The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light

                                                           

The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light...

So Isaiah Chapter 9 starts.  Does that passage lift your heart?  If not, try again!!   Imagine a people, poor, lowly, dispirited, living in darkness – the darkness of fear, of bereavement, of lack of peace, and look around you.  Yes, we see these people all the time, every day at some time or other, and, unfortunately we get used to seeing them, used to their pain and hopelessness, so that we don’t try to do anything about it.  Isn’t that true?

This word-picture in Isaiah goes further.  Isaiah says that they “have seen a great light.”  Not a small, bobbing light that gives no relief from the surrounding darkness, but a great light , a light that will never go out, the light of the risen Christ shining on our shadowed world, lighting up the darkness, so that we can see clearly, reaching out to those still sitting in the darkness of despair, and lifting them out of it with our prayer.   This is an Advent experience.  Advent is all about hope.

“You have made their gladness greater” the prophet goes on to say, “you have made their joy increase”.   Advent is also about joy.

Yesterday morning at Mass in our local Church,  there was a chill in the air.  The Church wasn’t adequately heated, and it was very frosty and cold outside.  People were rubbing their hands and putting gloves back on, and shrugging into thick heavy coats.  Not at first a particularly joyful atmosphere for the first Sunday of Advent.  Then one of the altar servers, a young girl, picked up a taper, lighted it and went over to the newly-created Advent wreath.  She lighted the first candle and everyone in the Church craned their necks to have a look.  A flickering candle, getting stronger, the first of four lighting up the greenery around it, and picking out the purple, pink and white candles  still unlighted in the circle of time.   Most smiled.  The first Sunday of Advent!  A sign of hope.   A bit of warmth in a cold Church,  the beginning of a journey of faith – another Christmas on the way.  You could almost read the thoughts of the Congregation as they looked at that lone candle.  The symbol of hope, peace and gladness.  We all knew what it meant to us.

Advent is about a shared journey of faith which is lighted up by the light of Christ’s coming which started all those years ago in that little town of Bethlehem.

It demands something of us, as all journeys do.  What did Isaiah say as he continued the theme of his prophecy?

For (we) rejoice in his presence as people do at harvest time,  when they are happy  dividing the spoils.  For the yoke that was weighing on him,  the bar across his shoulders, the rod of his oppressor, these you break as on the day of Midian.

Why?

Advent is about laying down burdens,  and freedom from oppression because Jesus promised us that he had been anointed “to bring good news to the poor,  to bind up hearts that are broken, and to  proclaim liberty to captives and those burdened”  (Isaiah 61).  His mission was to give hope to those made poor.  It is our challenge now in this Advent.

Further, he challenges us:

For all the footgear of battle, every cloak rolled in blood is burnt  and consumed by fire.

Advent is about refraining from enmity, hatred, aggression.

Again, why?

"For there is a Child born to us, a Son given to us, and dominion is laid upon his shoulders,

And this is the name they will give him:

WONDER -  COUNSELLOR,  MIGHTY GOD,  ETERNAL FATHER, PRINCE OF PEACE.....”

Advent is about the coming of the eternal, co-existent,   all-powerful God who is “other” to our world in order to forge human and divine links which makes him one of us, imminent, enfleshed in our humanity, part of our pain and our joy.  It is about a love that will not let go, a love that invites us to hold on to those tiny hands that became the healing, out-reaching hands of the Man God of Nazareth.  It is an invitation to change our stony hearts to hearts of flesh so that he can love us the way he wants to love us.

Read the passage from Isaiah just quoted again and again, and make it your own this Advent.  It is beautiful, awe-inspiring and challenging, as are all the Advent readings.

Have a lovely Advent.  We will meet again next week, hopefully, when you have walked a few steps on the journey.  As a famous anthem of a Northern football team would sing:

When you walk through the dark, hold your head up high,

And don’t be afraid of the dark,

At the end of the road is a golden sun and the sweet-silver sound of the lark.

WALK ON, WALK ON WITH HOPE IN YOUR HEART AND YOU’LL NEVER WALK ALONE!

