Christmas Playlist

A plague on the X-Factor, with its manufactured music and manufactured hype to get the Christmas Number One. (Not that any of these things are new.) So a campaign to usurp it, like the previous one to get Jeff Buckley‘s version of Leonard Cohen‘s ‘Hallelujah‘

up the charts, rather than Alexandra Burke‘s, is something I would welcome.

Except I can’t really go for Rage Against The Machine‘s ‘Killing In The Name‘, with its proliferation of f-words. Sorry.

But more positively, it set me thinking about what would be on my personal Christmas playlist.

Sufjan Stevens‘ 5-EP collection ‘Songs For Christmas‘ contains so many gems.  How about his version of ‘Come, thou fount of every blessing’?

For fun, you have to have Dylan. Yes, really: the old goat is laugh-a-minute. The recent ‘Must be Santa’ has to be in there:

Bruce Cockburn‘s ‘Christmas‘ CD from the 1990s was pretty stunning. ‘Joy to the world’ is but one of the gems – unfortunately, I don’t seem to be able to add the video into WordPress either directly or indirectly, so click here or possibly here to see it. Anyway, you won’t be surprised to find Cockburn in this list, since this blog’s name is inspired by him!

Back to the daft, and I have an irrational affection for ‘I Want An Alien For Christmas’ by the Fountains Of Wayne:

And for real Christmas kitsch, there’s nothing like a pseudo-Phil Spector sound, so over to Bruce Springsteen for ‘Santa Claus Is Coming To Town’:

Or for the real thing, Darlene Love and ‘Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)’:

I mean, you just don’t need Mariah Carey, do you?

Of the mainstream big Christmas hits, there’s something I like about the guitar sound on Chris Rea‘s ‘Driving Home For Christmas’:

But where’s the Christian stuff?  Randy Stonehill has written a couple. I can’t find a video online of ‘Christmas Song For All Year Round’, but someone has put pictures to the poignant ‘Christmas At Denny’s’:

For Christian cynicism about the commercial season, I can’t trace a video by Larry Norman himself of his song ‘Christmastime’, but here is Stonehill’s version, complete with the immortal lines

Christmastime is coming and the kids are getting greedy
They know it’s in the store because they’ve seen it on the TV

Well, that’s just some random stuff from me. What do you love at this time of year? What can’t you stand?

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links for 2009-12-17

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Why Pastors Quit

Brian Jones has a wonderful post entitled Your Pastor’s Dirty Little Secret. It’s all about why pastors contemplate quitting the ministry. He names two major reasons, and neither is to do with loss of faith or doctrinal issues, nor are they to do with ‘moral failings’. One is the problem of nasty and divisive church members who have never been confronted, but who have been allowed to continue to wreak havoc. The other is boredom.

What do you think?

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Digital Britain, Analogue Church

The Evangelical Alliance recently published some statistics about what it calls Digital Britain. They make fascinating reading. Here are some highlights. You won’t find all of it surprising, but what is clear is just how much our culture is shifting in a digital direction.

* There is a trend away from social letter-writing in favour of email, texting and IM. Only 10% of letters now delivered by the Royal Mail are now ‘social mail’. Although 72% of over-70s write such letters, it decreases to 47% of over-50s, and there is a 1-3% annual shift.

* The use of landline telephones is in sharp decline, too. In 2007, we spent only an average of 5 minutes a month making calls from fixed lines, but a staggering 136 minutes on mobiles. (I know, I find that hard to believe.) In a population of 60 million there are 74 million mobile phones in use (how many people really need more than one?) and 89% of over-14s have at least one.

* The use of email is increasing. Although it was falling out of favour with younger generations, who preferred texting, the arrival of smartphones such as the iPhone and the Blackberry have rejuvenated email among the young. Perhaps it is the mobility and that the common theme to texting and the increase again in email is the use of the mobile phone.

* Social networking is extraordinarily popular. 25% of British adults use social networking sites – a higher percentage than the Germans, French and Italians.

* Yet it’s not an interest in technology per se that is driving these increases, at least among the young. Rather, it seems they use technology to continue doing the things they were always doing: listening to music, watching TV or films, and contacting friends. Technology becomes a supplementary way of carrying out these activities, not a replacement.

