Advent Hope and Christmas Faith

I just wrote the following for my December/January church newsletter …

 

It’s mid-November and I’m writing something to cover all the way through January. Having just seen the end of Debbie’s miserable ear infection I’m 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 hasn’t announced that she has bought all her presents.

 

Me, well, I’ve ordered Rebekah’s main present and bought her a stocking-filler; I’ve bought Mark’s main present and I have a couple of small things so far for my lovely wife. But the rest of it – I haven’t a clue.

 

I know I’m 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 don’t suppose for one moment that when Slade wrote ‘Merry Christmas Everybody’ they had theology in mind, but the line, ‘Look to the future now, it’s 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 God’s kingdom.

 

That’s 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 God’s 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 God’s forgiveness, healing and justice. Our challenge is to live the Advent Hope, to live under the joyful reign of God’s Kingdom in the midst of the worst this world offers.

 

To do that is to live the Christmas faith.

 
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Suing God

The quote below is from a Times Online article (registration required). Thanks to Richard Hall for the link.
 
Is this the Gospel? Reminds me of the old story about a little girl who asks her mother, “Mummy, do all fairy stories end with ‘And they all lived happily ever after’?”.
 
“No,” says Mum, “some end with, ‘When I became a Christian all my problems disappeared’.”
 

Pavel M., the Romanian prisoner suing God, founds his claim in contract. He argues that his baptism was an agreement between him and God under which, in exchange for value such as prayer, God would keep him out of trouble. Lawyers for the prisoner, who is serving 20 years for murder, have reported that they would be unable to subpoena God to appear in the case.

 

 
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The Oldest Church In The World

Plenty on the blogs this week about the discovery of possibly the oldest church building in the world. I like the report on Novum Testamentum about the mosaic inscription that has caused so much discussion. The translation here shows at least two important things for me:
 
1. If we’re dealing with a mid-second century date, then regardless of anything else (such as clear New Testament teaching, say) here is clear evidence that early Christians acknowledged the divinity of Jesus Christ. So Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code assertion that Constantine imposed the doctrine of Christ’s divinity is once again shown to be so much hogwash. Yet a conspiracy-fixated culture chooses to dote on Brown. Madness.
 
2. Something that has attracted less attention on the blogs I’ve read (maybe it’s mentioned elsewhere) is the argument in the Novum Testamentum article that the Akeptus (or Acceptus) who is quoted in the inscription as having ‘dedicated the table to God, Jesus Christ, as a memorial’ is almost certainly female. Is this another possible sign of female leadership in the early centuries of the church? At the very least Akeptus has to be a prominent member of the congregation.
 
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Derek Webb lyrics

Sacred Journey reports some startling lyrics on the forthcoming Derek Webb CD Mockingbird. Blow the sanitised CCM gush of the recent years where Christian music has been emasculated from radical revolution to conservative business, these sound more like the incendiary stuff Larry Norman was turning out in the early Seventies:

“there are two great lies that I’ve heard:
‘the day you eat of the fruit of that tree, you will not surely die’
and that Jesus Christ was a white, middle-class republican
and if you wanna be saved you have to learn to be like Him”
-from “A King & A Kingdom”
+ + +

“peace by way of war is like purity by way of fornication
it’s like telling someone murder is wrong and then showing them by way of execution”
-from “My Enemies Are Men Like Me”
+ + +

“are we defending life when we just pick and choose
lives acceptable to lose and which ones to defend”
-from “Love Is Not Against The Law”
+ + +

“don’t teach me about moderation and liberty, i prefer a shot of grape juice”
-from “A New Law”
+ + +

“my first allegiance is not to a flag, a country, or a man,
my first allegiance is not to democracy or blood
it’s to a king & a kingdom”
-from “A King & A Kingdom”
+ + +

“come on and follow Me, but sell your house, sell your SUV,
sell your stocks, sell your security
and give it to the poor”
-From “Rich Young Ruler”

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Derek Webb lyrics

Sacred Journey reports some startling lyrics on the forthcoming Derek Webb CD Mockingbird. Blow the sanitised CCM gush of the recent years where Christian music has been emasculated from radical revolution to conservative business, these sound more like the incendiary stuff Larry Norman was turning out in the early Seventies:

“there are two great lies that I’ve heard:
‘the day you eat of the fruit of that tree, you will not surely die’
and that Jesus Christ was a white, middle-class republican
and if you wanna be saved you have to learn to be like Him”
-from “A King & A Kingdom”
+ + +

