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.

 

Advent 2025 : day six

 

Advent has its own flavours. Some years ago, Jo came across a recipe book of German Advent biscuits. Apparently, there is a German tradition of serving plates of mixed, home-baked biscuits to anyone who visits your home in Advent. Neither of us are German, but Jo lived there for a year, and we both enjoy visiting Germany. So, Jo decided that she would take up this tradition and bakes a couple of different batches of biscuits each Advent weekend.

Both of my grandfathers fought against Nazi Germany in the Second World War; but their grandchildren and great-grandchildren have known friendship. The prophet Isaiah foretold the birth of a child who would be known, among other titles, as the Prince of Peace; and Christians see that hope fulfilled in Jesus. In a world were peace seems distant, we are called to hold fast to the hope that in him, all will – one day – be reconciled. In the face of todays’ seemingly intractable conflicts, we remind ourselves of where peace has overcome hostility. Could something as simple as sharing biscuits help us to do this?

Hospitality is central to the Christmas story. Joseph brings his expectant wife, Mary, to the home of a relative. Social convention requires the relative to welcome them, but the space in the home (sometimes a separate room, sometimes an end partitioned off by a curtain, sometimes a shelter on the flat roof) where travelling guests might sleep is either too small for Mary too labour in or is already occupied – further evidence of hospitality, extended to another relative or to a stranger, for social convention required hospitality be extended to both.

Who might enter your home this Advent? And what might you serve them?

 

Advent 2025 : day five

 

In our home, we build up our Christmas decorations slowly through Advent, bringing out a box on each of the four weekends. It begins with just a few changes: a figurine of a pregnant woman, symbolizing Mary, placed on one end of the mantlepiece, with an attending angel; our Advent calendar opposite. I bring my wife a mug of coffee in bed every morning before we get up (itself another ritual) and on the first day of Advent we swap out our usual mugs for ones we only use in Advent: simple markers. The tree does not go up until week three.

In this way, we build up a sense of expectancy, ready to celebrate Christmas when it arrives – a twelve-day feast; we are not sick of it all by the afternoon of Boxing Day, desperate to pack everything away for another year.

But this might also help us to wait expectantly for Christ’s return: recognising – learning to recognise – that Jesus breaks into our lives in many often small and accumulative ways; that the victory of justice and mercy over exploitation and oppression is not, usually, dramatic – and yet, little by little – gradually – comes around again and again.

 

Advent 2025 : day four

 

Advent has its very own soundtrack, a mix of songs in a minor key, filled with longing for the light, and stirring carols focused more on Christ’s return than on his first coming as the Babe of Bethlehem.

I love more traditional Advent carols, like Hills of the North, Rejoice and People, look East. But in recent years, my go-to Advent playlist has included the albums Advent Songs (2021) by The Porter’s Gate; and Good News (2016) and the earlier In the Town of David (2006) by Ordinary Time. Check them out.

 

Advent 2025 : day three

 

I have a memory of a childhood Advent calendar. Card, with (probably – here, my memory is shaky) a picture of the hills around Bethlehem for backdrop. Doors opened carefully, re-opened year after year. Each one revealing a picture, depicting some character or item relating to the nativity, and a verse from the Bible on the back of the door.

These days, the Advent calendar on our mantlepiece is a wooden box, with twenty-four doors that lift upward, not to the side. Behind each door, Jo hides a piece from a jigsaw of an icon from the Church of the Nativity, for her, and a fairtrade individual ‘taster’ bar of chocolate, for me.

The practice of opening a little door every day through Advent, a door that is linked to the story of the incarnation, might shape how we open larger doors. So far this Advent, I have opened my front door to a neighbour, shut out of her own home and in need of help, and to delivery drivers, dropping off Bibles I had ordered for friends who are exploring faith. The vicarage doorbell is loud – I cannot adjust the volume, and it makes me jump whenever it rings. It does not predispose me to welcome those who come to my door. Yet the Advent calendar might resist that move; might predispose me to see Jesus coming to my door in the face of a neighbour or stranger. Coming to me, in need or in response to my own need. (In the Gospels we see Jesus ministered-to by others and ministering to others.)