 

For we, the people who walked in darkness have seen a GREAT LIGHT.  Praise him!

 

Drawings courtesy of P Macaulay (c) 2012
Photos courtesy of BML and AK (c) 2012
Clip Art courtesy of BMcC
 

 

The Resurrection

A happy Easter to all of you!  We have journeyed through Lent, and experienced the loneliness and the fear of the Passion, as well as the heart-warming act of Jesus as Servant, washing the feet of his disciples, and then giving us the wonderful gift of the Eucharist.  I suppose many of you celebrated the Seder meal, and became part of the first New Testament Seder, picturing Jesus going out into the darkness towards Gethsemane with the beautiful sound of the Hallel psalms ringing in his ears, yet knowing he was betrayed and soon would be captured and disowned.  But now we are warming ourselves, not at the brazier of Peter which just took away for a time the cold winds of fear and guilt, but the great sun of the Resurrected world.  Alleluia!

May I share with you another Resurrection?  I’m sure you have many of your own, which I would love to hear, but I’ve always been captivated by this one. Please send in your own stories of hope after despair.  Jesus offers us the fruits of his rising from the dead all the time. 

Here is my contribution:

An old man shuffled painfully along the cobbled streets of London.  He was stooped, awkward and obviously in pain. His face was pale and there were lines of pain etched deeply on his cheeks.  People passed him by, avoiding his eyes which seemed bitter and hard.  His name was George Frederic Handel.  The great musician of the 18^th century.  He had suffered a stroke some months before, and doctors held out little hope of his survival. “I am finished!” he said to himself. “I can no longer compose music.  I cannot hear those wonderful melodies in my head.  Point and counterpoint harmony no longer have any meaning for me.  I might as well die!”  Despondently he shuffled back to his lodgings.

When he got there he found a thick wad of paper rolled in a parcel standing on the hall table.  “Not another MS”, he muttered. “Will they never realise that I am no longer a musician?”  Listlessly he picked it up.  It was from his friend who had always supported him, so, listlessly he tore open the paper.  It was the story of the life of Christ.   He read on, without much interest, until he saw this:

“.. the crowds were appalled at seeing him, so disfigured did he look, that he seemed no longer human,… “   “Like a sapling he grew up in front of us, like a root in arid ground. Without beauty, without majesty we saw him no looks to attract our eyes, a thing despised and rejected by men. A man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. A man to make people screen their faces. He was despised, and we took no account of him.”   Fourth Servant Song:  Isaiah 52: 11 – 15.

“Why, that’s me!” he cried, “I am despised and of no account too!”  So, fascinated, he read on.

Afterwards he was to say:  “I saw the heavens open and I heard the most beautiful music.  Words poured into my mind.  “He was despised and rejected yet by his wounds we are healed.  I KNOW THAT MY REDEEMER LIVETH” he cried exultingly at the four walls of his hallway.  ALLELUIA!  For ten days he never came out of his room, refusing to eat or drink.  But he gave us The Messiah.  His greatest work.  The most famous oratorio in the world. 

London refused to put it on, as they thought he was finished.  So he went to Dublin, and they gave us “Oh thou who bringest good tidings to Sion”  “He was despised”  “I know that my redeemer liveth”  and of course the famous Alleluia chorus.  And so many more.... Handel lived on for some years after this, and became the most feted musician of the time.  Everywhere he went, he brought the portfolio of The Messiah.  It was his Resurrection. 

What are your experiences of Resurrection?  Thank God for them today, and go about humming “Alleluia, alleluia, alle- luia!"  Enjoy this wonderful time - the Springtime of the Church and ours too.

God bless.

ALLELUIA

THIS IS THE DAY THAT THE LORD HAS MADE. LET US BE GLAD, AND REJOICE IN IT.

Why look among the dead for someone who is alive?  (Luke 25:5)

When you think of Easter what image do you see?
The hint of longer, lighter days to come...
the hills bursting with new-born lambs...
the scramble for the hidden, coloured eggs in garden, house or field...
the Easter bunnies, or the dark-coated ribboned eggs decorating the sideboard?

