Okay God, it was glorious on Sunday: Reign of Christ and all the rest of it. But suddenly you've gone. This Sunday is the case of the disappearing God. There used to be a God here, we've got all the traditions and doctrine, we got all the history and the words of scripture to prove it. It's just we can't find God at the moment. Have we misplaced the divine behind an ornamental window or a pew cloth?
The Psalmist and the people of the community are seeking for God everywhere. "Look God, you used to be here. You've been good to us in the past? Where are you now, vine tender, Israel's shepherd, God of the angel armies?"
And after all the confidence of last Sunday (though that's not how we played it was it? We found Christ instead in the food queues, bedsides of the sick, behind bars with the imprisoned), God's gone and done a bunk. The people are out searching, that's if they can be bothered (maybe they aren't bothered) having discovered Jesus likes sitting with the lonely on wet pavements rather pews with communion cloths. So where are you big white beareded one? Not a bad question at the start of the year.
What a fabulous opportuity to step into the year free of all the baggage and be given the chance to start with a blank sheet and work to recreate our understanding of God from the experiences of God we have over the next few weeks of Advent. Here we could reshape God, not in our own image any longer, but in the image of God incarnate. That would be novel. And a blessing. To prepare for God in the flesh, maybe we ought to look for God as if for the first time.
What would you like to do to let that happen?
What word ought we use and what hymns ought we sing that enables that?
What space would you like to shape for incarnation that suggest the blank sheet?
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