Families with children are invited to join us in the hall for our Palm Sunday service, procession and activities.
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Families with children are invited to join us in the hall for our Palm Sunday service, procession and activities. Here are the services to be held at St Mary’s during Holy Week. Nerys writes, Once, when one of my children was mentally unwell, I had a conversation with a wise consultant psychiatrist about stookies. ‘Mrs Brown’, he said, ‘The medication I’m giving your son will act like a plaster cast on a broken limb. It will protect his mind, enabling it to mend.’ Looking back at that difficult time when Davie and I often felt useless as parents, I realise that our role also was to act as stookies, supporting and protecting our child until he had recovered and had the strength to be independent of us again. A plaster cast, just like scaffolding on a building, is a temporary measure. Once the house has been built, the scaffolding is removed and put away. In Stanley Spencer’s painting, ‘The Hen’ from his Christ in the Wilderness series, the mother hen guards her chicks by gathering them under her wings but a time will come when they will be able to fend for themselves. At that point, the mother hen will need to let them go. In our Gospel reading for Mothering Sunday, Luke 2.33-35, we read of Mary being warned by wise and faithful Simeon of the cost of motherhood. After you’ve read it, I invite you to reflect on a hymn by Gillian Collins which traces Mary’s relationship with Jesus throughout her life. Mary, joyful mother, resting from the birth, Mary, anxious mother, searching for your boy, Mary, hurt, excluded, standing in the cold, Mary, watching sadly by the cruel cross, Mary, new disciple, in the upper room, For Mary, as for most human parents, there was a process of letting go of her child as he grew up. A time normally comes when the stookie or the scaffolding of practical parental care is removed and put away. But this isn’t true of God’s care which is eternal. In the painting which is based on Luke 13.34-35, Jesus’ is depicted as the embodiment of God’s desire to gather together the whole of creation. See how his body encircles the mother hen and her brood providing a protective refuge. Notice the expression on Jesus’ face. Do you see anxiety? Perhaps he is concerned for the other hens in the picture which are outside the circle of his protection. In the foreground, between his left arm and his feet, there is a way for them to enter. A little bird is coming to land. Look again and see that this is not a chick but a sparrow. There is room for everyone in the spacious, abundant love of God. Is there perhaps sadness also in Jesus’ face? Maybe he is contemplating the cost of this love. You may wish to spend a moment with the painting, allowing it to speak to you of God’s unconditional love for you. I find that Spencer’s paintings are like icons. The more you pray with them, the more you see. Another layer of meaning was revealed to me the other day. As I contemplated Christ’s body protecting the vulnerable mother hen and her chicks, it came to me that we are Christ’s body. This painting can be seen as an image of the church in action, providing a space where all God’s children can receive love and healing. We are reminded in today’s epistle, the opening prayer of Paul’s second letter to the Christians at Corinth, 2 Corinthians 1.3-7, that ‘God comforts us in all our trouble so that we can then comfort people in every kind of trouble’. The word translated ‘comfort’ which is repeated so many times in this passage, is very rich in meaning according to Professor Tom Wright. It is, he writes, when ‘one person comes near another, speaking words which change their mood and situation, giving them courage, new hope, new direction, new insights which alter the way they face the rest of their life’. This is our calling here at St Mary’s, as part of Christ’s body in the world. Our purpose is to provide this kind of comfort to all we know within our community and to those we don’t know in the wider world. I invite you to take some time to pray for them now. At church today there is an opportunity to make a donation to the Mothers’ Union Make a Mother’s Day Appeal. If you wish to give a gift which will help empower women and girls in developing countries to flourish, you can make a donation directly to the church’s bank account, marking your payment Make a Mother’s Day in the reference field. Our Bank Account details are Vestry of St Marys Episcopal Church, Sort code 831809, Account number 00279983 Moira writes This morning as we continue our Lenten journey, we hear in our readings the essence of what our faith and belief is all about. In the lesson from the Old Testament, Exodus 20.1-17, we are reminded once again of the commandments that were given by God to keep his people walking in his ways. Psalm 19 speaks of the glory of God, his wisdom and the joy that comes from following in his ways. The Psalmist says, “The ordinances of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.” So, by following his ordinances, or commandments, we remain faithful and true to God’s way. And in John 2.13-22 we hear about the disciple’s faith in what Jesus told them and how, “they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.” And what of the debater of the age that Paul speaks of? Could this remark have been directed at those who spouted rhetoric and conducted arguments in public about the meaning of language amongst other things? A bit like modern day orators on Twitter, or whatever it is now called! All of these people, in asserting worldly wisdom over God’s truth, are made foolish and purposeless in the face of the cross of Christ. I think that the point Paul is making is that any intellectual search for