The contrast with anecdotal evidence in the typical traditional church is huge. You can’t send an email late at night to someone if you suddenly think of something, because they may not be online. They might have a mobile phone, but they may not use it often, so texting is less viable, too. As for a church website, well that’s nice and they may want the church to have one but it won’t be any practical use for them, even if they realise it is a good way of getting known today.

That we do certain things differently in the church is, in my opinion, both partly right and partly wrong. It is partly right because we need to minister to and with the digital poor. Sorry if that’s an ugly or patronising expression, I don’t mean it to be, but I need to make a contrast with the digital natives and digital immigrants who are comfortable learning and using new technology.

Yet it is also partly wrong, because it concentrates on maintenance rather than mission. It preserves existing ways but does not pioneer the Gospel into the ways in which our culture is developing. Therefore the church needs continually to find new ways into the digital culture.

In one respect, such a missionary thrust is tailored to introverts like me, who by nature are drawn to the written (or typed) word. Past models of evangelism have been throughly based around extraverted approaches – think about how the word ‘evangelism’ is conceived by many Christians and they think of crusade meetings and door-to-door work. I mean no disparagement of them, nor of the many other gifts extraverts offer, but might it just be that introverts could be on the cutting edge of new approaches to mission?

If so, that will mean a complete rethink of some of the attitudes and prejudices that prevail in many churches, alongside the ‘big ask’ of adjusting to the new digital culture.

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Introverts In Leadership And Ministry

Earlier this year, I chronicled as part of my sabbatical my investigations into ministry and personality type. My current reading is Adam McHugh‘s book Introverts In The Church, which Scot McKnight has picked up on.

Now I find I’m by no means the only Methodist minister interested in this topic. American minister Beth Quick posted an article last week entitled Introverts Can Make The Best Leaders, in which she cited an article from Forbes Magazine entitled Why Introverts Can Make The Best Leaders.

By way of a quick exercise, I thought I would take the five characteristics that the Forbes author and muse briefly on them.

1. Introverts think first and speak later. Well, sometimes a calm, measured approach is welcomed. When life is complex (and it is), careful reflection should be valued. I’m not sure it always is, especially in an always-on, text-sending, 24-hour-news-channel world.

2. Introverts focus on depth. I like this and I think it’s important. However, some people want ministers who are strong on chit-chat. They think it is a sign the minister is interested in people. It can be, but it can also be about a church that can’t get beyond superficiality.

3. Introverts exude calm. I haven’t often been told this! Although when I worked in an office and someone phoned in with a complaint, I was often the person who dealt with it. Many outwardly calm introverts are paddling furiously beneath the waves. There may be a genuine air of calm about a lot of introverts, but a lot of us have coping strategies, especially when calm is required in a group setting. The article quotes some examples. I rehearse conversations before I have them.

4. Introverts let their fingers do the talking. Yes. I love preaching, but I love writing. Given time, I can order my thoughts better that way.

5. Introverts embrace solitude. Please stop pejoratively calling the introvert a ‘loner’ and the extravert a ‘people-person’. You know the prejudice: serial killers turn out to be loners. When we withdraw from the exhausting task of being with people, we reflect and think.

None of this is meant to demean extravert leaders, but it is designed as a plea for people to widen their vision about the people who can lead and appropriate styles of leadership.

What do you think? What is your experience?

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Sermon: The Superiority Of Jesus

Luke 3:7-18

We’re all equal, but some people are more equal than others.

So goes the truism. It’s not far from what John the Baptist says about himself and Jesus here. I’m not concentrating today on the material about showing the fruit of repentance, because I said something about repentance in last Sunday’s sermon about John. Hence today I have chosen to concentrate on the contrasts between John and Jesus.

It’s a mark of John’s humility that when he draws the crowds and the attention, he doesn’t garner the praise for himself. Instead, he fulfils his rôle as the forerunner to the Messiah by pointing to this cousin, who is about to appear on the scene. Preparation for John is Jesus-centred, and as we look at the three ways in which he says that Jesus is superior to him, I pray that John’s example will be one for us as we prepare this Advent for Christmas.

