SOUL SURMISE

HOPE

Advent is a waiting in hope. Jesus followers are hope representatives, hope breathers, hope builders... in little gestures... in social transformation. We are called to intentionally live lives of hope in the waiting reality of hope in our hearts, our families, our neighbourhoods, our nations and our world... 

 

Hope is a known starling falling

Hope is the shade of an apricot tree

Hope is a dove with a leaf in its mouth

Hope is a star in the sky named for me

 

Hope is a greeting in the silence

Hope is a hand held tight in grief

Hope is a song sung darkness

Hope is a fragile and robust belief

 

Hope is the promise you remember

Hope is the substance of a mystery

Hope is a veil that’s torn asunder

Hope is a stone that’s rolled away.

 

Hope is a decision for love and joy

And that we're going to get out of this minute

Hope is belief in tomorrow ahead

And that today we’re going to live in it.

 

FOR GOD'S SAKE, GIVE US SOME REALITY

photo: Christmas in Yemen by Igor Dobrowolski (from a Billboard series in Berlin)

Jesus was not dropped into an idyllic nativity scene... but into a world of turmoil and violence... Advent reminds is that God is always present not distant from our reality.

 

Seamlessly sown creedal conclusions

Safe and sanitised solutions

Out of context texts for every question

All lamenting Psalms put beyond use

In suits and ties and hats and Sunday smiles

FOR GOD’S SAKE GIVE US SOME REALITY.

 

14 million people desperate for some food in Yemen

Thousands of central American refugees heading for the American border

Tensions threatening war on the Ukraine- Russian border

Alaskans coming to terms with an earthquake in Anchorage

The UK in turmoil over Brexit, back stops and inertia at Stormont 

FOR GOD’S SAKE GIVE US SOME REALITY.

 

A seasonally well decorated stable

Freshly showered cattle and perfumed straw

A carpenter with extra mural skills in midwifery

Westminster Confession signing stargazing mystics

A perfect little baby “no crying he makes”

FOR GOD’S SAKE GIVE US SOME REALITY.

 

A teenage girl’s screams pierce a silent night

A baby laid in an infested animal stall

God, vulnerable and homeless

Death squads descending in the dawn’s first light

From where refugees risk their lives escaping hell

FOR GOD’S SAKE, BORN INTO THE MIDST OF REALITY.

PEACE ON EARTH - BONO WRESTLING WITH THE CHRISTMAS ANGELS

(right at the outset of Advent, this U2 song gives us a reality check. Originally written around 2001, it only uses the U2 catalogue until that year...)

Those of us who are believers in the Christian faith and as a result are deeply engaged with the writings of the Old and New Testament are many many times caught in the horns of dilemma. Believing these ancient manuscripts of Scripture to be the inspired word of God we are often caught out by the reality of the news on our televisions clashing with such revelation. No better an example comes every Christmas time when those angels glide above the astonished shepherds and tell them:

Glory to God in the highest
And on earth peace to men
On whom his favour rests

This peace on earth usually clashes literally violently with the end of year reviews of the previous twelve months which is usually jam packed with tragedy, disaster, violent crime, terrorist atrocities and war. Where is the peace? What were those angels talking about?

Of course as with this and other such contradictions we who have followed an evangelical seamless view of Scripture have a habit of hermeneutical gymnastics to wish it away. Either that or we ignore it or palm it off to another time, when a star hung over some stable or to the culmination of time itself. And often I feel like a fraud. My apologetics are left in tatters as I ignore the anomalies. How can I convince a waiting world of the authenticity of a belief when I won’t stare the difficulties of my faith square in the eye? Few preachers have helped me. Few theologians either.

So what a breath of fresh air there is when Bono constantly eyeballs the dilemmas with an honesty and vulnerability that seems to me to be a courage and bravery of faith rather than the cowardly cop out. So you are watching the 1998 review of the year in the midst of your children’s nativity plays. How do you reconcile the twenty-nine lives so violently and needlessly ended by the terrorist bomb in Omagh, Co. Tyrone, with the aforementioned song of the angels. Honesty and vulnerability probably says that you don’t. Don’t lose your faith over it either. Wrestle with it:

"Jesus could you take the time
To throw a drowning man a line
Peace on earth"

Bono takes it all on. Longs for heaven on earth and yearns for the time when that might be some kind of reality and tells his God that indeed he is tired of the waiting. He asks His God to answer the cries of those who have lost their children now silent in the ground. He concludes by telling Jesus that the words of that Christmas nativity sticks in his throat and he asks Him what it is worth - this peace on earth.

