It
caught my eye when I first saw it.
It
caught Andrea’s eye too…and so we are going to use it for our children’s
Nativity service on the 20th December.
As
I began my preparations for today’s service on Friday it caught my eye again as
a copy fell through my door.
Bob
Hartman is a story teller. When he was
the main speaker at one of our church leaders conferences a couple of years ago
he was a real inspiration. He held
everyone’s attention from start to finish!
He
it was who put together a wonderful children’s bible called the Story Teller’s
Bible. It was taken on board by Open the
Book which in turn has been taken under the wing of the Bible Society. Our Open the Book team is one of thousands up
and down the country who take Bible stories into schools week by week: they go
into Oakwood school and have a wonderful time.
The stories they use are Bob Hartman’s.
And
so we decided to use his telling of the Nativity story – simply called The
Christmas Poem.
It’s
a relling of the nativity with a twist, however. It takes the story beyond the stable into the
life of Jesus and beyond the life of Jesus to the death of Jesus and beyond the
death of Jesus to the resurrection. And
it is all about turning what is sad into glad … again and again.
It’s
great fun … and it should make a great re-telling of the Nativity for our
Nativity service.
It
set my mind thinking and has given me a theme for this year’s Advent services. It’s what I am going to share on Sunday
mornings but it also is very appropriate on Sunday evenings too.
At
first it seems to be a disconnect. It
doesn’t work. It’s not appropriate. IT doesn’t fit with the neatness of the
church calendar.
Having
started rading through the Gospel according to St Luke at the beginning of the
year and having had a break in the midle of the year we find ourselves coming
to the end of the Gospel just as Advent is beginning.
It doesn't seem quite right to be reading in chapter 22 of the plot to kill Jesus,
of the institution of the Lord’s Supper, of the dispute about greatness, of the
way Jesus predicted Peter would deny him, of the challenge to the 12 to take
but purse, bag and sword, of the prayer of Jesus on the Mount of Olives,
Father, if you are willing take this cup from me; yet not my will but yours be
done.
As
Advent begins and we prepare to celebrate the coming of Christ at Christmas it
seems out of sorts to be telling the story of the betrayal and arrest of Jesus. But this is where our story has brought us.
And
there is a strange and moving appropriateness to it all.
The
whole point of Christmas is in the whole life of Jesus, in his death and in his
resurrection. And so we turn to that
moment when Peter denied his Lord.
Luke
22:54-71
Then they seized him and led him
away, bringing him into the high priest’s house. But Peter was following at a
distance. When they had kindled a fire in the middle of the courtyard and
sat down together, Peter sat among them. Then a servant-girl, seeing him
in the firelight, stared at him and said, ‘This man also was with
him.’ But he denied it, saying, ‘Woman, I do not know him.’ A little
later someone else, on seeing him, said, ‘You also are one of them.’ But Peter
said, ‘Man, I am not!’ Then about an hour later yet another kept
insisting, ‘Surely this man also was with him; for he is a Galilean.’ But
Peter said, ‘Man, I do not know what you are talking about!’ At that moment,
while he was still speaking, the cock crowed. The Lord turned and looked
at Peter. Then Peter remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said to him,
‘Before the cock crows today, you will deny me three times.’ And he went
out and wept bitterly.
Now the men who were holding
Jesus began to mock him and beat him; they also blindfolded him and kept asking
him, ‘Prophesy! Who is it that struck you?’ They kept heaping many other
insults on him.
When day came, the assembly of
the elders of the people, both chief priests and scribes, gathered together,
and they brought him to their council. They said, ‘If you are the
Messiah, tell us.’ He replied, ‘If I tell you, you will not
believe; and if I question you, you will not answer. But from now on
the Son of Man will be seated at the right hand of the power of God.’ All
of them asked, ‘Are you, then, the Son of God?’ He said to them, ‘You say that
I am.’ Then they said, ‘What further testimony do we need? We have heard
it ourselves from his own lips!’
In
Luke’s telling of the Gospel story of Jesus there is pain at the very outset in
the build up to the birth, in the birth itself and throughout the ministry of
Jesus.
It’s
a couple in Jerusalem of very elderly people who had been watching and waiting, watching and
waiting, watching and waiting all the years of their life.
It
was Simeon who saw in the Christ child the pain of all that would happen … and
yet somehow knew that pain would usher in great peace and great blessing.
And
the child’s father and mother were amazed at what was being said about
him. Then Simeon blessed them and said to his mother Mary, ‘This
child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and to be a
sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be
revealed—and a sword will pierce your own soul too.’
Buyt
then it was 84 year old widow, Anna who did something remarkable. She was a prophet – she, a woman, and she it
was who declared the Gospel for the very first time.
At
that moment she came and began to praise God and to speak about this child to
all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem.
That
too is a foretaste of how the Gospel story finishes.
Whoa
are the first at the tomb that Easter morning?
Now it was Mary Magdalene, Joanna,
Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them who told this to the
apostles.
And
what was it they had to tell? These
women in what they declared to the apostles.
Nothing
less than the message of the angels –
He is not here, but has
risen. Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that
the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the
third day rise again.’
That’s
the wonderful message entrusted to the women
In
the beginning is a foretaste of the ending.
And
in the ending there is a new beginning.
What
a wonderful message to share on what is for me a very special day in quite a
special year.
The
year I marked what would have been my father’s 100th birthday taking
Grandson Lake to the house where he was born.
The year I marked the 150th
anniversary of our family in Patagonia.
And
today marks the 100th anniversary of the death of my Great Great
Grand Father’s brother’s wife’s sister.
Quite
a mouthful!
My
Great Great Grand-father’s brother and his wife emigrated to Patagonia. His wife’s parents and two of his sisters
were buried in the same graveyard. And
the husband of another in a much finer grave.
It
was that other sister who in the late 1860’s had emigrated to the USA as a
young girl just turned 20. She went at
the invitation of the United Welsh Societies because she had a wonderful way
with words – a poet and a preacher she could preach with a real
inspiration. And she did. Throughout the States in Welsh Communities –
she married and in the late 1880’s was ordained in the Welsh Congregational
Church in Waterstown, Wisconsin – the first woman minister to be ordained in
that state.
And
it was 100 years ago today that she died.
Her
son by then had become a significant figure in government circles and went on
to be part of Woodrow Wilson’s team at
Versailles after the first world war, campaigned for Roosevelt’s election as
President and then served as Ambassador to Moscow just before the Second world
war, becoming Harry S Truman’s special envoy to Winston Churchill after the
second world war.
Wonderful
family stories – but most of all the passion for preaching – sharing the
wonderful good news of Jesus Christ and the difference he makes in the lives of
us all.
The
Good news is captured in those words of TS Eliot
What
we call the beginning is often the end
And
to make an end is to make a beginning.
The
end is where we start from. …
We
shall not cease from exploration
And
the end of all our exploring
Will
be to arrive where we started
And
know the place for the first time.
Isn’t
that the case?! It’s as we arrive at the end of the Jesus story that we really
understand the beginning. And it is only
as we remember the ending that is a new beginning that we grasp all that the
beginning actually meant.
Almost
the last word is given by T.S.Eliot to another woman preacher. A remarkable woman who lived in Norwich 600
years and more ago. Julian of Norwich.
For
me it sums up this year a message of certainty in a world of uncertainty. A certainty that we need to hold on to as we
discover the full meaning of the Christmas story by paying attention to the
ending of the story only to find that’s the beginning of something new.
And
the words TS Eliot wrote into the troubled world of the 1930’s?
And
all shall be well
And
all manner of thing shall be well.
That’s
what I want to hold on to this Christmas.
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