wisdom, for the understanding of human motives or behaviour, is doomed to failure, or at best to an orderly life of self-disciplined thinking. The human mind cannot by itself grasp, in its searching, the never-ending love of God which is revealed in the cross of Christ. In all of Paul’s epistles, it would seem that instead of applying human logic to all the problems that his readers seem to be going through, Paul used all of his trained and capable intellect to show how the gospel that he was proclaiming equated to human lives. In other words, Paul helped his readers to understand the wisdom of God and how it should show itself in their lives, transforming them in the way that they think and behave. People who have been transformed from unbelief into belief and who grow strong in their faith, have a strong connection to God through the love of Christ on the cross. These are some of the things that we should be reflecting on during this season of Lent, asking ourselves, how close our connection is to God and how, being a Christian, has shaped us and moulded us as we grow in our faith and our belief. I’d like to move on now to our reading from the gospel of John. This is a passage which some people find very difficult to understand. Our image of Jesus as the gentle shepherd of his sheep is certainly put to the test in this passage as he storms into the temple and displays his anger. I don’t know about you, but I remember as a child, fighting or arguing with my brothers and stomping off, slamming doors and then facing the wrath of my mother. And so, I suppose, I should find this passage about the ‘cleansing of the temple’ quite reassuring. Here is Jesus, throwing things around in the ‘church’ of all places – the Jesus who was so calm and gentle the rest of the time. It makes me actually remember that he had human traits as well as being divine. John places this event early in Jesus’ ministry, instead of near its end, as the synoptic gospels do. There it becomes the act that helps to provoke his death. However, in John’s account, this movement to an earlier time in Jesus’ ministry means that the disciples are even more clueless than usual. They are new to Jesus, still trying to figure him out. They are still clinging to their ideas of who he is, rather than paying attention to what Jesus is saying about who he is. Jesus Mafa Project In this passage we see a new side to Jesus, someone who is so angered by what is going on in the temple grounds that he lashes out. It wasn’t so much that the temple authorities were selling animals for sacrifice, after all this is what people were coming to the temple to do, it was more that he could see that the authorities were being deceitful in what they were charging people. They were also rejecting some of the animals that people brought as having blemishes, so that people would have to buy from them. Another reason for Jesus’ anger was that people could only pay for the animals with temple coin. The money changers charged extortionate fees for exchanging Roman or Greek coins for temple coins, and of course the temple took its cut of the profits gained by the money changers. So it was not simply the presence of the money changers and the animals offered for sale that angered Jesus, after all, they were services meant for the convenience of people who had to travel long distances to get to Jerusalem. It was the misuse of authority in the blatant overcharging of even the poorest people that set Jesus off. People were stunned at the behaviour of Jesus, including the disciples who asked Jesus for an explanation. They couldn’t understand why Jesus said, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” It didn’t make sense to them, after all, the temple had been under re-construction for 46 years, how could Jesus raise it up in three days? As with so many things, the disciples only understood what Jesus had said later, in the light of the resurrection. We also know that the temple of which Jesus spoke was his body, not the bricks and mortar of the temple building! But there is another lesson to be learned from this reading, and that is the need for righteous anger, the righteous anger that Jesus displayed in the temple that day. We need to have righteous anger in the face of injustice, extortion, and the exploitation of vulnerable people. Anger at such things is no bad thing, in fact it is a good cleansing thing. It is not the opposite of love. Anger at injustice is an appropriate expression of love and a cry for righteousness. Righteous anger is not a loss of control. Jesus is not out of control in this passage, he is very clear about the targets of his wrath. Righteous anger is about taking control, a move out of passive acceptance and towards change. Over the years we have seen change in the Scottish Episcopal Church. For decades now we have been working in our communities and beyond to bring change against racism, classism and poverty amongst others, and this can be seen in the Lenten appeals we support each year. We have also seen changes internally in the ordination of women and a fuller inclusion in the church of all people regardless of differing lifestyles, circumstances or backgrounds. And so, the challenge coming from our readings this morning, I think, is to remember that the wisdom and power of God is working in our lives, transforming us and moulding us into the people that God wants us to be. And as we are transformed, we should remember that we need that righteous anger to move us into action to help others however we can. In your prayers this morning you may wish to pray for causes that are close to your heart: Because of a beeping smoke alarm high in the rafters of St Mary’s which can’t be replaced until Saturday, the World Day of Prayer Service at 10 a.m. on Friday will now be held at St Blane’s Church.
