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Advent Calendar

This is really quite good and posting this instead of chocolate teapots in time for tomorrow.

Chocolate Teapots tomorrow - promise.

Thanks Leonard

This contemporary reflection on Isaiah 7 based on The Faith from Leonard Cohen's album Dear Heather. Have it playing in the background while you read this. The song itself is based on a Quebec folk song.

The gathering of darkness,
and the will to fight,
the pain born in conflict,
and the story of loss and fear:
these are the ways we live together.
O Love, aren’t you tired yet?

The turning from light,
and the work of injustice disguised as right,
the journeys we make that lengthen the distance between us.
O love, aren’t you tired yet?

The call unheard,
the silent questions we leave unlived,
and a graveyard of truth
left uncared for,
the bowing of the earth to extravagance,
and the weeping of the rivers.
O love, aren’t you tired yet?

The sun,
the land,
the sea,
limited in what they can give,
for they have given too much already;
the soil,
the faith,
still your holy turf,
but un-renewed by a future un-owned.
O love, aren’t you tired yet?

When the world leaves scattered,
holy words that seem like hope,
torn out from every page,
and past generations’ lessons
are thrown crumpled in a forgotten alley
darkened by the shadow cast from a new world empire,
O love, aren’t you tired yet?

But the seed of a promise
uncrumples,
in a name spoken in passion,
that holds out the future
as the past unwinds,
a love that will never let go,
called emmanuel.
O love, aren’t you tired yet?

May we...

From the liturgy for this Sunday

As the lights begins to shift
and a crack appears in heaven
As stars slide across the darkness
and angels clear their throats
As an unborn agitates
with the labouring of love

may we…

As incarnation moves from promise
into skin
As words of prophecy
spill into every empty silence
As you, O love, shift restlessly
and begin to let go

may we…

As the world turns
and the rumour goes unnoticed
As grandiose words are spoken
yet never contain the word
As the longing and waiting and calling
are missed

may we…

may we shift restlessly along with heaven
at the breath-taking vulnerability of hope
speak justice into the silence of injustice
move towards those others move away from
may we forgive in order to bring new life to the world
prepare to change as all of heaven changes now
live towards what is right and away from what is wrong

may we pull on the hope of advent
live on the cusp of incarnation
and proclaim with our lives
the Good News
of promise
of holy flesh in a messy world
of emmanuel

may we…
may you
make way
for birth
So be it

Leonard Cohen

There's an interesting article in Third Way Magazine about Leonard Cohen. I'm quite jealous of him because he has among the most fabulous lyric writers I know. Easily up there with... with... with... well actually, there's no one else up there.

I've just gone back to Ten Best Tunes which is just brilliant and you could write the whole Christmas Story with them.

In streams of light I clearly saw
The dust you seldom see,
Out of which the Nameless makes
A Name for one like me.

(Love Itself)

For the millions in the prison,
That wealth has set apart-
For the Christ who has not risen,
From the caverns of the heart.

(The Land of Plenty)

A sip of wine, a cigarette,
and then it's time to go
I tidied up the kitchenette;
I tuned the old banjo.
I'm wanted at the traffic jam.
They're saving me a seat.
I'm what I am, and what I am,
Is back on Boogie Street.

(Boogie Street)

There you go, Christmas in about three verses.

I hate to ask this, but what other contemporary songs would you use to tell the story of Incarnation? We could put together a whole alternative Christmas compilation album. If tehre are enough, we might just be able to do that...

Chocolate Teapots (November 29th 2009)

Isaiah 7:10-16

We're  mucking around with the lectionary again. Personally, two weeks of John the Baptist back-to -ack doesn't help with the depth or breadth of Advent in my opinion. Nothing wrong with the guy himself: the faith needs folk who eat locusts and honey, throw water around and decry the present establishment. It's the stuff of prophecy earthed in the real world and eccentric enough to be noticed but it's a very short season and lots to reflect on so we're going to go along with the suggestions from Ralph Milton from Rumors (Wood Lake Books) and we dive in with virgin births and Emmanuel. So, an easy start to the season.

Of course this isn't about virgin births really. It's about signs. It's the sign itself that is important and not how it came to be. Somehow we've moved ourselves into the awkward space of limiting God to doing things in a 'godlike' way needing immaculate conceptions and stuff as if God can't do births and things the same way every other living creature on planet earth can do it. It's the sign that's important.

'That woman over there, pregnant (or soon will be), by the time she gives birth, the king troubling you to the north will be gone and it will all be over,' says Isaiah to King Ahaz pointing towards one of the handmaids. This is about confidence that God is present when you can't recognise it. It is also about defiance, because Ahaz doesn't want to ask for a sign, but God is going to give him one anyway. 'Even if you don't want the responsibility,' says God, 'you're going to get it. This is not your shindig, but mine. Defy the odds, stand up man, I am with you.'

Defiance. Incarnation defies the mood of the times. Justice defies the global markets. The integrity of creation defies Copenhagan. Good News defies the move to turn the season into a 'Happy Holiday'. Go and give birth! Give birth to hope, to change, to a new thing, to freedom, to light, to truth, to a sustainable lifestyle, to eco-justice, go be a contemporary John the Baptist even. I don't care, just go and defy the mood of apathy: give brith to something. It's the sign of someone doing something about anything that is the important thing.