This is why the Church needs Bono. This is why I need Bono. He is willing to take that which he believes and the world that he sees around him and wrestle with them and not let any of them go. Peace On Earth is up front and without apologies. It’s a rant at God. Indeed as a song it could have got very slushy and sentimental when he names some of the victims of the bomb and links them with Christmas peace words. It works because the sentimentality is given the roughest of edges by the confrontation with God. And of course it is by no means a new theme on a U2 record. Indeed it could be seen as a direct follow up to the last track on Pop, Wake Up, Dead Man, when Jesus again is asked to help him because he feels alone in the world "and a fucked up world it is too".

Bono has written many times of his sense of connection with the Old Testament Psalmist King David most notably in his forewords for John Waters book Race With Angels and the Pocket Cannon Series book of Psalms. For Bono David, who he sees as an early blues singer indeed an early Elvis, was constantly raging at God for the injustices going on down here on earth. There is an honesty to the Psalms that seems alien to much of modern Christian worship where we are always looking at some kind of victory or overcoming. Bono and David’s experiences seem to be less than victorious or rosy as they look around at what goes on in this world.

For me this is what makes U2’s music, often condemned by the evangelical Christian fraternity, more real, prophetic and indeed Biblical than the vast majority of what masquerades as Christian music or art. Britain’s most successful Christian rock band,Delirious?, who openly speak of U2 as their major influence and inspiration never get close to writing a Psalm. For them the sentimentality is never smudged or stained by the blood or pain of the 21st century fallen world. That is not necessarily their fault as much as the Christian conditioning in which they have been developed and which is their market place.

Of course this has been a theme that can be traced back over 17 years of U2’s music. Perhaps their first foray into trying to equate faith and TV news was the War album and in particular Sunday Bloody Sunday, another look at the Northern Ireland troubles, when in the middle of the "trenches dug within our hearts" they were claiming "the victory Jesus won" and chanting "How Long, How long must we sing this song" from Isaiah and the Psalmist again.

On Unforgettable Fire there was the injustice of Martin Luther King’s murder, a look at Hiroshima on the title track and the Dublin junkies on Bad. Joshua Tree is much more steeped in Biblical and spiritual imagery than Unforgettable Fire and deals with this running and crawling and climbing and reaching for another Kingdom in the midst of the British miner’s strikes (Red Hill Mining Town), personal tragedy in the loss of one of their young employees (One Tree Hill) and that Dublin drug epidemic (Running To Stand Still).

The two songs from that album that maybe most sum up the theme of the entire U2 catalogue are Bullet The Blue Sky and of course I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For. After a trip to central America where he witnesses the horrific things that America was doing to the native population Bono returned o Dublin and asked Edge to do his best to put El Salvador through his amps. There has never been a more turbulent and war like rock track in the history of music as Edge did just that and in the midst of Bono’s lyrics there is an almost throw away line that might just be the crucial clue to Peace On Earth and so much more. Bono sings, "Jacob wrestled with the angel and the angel was overcome".

Now there is another interesting Old Testament story. Here is this absolute scoundrel. A man who has deceived everyone that ever came in contact with him from his father to his brother to his father-in-law. Somehow the grace of God "sees beauty in ugly things", "sees goodness in everything". We are told that one evening Jacob gets involved with a man and they tumble and wrestle the entire night. In the dawn, Jacob realises that there is something supernatural going on and will not let his assailant go until he blesses him. The man who has clearly become and angel eventually is understood to be God and Jacob gets a new name Israel which means "wrestled with God". A whole nation is born.

It is that wrestling that Bono has been involved in. He has never let go. Since those early days, in the fervent and zealous and a whole lot more naive Christian fellowship back in Dublin, Bono has tried to make sense of his unflinching faith in God and the Christian belief in redemption and hope. On his pilgrimage he has never hidden away from the very difficult issues that that faith has to wrestle with in the unbelievable world that he has seen as a rock star, a humanitarian and as a courter of Popes and Presidents and Prime Ministers.

In the end I Still Haven’t Found What I’m looking For has always been his confession:

"You broke the bonds
You loosed the chains
Carried the cross
And my shame
You know I believe it
But I still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For"

EMMANUEL - GOD WITH US

My Christmas Day sermonette was about how everything we face in life is not fixable BUT the baby Jesus tells us that whatever we are going through God is with us...