Nerys writes: Have you ever ridden on the back of a bike that’s going too fast? That’s what it feels like to me sometimes when I read or listen to Mark’s Gospel. I want to shout, ‘Woah! Put the brakes on!’ In today’s Gospel passage, Mark 1.9-15, in just six sentences Mark has told the story of Jesus’ baptism in the river, his testing in the wilderness and the beginning of his ministry in the villages of Galilee. These important events whizz past and we’re on to the calling of the disciples and the stories of healing before we know it. So today, on the first Sunday of Lent, let’s put on the brakes and take some time to explore what Mark is telling us about Jesus and what we can learn from him. So how does the passage begin? Here is the first sentence: In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. Here’s the next sentence: And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. Something else happens: And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’ We’re left to guess what effect these words have of Jesus as Mark moves relentlessly on. And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness.
Mark has just one sentence on Jesus’ experience in the wilderness : He was in the wilderness for forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.
Mark, once more, says nothing about the effect these experiences had on Jesus. He simply tells us what happened next: Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news. I invite you to take a moment to bring to mind those times where you feel close to God, when you know that you are loved and blessed. Think of those times where there is testing and difficulty , when you feel threatened, anxious, afraid. Know that God is with you all the time and that God’s love is greater than any evil. Offer it all to God. Join with me this week to pray for all people who are living in dangerous and difficult situations: • for people in areas of the world where there is armed conflict, Loving God, during this Season of Lent show us by your Spirit how we can wait on those who need our support and prayers. Amen.
Something for everyone during the season of Lent … In the Eastern Orthodox tradition, Peter writes, artists always paint the Transfiguration as their first icon. In fact, in the Orthodox Church they say the artist writes, not paints, the icon. That means it is created not just as a picture to be admired but to convey a message and to point to a meaning. Icons and other religious art is not to be worshipped but to be honoured, venerated even, for the holy truth that it conveys. The Transfiguration scene calls out for visual presentation – with the three figures in a blaze of light on the mountain top and the disciples transfixed by the glory that shone around. At the centre is Jesus, his appearance transformed by this dazzling light. So what is this scene telling us? 15th century icon of the Transfiguration, unknown artist (public domain) The light and the glory that shine forth are not reflected or have their source elsewhere. They come from within the person of Jesus himself. This is the uncreated light which signifies the divine nature of Jesus. But this divinity is present in a physical body, Jesus’ other nature, as a human being. It took the Early Church some 300 years to work this out and formulate it in the words of the Nicene Creed, which we repeat every Sunday: Jesus the Son of God and the second person of the Holy Trinity is two natures – human and divine – in one body. Icons, and indeed most religious art, portray human bodies – of Jesus, his blessed Mother and indeed even God the Father himself. This is by no means idolatrous. We know perfectly well that God does not have hands but yet we happily sing “He’s got the whole world in his hands”. Like icons themselves, words like hands, eyes, arms are what our human language uses to help us get our heads round the reality that lies beneath and beyond. The appearance of Jesus as a light-filled human body at the Transfiguration helps us to grasp the meaning of that phrase on the Book of Genesis, that God created us “in his image” and our bodies – and by extension our characteristics, personalities and capabilities all have the potential to illustrate or reveal the presence of God in our thoughts, actions and words. God has given us the gift of creativity, a sense of what is right or wrong, and a desire to work for the good of others. All this has huge implications for the way we treat our fellow humans, all of whom like us are made in his image. And, given that, to quote the First Letter of John “God is love and all who live in love live in God and God lives in them”, then it follows that the extent to which we love our fellow men and women, and indeed the whole of creation, must