Odd and difficult

The second part of this extraordinary public announcement about the meaning of Christmas is much more difficult. The beautiful cadence of the AV reads: 'Suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, and saying Glory to God in the highest and on earth, peace and goodwill.' You know what's difficult don't you? It's the words peace and goodwill. The cynic says 'Where?' Actually, you don't have to be a cynic to say that. Where in our world today can we speak of peace and goodwill?. It sounds too wonderful - that. this baby is born to bring peace and goodwill everywhere. It sounds blanket wishful thinking, magic wand thinking. And God doesn't do wishful thing, magic wand thinking. He deals personally in relationship. 

We really need to look at other translations. The NIV says: ' on earth peace for those on whom his favour rests.' The Message is even more personal: 'Peace to all men and women on earth who please God'. Profoundly and ultimately, Jesus as Prince of Peace will reign in the consummation of his mission on earth. All will bend the knee. Yet we must understand that God works in relationship with ordinary people in ordinary places now. His  peace works in two directions.  First, Jesus makes peace with God. Peace is about wholeness, belonging together, at-one-ness. We call Jesus work on the cross the AT-ONE-MENT for this is the place where, in ways far beyond our full understanding, Jesus dies in order to bring us back to God as forgiven, whole people. The first thing Jesus does as he greets his friends after he has risen from the dead is to greet them 'Peace be with you' and he says it a second time.(John 20:19,21) Because now his disciples belong with him in a peace relationship that nothing can break. Personal peace with God is the most precious transforming gift we can know.

Yet peace with God flows in another direction. When we call Jesus, Christ the Lord, acknowledging his Lordship, we belong to his new people - a kingdom of different relationships because we are Easter people. Ordinary people in ordinary places, belonging in peace and goodwill.  The baby born in a manger fulfils his destiny on the cross to create a new people. As someone put it: You will not reach your destiny unless you see this baby go to his. We are a new people knowing the risen Jesus empowered by the Spirit with love, joy, peace, patience, long-suffering, self-control. I know kindness is not on the list but these qualities add up to kindness.

When cynics say; 'Where is there peace and goodwill' they should see these groups of people like HBC where we seek to share love. Do we always succeed. Oh no! I know how churches, tragically, can fail. But I have also experienced the love and kindness of a church. Peace and goodwill. Indeed, in my own recent problems with Carol's illness that's exactly how it has been.  I am so grateful. Where else on earth is this extraordinary possibility of a group of people, so different in personality, gifting, esperiences, behaving differently together, kindly and caring because of Jesus?

I finished the sermon with the recent event in my house when Carol cried out 'Where's Jesus? when she found the empty stable (Post Dec 25th).  That really is the vital question for 2026. Where is the living Lord now in our lives.  As a busy minister, off duty one Sunday, I was in worship in my local church in London. When the service was over, the old West Indian gentleman sitting next to me, who I didn't know, said to me: How's your walk with Jesus?   That's the question for me. And it's about peace and goodwill!

Odd but very good

 The first part of the public announcement on the hillside is odd ( you wouldn't expect a God-intervention to be straightforward) but so good.  The angel with God's glory (and glory is God's own word about his presence, power, and sheer splendour which did not accompany the earlier Christmas visitations) overwhelms these ordinary men with terror. Who wouldn't be when faced with God's messenger?  Something utterly beyond material experience. Such ordinary men in an ordinary place. They really need to hear DO NOT BE AFRAID swiftly followed by: I BRING YOU GOOD NEWS OF GREAT JOY THAT WILL BE FOR ALL PEOPLE. TODAY IN THE CITY OF DAVID A SAVIOUR HAS BEEN BORN TO YOU. HE IS CHRIST THE LORD.  This is the birth announcement TODAY, and its personal.

I was in the gym recently (too rare I confess) and a young man was pumping iron effortlessly near me. An older man came up to him and spoke. With a loud excited voice the young man responded (that's how I came to hear the conversation you understand) ' Yes, two weeks to go now. We're so excited after all this time but really looking forward to it.' And the older man said how glad he was and how he hoped all would go well, 'You know this is going to change your lives forever!' I smiled. I thought of conversations like this all over the world - of expectation, excitement and maybe a little worry.  And of the utter joy in the safe birth. Some of us have been privileged to share first-hand in the TODAYNESS of such good news.  