 

EMMANUEL - GOD WITH US

Emmanuel - God With Us

 

May we know God with us

 

In the joy of family together

And in the sadness of empty chairs.

May we know God with us 

 

In the blessing of our grace nourished souls

And in the sins and doubts within us.

May we know God with us

 

In the abundance of what we are given

And in the poverty of so many around us. 

May we know God with us

 

In our city blessed with peace and hope

And in a world that is still at war.

Emmanuel - God with us

 

Wherever we are

Whoever we are with

However we feel

Whatever ways we are broken.

Emmanuel - God with us!

GREGORY PORTER SINGS JESUS IN THE ALLEYS - ALMOST A CAROL?

My goodness what a talent Gregory Porter is. Coming out of the jazz corner with that incredible voice, that Jools Holland has suggested is one of the best of the millennia so far, he crosses all the genre boundaries and channels Gaye and Hathaway with songs of politics, social comment and the spiritual, filtered through velvet.  

Sneaking past the dragons at the door by way of that velvet voice, for the next while, will be prophetic Gospel call of the title track of his new record, Take Me To The Alley.

Well the guild their homes

In preparation of the king

And they line the sidewalks

With every kind of shiny thing

They will be surprised

When they hear me say

Take me to the alley

Take me to the afflicted ones

Take me to the lonely ones that somehow lost their ways

Let them hear me say

I am their friend

Come to my table

Rest hear in my garden

You will have a pardon

When Jools Holland asked Porter what it was about he didn’t go for some cerebral poetic song about Jesus. He said it was about his mother and her example as she would have them out in the alleys of the city helping the lost and lonely and poor in whatever way they could. Porter’s mum was a minister and this was not the just the Gospel she preached. This was the Gospel she lived while she preached it.

If we listen closely we hear the Christmas nativity. God's incarnation was in a baby born in a back alley where there was no room in the Inn. The Gospel writer John put it poetically when he wrote, "The word came flesh and moved into the neighbourhood". If you want to find Jesus then take yourself to the alleys. That's where he surprised us when he showed up on earth. That is where he still surprises us with his presence today.

Sing it Gregory!

My goodness what a talent Gregory Porter is. Coming out of the jazz corner with that incredible voice, that Jools Holland has suggested is one of the best of the millennia so far, he crosses all the genre boundaries and channels Gaye and Hathaway with songs of politics, social comment and the spiritual, filtered through velvet.  

Sneaking past the dragons at the door by way of that velvet voice, for the next while, will be prophetic Gospel call of the title track of his new record, Take Me To The Alley.

Well the guild their homes

In preparation of the king

And they line the sidewalks

With every kind of shiny thing

They will be surprised

When they hear me say

Take me to the alley

Take me to the afflicted ones

Take me to the lonely ones that somehow lost their ways

Let them hear me say

I am their friend

Come to my table

Rest hear in my garden

You will have a pardon

When Jools Holland asked Porter what it was about he didn’t go for some cerebral poetic song about Jesus. He said it was about his mother and her example as she would have them out in the alleys of the city helping the lost and lonely and poor in whatever way they could. Porter’s mum was a minister and this was not the just the Gospel she preached. This was the Gospel she lived while she preached it.

If we listen closely we hear the Christmas nativity. God's incarnation was in a baby born in a back alley where there was no room in the Inn. The Gospel writer John put it poetically when he wrote, "The word came flesh and moved into the neighbourhood". If you want to find Jesus then take yourself to the alleys. That's where he surprised us when he showed up on earth. That is where he still surprises us with his presence today.

Sing it Gregory!

TOM CHAPLIN - TWELVE TALES OF CHRISTMAS

“This is the sound of Christmas for me,” my daughter has been saying as we have listened to Tom Chaplin’s Twelve Tales Of Christmas on a loop in the car this past week. Jasmine loves it. She loves, loves, loves his cover of Walking In The Air. “Best version ever,” she tells her friends on a youth club run. She’s 17 and too young to have heard of Keane. She’s listening to the record as a stand alone piece and she cannot get enough. “His voice is so warm!” 

Her father has to agree. Chaplin’s Keane were harshly done by on the credibility stakes but as Jasmine points out, he has some voice. Twelves Tales… has eight original songs and the covers of the aforementioned Walking In The Air as well as The Pretenders’ 2000 Miles and Joni Mitchell’s The River are beautifully reconfigured… that voice does them more than justice!

I am trying to think of another artist who has written eight original songs for a Christmas record. Apart from Sufjan but then Mr Stevens is almost working on another art form! 