All these perhaps, yet each is but a faint, far-off image of what it is to us as Easter people.

Our song is ever and always the alleluia of the angels as they look on him whom sin has pierced and love has healed... now risen and glorious, standing triumphant against all that would demean or limit us and offering without price the promise of a life that holds eternal joy.

Praise him!

"I wish you all a Happy Easter, full of graces; graces of renewal of spirit, of fresh strength and energy in our Lord's service."
(Mother Magdalen)

After the Easter Vigil, we should be full of joy and hope. 
So we pray:

Come, Risen Lord Jesus
Easter in us,
Be a day-spring to the dimness of us today,
and always that we may bring glory to you. (Joyce Huggett)

If you have the energy, get up at dawn to see the sunrise and pray... If not, just enjoy the day and sing "alleluia" in your heart.

Happy Easter!

Feast of the Epiphany - Follow your star!

Before the feast of the Epiphany, or to use an English word “showing” I try to read T.S. Eliot’s poem  “The Journey of the Magi” because it teaches me a very valuable lesson which I keep forgetting.  It teaches me that to follow one’s star until the very end, means that one has to accept disappointment, pain, tedium, regret, cold, the loss of all that we want most at times.  And only those who persevere and keep the dream alive in their hearts find that star.

We put the three kings in the Crib, and we sigh sentimentally.  “Don’t they look sweet!” we sigh.  “Oh look at that young one, he’s so handsome! I love it when he comes into the Crib.  I wonder what Jesus made of all those exotic clothes and presents, and those crowns!“  And so we go on....  But we forget the journey don’t we, the long, cold nights, the weary pain-filled days, the disillusions on the way, the homesickness...  Theologians tell us that it must have taken the best part of two years to travel in those days from the East to Bethlehem. Easy Jet was a long way into the future, and 24-hour journeys were unknown!  It must have been a nightmare from start to finish.   

 T. S. Eliot, with his American freshness of outlook, tells us about it. He imagines one of the kings in old age sitting down in his Eastern palace one night when the stars are out, and as he gazes into the heavens, he remembers what it was like.  He recalls the journey that changed his life and the lives of all those around him.  He remembers the agony and the ecstasy of it.  The poem begins:

                       “A cold coming we had of it,

                        Just the worst time of the year for a journey, and what a long journey.
                        The way was deep, and the weather sharp
                        The very dead of Winter.
                        And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
                        lying down in the melting snow.

                        There were times when we regretted
                        the Summer palaces the stopes, the terraces,
                        and the silken girls bringing sherbet.
                        Then the camel-men, cursing and grumbling,
                        And running away, wanting their liquor and their women..."

Reading this we say to ourselves: “What has changed in all those years since this happened?” Not a lot, if we go on further in the poem:

                        "...and the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
                        and the cities, hostile, and the towns unfriendly
                        and the villages dirty, and charging high prices
                        A hard time we had of it.
                        At the end, we preferred to travel all night
                        sleeping in snatches
                        with the voices singing in our ears, saying
                        that this was all folly..."

Temptation!  They were at their weakest, and they began to regret the venture.  Familiar territory for us?  We have all experienced that!   We, like the kings, set off on our journey, following our dreams, with high hopes, but the reality is very different.  We begin to think that the price we have to pay is just too high.  That was the time the kings had to grit their teeth and just go on, blindly following their star.  And we know the end of the story.  The star stopped over a stable (what did these eastern potentates make of that, I wonder!)  and they found the baby with Mary, his mother (and presumably St. Joseph as well).

T.S. Eliot ends the poem with a challenging and provoking question: “ Was this a birth” he said “or a death?”

What do you think he meant by that?  Think about it.

It was certainly a birth, but it was also the death of the old way of thinking and acting, the death of the old interpretation of the law:  the death of so many things....  Think of what that means in your own life.

So I’ll end where I began.  Epiphany means the showing of the Christ Child to others beside his own people.  It is all about going out, bringing the Gospel message to the ends of the earth.  Following the star.

