th December. I think that what we are about though is proclaiming this good news in a focused way, allowing ourselves to hear it afresh each year, and so, we pray, every day of the coming year, and most of all seeking ways to share it. This is the point of our carol services, midnight communions, nativity plays, dinners, cards, presents, tinsel… and so on. However, the way we use and re-use these means of proclamation which have been handed on to us gives them more than just a utilitarian function – they themselves also become part of the truth and reality they point to.

There is something here akin to the relationship between the language of poetry and the reality it describes.

I have been using the book, Haphazard by Starlight by Janet Morley[1] which gives a poem a day during advent; these poems, and others, have featured large in my Christmas. Why is poetry so special? There has been a welcome recovery of poetry in Christian theology as a way of understanding the revelation of truth. It uses language to full effect not only to point to reality, but also itself to become new meanings and depths in our experience. Poetic language delights in multiple meanings and interpretations, ambiguities and paradoxes – these become not a hindrance but the means by which a depth of truth is encountered in poetry that is closed off to attempts at objectivity, precision and unequivocal statements of truth. Bernadette Waterman Ward, writing about Hans Urs von Balthasar’s appreciation of Gerard Manley Hopkin’s poetry (both Catholic champions of poetic theology) writes, “Like every other reality, a poem is unified, but multitudinous. The joy of it is in the artistry – that it has been deliberately arranged by a human being to proclaim its own richness, which the poet recognizes.”[2] Poetry is both made by humans and a site of divine revelation; a poem can be particular to the writer, and differently particular to each reader. The poet and theologian, Malcolm Guite, points out: “Poetry may be especially fitted as a medium for helping us apprehend something of the mystery embodied in that phrase ‘the Word made flesh’.”[3]

Enough of my attempt to explain it, which without using poetry is set to fail anyway – this Christmas time, why not seek Christ in one of these:

BC:AD by U.A. Fanthorpe

At the Winter Solstice by Jane Kenyon

Many poems by Gerard Manley Hopkins and R. S. Thomas!

or for a contemporary performance poem – The Christmas C(h)ord by Dai Woolridge

These, and others, have led me to think that our celebration of Christmas is somehow like writing a poem – we have a language to work with in the words and practices of the tradition, and we form it into our own poem, which by the work of the Spirit intersects with the experience of Christ in the world, for ourselves and the people around us.

Last week, gathered by the doorway of a supermarket, as we sang,

“Yet, with the woes of sin and strife, the world has suffered long,”

…we watched a teenage girl being apprehended by security guards. As they led her by the arm back into the store, she looked anxious and defeated. Later, as we sang,

“Joy to the world, the Saviour reigns; Let us our songs employ;”

…we watched two police officers stride in from the car park on their way to arrest the girl. In what way was the Saviour reigning? How could we employ our songs to address the power of this consumer society that drives the need to possess more, beyond our means, yet also places production, distribution and profit in the hands of a few wealthy companies? At Christmas we want to help those in need; and do we also need to help those weighed down with wants? Our Christmas poem opened new depths of questioning and prayer.

Last Thursday in the nursing home, a woman, for whom conversation is made difficult by memory loss and confusion, listened to Luke 2:1-7, then was handed a small wood carving of the baby in the manger. She turned it over in her hands, her eyes lit up, and she began the story of how, aged 14, she first responded to Jesus at an evangelistic tent meeting. Our Christmas poem opened new depths of Christian experience and discipleship.

What poem have you been living this Christmas? How has it been heard and experienced by you and by others? How has the Spirit revealed Christ in the rhythms and rhymes of the festival?

[1] Janet Morley, Haphazard by Starlight: A poem a day from Advent to Epiphany, London: SPCK, 2013.

[2] Bernadette Ward, “Hopkins, Scotus and von Balthasar: Philosophical Theology in Poetry,” in James Fodor (ed.), Theological Aesthetics After Von Balthasar, London: Routledge, 2016, p.74.

[3] Malcom Guite, Faith, Hope and Poetry, London: Routledge, 2016 (first published 2008), p2.

by Jill Baker.

In Luke 1 (v 17), the elderly priest, Zechariah, is told by an angel that he is to become a father and that his son, John the Baptist, will ‘make ready a people prepared for the Lord’. With just one week to go before Christmas Day, I wonder what that phrase might mean to us today? The fact that you are finding time to read this may mean that you are indeed ‘prepared’ for Christmas – or it may mean you have given up!

The season of Advent – only 22 days this year as Christmas Day falls on a Monday – is a season of penitence and preparation in the church year. To many this can feel as though we are out of sync with the world around us; far from a season of fasting, Christmas parties are held throughout Advent then, just as the legitimate feasting season of the Twelve Days of Christmas is getting into its stride we hit 1^st January, New Year Resolutions kick in and people commit to a “dry January”!  Does it matter?  The liturgical calendar is not something for which I would go to the stake, but the rhythm of feasting and fasting, preparation and celebration, penitence and jubilation is, to me, a helpful and life-giving rhythm.

Nonetheless, despite our best intentions, for many of us Advent preparations may become largely practical preparations; making a cake, buying gifts and cards, decorating the house, stocking up on food and drink.  It is strangely ironic that a consumerist world which has lost sight of the origins of Christmas can become a harsh taskmaster at this time of year, adding more and more requirements to what is deemed essential for a perfect Christmas.