Firstly, Jesus is superior in authority. It may not have been the most watched movie in 1992 among many of our people here, but Wayne’s World, the affectionate spoof of teenage heavy metal fans, provides a way in here. Wayne and his friend Garth get to meet some of their musical heroes, such as Alice Cooper. When they do, they prostrate themselves before them and utter the famous catchphrase of the film, ‘We’re not worthy.’

John’s whole attitude to Jesus is that he, too, is not worthy: he says he is ‘not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals’ (verse 16). Removing a master’s sandals from his feet was ‘one of the most demanding and least liked’[1] of a first-century slave’s duties. ‘This is like a CEO saying he is not worthy to take out Jesus’ garbage,’[2] says one commentator.

In other words, as the same commentator continues,

Human beings are not Jesus’ advisers or equals; they are greatly honoured to know him and serve him. John does not draw attention to himself; instead he points to the superior greatness of the one to come. To direct others to Jesus is the call of God’s servant.[3]

None of us, I’m sure, would ever remotely say we are Jesus’ equals. We too would say we’re not worthy. But however much we know that in our hearts, is it not true that sometimes we slip into the habit of being Jesus’ advisers? How many of us have prayed at times, virtually telling Jesus what his will should be? It’s a real test sometimes to change our prayers from requesting that our Lord do something we want to seeking his will and striving to pray in line with that. Yet how often when we look back after having initially being disappointed with his answer do we see that he knew best all along? We are not his advisers, because he as the Son of God has superior authority.

And not only that, we have our subtle ways of drawing attention to ourselves. It is a maxim among preachers that you cannot set out to show yourself as a wonderful preacher and at the same time demonstrate that Jesus is wonderful. We may not be as blatant as the corporations which like to wave their big cheques in front of the cameras on fund-raising telethons like Children In Need or Comic Relief, but we have our little techniques, and some of ours involve the use of money, too. Donations or buying equipment for the church are not always done innocently. Sometimes I have found the donors want to get a message across that they are admirable people. However, when they do, they rob Jesus of his glory, the glory that is rightfully his as the Son of God. John the Baptist would have none of it. Jesus has superior authority, and we should never undermine it.

Secondly, John tells us that Jesus is superior in blessing. Many people have problems conceiving of God as Father, due to bad experiences in their upbringings. I certainly never had a violent or abusive father as some have suffered, but I still found it difficult to think of God as Father in certain ways. Most especially it was a problem to accept that God could give abundant gifts to his children. That was because my parents were never well-off, and could rarely afford the treats for my sister and me that our friends often had. I remember Dad’s agony about buying tickets for my first football matches. I recall friends who had much more spent on them at Christmas. If God was a Father, then, that didn’t mean One who could give heaps of generous blessings.

However, with our children, it’s different. Debbie and I shall never be as affluent as some of their friends’ families are, but whenever Rebekah or Mark complain about something – whether it’s something they don’t have or something they perceive not to be very good – we can reel out a whole list of things they enjoy that we never did as children. Some of that is about economic and social progress, of course, but we won’t complicate young minds with those thoughts yet!

When it comes to John pointing to Jesus, he talks of the blessings that Jesus can give which he can’t: ‘He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire’ (verse 16). Leave aside the ‘fire’ reference for a moment, and think about this: you will know the verse in Matthew where Jesus says how much more your Father in heaven will give good things to those who ask him. When Luke writes that up (admittedly in a different context), Jesus says, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit. In Luke’s Gospel (and, of course, in the New Testament generally!), the gift of the Holy Spirit is a Good Thing. Jesus can bless you like no-one and nothing else in all creation.

That isn’t to say that the gift of the Spirit is simply for some selfish ecstatic bless-up, but it is to say this: what could possibly be better than the presence of the living God at the heart of our lives? That is what Jesus gives.

The other day a friend of mine asked this on Facebook: why do we give presents when it’s Jesus’ birthday, and Jesus is the best gift to the whole world? When I read it, I thought at first, oh Peter, you Puritan! But I know he isn’t the sort who would fail to buy something nice for his wife and children. I think he simply meant to say that there is nothing like the gift of God in our lives. We celebrate the gift of God in human flesh in our midst at Christmas. But beyond that, we celebrate the gift of God who not only lives in our midst but lives within us – the Holy Spirit. There truly is no better gift. Does that put our Christmas in perspective?