be the yardstick by which we measure the clarity, the brightness and the sharpness of the divine image in us. As we come to God in prayer, in this coming season of Lent, examine ourselves and call to mind what we have done or failed to do, then we need to ask ourselves, “Have others seen God’s image in me? Do they see the light of his presence in my thoughts, words and deeds?” And having examined ourselves, pray that we may embody that wonderful truth “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth”. Everyone is invited to our Shrove Tuesday events. Please get in touch on rector @stmarys.org or sign up at the back of church if you would like to attend. A Happy New Year to you all! Since this is the first magazine of 2024, I assume that it is not too late to use this greeting. I hope that it is not too late either to encourage you to make one more New Year’s resolution and to join me in seeking to try new things this year. I read an article recently claiming that trying new things can transform our lives for the better. It can help us discover our strengths and weaknesses, overcome our fears, build our confidence, boost our creativity and grow as people. Here at St Mary’s we aim to offer a variety of Sunday services. If you have been attending the morning services regularly for a number of years, the liturgy will be comfortingly familiar. We also seek to provide services that are different and new, particularly at Night Church. We hope that these might teach us new ways of approaching prayer and worship and challenge us to think afresh about our faith and the way we live it out. This month at Night Church, Ruth Burgess will lead us in a celebration of the ancient festival of Candlemas, Iain Goring, inspired by the author Richard Foster, will reflect on spiritual disciplines, and Kate Sainsbury will share with us a year in the life of the Appletree Community which she has founded to support her son Louis. This month also, we will mark the beginning of Lent with services in the morning and the evening of Ash Wednesday, 14th February. If you haven’t observed Lent before, what about coming to one of these or to the whole church service on the first Sunday of the season to find out more? You are also invited to come together to mark Shrove Tuesday with pancake events in the church hall on the afternoon or evening of 13th February. These will be the first in a series of social events to which you are encouraged to invite relatives, friends or neighbours. Please consider who you might ask to come with you either to the afternoon gathering or to the supper – details below.
The Gospel we’ll be using in our eucharistic services during 2024 is the Gospel of Mark, the earliest and probably the most puzzling of the four Gospels. It is also the shortest, possibly designed to be read aloud in one sitting of a church community. Some of you have already agreed to meet this month to read the whole of this Gospel together. It is not too late to sign up for a morning, afternoon or evening session in the Rectory or in someone’s home. Hearing the Gospel in this new way can be a powerful experience. It may lead to further gatherings to look in detail at various aspects of Mark and explore its themes. We’ll have to wait and see! At St Mary’s we also offer opportunities to meet regularly in groups during the week to discuss and pray together and get to know each other. If you would like to find out about the Monday Gathering, the Men’s Group, the Young Adults Group, the Prayer Group, Sensible Shoes and The Chosen, please get in touch with the organisers, some of whose contact details are at the back of the magazine, or with me. A new home group will soon be launched which will hopefully bring together Christians from different churches in Dunblane to pray and learn together and provide support for one another. This may be the new thing for you to try this year! If so, I urge you to come to the introductory meeting or failing that, to contact Martin or Jill Wisher to find out more. Meeting to worship and to work for good causes along with members of other local churches has always been an important part of the life of St Mary’s. This year, it’s our turn to host the World Day of Prayer in Dunblane. If you haven’t attended this service before, what about coming along to join in the world-wide wave of prayer and to hear a powerful message from the Christian women of Palestine?
This month also, there will be a special Diocesan Evensong to welcome Bishop Marinez of Amazonia and celebrate our new link with her diocese in Brazil. This will be a great opportunity for some of you to visit our cathedral in Perth for the first time and to find out about what may turn out to be an exciting new project for our church.
