All posts by 3 churches

Jesus revealed

newsletter

This year Christmas falling on a Sunday affects the other feasts of the season. As the Epiphany is now celebrated on a Sunday, which is now two weeks away from Christmas, it replaces the Baptism of the Lord, which is transferred to Monday. So these two feasts when we remember how Our Lord was shown forth to the world, first through the (gentile) Wise Men at Bethlehem and thirty years later at the River Jordan, fall together. In fact in former centuries they were celebrated as one feast, one celebration of the revealing of Jesus.

Here is poet Malcolm Guite’s sonnet reflection on the Baptism, which he nicely calls “Epiphany on the Jordan”

Beginning here we glimpse the Three-in-one;
The river runs, the clouds are torn apart,
The Father speaks, the Spirit and the Son
Reveal to us the single loving heart
That beats behind the being of all things
And calls and keeps and kindles us to light.
The dove descends, the spirit soars and sings
‘You are belovèd, you are my delight!’

In that quick light and life, as water spills
And streams around the Man like quickening rain,
The voice that made the universe reveals
The God in Man who makes it new again.
He calls us too, to step into that river
To die and rise and live and love forever.

Fr Matthew

Merry and messy

advent

At Christmas we often go to great lengths to try to make everything perfect. Exactly the right present for auntie Flo, new lights on our houses just a bit better than the family down the street, special little extras at our Christmas dinner to make it better than last year’s, a perfectly shaped Christmas tree… and, of course, perfectly planned Christmas services. But we only need to look at the news to see that reality is not always like that. So many people are living with suffering of one kind or another. Problems both far away and closer to home, sometimes in our own lives, tell us that our world is often, well, messy.

This points us to something very important about the original Christmas story, the birth of Jesus. It, too, was not entirely neat and tidy. Mary and Joseph had a very difficult journey to Bethlehem. They probably walked, or rode a donkey as tradition says, about 90 miles, with Mary heavily pregnant. There was not a warm welcome from the people of Bethlehem, and, of course Mary had to have her baby where the animals were. To cap it all, they then had to get out of Bethlehem and escape to Egypt as refugees. That all sounds very messy to me.

Two lessons then… If we find ourselves running round at home, dashing to the shops, trying to get everything right, and feeling rushed and tired, we shouldn’t be too hard on ourselves. We’re allowed to not get it quite right, it’s absolutely OK to be messy, and who said that we always have to be happy – all the time?

Secondly, let’s take our cue from the Baby whose birth it is really all about. He could have chosen to be born in a luxurious palace or a bright shiny hospital. But he didn’t. He plunged straight into the chaotic world of human life, complete with its joys – and its problems. He set about trying to put it right, and that’s a challenge to all of us, to do likewise, to help lift each other’s burdens and clear up at least some of our world’s mess.

Have a happy, if messy, Christmas!

Fr Matthew (edited from this week’s Wednesday Word)