Advent 2025 : day fourteen

 

Tomorrow – the third Sunday of Advent – we will hold our annual Nativity at St Nicholas’ church. We have invited everyone to come dressed as their favourite character from the story – it does not matter whether we have one Mary or fifteen (the Gospels are full of women called Mary) because there is room for everyone.

Nativities – retellings of the events surrounding the birth of Jesus, usually pitched for children and popular in primary schools – remain reasonably familiar, and poorly presented. Famously, they involve Mary & Joseph turning up at Bethlehem on the very night she will go into labour, desperately going from inn to inn seeking a room, being turned away by innkeeper after innkeeper, until a kindly one, deeply apologetic at having nothing better to offer, let’s them sleep in his stable. Nothing could be further from what the Gospels actually portray.

Jesus is born in the home of a relative of Joseph, who, some time earlier, has returned to Bethlehem with his bride Mary, from her father’s home in Nazareth. In keeping with custom, a newly married couple (that is, having completed the legally binding contract of betrothal) would expect to live with the bride’s parents for the first twelve months of their life together – Joseph may well have been working for his father-in-law by way of a dowry – before the bride was taken to live in the home of the groom’s parents (marked by what we would recognise as a wedding feast). There is not space in the room allocated to the couple – Luke uses a term we might translate as ‘guest room’ and definitely should not translate as ‘inn’ – for Mary to give birth, attended by female relatives and town midwives, and so Jesus is born in the main, shared living space. He is then washed and wrapped tightly in bands of linen – all he has known so far is the confines of the womb – and laid in a stone depression hollowed out to form a manger in the dividing point between the lower end of the home, where animals slept at night, and the upper end, where the humans slept. Luke makes a point of describing he manger in detail, perhaps because it is a relevant detail for the shepherds (possibly a particular manger in a home known to them) but also because he is foreshadowing the stone shelf in the tomb where Jesus, wrapped in linen strips, will be laid following his crucifixion. The whole town of Bethlehem – the ‘city of David’ – rejoice that God has at last restored the fortunes of the house and line of David – though their joy will turn to sorrow within a couple of years, when Herod orders the massacre of every male child of two years and under in and around Bethlehem.

This, then, is a story set firmly in history, in the history and cultural practices and hopes and expectations of a particular community. It is a story of hope and of joy, albeit a story that will not run smoothly, because there will be powerful others who contest the story.

And the invitation is, where do you find yourself in the story? Not as a shepherd or as townsfolk or relatives, but where does the story resonate with your life – lived in a very different culture?

Where will the God who broke in there and then, break into your life here and now?

 

Advent 2025 : day thirteen

 

Once upon a time, many years in the past, there lived a young man, in a valley in a city built on seven hills. Each Sunday, he would get up bright and early and make the short walk to the house of the young woman he loved, stopping on the way at the boulangerie, to pick up two fresh-from-the-oven pains au chocolat, and at the tabac, to collect a Sunday paper, stuffed with weekend supplement sections. Then they would sit and drink coffee and eat their pains au chocolat and read the supplements, before walking up the hill to church. [1]

On a street between where the young man and the young woman lived, a street that ran parallel to the one with the boulangerie and the tabac, there was a gift shop. The kind of shop you could not walk past without looking in the window, for something new. The kind of shop you might turn into, at any time of year, and find the perfect gift to hold onto, to give a friend or relative when Christmas came around. The kind of shop that has, in cities up and down the land, been put out of business by online shopping.

These days, it is perhaps harder to find the perfect gift, in good time in advance, not only because we have withdrawn from the physical world but because the virtual world shapes us for immediacy. But the perfect gift might be in your hands: your own, undivided, presence the best present you have to offer (and, you don’t need to give a gift to everyone you know or have ever met; don’t need to be run ragged by the season of More Invitations Than You Can Possibly Accept).

Advent invites us to slow down enough to be present. But also, to plan in advance. Not for the Christmas that is upon us, but for the days and years and times ahead. Advent reminds us that the first coming of Christ – his incarnation – was a plan set in motion from before the creation of the world: God’s desire to be one with us, to be one of us, to unite heaven and earth. To savour the anticipation of seeing our surprise and delight. Might we rediscover this for ourselves?