These ordinary shepherds are suddenly plunged into living this possibility. The baby has arrived and they can be witnesses to the arrival of the long awaited Messiah. It's intensely personal. Good news of great joy.  I love to picture what happens next as the shepherds are given a sign and the senior among them says ' Let's go' having presumably organized someone to remain guarding the sheep!  Meanwhile the birth has happened with Mary going through a Call the Midwife experience, except there are no midwives though perhaps a kindly maternal woman helped. Notice that in the birth, with the pain, the cries, the ultimate joy there is no mention of an angel or glory. It's ordinary - the baby laid in a manger.  So ordinary. When suddenly there's a noise outside and a bunch of shepherds appear grinning from ear to ear. The senior one asks if they can come closer. They are so excited its almost as though this baby belongs to them! The extroverts are hugging others and jumping up and down with joy. Imagine Mary's face. Just who are these people?  Why are they so joyful - it's as though they share the moment? Crowding in from nowhere.

But when they explain they had witnessed an angel in glory who told them this is the birth to change the world and they were somehow chosen to see him for themselves, Mary realizes a deep confirmation is happening.  No wonder 'Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart (verse 19). God works in ordinary places with ordinary people.  And she knows this is going to change her life and the world's destiny forever.

Let's not forget the shepherds as the first evangelists, unstoppably spreading the word to everyone's astonishment, and returning to the fields with good news of great joy for all people. They have seen! Do you think Luke later found one of them as eyewitness?  

A field

 On Sunday I asked the congregation to pause and come with me to a field. The days after Christmas are apparently being termed 'Twixmas' and because of all the demands of Christmas it's downtime before the New Year. But I pleaded for a little more time in this field before bouncing into the next thing.

This doesn't look much. A scruffy, scrubby looking hillside that happens to outside Bethlehem. We cannot be sure this is the exact field though just behind are shepherd's caves still in use. But what strikes you when you stand looking over this field is that it is so ORDINARY. Just a bit of nothing countryside. An everyday hillside. Really ordinary. And that's so important. It is precisely the point. Because here we see how the real God works - in ordinary places with ordinary people so that no one may miss out.

We must never miss the ordinariness of Christmas. I know there's so much razzle, dazzle as we celebrate but so much is just plain ordinary. Mary and Joseph are nobodies who do not register on any scale of human significance. That's true of so many in the story. And, as for the shepherds on this  hillside, they are at the bottom of the social scale, outliers, ceremonially unclean. Night-shift workers out in the dark. Yet, precisely to these shepherds comes the first public proclamation about the meaning of Christmas. Yes, there have been private visitations to Mary, Zechariah in preparation but this is where, for the first time, the real God tells the world what's happening.  This is how the real |God works: in ordinary places with ordinary people so that no one may miss out.

I love the way that Luke, as historian, tells us at the beginning of the gospel how carefully he has authenticated this.  He assures us that he has used eye-witness evidence and carefully investigated everything from the beginning. He knows it matters. People are going to live and die by this story.

And the public pronouncement, we have heard many times before, needs our attention again......

Merry Christmas

Let me greet you on this day of miracle birth, divine intervention and new beginnings. A very Merry Christmas to you.

With memory-loss patients there can be genuine laughter.  Pressure this year meant my attempts at decorating the house were limited. No Christmas tree (first time in 57 years) and no Nativity scene. Since coming to Cambridge we have placed all the nativity figures on straw in front of a stable backdrop in our hall. I had found the stable in a storage box but realized energy was too low to unpack the key nativity figures. So I put the stable on its side in a corner.

Yesterday Carol came into the room asking me loudly: 'Where's Jesus? Where's Mary?  She had found the stable and placed it empty where it has normally stood. But where were the key figures?  Smiling, I explained I had run out of energy but said what a good question that is in all the Christmas festivities. Where's Jesus? She laughed in agreement.

I left the empty stable there.  As someone said

The manger is empty - He outgrew it

The cross is empty - He endured it

The tomb is empty - He overcame it

The throne is never empty - now He reigns for ever and ever.

Christmas blessings to all my readers.

 

4 parcels

I am preaching on Sunday (second time this year!) and am looking forward to it. Maybe I'll post some of my offering but I was wondering if anything would happen in my week to help make a point. And it did. Last week on Thursday I received a parcel, followed by another on Friday and two on Saturday. Addressed to 'The Quickes' their senders were anonymous in Amazon blurb. Not plain oblong boxes but intriguing assorted sizes and shapes.   

And then came the text. A friend said they had sent us a box with an amaryllis.  She commented that it would look like a straight forward amaryllis plant box! I checked and found that it had arrived on Thursday addressed to 'the Quickes'. Then, with apology, she explained that she had mistakenly sent three other further packages to my address NOT intended for me. 'My mistake,' she said, 'I'll come round and collect them.'  They look good piled up in the hall but they're not for me. To top it off, yesterday a post van drove up outside. 'For you' said the postman, holding a very large box.   As I grappled the gift I checked the address and saw it was the right road but another number. And a completely different name. For commercial savvy UK readers  - did the postman need to go to Specsavers?)