    

Advent 2025 : day two

 

Warning: mention of suicide

The Advent candles are not the only candles we light in our home throughout Advent. We also light a frankincense & myrrh candle. One of the smells of Advent, along with cinnamon biscuits—for smell connects deeply with memory and so has a key role in keeping traditions alive—is frankincense & myrrh. Two of the three gifts (along with gold) presented to the infant Jesus and his parents by the magi/wisemen/kings.

This is a dark time of year. The sun does not rise above the horizon, here where I live, until 8.00 a.m. (by mid-December, not until 8.15 a.m.) and sets mid-afternoon.

These are dark times, at the best of times. Not a week goes by without news of another life taken in violence by its own hand. Lives that have run dry of hope, carrying a burden of pain they just don’t think they can continue to bear. Tragically, often longing to be reunited with family members who have died too soon, carried away by illness or accident or suicide.

For some, this darkness, this void of despair, is evidence against the existence—or at least the efficacy—of God, of a god who is good and loving and strong. And yet, for others, it is in the darkness that Light and Love shine most brightly. How, then, might we side with the Light and Love?

Those gifts—made to a child who all too soon will find himself a refugee, his peers butchered by hardened soldiers at the orders of a fragile king—just might hold a clue, a key. Incense, symbol of prayer rising; prayers rising, even when we can find no words. And myrrh, used to prepare a body for burial, a final act of tenderness, of kindness, of dignity; and though these days embalming is undertaken by professionals, we still might embrace the bereaved with tender touch.

In the darkness, we light a frankincense & myrrh candle, and breath in what it means to wait, until our eyes adjust, until the clouds pass over and the stars are revealed, fierce pinpoints of light in blazing glory.

 

Advent 2025 : day one

 

This is now the twentieth year that I will post a daily reflection through Advent. For longer than that – almost a decade longer – Jo and I have woven Advent traditions into the pattern of our year, the fabric of our lives. Some of these we were introduced to by older friends, when we were newly-married – not as an off-the-peg coat, whether it fit us or not, but as a pattern we might start with and adapt to create a bespoke fit. This year, we are passing some of the traditions on to friends – we are now the older ones – some of whom are marking Advent for the first time.

Traditions, and especially the kind of traditions we might call rituals, act as anchors or hooks that connect us to a Story that is bigger than ourselves, in such a way that has sustained both families and wider communities through times of unimaginable tragedy.

One of the simplest Advent rituals is the lighting of candles: one on the first Sunday of Advent, two on the second, three on the third, and four on the fourth. These are often arranged around a fifth candle, which represents Jesus, the light of the world. One tradition leaves this candle unlit until Christmas Day; another variation lights the central candle each Sunday, and the other candles from it. There are also various traditions regarding the colours of the candles: red, or blue, or three purple and one (week 3) pink. This year, the Advent candles in our home are a simple arrangement, all white.

We lit the first candle and spoke about waiting with hope. Waiting in anticipation of something we are looking forward to. Waiting, well, for inevitable bad news. Waiting, in times of pain – and as faithful friends in others’ times of pain. Light in the darkness. We spoke of faith handed down by previous generations, well-worn words of prayer when we cannot find words of our own.

 

Christ the King

 

Today is the Feast of Christ the King, the culmination of the story we begin to tell again next Sunday with Advent, Christmas and Epiphany, Lent, Holy Week and Eastertide, Pentecost and the long count of weeks in Ordinary time. The culmination of history to which the Church points; and of the news the Church proclaims concerning Jesus, that ‘his kingdom shall have no end.’

But if Christ is King, what kind of a king is he? And why is this good news?