Chaplin’s strength in these songs is that he takes you into spaces. You are in the Cathedral on Christmas Eve in Midnight Mass, a song about faithful friends, you are on the Banks Of Thames in London Lights, a love song far out relation of Waterloo Sunset; and in the family front room We Remember You This Christmas as we remember those no longer with us.

Tom Chaplin doing Christmas songs has all the ingredients of cheesiness abounding. Twelves Tales… though, giving the warmth as my daughter’s suggests, is a melancholy affair in its moody atmospherics. There is, as we would imagine some sentimentality but reality is always around the next verse. It is a soundtrack for the entirety of the Christmas feeling. 

My disappointment would be that it is rather light on theology or mention of the Christ baby. God is not absent but there is a sense that Church and Mass are in there like all the other decorations. There is however a lot of light in the dark, no more clearly than on For The Lost. Chaplin sets the scene in a Brexit and Trump world:

 

“Everyone is running scared

All terrified and unprepared

For where we are and what we have in store

You can turn your head away

Or you can turn to guard and pray

But either way, the writing's on the wall”

 

Into this bleak midwinter Chaplin calls us to be lights:

 

“Bring your light, only bring your light

For the lost, for the lost in our time

For the lost and an end to the night

Bring your light, only bring your light”

 

Light in the deep dark winter. Hope for the new year…

 

“So gather up, don't be afraid

The future's ours and ours to make”

 

Let’s!

CLOSE ENOUGH TO WHISPER - Stockman with Chris Taylor on Bandcamp

When I wrote Close Enough To Whisper, some twenty years ago I always saw it as a song. All these years later and I get my wish.

Chris Taylor is an musicians and artist from San Antonio, Texas. When I was writing Close Enough To Whisper he was fronting a band called Love Coma before going solo. I used to play his songs on my Rhythm and Soul radio show, back in the day. His album of Dylan covers, Down A Dead End Street, is one of my favourite albums of 2017.

Chris and I have hooked up over the last number of years on Facebook and last week he sent me a message asking about this poem. I sent it to him one morning and by evening he had conjured this. It comes with all the artistry of Taylor and I guarantee that if you give it two or three plays it will sneak its way into your head... and I hope your heart and soul.

The lyrics are my attempt to unpack the intimacy of St. John's phrase, "The Word became flesh..." We need to stop right there and try to grasp with our finite brain capacity this idea of God becoming one of us. 

I think Chris's take on the lyric draws out the soul depth tenderly...

Go get it now... it is FREE! 

https://christaylor.bandcamp.com/track/close-enough-to-whisper

 

CLOSE ENOUGH TO WHISPER 

The Eternal focused on a moment
The Voice becomes a listener
The Word becoming flesh and bone
Close enough to whisper

Beyond the world's comprehension
Moves right into the midst of her
Heaven stoops to touch the earth
Close enough to whisper

Close enough to touch her
Close enough to kiss her
Close enough to be broken
Close enough to whisper

For God so loved the world
He emptied Himself to visit her
Came down to walk beside her
Close enough to whisper

The Eternal focused on a moment
The Voice becomes a listener
The Word becoming flesh and bone
Close enough to whisper.

ANGELS PLAN THE GRAND ARRIVAL... THE BIG BIRTH - A Monologue

At our recent Community Carol Service and this morning in Fitzroy, Paul Bowman and I were trying to look at the stranger than fiction downside up story of God becoming human. I wrote this...

Lord, The County Council of Heaven Events Sub Committee met about the BIG BIRTH… the GRAND ARRIVAL…

We don’t want to leave anything to chance.

God becomes human

It's a big deal.

We see majesty, holiness, splendour, power and worship… World wide worship..

We have chosen Jerusalem Jubilee Maternity Hospital

It is near the Palace

It has  a great reputation

All princes and princesses are born there

They can deal with the world’s attention

And we kind of liked the play on Jubilee…

It’s the little detail’s with us

We are putting in a new wing starting in the morning…

We want comfort, professionalism, no risk, no germs, no animal smells… AS IF…

After all these centuries… 9 months is not a lot of time

Anyway

We have purchased a brand new state of the art helicopter

On stand by for any emergency

And Mary will have an Emergency hot line 24/7

Midwife?