 

[1] I know the young man and the young woman, though they are no longer young. They married, and he brings her coffee before she gets out of bed each morning – not only on Sundays – but they no longer live close to a boulangerie where people queue out the door waiting patiently for the oven to be opened.

 

Advent 2025 : day twelve

 

Is your Christmas tree up yet? At this time of year we make room for Christmas trees in our homes, gardens, businesses and public squares. As I have walked around my parish delivering Christmas cards, I’ve seen Christmas trees of all styles – including stylish minimalist branches, painted white, with a few brightly coloured baubles – and sizes.

In the symbolic universe of the Bible – in the imagination of the poets who wrote much of what has been handed down to us – trees stand for a person or people.

The poet Isaiah imagines a creative act of God – of the god who first created the world and everything in it – establishing a whole, diverse ecology of trees in the wilderness: cedar and acacia and myrtle and olive and cypress and plane and pine (Isaiah 41:17-20). It is a vision of a new way of being human, rooted in quietness and rest, in trust in the God who waits to meet with us, who waits for us to grow weary of the noise, the drivenness, the distraction of the city – of our physical and virtual, external and internal architecture.

And it isn’t a monoculture, this new way of being human – this vision of the Church. There are many different types of tree: some tall and thin; some spreading out a broad canopy providing shade; each with its own properties – this one is good for burning, for fuel; this, for building; this one, for food; this, possessing healing in its bark, or leaves.

This year, I have witnessed something of a fulfilment of Isaiah’s vision – biblical prophecy, biblical sense of history, is both cyclical and linear; its poetry speaks to events down through the ages – this year. Men and women seeking something that the world cannot give, searching for it in the wilderness of our long-abandoned churches. God is planting trees, creating something beautiful in its diversity.

And this Advent, the trees we make space for in our homes might just point us to this joyful reality.

 

Advent 2025 : day eleven

 

‘Are you feeling Christmassy yet?’ If not, that’s quite alright. Christmas – as Rend Collective sing* – is not a feeling. Christmas celebrates a truth – a reality that Advent points to – that ‘In the tender compassion of our God the dawn from on high shall break upon us, To shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death, and to guide our feet into the way of peace.’** In Advent we hold on to the hope that the dawn is on the way, and at Christmas we celebrate that it came and will come again. The dawn tells us that the darkness in our lives does not have the final word; but it does not deny that the night can be bitterly cold.

 

*We are playing Rend Collective’s ‘God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen / Hallelujah’ before all our Christmas services this year. Check it out on your music streaming service of choice.

**vv. 9&10 of The Benedictus (The Song of Zechariah) which is ‘normally said’ at Morning Prayer.

 

Advent 2025 : day ten

 

One of the great themes of Advent is joy. (It is especially associated with the Third Sunday of Advent, also known as Gaudete Sunday; and this year,  JOY is the overall theme for Advent across the Church of England nationally.)

The author Brené Brown describes ‘joy’ as ‘sudden, unexpected, short-lasting, and high intensity. It’s characterized by a connection with others, or with God, nature, or the universe. Joy expands our thinking and attention, and it fills us with a sense of freedom and abandon.’

(Atlas of the Heart, p. 204)

I know too many people whose marriages have fallen into messy divorce. (That is not to pass judgement: marriage is hard. I am aware that singleness is also hard, but the point is not comparison; the point stands: marriage is hard.) I know far too many people whose lives have been touched by the death, by suicide, of someone close to them. I know people who are living, this Christmas, with end-stage terminal illness. People who have lost a much-loved family pet. (this is no small thing.) And this is not to look for the wider catastrophes of climate collapse or war that uproot and remove families from their lives and confront the watching – perhaps receiving – world with our own in/humanity. It is common to the human condition that we dwell in darkness and in the shadow of death.

Joy does not deny or dismiss this reality. Rather, it is under these conditions that joy is utterly essential, strengthening us to face our lives. For we do not face life alone, beneath a dispassionate void, but with the God who chose to become God-with-us in the birth of Jesus. He is the light that shines in the darkness, the light that grows, incrementally, to noon-day sun. But the dawn, the dawn sky, will take your breath away.

