Always Hope

This year I want to skip Advent and go straight to Christmas. Not the presents-and-turkey bit, but the Jesus bit. It seems to me that one good way of getting ready for the coming of Christ into the world is to spend a bit of time thinking about his birth, and what it means. This morning we read Matthew 1:18-25, and I was struck again by this: All this took place to fulfil what the Lord had said through the prophet: The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel— which means, God with us. God with us. I'm sure Matthew is not just grabbing a convenient Bible quote to make his point, but telling us something deeply significant about the incarnation. God with us. How many people are convinced that God is with them? So many have concluded the opposite - that he isn't with us at all. And would God have any reason to want to be with us anyway? It is what we want, though. We need somebody on our side. In life, we seek support from the ...

Matthew 3:13-17 Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to be baptised by John. But John tried to deter him, saying, "I need to be baptised by you, and do you come to me?" Jesus replied, "Let it be so now; it is proper for us to do this to fulfil all righteousness." Then John consented. As soon as Jesus was baptised, he went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and lighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, "This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased." I love the account of Jesus's baptism. Remarkably similar in all four Gospels, it's a wonderful example of how the Gospel writers combine the eyewitness accounts of Jesus's life with profound theological truth (Clayboy has a good post giving the more scholarly take on this). It's an Epiphany reading because it's a moment of revelation - when we see who Jesus really is. In the Gospels it acts a...

Something a bit more edifying today. Apparently Advent Sunday is the start of the Church's year, something that means very little to most people (including me), but what does make sense is the idea of preparing for a new year, for the new birth that Christmas celebrates. Isaiah 2:1-5 Romans 13:11-14 Matthew 24:36-44 This Sunday's Gospel reading calls us to be ready in an urgent way. The doctrine of the second coming is not everyone's favourite, and perhaps suffers from the over-simplistic interpretation of fundamentalism, but "He will come again" is a creedal statement which is one of the building blocks of our faith. Advent Sunday focuses us on that future coming, which completes the cycle begun with Christ's first coming into the world. Did Jesus' disciples expect it to happen in their lifetime? Certainly , at least for the first few years. Did Jesus expect it to? Not necessarily . Despite the urgency of this saying, "no-one knows the day or the h...

Yesterday at Kea we had an excellent sermon from Charles Burgess of CPAS : a simple and effective explanation of servant leadership, based on Matthew 20:20-28. It's good to be reminded of what kind of ministry Jesus calls his disciples to: You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant,and whoever wants to be first must be your slave- just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. I feel strongly that this is another of those parts of the Bible that is well known, but little understood. So many Christian groups seem to embody a style of leadership that is the opposite of what Jesus lays before us here: bombastic, self-promoting, controlling, abusive. And often it's not just the leaders who inflict this on others, but the people themselves who collude in embracing thi...