We see the answer to these questions in the Gospel reading set for today, Luke 23.33-43. It may seem strange to hear, today, of Jesus’ crucifixion; but the cross is the throne this king choses for himself. More than that, a cross alongside two others.

This we proclaim: that Christ suffered, for our sake, and that his kingdom shall have no end.

This is where we see him: alongside us in the place of our deepest wound, our deepest humiliation, our agonising and protracted public death.

There are two near-universal human emotions at play in our Gospel passage, that reveal this wound: shame, and humiliation.

Shame is the self-belief that we are, inherently, unworthy of love, of connection. Shame is the secret we do not want anyone to know about us, because if you knew, you would agree that I am unworthy. The tragedy is that shame grows in the dark, and is destroyed by the light of empathy, of being seen and accepted.

Humiliation is what we experience when someone else judges us unworthy of love, of connection, and we inherently know that they are wrong, that this is unjust. Humiliation is being told we are too fat, too ugly, too foreign, too gay, to be in our gang. From primary school, if not before, we are flayed by humiliation. And, tragically, humiliation correlates to violence. Studies in the US show that the experience of being humiliated, deeply, repeatedly, is a key part of the backstory of those who perpetrate high school shootings. I don’t know of UK based research, but I would expect to see the same regarding fatal stabbings.

(For more on shame and humiliation and many other emotions, see Brené Brown’s ‘Atlas of the Heart’)

Crucifixion was all about humiliation, as a deterrent. Luke records not only the physical humiliation Jesus is subjected to, but also how the religious leaders and the soldiers join in. Crucifixions were conducted by specialist teams of soldiers. I cannot prove it, of course, but I would wager that these teams were made up of those who had, themselves, been subject to humiliation. Humiliation correlates to violence; and spreads as those who have been made to feel inadequate — unworthy — seek out a victim to shore themselves up.

The first criminal knows humiliation. He turns to the person hanging next to him, and both adds to their humiliation and calls on them to turn the tables: what would humiliate the leaders, the soldiers, more than Jesus getting down from the cross and defeating them? But Jesus refuses to play the game, to perpetuate violence, to deepen the problem.

The other criminal knows shame. He believes that he, and the other criminal, deserve what is happening to them. In this, he is not a reliable witness (in the Bible, we find the testimony of many people, but Jesus alone is the faithful, reliable witness). Certainly his actions may have had consequences, may have deserved punishment; but noone deserves the obscenity of crucifixion.

Nevertheless, this man, who is steeped in shame, is able to do the very thing that is necessary: despite believing that he is unworthy of connection, he reaches out to the person who is right there next to him: ‘Jesus, remember me — make me whole, make me worthy — when you come into your kingdom.’

And Jesus responds, ‘Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.’ Paradise is a tricky word to translate. It seems to mean both ‘in the ground’ — that is, dead — and in heaven — that is, alive. In other words, the promise is that Jesus will be with him — and us — in our protracted dying, and in the life on the other side, where suffering is transformed into glory.

I do not say that lightly, that suffering is transformed into glory. This is a slow, slow process, a life-long (and perhaps beyond) process. And yet it is the way in which Christ the King goes about his reign.

I don’t know your shame story, your humiliation story — but I know you have one. And that is why I believe that Christ the King is good news. Because in these places, we are not alone. This is where he meets us, sees us, re-members us. In the deep blues, the bruised purples, the bloody reds of our lives, drawing these emotions, too, into the spectrum of his light.

Luke 23.33-43

When they came to the place that is called The Skull, they crucified Jesus there with the criminals, one on his right and one on his left. Then Jesus said, ‘Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.’ And they cast lots to divide his clothing. And the people stood by, watching; but the leaders scoffed at him, saying, ‘He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God, his chosen one!’ The soldiers also mocked him, coming up and offering him sour wine, and saying, ‘If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!’ There was also an inscription over him, ‘This is the King of the Jews.’