And to return to the word ‘fire’, that may sound troubling and perhaps in some sense it is, but that surely simply refers to the work of purging the darkness from us and strengthening us with divine power. After all, when Luke writes his second volume, the Acts of the Apostles, and describes Pentecost, you’ll recall the Spirit comes like tongues of fire. And it certainly isn’t a traumatic experience for the disciples.

No, we have reason to believe all year round – not only at Christmas – that Jesus gives the best gift of all.

Thirdly and finally, Jesus is superior as Judge.

‘His winnowing-fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing-floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.’ (Verse 17)

Well, we were never going to get away with a completely comfortable sermon with John the Baptist on the case. There is no room in his preaching (or that of Jesus) for the idea that everybody goes to heaven. Both of them deny that. It is clear that where we stand with regard to Jesus affects our eternal destiny.

Not that it is a ticket to heaven and we then sit back and wait, of course. For the fire that came with the Spirit purifies those who follow Christ, and also weeds out those who are not serious about the demands of discipleship. Wesley was right: we are saved by the free grace of God in Christ through faith, but true faith shows itself by deeds of love. The division is between those who have a faith in Christ which leads to a changed life, and those who either claim faith but do not change or who deny Christ.

No, that doesn’t cover everyone, because John doesn’t consider here those who don’t get to hear about Christ, but he is dealing with a situation where he is preparing people for Christ and they will encounter him. Hence his focus.

Put it this way: I once heard a man say after many years of marriage that if he still loved his wife the same way today that he loved her on their wedding day, then their marriage would be in trouble. Real love grows and develops.

It is the same with faith in Christ. He draws us to himself, we entrust our lives to him, and that sets us off on a lifetime journey of change. It is only reasonable to look back and ask, “Have I changed? Am I continuing to change, by the grace of God?”

The good news in this part of John’s message is that God is a God of justice. He is so full of love that he draws sinners to himself, but scandalous as forgiveness is, he does not jettison his moral compass. But of course, if we recognise what he has done for us in Christ, then we shall want to change. And this is possible by his Spirit. All of which makes us wheat, not chaff, entirely by his grace.

Overall, then, John has again given us the Advent mixture of warnings and promises as he has made us focus on the superiority of Jesus. In bowing to the superior authority of Jesus, we stop seeking our own glory and have a passion only for his. In welcoming the superiority of his blessing, we find that Jesus fits us for the life of discipleship. And that means we need not fear his superior rank as Judge, for when we are open to the work of his Spirit in our lives, he makes us into wheat, not chaff.

Even among the warnings of John the Baptist, there is Good News.

[1] Darrell Bock, Luke (IVP New Testament Commentary), p73.

[2] Op. cit., p73f.

[3] Op. cit., p74.

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Amazon Recommends

I thought you’d like this. I was surfing Amazon, looking for Val Doonican CDs for a relative. Well, OK, it was for Debbie. Her taste and mine, well … although she says she wants this in order to introduce such gems as ‘Paddy McGinty’s Goat’

to the children. That’s her line, anyway.

Now I don’t worry too much about the relevance of what Amazon suggests you might be interested in as a result of your searches and purchases, but I thought this was good: one of the suggestions for those looking at Val Doonican was …

Human Conditions by Richard Ashcroft, former lead vocalist with The Verve.

So given that Val has in the past covered Simon and Garfunkel (59th Street Bridge Song – Feelin’ Groovy), The Commodores (Three Times A Lady), Tim Hardin (If I Were A Carpenter), Bette Midler (Wind Beneath My Wings) and so on, perhaps we can now await his versions of The Drugs Don’t Work or Bittersweet Symphony.

Which made me think: can you suggest any other unlikely cover versions you’d like to hear? After all, if Rolf Harris can do Stairway To Heaven …

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Sermon: Advent Preparation In The Wilderness

Luke 3:1-6

For the second year running, a group called Beyond Church has organised an outdoor Advent calendar. It’s a series of beach huts on Brighton beach. Does anyone fancy Brighton beach in December? They had a hundred people turn up on the first night. But if you don’t fancy that, you can follow it online or follow the daily coverage in The Independent and stay in the comfort of your home.  If, however, Brighton in winter isn’t challenging enough for you, then you can travel north to Bridlington, where local Christians are doing the same on their beach. Brighton or Bridlington, though, you’re talking about bleak places at this time of year.