“peace by way of war is like purity by way of fornication
it’s like telling someone murder is wrong and then showing them by way of execution”
-from “My Enemies Are Men Like Me”
+ + +

“are we defending life when we just pick and choose
lives acceptable to lose and which ones to defend”
-from “Love Is Not Against The Law”
+ + +

“don’t teach me about moderation and liberty, i prefer a shot of grape juice”
-from “A New Law”
+ + +

“my first allegiance is not to a flag, a country, or a man,
my first allegiance is not to democracy or blood
it’s to a king & a kingdom”
-from “A King & A Kingdom”
+ + +

“come on and follow Me, but sell your house, sell your SUV,
sell your stocks, sell your security
and give it to the poor”
-From “Rich Young Ruler”

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Bryn Haworth, Keep The Faith

I went to play Bryn Haworth‘s new CD Keep The Faith on the hi-fi this morning, only to find that the kids had not only wrecked the loudspeaker covers, they’d done unmentionable things to the woofers, too. So the CD went on the computer (and was ripped to iTunes). Can’t stop playing it: often reminiscent of his early 1980s album Pass It On (must be the horn section). So many of the songs sound like I’ve known them for years – always a good sign. Lovely to hear Bryn’s slide guitar given full rein, too. And a lovely adaptation of Maggi Dawn‘s Wash Me Clean: Bryn has taken this old chorus and added several verses. Beautiful.
 
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What Does The Fifth Of November Remember, Remember?

Adrian Warnock has been blogging about Guy Fawkes’ Night and his gratitude for the fact that it celebrates our Reformation heritage. (Well, perhaps just theoretically these days – rather like Christmas). Certainly the history is lost on many people, apart from cries of “Where are you, Guy Fawkes, when we need you?” at times when we are frustrated by our politicians.
 
He refers to the biggest celebrations every year in Lewes, where huge parades takes effigies through the narrow streets of the old county town. Protestants were martyred in the town in 1556 and the traditional effigy is of  Paul V, who was Pope at the time of the Gunpowder Plot. In recent years the Bonfire has had news coverage for the controversial choices of effigies. In 2003 the bonfire society from the nearby village of Firle made an effigy of Travellers, after problems there had been in the village. Prosecutions under race hatred laws were considered; the travellers were fearful, because there had been actual fire-based attacks on their communities in Sussex in the recent past; locals regarded it (as with other effigies, such as Osama bin Laden in 2001, as satire). My wife is a Lewesian and could not understand the possible prosecutions; I, having grown up in a very multi-racial area, could understand fears of racism.
 
Like Adrian, although I have many fine Catholic friends, I am grateful for a Reformation heritage being preserved. However there must be qualifiers. The word ‘bonfire’ comes from ‘bone fire’, that is, burning people alive. There is something to be deeply ashamed of here, too, as Christians. Is this the way of the Cross? Further, it was not simply a matter of the Reformation being preserved, but a particular strand of it: moderate Anglicanism, reformed in doctrine and Catholic in church order. It was a form of Christianity that would continue to persecute those it disagreed with – witness the Cavalier Parliament. It took until the nineteenth century before legislation began to remove discrimination against Catholics and Non-Conformists.
 
But having said that, there is something generally very ugly here with which all Christians must grapple: when we get into power we can do terrible things. The Puritan Commonwealth of Oliver Cromwell persecuted the Anglicans and the Catholics. What is it we have failed to learn from the Cross about power?
 
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Halloween: Turning Trick Or Treat Upside-Down

Here is a wonderfully subversive and positive Christian witness on Halloween: going out as if to do Trick Or Treat but instead turning up on people’s doorsteps, giving them presents. Unconditional grace or what? The ‘light parties’ and the like are all very good, but they do keep the Christians in their ghetto. This doesn’t.

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Bono On Faith, Life And Music: Rolling Stone Interview

Great link from the weekly Off-The-Map Idealab email (NB the link is only in the email, not on the website) to a new interview with Bono by Jann Wenner of Rolling Stone magazine. Fascinating section on his religious beliefs. Christians wonder whether Bono is ‘one of us’. He explains that his beliefs do make him a Christian, he is just reluctant to use the label because he feels he doesn’t live up to the standard. There is surely more grace for the Bonos of this world.

Note for the sensitive: several profanities in the interview.

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