One of the criminals who were hanged there kept deriding him and saying, ‘Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!’ But the other rebuked him, saying, ‘Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed have been condemned justly, for we are getting what we deserve for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong.’ Then he said, ‘Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.’ He replied, ‘Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.’

 

circus maximus

 

In the summer of 64 CE, a great fire broke out in the cramped streets surrounding the Circus Maximus. The Circus Maximus was the largest venue in Rome for public games — the Colosseum was yet to be built — home to chariot racing, athletics, gladiator fights, and beast hunts (where artificial forests were created and wild beasts imported, the most popular being the ferocious lion). The great fire would destroy three-quarters of Rome.

The rumour rapidly spread that the fire had been set at the command of the emperor Nero — a populist, despised by the ruling class but popular with those who had no political voice — to clear ground to build a big, beautiful Golden Palace. That Nero was away from Rome, at his private villa, when the fire occurred, along with the speed with which he had his new palace constructed, only added fuel to the flames. Needing to deflect the heat, Nero pinned the blame on the city’s Christians. Perhaps a thousand were put to death, including Paul, who had come to Rome some two years earlier having claimed the right to defend himself against false claims of inciting an insurrection before no lesser court than the imperial tribunal.

Knowing that he would soon meet his death, Paul writes two letters to Timothy. It is possible that the great fire had already occurred by the time he wrote a second, and final, time — we cannot know for sure, but in any case, the imagery of the Circus Maximus is clearly on Paul’s mind, from the libation that marked the opening ceremony of an athletic games, to the gladiatorial fight, the athletic discipline of the foot race, the victor’s wreath, and the triumph of the bestiarius (hunter) over the lion.

(Very boldly, if this timescale is correct — and we know that Paul believes his death will be imminent, and we know that it was part of the scapegoating of Christians following the great fire — Paul has already told Timothy to ‘fan into flame’ the gift of God that is within him through the laying on of Paul’s hands, 2 Timothy 1.6.)

Reflections:

We are called to pour out our lives as a sign and symbol of the peace treaty between God and humanity that is established in and by Jesus.

Faith is something we wrestle with, not the absence of struggle. Some days we experience relationships, some days despair.

We are acceptable to God not on the basis of our own merit, but on the merit of Jesus.

We still get scared and run away, just as Paul’s supporters did, just as Jesus’ apprentices had done. But — as Paul prayed that it would not be held against them, and as Jesus restored Peter after Peter had denied knowing him — we can experience forgiveness, and redemption, the transformation of bad circumstances for the greater or common good.

Death is not a tragedy, but an adventure, a new journey (and in some sense, a journey home).

2 Timothy 4.6-8, 16-18

‘As for me, I am already being poured out as a libation, and the time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. From now on there is reserved for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will give to me on that day, and not only to me but also to all who have longed for his appearing.

‘At my first defence no one came to my support, but all deserted me. May it not be counted against them! But the Lord stood by me and gave me strength, so that through me the message might be fully proclaimed and all the Gentiles might hear it. So I was rescued from the lion’s mouth. The Lord will rescue me from every evil attack and save me for his heavenly kingdom. To him be the glory for ever and ever. Amen.’

 

analysis

 

On Sundays at the moment, we are reading extracts from letters from St Paul, writing at the end of his life, to Timothy, whom he has mentored over more than a decade. Paul is in prison in Rome, awaiting trial, and will eventually be executed (according to tradition, on the same day as St Peter) as part of the Neronian persecution of the Christian community in Rome, whom Nero made scapegoats responsible for starting the great fire that devastated Rome in 64 CE. He does not know when he will be executed but is aware that it will be soon; and the two letters he writes to Timothy express what he most wants Timothy to hold onto.

Paul writes, ‘As for me, I am already being poured out as a libation, and the time of my departure has come.’

