In the sermon, Mr Green told a congregation on the small south-eastern island of Oland that homosexuals were “a deep cancer tumour on all of society” and that gays were more likely than other people to rape children and animals.
Pope May Suspend Limbo
Give Us This Day Our Daily Chicken
‘Archbishop, we will give you £100,000 to the Church if you change the Lord’s Prayer to say “Give us today our daily chicken.”‘
‘I’m sorry, I can’t do that,’ replied the ABC. ‘It would mean undoing hundred– thousands–of years of Christian tradition.’
The next week KFC phoned back again.
‘We will give you £500,000 to change the Lord’s prayer.’
‘I’m sorry, these are Christ’s own words–I cannot change them’
The next week KFC phoned again.
‘We will give you £10 million.’
‘I’m sorry, the words are in the Bible–I cannot change them.’
Finally, KFC phoned a last time.
‘We will give you £100 million to change the line.’
The ABC thought hard. The money could help a lot of people; it could make the gospel known to the whole country; it really could do a power of good. ‘All right’, he replied, ‘I will propose the change to the Archbishops’ Council and Synod.’
After much thought and prayer, despite the fact that the words were the Lord’s own, that it meant changing thousands of year of Christian tradition, that the words are in the Bible, the Council agreed to present the change to General Synod–after all, the money could do a lot of good.
So at the next Synod, the ABC stands up.
‘I’ve got some good news, and some bad news.
The good news is that we are being given £100 million.
The bad news–I think we’ve lost the Hovis account.’
Buy Nothing Day
Marriage
Advent Hope and Christmas Faith
I just wrote the following for my December/January church newsletter …
Its mid-November and Im writing something to cover all the way through January. Having just seen the end of Debbies miserable ear infection Im not quite thinking of Christmas yet.
But others are, and have been planning for months. The shops have been working out their campaigns, the record companies have been recording wretched Christmas singles, et cetera. And blow me down if Debbie hasnt announced that she has bought all her presents.
Me, well, Ive ordered Rebekahs main present and bought her a stocking-filler; Ive bought Marks main present and I have a couple of small things so far for my lovely wife. But the rest of it I havent a clue.
I know Im far from unique: Christmas shoppers seem to be divided between those who start buying in the January sales and those who rush around frantically on Christmas Eve.
Yet I believe that the Christmas faith is one that calls us to look forward in a far greater and deeper way. Christmas is not only a time to cast our minds back two thousand years to the miracle of God taking on human flesh in obscurity and poverty, revolutionary as that is.
Let me put it like this: I dont suppose for one moment that when Slade wrote Merry Christmas Everybody they had theology in mind, but the line, Look to the future now, its only just begun is exactly what the Christmas faith is all about. The coming of Christ has changed everything and the future has begun, the future which is Gods kingdom.
Thats why we begin Advent four Sundays before Christmas with the theme of the Advent Hope. We are not only looking back to the incarnation of Christ, we are looking forward to his coming to bring the fulness of Gods kingdom.
In the meantime we live in the tension between the now that is full of pain and sin and the future which has begun with Gods forgiveness, healing and justice. Our challenge is to live the Advent Hope, to live under the joyful reign of Gods Kingdom in the midst of the worst this world offers.
To do that is to live the Christmas faith.