But Advent is about God doing great things in bleak places. Today’s Gospel reading offers us precisely that, as it describes the essence of John the Baptist’s ministry. John’s ministry not in a cold, bleak place but a hot, bleak place – the wilderness – prepared the people of his day for the coming of Jesus. We too may discover a profound meeting with God in the bleak places.

The first thing I want to share is to do with our significance to God.

When I candidated for the ministry, my Superintendent Minister at the time gave me a piece of advice. It began with the word ‘Read’, and you know that’s a favourite word of mine! But he went on to say, ‘Read political biographies and learn all you can from the people who exercise power.’

There is some virtue in this, of course. It is good to understand the way things work and the motivations people have. What I wasn’t to know was that he was a man obsessed with getting to know the well-known and the powerful – admittedly in the small pond of Methodism – and that his interest in the influential was about climbing the greasy pole of preferment in the church. He succeeded – for a short while.

And you might think when you hear the beginning of this reading that Luke has a similar interest:

In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, during the high-priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness. (Verses 1-2)

Emperors, governors, rulers, high priests. Indeed when you read Luke’s Gospel, you often find him setting events in historical context. But you know, Luke isn’t too bothered about the Emperor Tiberius or Pontius Pilate or Herod, Philip, Annas or Caiaphas. He isn’t star-struck. Luke knows that God has a special place for the poor and marginalised, for those whom this world doesn’t regard as powerful or significant. So Luke recognises that the true action doesn’t take place in a palace or a temple, but in the wilderness. The same Luke who tells us about the manger and the shepherds takes us to the centre of God’s purposes where the red carpet is made of sand.

Here, then, is this country boy, John, living in the middle of nowhere, probably undetectable by sat-nav. And he is God’s person for this strategic moment in history. He gets to be the compère for the long-awaited Messiah.

Now if this is true of John, what might we take from this? I suggest it’s time to challenge all the ideas that some of us might not be valuable to God or able to be used by him. So often I hear people saying, “I can’t do that, I’m not a minister. I don’t have your knowledge. I’m not special. I’m not anyone.”

To that, God says a great big NO! Because to him you are significant, you are made in his image, you are redeemed by his Son, the Spirit of God lives in you. And what matters is not your ability but your availability. This year, learn that you are significant to God. He isn’t waiting for you to be rich and famous. He isn’t impressed by celebrity culture. He is just waiting for you to say ‘yes’ to him, because he loves you and he has a purpose for you that nobody else can fulfil.

You are significant to God.

Secondly, John in the wilderness shows us the importance of God’s word.

Two things in this reading point to this. One is that John’s ministry begins when ‘the word of the Lord came to [him]’ (verse 2). The other is that Luke sees John’s ministry as a fulfilment of the prophecy in Isaiah 40 (verses 4-6). Between them, these help us in our call to hear the word of God.

How John receives the word of the Lord isn’t explained to us, any more than it is in the Old Testament when we read similarly that the word of the Lord came to a certain prophet. We know ourselves that there are many ways that we hear God’s message. The common theme, surely, is that John was listening. And focussed listening is a great challenge in our society, when we are being bombarded by messages from here, there and everywhere. You have turned your mobile phones off before the service, haven’t you?

The (American) author of a book I’m reading tells this story about a visit he and his wife made to the cinema:

There were three people in the rows in front of us who had their cell phones open during the entire movie. They were text messaging and surfing the Internet and otherwise annoying people. As I saw those cell phone screens open during the movie, I observed that the people using them were not fully committed to being anywhere during those two hours. They were physically sitting in the theatre, even sitting with others who accompanied them, but their minds and hearts were all over the place. They were not fully present, in terms of their attention, to the visual and auditory experience in front of them, they were not fully present to their friends and family that they were sitting next to, and they were not geographically present to the people they were text messaging. They ha a hand and foot in several different places that were disconnected, leaving them as some sort of radical amputees. They were everywhere and they were nowhere. (Page 68f)

Everywhere and nowhere, radical amputees. Because they couldn’t or wouldn’t be fully present to one source of communication. A page before this, the author quotes a magazine article in which the writer argues that the rise of new technology has adversely affected people’s ability to concentrate for a long period of time on reading. Now people get fidgety after two or three pages.