All this adds up as a lightweight reminder of the sheer wonder that the greatest gift in the world - Christ the Saviour - is born to us. Its addressed properly, reaching the right people, like the shepherds who hear 'Today, a Saviour has been born TO YOU (Luke 2:11). This is part of the public announcement in the fields outside Bethlehem which I shall preach on next Sunday. But the specific personal words to these shepherds emphasize ground-breaking truth; the real God works in ordinary places with ordinary people so that no one misses out.  To hear from God directly yourself is the miracle of his grace. No fudged address and misdirected message. TO YOU.

We are closing in on Christmas and I wish you joy as you revel in specific personal words TO YOU IS BORN A SAVIOUR. HE IS CHRIST THE LORD.  He's come for each of us, in ordinary places as ordinary people so that no one misses out. 

Edges, Fourth Legs

In my declining energy I jumped at the chance of someone coming to winterize (is that really a word?) my garden.  It's only the size of a largish handkerchief but it still holds a surprising amount of overgrown organic stuff.  

When the gardener came this week I think he saw genuine need!  He set to weeding and pruning. Unfortunately, sudden heavy rain saturated him and even for a seasoned gardener he found the going was too tough. However, he said the lawn needed cutting for the last time in 2025. Can you imagine that? Cutting grass nearing Christmas!  Through teeming rain I saw him manouvre a serious machine, intended for large scale acreage, and move swiftly up and down leaving attractive stripes in the soaked lawn.

Later when the sun came out I had opportunity to see his work.  The wet lawn looked transformed. Prior to cutting he had worked on edging it.  Near the deck he had exposed the wooden surrounds framing that part of the lawn. I had not seen these edges for a decade. Grass had grown over, with weeds germinating in the gap and a mulch of leaves.  On hands and knees he had restored the edge, long hidden.  Then for the rest of the lawn he dug its edges cleanly, weeding the beds and leaving earth freshly exposed.

I had not thought of it for years but one of my mother's sayings when I had to cut the manse lawn was 'Don't forget the edges!' I remember her cautioning that the job was never done until the edges were properly cut. I also remember regularly skimping that part. After all the main law looked OK.  Yet, it was proved true again this week - now that the edges have been clearly cut the lawn looks finished.  

This lesson about completing a job properly is an important one.  I remember a teacher commending fourth-leggery to her students- that when you were cleaning the room and the far leg of a chair or sideboard, or whatever, was less accessible so no-one would see whether it was cleaned or not, it was just as important as the rest. I know this makes a different point but it also comes back to that verse Col 3:23 Whatever you do, work at it with all your hears, as working for the Lord and not for men!

Edges, fourth-legs, I get the point!

Humanness

I have moaned about my dismal task of disposing old books of sermons, brown, mottled, and often massively dated in language and tone though not, I hasten to add, outdated in message. Admittedly, a little patience is sometimes needed when reading!  I also have several preacher biographies - sometimes massive tomes!  Thinking of John Watson, also known as author Ian Maclaren, I shall need to ditch his heavy biography along with his other books I mentioned a post ago.  Written in 1908, it charts his full life: studying in Edinburgh and Germany, minister in Edinburgh, Glasgow and 25 years in Liverpool, acclaimed novelist, theologian, involved in founding Westminster College, Cambridge,  interacting with the good and great on wide travels, especially in the USA. And it turns out, especially compassionate about the ordinary mortals he met too. That's what always interests me when I read a biography. What kind of person was he? 

• Top of the list, his distinguishing characteristic was humanness. 'It was said of him at his death that nearly every man on the streets of Liverpool was more or less affected in the loss. He gave himself to everyone he met - the most accessible of men and with this great generosity'. 
• Happiness - his affectionate family life and rich friendships. For him a happy day was strenuous labour followed by time with family and friends.
• Humility - 'no great preacher was ever less elated on a Sunday night...because he felt his service was so poor and ineffectual.'
• Religious conviction - his faith in Christ was central with a key theme of immortal hope.  'Convinced of the emptiness of all human desires and efforts if they end in death...he had much of the mystic's certainty'. 
• Grace towards others - a great encourager of others, with compassion for those he saw unfairly criticized.

Of course there were other aspects such as his drivenness and depression - which makes some of the

above even more remarkable.

When I read this I was particularly struck by the word humanness. I don't think I have ever used it before and yet it sums up so well the best of being a human being.  And as the Advent season gathers pace towards the coming of Christ in flesh it seem a very apt word to keep in mind.  The greatest expression ever of humanness