Nerys writes: The repentant Jonah fresh from the belly of the whale, the psalmist beset by enemies, Paul, writing at a time of great pressure from imperial Rome, and Jesus, starting his ministry under the shadow of John’s arrest – in each of our readings today – Jonah 3.1-5, 10, Psalm 62.5-12, 1 Corinthians 7.29-31 and Mark 1.14-20 – we hear of a response to a call to God at a time of crisis. It is often when we are in crisis that we turn to God, seeking God’s wisdom or guidance, comfort or strength. We trust that God will hear our calls of distress even when they come out of the blue, but will we recognise God’s voice when God responds to our plea? As the Vicar of Soham said in the wake of the murder of two schoolgirls in his parish many years ago now, when we’re drowning is not the best time to start learning to swim. Getting to know God’s voice takes practice. It is a lifetime’s work. Our Gospel today is the first in a series of passages from the Gospel of Mark which will take us to the middle of Lent. I would like to encourage you to take time over the next few weeks to get to know God’s voice a little better by allowing God to speak to you through this Gospel. Mark’s Gospel is a Gospel written at a time of crisis. Scholars think that it was produced either just after or just before AD 70, one of the most traumatic dates in the early history of the Jewish people. It was the year when Jerusalem was attacked and captured by the Roman army after a siege. Over a million people were killed and almost 100, 000 enslaved, the Temple was destroyed and the whole country laid waste. In its opening sentence, this work is described as an evangelion, a Greek word used for an important public announcement about a significant event which would change people’s lives for the better. It is a message of good news about someone called ‘Jesus Christ (Jesus the Messiah), the son of God’ . This was someone whose coming was prophesied by Isaiah and proclaimed by John the Baptist. This was someone who came to Galilee announcing a regime change. God’s kingdom is at hand. It is time to change the way we think and the way we live our lives. The narrative forges ahead with breathless urgency and excitement. It is written in the style of the popular storyteller as a series of anecdotes vividly told, with short sentences strung together, the word ‘immediately’ appearing time and time again moving the action swiftly and jerkily along. This is not a Gospel to be read slowly, chewing on every morsel. In fact, it was probably intended to be listened to in single session. When we read it like this, we can imagine the disconcerting and exhilarating impact this Gospel had on those who first heard it, and we can begin to understand what its author is seeking to do. For hundreds of years, Mark was felt by the Church to be inferior to the other three Gospels which are written in a more sophisticated style and present in more detail the teaching of Jesus. It was only in the nineteenth century that it was discovered that Mark wasn’t an abridged version of Matthew but the earliest surviving record of the life and teaching of Jesus. And it is only in the last hundred years that scholars have realised that it is not simple or naïve but ‘shot through with deeply theological perspectives’, to use the words of Rowan Williams. It is when we read or listen to it from beginning to end that we notice, that although Mark is the shortest of the four Gospels it consistently provides much more detailed descriptions of events than Matthew and Luke. In the account of the feeding of the five thousand, for example, Mark tells us that the grass the people were sitting on was green. This little detail which indicates what time of year the miracle happened, not only makes the story more vivid but also according to some scholars, suggests that it is based on an eyewitness account of the event. The identity of Mark has been lost in the mists of time, but there is an ancient tradition that he was the secretary of St Peter. This was recorded early in the second century by a bishop who had learnt it from his churches in Asia Minor. According to this tradition, Mark not only wrote down but also interpreted what Peter had said to him, so that it would be accessible to new hearers and readers. It is when we read the Gospel from beginning to end that we begin to see the great skill and artistry behind the presentation of this series of apparently simple stories. Threads of continuity come to light and we notice repeated behaviour in the three groups of characters who appear regularly in the story. The religious authorities – priests, scribes, Pharisees and Sadducees – are suspicious, sceptical and argumentative opposed to Jesus from the start. The crowd which appears more consistently in Mark than in the other Gospels, is impressed by his teaching and his miracles but its members never seem able to take a step beyond expressing wonder and amazement. The disciples follow Jesus but never really grasp who he is and what he had come to do. It is only the ragbag collection of people in crisis – like the man possessed by demons, the woman who is haemorrhaging blood, Jairus whose daughter had died, the Syrophoenician woman or the blind man from Bethsaida – who recognise him as the Christ, the Son of God, and call out to him for help. The way Mark portrays these characters doesn’t just draw us into the story but challenges us to respond ourselves to Jesus from amidst the crises of our lives and our times. I urge you to sign up to meet with others in the congregation to hear Mark’s message of good news read in a single session, or failing that, to set aside an hour and a half sometime in the next few weeks to read it through yourself. Allow this ancient little book to work on you, to bring you closer to Jesus so that you will better recognise God’s voice.