We may be aided in our struggle to ‘Keep Christ in Christmas’ by the plethora of Advent resources now available.  The first book of Advent readings I came across, back in 1983, was Delia Smith’s ‘A Feast for Advent’.  In the introduction she raises precisely this dilemma, comparing our situation to Exodus 5 where, as Moses requests leave for the people to go into the wilderness and ‘celebrate a festival’ (v1), Pharaoh’s response is to force the slaves to collect their own straw for brick-making, to make their burdens heavier so they will forget about God; ‘How significant it is that at Christmas we find ourselves so easily caught up in twice our normal workload, so that we too have no time to listen to the message of freedom.’¹

In a similar vein, Walter Brueggemann in ‘Sabbath as Resistance’ talks about the ‘contemporary context of the rat race of anxiety’² – in which our observance of Sabbath (or we might say, Advent) is an important counter cultural stand.  There is a real danger that even when we do deliberately opt out of ‘being productive’ for a time, we remain almost overwhelmed by the anxiety of the ‘to do’ list.

All this is very far from the experience of the key players in the drama of Incarnation.  Elizabeth and Zechariah would not have Christmas cards, cakes or crackers in mind as they pondered what the angel might mean by ‘A people prepared for the Lord’.   The earlier verses of the chapter give us some pointers; almost the first fact we learn about John the Baptist is that he must drink no wine or strong drink. That might prove rather a surprise to Cosmopolitan magazine whose December editorial begins with the words, ‘As the year reaches its alcohol-saturated finale…’.

Instead John will be ‘filled with the Holy Spirit’ and in this power, will have three key tasks, all concerned with turning hearts and minds. He will ‘turn many people… to the Lord their God’, he will ‘turn the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous’ and he will ‘turn the hearts of parents to their children’. In this, perhaps, Luke’s record comes closer to the hopes of Cosmopolitan, whose editor continues; ‘…our thoughts turn to loved ones, lack of sleep and things we really want to find at the end  of our beds come 25^th December’. Even in the sophisticated world of glossy magazines, it is something of a relief to see that human relationship comes first.   For John the Baptist too, ‘a people prepared’ is about our human relationships above all.

Looking again at the story around which all our preparations (or lack of them) are centred at this time of year, I am heartened to see wide diversity. The magi have been preparing for years, observing celestial movements and patterns on a huge map of time and space and selecting symbolic gifts of great value to take to the Christ Child.  For the shepherds, however, it is definitely a ‘come as you are’ party – an ordinary night becomes extraordinary and they rush into Bethlehem  – maybe snatching up a lamb to keep it safe and then offering it to the Holy Family… but maybe not!

Whether we feel ‘prepared’ or not this year we will be welcome at the manger next Monday. Perhaps too, like John, we are called to be heart-turners in these final days of Advent.

¹ Delia Smith, A Feast for Advent (1985, Bible Reading Fellowship)

² Walter Brueggemann, Sabbath as Resistance (2014, Westminster John Knox Press)

by David Clough.

If you go to church in Advent, you hear lots of Bible passages from the prophets who look forward to a time when the Messiah will come. For Isaiah, the first sign of the new reign of the Messiah is peace. Perhaps that’s not a surprise to you. But had you realized that the first kind of peace he describes is between humans and animals? Isaiah 11 tells us that ‘a shoot will come out from the stump of Jesse’, that the ‘spirit of the lord shall rest upon him’, and that he will just the poor and meek with righteousness (vv. 1–5). And then what?

The wolf shall live with the lamb,

the leopard shall lie down with the kid,

the calf and the lion and the fatling together,

and a little child shall lead them.

The cow and the bear shall graze,

their young shall lie down together;

and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.

The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp,

and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den.

They will not hurt or destroy

on all my holy mountain;

for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD

as the waters cover the sea. (Is. 11.6–9)

This beautiful prophecy suggests that the first sign of the in-breaking reign of God will be peace between humans and other animals, and an end to hurt and destruction of life. For centuries, Christians have been inspired by this vision. Christmas nativity scenes portray the birth of Jesus as bringing this peace, represented in the animals around the manger.

These theological visions of how things will be when God reigns aren’t just about the future. Jesus told his disciples that the kingdom of God had come near, and that they needed to respond to it in the way they lived. One way of understanding Christian discipleship is as a witness to what life in this kingdom looks like.

So how could we witness to the peace that the Messiah brings between humans and animals? It’s not complicated. We could choose to eat foods that mean fewer of them need to suffer and be killed for our sake. We could eat more peaceably, as a practical daily act connected to our Christian beliefs about God’s care for all creatures, and the peace that the reign of God will bring for them and us. It’s striking that this small act of witness is also good for global human food and water security, good for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, good for reducing cruelty towards animals, and good for reducing a range of human disease risks. Methodists have particular reasons for recognizing the link between their faith and animals.

Many Christians I talk to warm to this idea that their faith could make a difference for what they eat, but get stuck in imagining how they could make a change. One good way is to do it together. Why not make a New Year’s resolution to run the CreatureKind course as a Lent group at your church next year? If you can’t wait that long, think about some first steps, such as substituting soy or almond milk for breakfast (there are now lots of choices in the supermarket), choosing plant-based options for lunch, or having one plant-based dinner each week. If you decide that you’d like to explore ways of eating that don’t depend on killing animals at all, there’s lots of advice around.

Most Christians have lost touch with traditions of eating that reminded us that what we eat connects us to a wider world. Paying attention to the links between what’s on our plate with the world of God’s creatures around us is not just an ethical practice, it’s a spiritual practice, too.