(2 Timothy 4.6)

A libation is a drink offering made to a god or gods, probably the most common daily form of offering. One might pour water into a bowl or onto the ground as a libation on waking, and libations were made before every meal. Whenever wine was drunk, first a libation would be poured from a jug into a small bowl, before the rest of the wine in the jug was consumed. There are frescos depicting libations being made at weddings, and in the Roman tradition a libation was also made at funerals: indeed, if you had no one to take care of your funeral arrangements, and so the state took on that responsibility, the libation may have been the only part of funeral observances to be fulfilled — an interesting observation given that Paul feels abandoned by those who should have supported him.

But where a libation is described in the middle voice (a voice that combines aspects of both the active and passive voices, to describe something you do that changes you in the doing) — as can be read here (though my English translation opts for the passive voice) — a libation refers to a formal and binding peace treaty. Specifically, it related to a peace treaty contracted between city states at the opening of an Olympic, Corinthian, or other athletic games. Paul underlines this meaning by claiming to have struggled the beautiful struggle and run the foot race — direct allusions to events the athletes competed in — and that he now awaits being presented with the wreath crown worn by athletes who won their events.

Paul’s life has been lived (at least, since his conversion) as a peace treaty between the God of the Jewish people and the Gentile nations: as a declaration that all who confess that Jesus is Lord — regardless of their ethnicity — will be welcomed by the God of his own ancestors.

Who or what are you pouring your life into? And how are you being changed in the process?

Paul goes on to speak of his impending departure. The word for departure is analysis, that is, the loosening of ropes holding a ship to the dock, or the loosening of elements (of e.g. a life) so as to understand how they work together.

Jo and I have spent the last week in Rome, celebrating our wedding anniversary. We flew home yesterday. We boarded the plane, and then we waited. We knew that our departure would be taking place soon, but we did not know exactly when it would be. There was a shortage of ground crew to load cases into the hold, and then to uncouple the sky bridge from the cabin doors. We could not depart until this ‘analysis’ had been completed. We missed our take-off slot, and, in the end, we took off forty-five minutes after our departure had been scheduled. Nonetheless, it was only a matter of fairly imminent time.

Paul writes of his departure time, or, the final analysis of his life. And the final analysis is that he has lived — and would soon die — trusting not in his own merit, but on the work of Jesus, whom, he believed, God had appointed as judge over the nations of the Greco-Roman world. Whether Paul was right or not is a different matter, but of this he was convinced — and many others with him.

And so for Paul death is not a tragic end, but a new chapter, a glorious transformation of what has been into something more than the world can offer.

Death comes to us all, or rather, we come to death. What would the final analysis of your life be? What has already been loosened — those things we no longer need to hold tightly to, for fear of the voyage ahead — and what is (perhaps entirely appropriately) ‘keeping us here’ for now? How might we make the most of the time we have left before our own departure?

2 Timothy 4.6-8, 16-18

‘As for me, I am already being poured out as a libation, and the time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. From now on there is reserved for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will give to me on that day, and not only to me but also to all who have longed for his appearing.

‘At my first defence no one came to my support, but all deserted me. May it not be counted against them! But the Lord stood by me and gave me strength, so that through me the message might be fully proclaimed and all the Gentiles might hear it. So I was rescued from the lion’s mouth. The Lord will rescue me from every evil attack and save me for his heavenly kingdom. To him be the glory for ever and ever. Amen.’

 

mast year

 

Every several years, certain fruit or nut trees produce a harvest that is exceptional in both quantity and quality. These are known as mast years. 2025 appears to be a mast year for acorns, and apples.

No one knows exactly why this happens. There are various theories, and it may be that the phenomenon is the result of several factors combining. Climate may be a factor. Another theory sees mast years as a mechanism for survival: producing seeds is costly, and many are eaten by animals — for example, wild pigs like to eat acorns — so there is advantage in reserving energy for bumper crops every so often, which are more abundant than the prey can consume.