An icon of St Mark written by Diana, late wife of Hugh Grant. St Mary’s is hosting the World Day of Prayer for Dunblane this year.
Nerys writes: A few weeks ago, Peter was telling us that Advent was his favourite season in the church year. I think that I prefer this season of Epiphany which starts on such a dramatic note with the revelation of Christ to the wise men and contains such a rich and varied selection of readings, culminating in the mountain-top revelation of Christ to his disciples on the last Sunday before Lent. This week’s passages present us with a tapestry of images of the One who seeks us out, draws close to us, inhabits us and calls us to service. In our Old Testament passage, 1 Samuel 3.1-10, we read of the boy Samuel ministering to God even though he did not yet know God. ‘Go, lie down’, Eli says to him, ‘and if he calls you, you shall say, “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.”’ ‘O Lord, you have searched me and known me’, the poet prays in Psalm 139. ‘You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from afar. Even before a word is on my tongue, O Lord, you know it completely.’ ‘Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ?’ Paul asks in 1 Corinthians 6.12-20. ‘Do you not know … that anyone united to the Lord becomes one spirit with him?’ “How did you come to know me?” Nathanael asks Jesus in our Gospel, John 1.43-51. Again and again the word know appears, reminding us of God’s desire to know us, and for us to know God. At the beginning of this season of Epiphany, a season whose focus is on the revelations of God in Scripture, I think it is worth taking some time to ask what do we mean and how do we feel, when we talk of God knowing us and of us knowing God. In English, ‘to know’ has a very wide range of meanings that require two or more verbs in other languages. In my native Welsh we have gwybod and adnabod, in French we have connaitre and savoir, in German we have wissen, kennen and erkennen. Some of you will know of other languages, like Spanish and Italian where a similar distinction is made between knowing a person or a thing and knowing a fact. Our psalm for today is a celebration of all aspects of God’s knowledge of us. It tells us in detail how we are known completely by God. Wherever the psalmist goes, whatever he says and thinks, all is known to God. No detail in his everyday life is too small for God not to know about. This is a wonderful mystery according to the psalmist, but I wonder how thinking about it makes you feel? In our age of widespread surveillance, the idea that we can’t escape from God’s knowledge of us may feel threatening. But if we are anxious or even frightened by the thought of an all-knowing God, we are missing the point of the psalm. The Hebrew word for ‘know’ has an even wider range of meanings than the English and includes the sense of having an intimate relationship with someone. To be known by God is to be loved by God. When we get to know God, we learn that God is not an intruder invading our privacy by stealth or by force. Neither is God’s persistent presence with us designed to keep track of everything we do wrong. God’s deepest desire is not to control us, but to invite us to know the unlimited and unconditional love that God is. Rather than being a threat, being known by God is a great comfort to the psalmist. When we have an awareness of the presence of God who has known us from the moment of our conception, who is familiar with every aspect of our lives, who understands us better than we understand ourselves, we never need to feel alone. There can be times when we’re suffering the loss of a loved one or experiencing pain or battling illness when we feel that no one fully understand what we are going through. With God there are no moments, however dark, which we need to face alone. There is nothing, no hurt or trauma, no disappointment or shame, in our lives that God isn’t concerned about. God knows the story of our lives. God is aware of the sources of our fear or anger or guilt and understands what they are doing to us and what they are doing to others. When we allow God to be intimately involved in our lives, accepting as Paul does, that our bodies are not our own but are temples of God’s Spirit, members of Christ’s body, God can use this knowledge of us to protect us and care for us. This is the psalmist’s experience. ‘ You have hedged (or enclosed) me’ he says – the Hebrew verb deriving from a word often used of a military fortification. ‘You have laid your hand upon me’. Knowing that God’s love is working for good in our lives frees us to work for the good of others. I find it reassuring that God knows all about us and understands us before he calls us. When I look back at my life, I remember a time when, like Samuel, I didn’t know God but I can see now