What is your star?  What dreams do you have for your life?  Are you prepared to follow your own particular star with the same determination and courage that the three kings showed?  If not, then you won’t reach your star, and that would be a shame, wouldn’t it? 

So we pray:

Lord, at this time when we celebrate the journey of the three Wise Men, we pray for their perseverance, their courage, their determination to go on, making the dream possible, in spite of so many things that militate against it.  Help us each day to put our hands in yours and to start afresh on our journey, so that, one day, we will, with all those who started along the long, winding road with us, glimpse the star shining over another stable, and come in to see you, with Mary your Mother.  We ask this through Christ our Lord.  Amen.

A very happy Epiphany!  I suppose you will be keeping it on Sunday, but today, on the 6^th January I wish all our readers the joy of journeying and one day reaching the end, together!  God bless.

Expectancy, Hopefulness, Joy!

The Coming

God held in his hand a small globe.

"Look!" he said.  The Son looked.

Far off, as through water he saw a parched land

of fierce colour. The light burned there;

crusted buildings cast their shadows; a bright serpent,
a river, uncoiled itself, radiant with slime.
On a bare hill, a bare tree saddened the sky.
Many people held out their thin arms to it,
as though waiting for a vanished April to return
to its crossed boughs.
The Son watched them.
"LET ME GO THERE", he said.    R.S. Thomas.

This poem by the Anglican clergyman, R.S. Thomas, who died recently, has a very powerful message for us as we open the gate to Advent.  The weeks leading up to Christmas are wonderful aren't they?  Each year we experience the excitement, the hope the expectancy that lift us out of the dark days and light our lives with that tingling of the thumbs that means we are coming to life!  All around us we hear the sounds of life - the tinkling bells, the running feet of children racing to the shops for brightly-wrapped presents, the sound of carols sung outside in the crisp air of Winter days -  the monotonous ping of the tills registering another sale, the noise of laughter and excited voices drowning out the myriad voices of the beggars who throng our streets at this time. It is almost Christmas - the beautifully lighted window displays tell us so, and in odd corners and in large shop windows the simple, age-old Crib re-iterates the message.  But what message is that today?  So many regard Christmas as just a holiday, and Advent as a time of extra work which is often stressful.  But what is it for you? As Christians, we have to think about that very carefully.

Frances Taylor thought of Advent as a special time when, to quote the SMG Way of Life, she asks us "to allow the mystery of the Incarnation to penetrate our whole being, until Christ becomes our all in all." So for her as for R.S. Thomas, it was a time for reflection for quiet prayer.  Look at the poem again and try to imagine the scene.  Christ sees the darkness, the hopelessness, the longing for an escape as he contemplates the unredeemed world. His response was wrung from him: "Let me go there!" he begs his Father.  To give us hope, to give us freedom, to give us life, to give us Christmas.  The Incarnation, or the coming of Christ to share our pain and darkness as well as our joy and hope, is for Frances Taylor the ultimate sign of the worth of human beings.  If Christ thought it of value to become human, then, in her eyes all human beings were worthy of dignity and of love. All without exception.  She understood that the Incarnation happened only once historically, but in love it goes on through time and space, so that each Christmas brings Christ anew to our darkened world, reaching out his hands to heal, to reconcile, to lift us out of our own particular darknesses  in order to experience the joy of those shepherds and kings that first Christmas-tide.. And we?  Well there is no contest.  Our response in these cash-strapped days of recession, has  to be that of men and women of hope.  We are invited to help those less fortunate than ourselves: to pray for the homeless, the housebound, the lonely, the poor. 

It is now our turn, we cannot just look on Christmas as a big party time and nothing more - to do that, would be to imitate those harassed innkeepers in Bethlehem on that first Christmas night.  They ignored Jesus; they had no room for him.  The demands of the census and the subsequent influx of visitors proved too much for them.  To house a baby, a young mother and a worried father was out of the question.  Frances Taylor told us that the saints revealed that Jesus himself loves to have his infany honoured on earth, and he blesses those who do it.  I told you there was no contest!!  Enjoy Advent.