Now you know I am not exactly adverse to new technology, and I know not all of you use it, but we are all affected in some way by the increased number and speed of communications today. But if I really want to reflect deeply on a Bible passage, then it’s not enough for me to look it up on the Internet and display it on my computer screen as I do when preparing sermons, because if I do that there are plenty of distractions at hand which disturb my concentration. I have to go away from the computer and ensure that I am only focussing on that Bible passage. It’s the same with a book. I can’t read one at the desk where the computer sits.

Why go into all this? Because if we, like John, are to hear the word of the Lord, we need to do some radical things in terms of aiding our concentration in listening. We need to set aside time for the Scriptures and prayer that are away from other distractions. That’s why a set time of personal devotions is good. Get away from whatever might tempt you with a stream of other messages or information, whether that’s the computer, the television or the phone.

Luke may not have had modern communications tools, but I feel sure the only way he would have concluded that John the Baptist fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah was that he – as a Gentile interested in Judaism – had given concentrated time to the Scriptures. And John probably only heard the word of the Lord because he had put himself away from distractions, too. In his case it was the wilderness. In our case it might simply be another room in the house. But whatever it takes, do it – because we need to hear the word of the Lord.

Thirdly and finally, John in the wilderness shows us the importance of repentance.

John proclaims ‘a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins’ (verse 3), and Luke adds imagery to this from Isaiah 40: the way of the Lord is to be prepared by making crooked paths straight, dealing with bumpy roads by filling valleys and lowering mountains, and smoothing out the rough ways. It’s what we all wish the Highways Agency would do for the A12.

Now that’s more than a cheap joke. Many of us know what it’s like to drive stretches of the A12 and feel the suspension of our car tested. The section from around about Witham to Colchester is particularly taxing. We long for a straight, smooth road. No wonder it was dubbed Britain’s worst road in a 2007 survey.

God longs for a smooth, straight road, too. His desire is that the potholes in our lives be filled in, that our crooked ways are made straight, and that when people encounter us we don’t damage their suspension!

In the wilderness, away from other distractions, we find ourselves unnervingly face to face with ourselves, and the disguises with which we cloak our sins are gone. Spiritually naked before God, we know what we must do. John’s baptism (which is not quite the same as Christian baptism) gives us the symbol of washing to be made clean and new.

So what are our crooked ways? Where are we not on the level? What are we hiding in our valleys or covering with mountains? Let’s not pretend that just because we are churchgoers and Christians that we are fine. Most, if not all, of us, need straightening out by God in some ways. If we just see Advent as a time when the anticipation and excitement ramps us towards the 25th, we are seriously mistaken.

For repentance is fundamental to our Advent preparation. If the King is coming, we need to make a straight and smooth highway for him in our lives. And repentance is essentially two things in the Bible. In the Greek of the New Testament the word means ‘a change of mind’, just as our English word ‘repent’ is related to the French repenser, which means to think again. So repentance first of all means we have a change of mind, a complete rethink about our lives. Jesus is not just a bolt-on to an existing Western lifestyle. Meeting Jesus means thinking again about the whole direction of our lives.

And the second thing it means, more so in the Aramaic and Hebrew behind the New Testament culture, is related to that. It means ‘a change of direction’. Because if we have had a change of mind about our lives, it can’t stop with the thinking: the thinking must lead to action. If we continue with the imagery of the road, this is not about a straight road but about a U-turn. God’s sat-nav is pointing some of us in a new direction, and our spiritual health depends on us following the new route instructions.

In conclusion, someone once said that Advent is a mixture of promises and warnings. We have had both in our reading today. In appreciating our significance to God, we have a promise of grace. In hearing the call to repentance, we have a warning. And in coming to God’s word, we have a message that is both promise and warning.

What is the Holy Spirit bringing to us this morning? Promises? Warnings? Or both? Let those with ears to hear, hear what the Spirit is saying.

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