that God already knew me well and that God used that knowledge of me and those around me in order to draw me close enough to hear God’s voice. We are told that Samuel did not yet know God but through his mother’s prayers he had been placed in God’s house under the tutelage of someone who could guide him and teach him God’s ways, and on that fateful night helped him to recognise that it was God who was calling him. We don’t know what Nathaniel was doing underneath the fig tree. Some scholars claim that he was studying the Torah, others that he was keeping alive an ancient dream of his people. The Chosen, a dramatization of Jesus’ life that some of us have been watching, has him sheltering there at a time of crisis in his life. Whatever it was that he was doing, Nathaniel, like the young Samuel, had made himself available to the God he did not yet know. A word of encouragement from Philip leads him to Jesus who only needs to refer to that moment under the tree for Nathaniel to know that he was known and to express his faith in the most unlikely of Messiahs. This was my experience too. After many years of making myself available to the God I didn’t yet know, I was invited by a friend to ‘come and see’. At that meeting, it was revealed to me that I was loved by God who knows me through and through. Something changed in me. I no longer merely knew about God but knew God through Jesus. I experienced his forgiving and healing love, and from that point my faith began to grow.
We are not told what happened to Nathaniel after that day but Jesus’ promise that he would ‘see greater things’ suggests that he would become a follower, witnessing the miraculous healings and signs recounted in the Gospel. For Samuel, God’s call to service followed swiftly on from his recognition of God’s voice. In a world that largely doesn’t yet know God, we who do know and love God have work to do. We are called to introduce others to Jesus like Philip did and to guide and support them as Eli did. I wonder how will we respond this week and through the course of this new year, to that call? Mark Cazalet, ‘Nathaniel under the fig tree’ (Methodist Modern Art Collection) Nerys writes: Yesterday morning, I tried very hard to prepare a sermon for our Midnight Eucharist but the words just wouldn’t come as they usually do. After several hours of grappling in vain with my thoughts, I heard two pings from my mobile phone. Two friends had sent me messages at the same time, one containing a poem, the other an image, both created in response to the horrors of the last few months. This confirmed to me what I already knew deep in my heart, that for me, this Christmas is not a time for talking but for holy silence as we come together to mark once more the coming of Christ, born into the rubble of the world which we have broken. I invite you to join me in putting aside some time to read Thom Shuman’s poem and explore Kelly Latimer’s icon, using them as way into prayer this Christmas. Kelly Latimer, Christ in the rubble
the creche is empty this year . . . Mary is sitting with the mothers Joseph has put his tool belt the shepherds are sitting the animals are tagging along and the angels have fallen silent, (c) 2023 Thom M. Shuman Nerys writes: During the last few weeks, I’ve been reading a book which I’m finding is sustaining me during what has turned out to be a difficult Advent in many ways. I don’t know about you, but for me it’s going to be hard to find much joy in our Christmas festivities this year. It doesn’t feel right to be carrying on as usual when there is such killing of innocent people happening in places like Gaza and in eastern Ukraine, when so many people have been driven from their homes by war and climate disasters and when there is so much economic need in our own communities. What I have learnt from this book, and what gives me hope in the face of the horror and terrible injustice of today, is that it was in a very similar circumstances that Christ was born. Over the years we have sanitized and prettyfied the Gospels’ account of the first Christmas until it bears little relation to its historical setting in first century Palestine and has little to offer anyone living in troubled times like ours. The book I’ve been reading sets the story in the political and economic landscape of the time – a time of darkness and danger for the Jewish people. For generations they had suffered at the hands of one empire or another and now they were under Roman rule. Caesar had announced the Pax Romana and had been declared the saviour of the world. Through crushing military victory and control maintained through violence, the Romans had ended the cycles of endless wars and brought about world peace. It was at this time that God who is love, came to the hills of Judea and to a village in Galilee to begin a