We have googled one in Belfast…

She comes with great CV

And Wikipedia say she’s the best int he world

Nothing to chance

Now… media…

We will insist on a media blackout for a few days

And then… 

An open topped limousine to the Palace

With bullet proof glass of course

The a press conference

Beamed all around the world… 

And… could we as this ONE special time

The Universe… Perhaps?

Anyway… time to talk about the detail

The Press office are on it

And then the Party

All world leaders

And U2 are being booked

Only one person that God wants to meet eh… Bono…

As they say, the only difference between you and Bono Lord is that you don’t think you’re Bono

Sorry sir… I know you like Bono

Anyway… enough jokes… anything we left out

What…

No maternity ward… no room at all…

No helicopter… a donkey

No midwife… not even her mother

No press… Bethlehem… Bethlehem

No limousine… fleeing to Egypt as a refuJesus

Really

The detail is all in the Bible

Really… ok… 

You want us to locate a few shepherds… and eastern mystics…

Thank you sir…

Oh well at least he wants a choir!!

THE CLASH OF EMPIRE... AND A BABY IN STRAW

 

Do you know that sound… that grating sound…. a nail scratched down an old black board. It is repellent. It jars deep within. You hate it!

Have you ever thought of Christmas as this? It is how Herod thought of Christmas. Why did he kill all those babies?

When I was a child I used to confuse Herod and Pharaoh. In some ways there was no need. Add Caesar and you have the three main protagonists against God. From beginning to end the Bible is a battle of Kingdoms. God Kingdom verses The Empire. 

The theologian Walter Brueggemann wrote a piece called 19 Theses. here are a few: -  

1. Everybody lives by a script—whether implicit or explicit.

2. We get scripted through the process of nurture, formation and socialization, and it happens without our knowing it.

3. The dominant script in our society is one of technological therapeutic military consumerism.

4. That script enacted through advertising, propaganda and ideology, especially in the liturgies of television, promises to keep us safe and happy.

5. That script has failed. The script of technological therapeutic military consumerism cannot make us safe or happy.

9. The alternative script is rooted in Scripture and is enacted through the tradition of the church. The Bible and the Church offer of a counter-metanarrative to the script of technological therapeutic military consumerism.

10. The counter-script has as its most distinctive feature its key character, the God of the Bible—Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

The Christmas script clashed with Herod’s script. The clash is so obvious in the story. One King Of the Jews, in a palace, in power and with the might of an army ready to wipe out any threat to the Empire, that he is in cahoots with. Another King Of The Jews born unnoticed in a backend of nowhere hamlet with no room for him but an animal’s manger. Herod saw what was coming. Herod knew that this was going to cost him his comfort. That he would be thrown from his throne and under a radically different Lordship.

And us? What is the script we have been nurtured by? Jesus birth is a “counter-metanarrative”. Yet, do we hear the repellent sound of the clash. Did the Holiday season of greed and excess influence your Advent Season or the other way around? Which script is winning?

The first chapter of Paul’s letter to the Colossians is a subversive poem about the clash with Caesar. All the names he uses for Jesus were used about Caesar. As the dominant script of the Empire is beaming down on the followers of Jesus, Paul helps them reimagine another script. 

Colossians 1: 15 -20 The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.

In the car coming back from another shopping run my daughter Jasmine asked me the meaning of it. “All this stuff Daddy. What is it for? It will be thrown out? We can’t take it to heaven? Why should I get anything for Christmas?”

It is teenage angst? It is actually, I believe, a trip to Onialeku in Uganda last summer and the two beloved sponsor children that are her screen savers on her phone? It is the script of Jesus clashing against the script of Herod. It is a world changer.

PRAYER: Lord make us alert to the script of Empire around us. Help us to be sensitive to your counter-metanarrative that changes everything. May we hear that repellent sound of the clash of Kingdoms and follow the humble baby not the earthly power.

Do you know that sound… that grating sound…. a nail scratched down an old black board. It is repellent. It jars deep within. You hate it!

Have you ever thought of Christmas as this? It is how Herod thought of Christmas. Why did he kill all those babies?

When I was a child I used to confuse Herod and Pharaoh. In some ways there was no need. Add Caesar and you have the three main protagonists against God. From beginning to end the Bible is a battle of Kingdoms. God Kingdom verses The Empire. 

The theologian Walter Brueggemann wrote a piece called 19 Theses. here are a few: -  

1. Everybody lives by a script—whether implicit or explicit.

2. We get scripted through the process of nurture, formation and socialization, and it happens without our knowing it.

3. The dominant script in our society is one of technological therapeutic military consumerism.

4. That script enacted through advertising, propaganda and ideology, especially in the liturgies of television, promises to keep us safe and happy.