I believe that the physical and spiritual are entwined, and that the physical can be an expression of the spiritual. We are seeing an unusual number of people exploring Christian faith for the first time or the first time in a long time, and this seems to be replicated across the UK and across other western contexts that have not been especially open to such things for some time. It interests me that this coincides with a mast year.

Why would we see a mast year in people coming to faith? Perhaps climate plays a factor. Perhaps a materialistic worldview is increasingly ‘dry’ for more and more people, experiencing a new awareness of thirst for spiritual things. Undoubtedly, successive generations are needed for a particular faith, or other worldview, to survive, and Jesus’ parable of a sower sowing seed points out the many reasons why converts might give up. Mast years might be a good way of ensuring the faith is passed from generation to generation. Certainly, large numbers new-to-the-faith at the same time is exciting, yes, but also demands a lot of energy. It is not necessarily sustainable. Mast years with quieter years between them might be a more viable pattern, over the long term.

Anyway, all this to say, 2025 might just be a mast year, in the physical sense and the spiritual sense. I am praying that we would not only see an increase in people coming to faith, but that they would be a cohort of exceptional quality, not just quantity. That this year’s seeds might, in time, grow into what the ancient Jewish prophet Isaiah called oaks of righteousness, keystone species in the ecology of their community, providing a viable habitat for many others.

 

on immigrants

 

Summary: Christians should welcome immigrants, not fear them.

‘The Letter to the Hebrews,’ a first-century circular that has been passed down the centuries as one of the 27 ‘books’ of the New Testament, was originally written to Jews who were followers of Jesus, and who had fled their homes and found themselves internally or regionally displaced by the Jewish-Roman War.

The passage below (Hebrews 13.1-8) feels incredibly pertinent to my own current context — both globally, with Christian communities displaced in the West Bank, in Nigeria (18 million Nigerian Christians living in refugee camps) and in other other nations; and more locally, in England, where there is a growing anger being directed at asylum seekers. This pertinence is one reason why the New Testament continues to have relevance, some two thousand years after it was written.

‘Let mutual love continue.’ The Greek here is philadelphia, that is, love for your sisters and brothers in Christ. The new family, constituted by and in Jesus — and which embraces gender, age, class, education, ethnicity, nationality — every category of the census — takes primacy over blood family and nationality.

‘Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.’ The Greek word translated ‘show hospitality’ is philoxenia, and means hospitality — warmth, friendliness — shown to strangers. This is written to people who themselves have been displaced — as could happen to any of us — making an appeal to their shared history, or stories. There is a play on overlooking to show hospitality: God sends messengers (both ‘angelic’ and human) who might or might not be received, and whose message might be lost even on those who do welcome them in. Therefore, hospitality should be an intentional practice, a doing the work of getting to know the other — the stranger — for, whether we recognise it or not, we are as much in need of and benefitted by them as they are in need of and benefitted by us.

So, those who consider themselves to be Christians should love other Christians, regardless of where they are from; and to extend warmth, friendliness, and hospitality to strangers, regardless of where they are from. This is in keeping with God’s repeated insistence, recorded in the Old Testament, that the people treat the alien living in their midst well, attending to their welfare and livelihood, and guaranteeing them justice.

‘Remember those who are in prison, as though you were in prison with them; those who are being tortured, as though you yourselves were being tortured.’ There is a radical solidarity urged here, a compassion born of empathy and practical care.

The line of reasoning may seem to swerve here — ‘Let marriage be held in honour by all, and let the marriage bed be kept undefiled; for God will judge fornicators and adulterers.’ — but marriage, or, the marriage feast, is an image of the union between Jesus and the Church, and so, whatever this may have to do with honouring any marriage (which is a good outlook to embrace) this is also an injunction not to defile our union with Christ, by embracing the xenophobia (excessive fear of strangers) that is so common in the world around us. We should resist, separating ourselves from such ungodly ways of being in the world.