different kind of peace campaign. God first came to Zechariah, an ordinary priest, and his elderly, childless wife Elizabeth. God then reached towards Galilee to find someone to collaborate with in a plan for a kind of peace that didn’t rely on violence or war or on turning people out of their homes. While the Roman empire would soon collapse, God’s peace would be good news for oppressed people the world over for ever. But the coming of the Messiah was nothing like any good first-century Jewish man or woman expected. No one anticipated the place or the person that God would approach – least of all Mary, the girl from Galilee. The people of the north were considered inferior by those in Judea and Jerusalem. Over the centuries they had intermarried with other peoples, they didn’t observe the Jewish Law to the same extent as their southern neighbours and didn’t worship regularly in the temple. These villages were places of resistance to foreign rule – the people always waiting for the next act of aggression in a cycle of protests, uprisings and reprisals. This was the last place anyone expected to be on God’s map. But it was to Nazareth in Galilee that God sent the angel Gabriel, to the last person you would expect – a local girl from an ordinary family. The Mary of our Christmas cards dressed in blue with her delicate beauty, calm and serene, is not the Mary of Luke’s Gospel. This girl on the verge of becoming a woman would have been shaped by trauma – the collective trauma of her people, humiliated and oppressed for centuries on end, and perhaps personal trauma, existing as she did in a precarious place where sexual violence against women and children was widespread. But a young woman like her, living at a time of great political tension which often spilled into violence, would also have been formed by resistance. The author of the book I’ve been reading, likens Mary to members of the current generation of Palestinian women in the West Bank who refuse to accept the Israeli occupation. Women like Abed Al Tamimi, from the small village of Nabi Saleh, not unlike Nazareth, who at the age of 16 was arrested for slapping an Israeli soldier. She had grown up marching in community protests against the Israeli settlers who had taken over the village spring and much of their agricultural land. She was only ten when Mustafa, her cousin, was killed by soldiers. The following year, she witnessed the arrest of her mother (which she herself tried to stop) and then the arrest of her older brother. When soldiers came to her front yard just weeks after shooting another of her cousins in the face, she reacted with her fists. The next time the soldiers came, it was to take her to prison. Before she became and adult, Abed Tamimi had developed a spine of steel. At the age of 22, she continues to resist the occupation, regularly risking her freedom and her life in her community’s quest for justice. Two thousand years earlier, Mary would have seen soldiers riding into Nazareth, terrorizing her neighbours in the name of peacekeeping. She would have witnessed uncles humiliated, cousins hurt and female relatives taken by force to be punished in unspeakable ways. While the men in her community took up arms to protect their lives and land, she might have composed songs of grand reversals and unlikely victories. Formed by trauma and resistance, she would have understood justice as rebellion against the oppression of the empire. But before she herself could push against it with violence, Mary was pulled into God’s peace-making initiative. The angel insists that she has found favour with God. God’s Spirit would overshadow her body, and she would conceive the Son of God, a rival to Caesar, one who would be able to reshape the world according to justice, bringing a different kind of peace. Mary listens to the promise of the healing of so much hurt and responds with confidence borne of trust. The young rebel is ready to be at God’s service. In the courtyard of the Church of the Annunciation built on the foundations of what is thought to have been Mary’s home in Nazareth, there is a collection of images from across the world. Most are the classic Madonna and Child motif but each reflects the nation of the artwork’s origin. Together they represent the ways in which Mary and her son continue to be embodied in those precarious places in the world where mothers are practicing non-violent resistance to oppression and teaching their children to hunger for justice and peace May we in our prayers and actions support those who are continuing what Mary started with her ‘Yes’ to God, and in our own lives may we hold on to the hope which the coming of her son offers us in these dark days. Kelly Latimore icon: Mother of God: Protectress of the Oppressed |
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