A baby in a stable

Last Sunday Peter gave a talk based on John the Baptist's preaching in Matthew. He asked how we can preach the gospel, using an example of some 19th century ideas about hell and damnation - rescuing people who are "hanging over the edge of the pit". We were asked to think about whether or not that kind of language (or those kind of ideas) are right today - what would John the Baptist be saying now?

I've been thinking about this, and though I don't claim to have any well-worked out answers (and certainly not final or authoritative ones!) I can't help coming back to my previous thoughts about who church is for. Is it for people who don't necessarily feel they need to be there, but like the company or think they should show their face once in a while? Or is it for people who know they need something, but don't necessarily think that they'll find it in church? I know there are lots of other kinds of people between these two extremes, but my feeling is that the church in general has quite a lot of the former and not enough of the latter.

I'd really like to see the church being a first resort for anyone who is lonely, desperate, unhappy, friendless, addicted, ashamed or bewildered. But I don't believe that those people will seek out Jesus (especially not in the church) as long as they are lectured or talked down to by people inside the church. I don't think that they will come - even if they are invited - if the church is seen as a group of people who think they know best, telling the rest of the world just how wrong they are.

I think that the church has something of an image problem. Strangely, I believe that the wider culture is actually helping with this. Church is increasingly being seen as a refuge for the intellectually incompetent, the social misfits, the bizarre fringes of the human race. And that's a good thing. I think that we as a worshipping community should identify strongly with that. We are not the people who have got it all together. We are not the best of the best, or even the middle of the average. We are the people who are beginning to grasp just how massively we've messed up. But we come together on a Sunday morning (or a weekday evening) because we have found a hope, an answer, a love that will never give up on us - and we'd love everyone else to find it too.

Of course, as a church we don't have to do that. Nobody says we have to admit our failings in public. We can stand proud, knowing that not only are we children of God (true) but that he has revealed himself to us (also true). We can let everyone know that they need to be saved (this, I think, is referred to as "speaking the truth in love"), and then we can shut the doors of the church and sing our groovy up-to-date worship songs, with a request that the last member left will please turn out the lights. We can, in short, give the world the church it expects.

Should we? I can't say for sure, but in a couple of weeks time I'm going to be celebrating the birth of the Son of God, and he wasn't born anywhere that people expected. The King of Kings and Lord of Lords was born in a stable. We could do worse than think about what that means for us.

Consumerist Christmas

I went up to Tesco yesterday and in the reduced section there was a huge stack of cut-price mince pies. Now I know that mince pies (unlike hot cross buns) are a year-round food, but they are associated with Christmas, and indeed Mr Kipling, the manufacturer, has thoughtfully put a design on the box that features a gas lamp, snowy fir trees and a cottage with lighted windows. They've even adapted their trademark "exceedingly fine" phrase, and called them "exceedingly merry" mince pies. I don't think that it's unreasonable to infer that these are mince pies that are particularly designed to be bought for Christmas. "Just the thing," you may think as you buy your seasonal provisions, "some mince pies in an attractive Christmassy box." So why, in the name of heaven, do these mince pies have a best before date of 20th October? They're a food associated with Christmas in a Christmas-themed package and they are going to go off a whole one sixth of a year before Christmas even starts!

I know that retailers make a lot of money from Christmas (though I have my own opinions about that) and I understand that they want to start selling Christmas-themed goods as early as possible to maximise profits, but it just seems bizarre to sell things in Christmas packaging that won't even make it into November.

Twelfth Night

So it's Saturday morning, it's pouring with rain, I've taken Rachel to dancing and Daniel to Winchester and now I'm putting off taking down the Christmas decorations for another year. It doesn't matter that I know the point of a celebration is that it is a marker, a defined point in time to note transition or difference, or that the reason that we are very traditional and have don't decorate until Christmas Eve and then take them down for Twelfth Night is because we want to celebrate Christmas at Christmas, not celebrate during Advent and then give up and act as though it doesn't matter as soon as we go back to work or school; I still hate taking down the Christmas decorations and having the house looking suddenly bare and plain and... ordinary.

I guess that that's part of the meaning of Christmas for christians: it's really easy to get excited about the Incarnation, about the possibility of Christ being born into our lives, about the promise of new life in him, just as it's easy to get excited about the birth of any baby. And just as with any baby, for the first couple of weeks there's a sense of amazement, of wonder; but wonder wears off and life becomes sleepless nights and nappy changing and feeding, and we have to make a conscious effort to look at our children and think "You are an amazing thing: a completely separate life that somehow I helped to make".

So here's a Twelfth Night challenge: to take down the decorations, to end the celebration of birth, but to keep hold of the wonder, and daily to see Christ present in our sometimes bare and plain and ordinary lives.

Christmas pictures

A couple of quick pics:

The Lone Barn done out with thousands of tiny silver streamers

The Civic Centre in Southampton with the clock tower lit in red and green. And finally...

our house on Christmas Eve (the little socks are the gerbils' stockings).