O, by the way: symbols? songs? words? catch phrases? that may help shape and stir the worship for Sunday...?

Endings and new beginnings

Our contemporary reading for Sunday based on Alpha and Omega (The Revelation passage) reflecting on endings and beginnings.

Voice 1	Often when you finish one thing,
Voice 2	You find it is the start of something else.
Voice 1	There were two fishermen mending nets. The night had closed, and they were mending the tears: the last thing to do after on night’s work, and before the next night’s fishing, fishing, fishing…
Voice 2	…fishing, fishing, fishing was just that start of it, for no longer were creatures of the sea needed. It was a whole new life, a whole new catch, where men and women were being caught, caught, caught…
Voice 1	…caught, caught, caught, up in the stories Jesus told: of Samaritans and seeds, of lost sons and vineyards, great stories that had you holding on to every word, and just when you thought the story had concluded, concluded, concluded…
Voice 2	…concluded, concluded, concluded that having heard the story, there was no ending, but a call to live out the story in life, a new way of living in right relationships with each other: in justice and grace, with friend and enemy, enemy, enemy…
Voice 1	…enemy, enemy, enemies of Jesus heard what he was saying. Here was another upstart, trying to incite and riot and destroying centuries of carefully worked out doctrine and law. So when one night Judas decided to betray him, the authorities thought Jesus’ life was at the end, at the end, at the end…
Voice 2	…at the end, at the end, at the end of the night love was just beginning her work. The final push to redeem the world, to bring it through the hate. The man of light was facing the final assault of God, and hatred’s fulfilment, fulfilment, fulfilment…
Voice 1	…fulfilment, fulfilment, fulfilment of the charge against Jesus was crucifixion. This was the finale, this was where Jesus would be stopped: by the torture and the abuse, the suffering and the pain. All was coming to a conclusion. The cross was ready, and as the cock crowed, and night ended so should have everything else, everything else, everything else…
Voice 2	…everything else, everything else, everything else, just stood waiting. Sunrise is silent. The day was beginning, the light was new, the time newborn. This was the start of the kingdom day, and as everything else ended, heaven began, and Jesus was found in the garden, waiting, new life, newly reborn. You see often when you finish one thing,
Voice 1	You find it is the start of something else.

Reign

Here's a wee symbolic action we'll do at the beginning of the service on Sunday as we mark Reign of Christ Sunday.

Four people behind communion table, each in turn leading one of these actions:

Rip a purple sheet and lay on communion table
Lift a crown of thorns and lay on table
Break crusty bread so there are lots of crumbs and lay on table
Place a cross on the table

These are the symbols of our king
Jesus Christ
rich in the life he gave for others
rich in the grace he offers all
These are the symbols of our king Jesus

Let us worship

Think Tank

We met again tonight. Jesus. It's a bit topic but we jumped in. If you go to the Think Tank blog then you'll find out what we all talked about. Still looking for a better way to process this but working on it.

We had a look at some images of Jesus. I can't post them here for copyright stuff but just put images of Jesus into google image search and you'll get quite a few. What's the most loathesome? Why? Whose shoes need you stand in to find out who the image speaks to?

Interetsing. Feel free to blog about it here.

Looking for Christmas

Each year we tend to have a phrase or theme that travels with us through Advent which appears each week. Last year was 'The breaking in of the light'. Others have been about shoes, stars, also 'when, how, where, why...'

It's a bit early I suppose, but Advent begins a week on Sunday and I haven't a thought about a theme or a phrase or a word that we could hang everything on. So, obviously I turn to all the imaginative and creative people out there to suggest a phrase or image or line from a poem or song that might be interesting to play with. The more ambigious or poetic or questioning it is, the better like 'the snarl of light' rather than 'visitors to the stable'.

A free mince pie to the person who suggests the phrase that is selected. Now I know you won't be able to sleep at night thinking something up or going through all your old The Byrds and Leonard Cohen albums...

Chocolate Teapots (November 22nd 2009)

Revelation 1:4-8

When you talk of beginnings and endings you're really talking about eternity. Humans have this linear approach to things. What if it was entierly diffeent in reality. BBC Horizon programme (brilliant) was doing Black Holes a week or so ago. They are so dense they kind of make a big dent on the surface of space and everything falls into them. Imagine a marble rolling round on the surface, and it comes to this dent, then it will roll round into it. And that includes light and time too. It goes round in circles. there is no beginning and no ending as such. I think, but no one yet understand it.

Okay, so John, who wrote Revelation, hadn't a scooby doo about the mechanics of Black Holes. No one yet born does. Then if you talk about Jesus being the beginning and the end, then you're really talking about trust and faith rather than fact. It's not a political or scientific statement. It is simply a vision of eternity. A statement of what you believe about the construction of the universe.

I don't understand it one bit. The same way I don't quite undertand what I've just written there! It's just the way it is. It's how you see things: through the eyes of eternity, though the process of on-going-ness, of potential and possibility. Alpha and Omega: not letters in an alphabet but a way of saying all things are possible.

Does that make sense? Hope not. Black holes and quantum mechanics don't make sense. They are possible despite their impossibility.