5. That script has failed. The script of technological therapeutic military consumerism cannot make us safe or happy.

9. The alternative script is rooted in Scripture and is enacted through the tradition of the church. The Bible and the Church offer of a counter-metanarrative to the script of technological therapeutic military consumerism.

10. The counter-script has as its most distinctive feature its key character, the God of the Bible—Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

The Christmas script clashed with Herod’s script. The clash is so obvious in the story. One King Of the Jews, in a palace, in power and with the might of an army ready to wipe out any threat to the Empire, that he is in cahoots with. Another King Of The Jews born unnoticed in a backend of nowhere hamlet with no room for him but an animal’s manger. Herod saw what was coming. Herod knew that this was going to cost him his comfort. That he would be thrown from his throne and under a radically different Lordship.

And us? What is the script we have been nurtured by? Jesus birth is a “counter-metanarrative”. Yet, do we hear the repellent sound of the clash. Did the Holiday season of greed and excess influence your Advent Season or the other way around? Which script is winning?

The first chapter of Paul’s letter to the Colossians is a subversive poem about the clash with Caesar. All the names he uses for Jesus were used about Caesar. As the dominant script of the Empire is beaming down on the followers of Jesus, Paul helps them reimagine another script. 

Colossians 1: 15 -20 The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.

In the car coming back from another shopping run my daughter Jasmine asked me the meaning of it. “All this stuff Daddy. What is it for? It will be thrown out? We can’t take it to heaven? Why should I get anything for Christmas?”

It is teenage angst? It is actually, I believe, a trip to Onialeku in Uganda last summer and the two beloved sponsor children that are her screen savers on her phone? It is the script of Jesus clashing against the script of Herod. It is a world changer.

PRAYER: Lord make us alert to the script of Empire around us. Help us to be sensitive to your counter-metanarrative that changes everything. May we hear that repellent sound of the clash of Kingdoms and follow the humble baby not the earthly power.

THE AUTHOR, THE WORD & THE STORY... ADVENT SURMISE

JOHN 1: 1-3 

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ² He was with God in the beginning. ³ Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.”

GENESIS 3: 1

“And I will put enmity
    between you and the woman,
    and between your offspring^[a] and hers;
he will crush^[b] your head,
    and you will strike his heel.”

Jesus story did not begin in the four Gospel accounts of his life in the New Testament. John told us in the opening lines of his account that Jesus was there in the beginning. The first Biblical sign that Jesus would interrupt human history is in the third chapter of the Old Testament. There, when all seems lost in the account of humanity’s fall and the enmity that has now broken the intimate relationship between humans and God, God hints.

In that garden scene, humanity’s belonging, vocation and inheritance are all lost. In the nativity scene we see the fulfilment of that hint from Genesis 3. The Word has become flesh to put all that is broken back together again and to find all that was lost. From Genesis to John and beyond, to us right here and now, The Word has been writing the story. Advent invites us to invite The Word to write us back into a story bigger than our miniscule little lifetimes.

In the beginning was the Word

And the Word started the story

He crafted the set

Chose the characters

Gave them their places

The story moved like the planets and the oceans

And the Author said that it was very good

But the characters were dissatisfied at being characters

And one day reached beyond themselves

To become Authors and story tellers themselves

And Reaching to be more

They ended up less than the characters they were meant to be

And sent the story off in dark, selfish, violent, deadly ways.

 

Instead of the author tearing up the story

And getting rid of his characters

To begin again

The author deep love influenced the story

He sent stories and poems and wise words

But the characters didn’t listen much

And when they did

They didn’t listen for very long

All seemed hopeless

And then...

 

The Word became flesh

And interrupted the story

And we shouldn’t have been surprised

That the author of Word

Didn’t come matter of fact

But stranger than fiction.

The Word became a character

And moved into the story

Immediately the darkness and violence sought him out

But the characters who played his parents fled with him as refugees

And so the Word led the story in another direction

Towards another ending

Brighter and more hopeful and eternal

Himself dying in his own story

To turn the story around.

 

 

The Word that set the story off in the beginning

Who was born into the story and died in the story

We thank you for inviting us into the story

Let us into your story

That we might be those characters

Who help you the Author write a redemption story.

Author write us our parts in your story

Word made Flesh show us the way to live the story

Spirit give us the power and courage to make the Word flesh in how we live out our stories...

Forever and ever

Amen