 

Advent 2025 : day nine

 

In our home we build up our Christmas decorations slowly through Advent. One of the pieces that comes out on the second weekend is a German wooden Christmas carousel/pyramid. Heat rises from candles to drive propellor blades that spin a nativity scene – slowly at first, then faster, building up momentum. In truth, it can be mesmerising, quite relaxing to look on.

But spinning around is not relaxing. And I am aware of an Anxious Generation, driven to distraction, unable to embrace stillness – to enter into the rest that God holds out to us. I am also aware that there are some in this very generation who are ‘returning’ to church, in search of God; returning to a place left behind by their parents’ (and perhaps grandparents) generation, drawn by the call of deep rest in a very fast digital moment. A generation who need to rediscover how to be quiet and still – on the inside – and in this Advent can help, as we discover the God who waits for us to wait for him.

One of the things many Christians do in Advent is read the poetry of the prophet Isaiah, who lived and wrote some 600 years before the birth of Jesus. At Morning Prayer today, we read these verses:

‘For thus said the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel:
In returning and rest you shall be saved;
in quietness and in trust shall be your strength.
But you refused and said,
‘No! We will flee upon horses’—
therefore you shall flee!
and, ‘We will ride upon swift steeds’—
therefore your pursuers shall be swift!
A thousand shall flee at the threat of one,
at the threat of five you shall flee,
until you are left
like a flagstaff on the top of a mountain,
like a signal on a hill.

‘Therefore the Lord waits to be gracious to you;
therefore he will rise up to show mercy to you.
For the Lord is a God of justice;
blessed are all those who wait for him.’

Isaiah 30:15-18

 

Advent 2025 : day eight

 

I learned recently that for some young adults (dubbed the Anxious Generation) at least, Advent calendars are a source of anxiety at being expected to remember to open a door / eat a piece of chocolate every day for twenty-four days. This is no joke, but an expression – and indicator – of the levels of anxiety, over performance and in relation to simple, daily tasks or habits, the younger generation live with – and if not for any given member of that cohort, likely for people they know personally.

This is a tragedy, because Advent practices are not meant to be burdensome. They are about building a sense of expectancy – flexing the muscles of hope – not hyper-vigilance. The Church has been waiting, actively, for Jesus to return for two thousand years. It is not possible to remain hyper-vigilant for any extended length of time (let alone millennia) but grace-filled habits train us for healthy lives. Whereas in Lent we might abstain from chocolate – a simple practice of learning to say no to immediate self-gratification; simple, but hard in an age addicted to both dopamine hits and sugar – in Advent we might embrace the discipline of receiving a gift.

Advent anxiety prevents us from entering into Advent. For me, the weekend just gone was a full one, with our parish church patronal festival, marked by the St Nicholas Fayre on Saturday, two services on Sunday morning, and a Christingle on Sunday evening. In the need to attend well to these things, I did not need the added pressure of writing a daily Advent calendar post. And so, I made the choice not to have to do so. To leave it – this thing I have done every Advent for twenty years – until tomorrow. To extend grace to myself, just as grace has been extended to me.

 

Advent 2025 : day seven

 

Today (6th December) is the Feast of St Nicholas, sometime Bishop of Myra, patron saint of children and sailors, defender of both orthodoxy – believing ‘rightly’ (faithfully) about God – and orthopraxis – acting ‘rightly’ (faithfully) in accordance with what we profess to believe. And the saint for whom the parish church I serve as vicar is named.

The parish church of St Nicholas, Bishopwearmouth, was dedicated as a place of worship ten days after the declaration that, for a Second time in just over two decades, we were at War. A declaration of another kind, that, however uncertain the world we live in, Christ is our hope. Following in the footsteps of Nicholas, as he followed in the footsteps of Jesus the Christ (the one sent by God to deliver his people from oppression), the ‘charism’ of this church (charism: the particular gift God has given this church to serve their neighbours) is to be a safe haven for those experiencing the storms of life – for those ‘lost at sea’. This is a place, and a community, I long to see filled with the joy of children and of people of all ages who have dared to call out to God to deliver them.

The Feast of St Nicholas always falls in Advent, provides a moment of joyous celebration (our patronal festival, however we mark it, which this year included the St Nicholas Fayre) in the approach to Christmas, and – if we allow it – recalibrates our lives to Jesus.

Photo: me, dressed as St Nicholas, on his feast day.