‘Keep your lives free from the love of money, and be content with what you have; for he has said, ‘I will never leave you or forsake you.’ So we can say with confidence, ‘The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid. What can anyone do to me?’’ The reasoning continues, with a warning about covetousness and a call to remain in the present moment (this, rather than possessions, is the emphasis of ‘with what you have’). It is telling how often I see complaints about what asylum seekers — or black people, or gay people, or [insert scapegoat of choice here] are given, that [place myself here] does not. Why should asylum seekers be housed in a hotel!? (These really aren’t the hotel you have in mind, and you would not ever choose to stay in such an establishment.) We — those who are displaced, and those who receive them — are encouraged to remain in the present, not necessarily because conditions are ideal, but because God will not abandon us, whatever we face, now and in the future. Therefore we can say, I will not withdraw, I will not flee from the stranger in need, from the one I am continually provoked to fear.

‘Remember your leaders, those who spoke the word of God to you; consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and for ever.’ Those who hold office, who have authority within the community (that is, the community of the Way, or, the Church community) should take the lead in modelling such a loving, hospitable way of life, to which we are called today as much as the original recipients of the Letter to the Hebrews were called in the first century. And those who call themselves Christians should look to make hospitality towards strangers their own practice, by which we live out our faith in tangible ways.

Hebrews 13.1-8

‘Let mutual love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it. Remember those who are in prison, as though you were in prison with them; those who are being tortured, as though you yourselves were being tortured. Let marriage be held in honour by all, and let the marriage bed be kept undefiled; for God will judge fornicators and adulterers. Keep your lives free from the love of money, and be content with what you have; for he has said, ‘I will never leave you or forsake you.’ So we can say with confidence, ‘The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid. What can anyone do to me?’ Remember your leaders, those who spoke the word of God to you; consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and for ever.’

 

A-levels

 

Today is A-level results day. Many young people will be celebrating getting into their first choice of university. Through Clearance, others will be offered an opportunity — a degree course, a location — previously unconsidered. For others, today will mark the end of academic study and open the door to a different future, just as valid.

The first-century biographer Luke records Jesus as saying, ‘I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!’ Jesus is speaking of the Holy Spirit, poured out with wind and flame at Pentecost, but not before Jesus will be stretched out on a cross, a Roman soldier piercing his side with a spear.

Luke’s Greek audience would have immediately thought of Prometheus, the titan who, according to Greek mythology, had created the first humans from clay, and who, for love of his creatures, stole back fire for them from the Olympian gods, thus giving the means of technology, innovation, and ultimately civilisation in its broadest sense, for which Zeus had him chained to a mountainside and sent an eagle to eat his liver — which regenerated every night — day after day after day.

For Luke, the stories of Prometheus are a culturally-embedded longing that points to Jesus. To his suffering for love of the human race; and to his ushering-in of the age of the Spirit, along with all the benefits the Spirit brings.

These benefits are not limited to life-giving animation of our spirits; charismatic gifts; and character formation; but also include the skills by which we might participate in the shaping of the world towards creative fruitfulness. Gifts of music and all the arts; of science and technology; of the means to discover more of the cosmos God has created; of architecture and medicine and engineering.

Jesus not only brings fire to the earth, which will be apportioned out person to person; he is also the Clearance officer, by whose gift we are allocated our place: some to this role and some to that.

Today is A-level results day. A day of fire, apportioned according to Christ’s call, for the greater blessing of our and every civilisation. None are left out, regardless of results, regardless of the plans our parents might wish for us and whether we have made them proud or disappointed them. Each young person has measureless value; has a role to play in society. Today, may they know the love of Christ Jesus for them, and something of the meaning and purpose he holds out.

 

bringing fire

 

‘I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!’ Jesus

The Gospel writer Luke was a first-century Greek author who had decided to order his life around the claim that Jesus — not Caesar — was Lord, and who wrote for other Greeks who were interested in exploring the same claim. Jesus was a Jew, whose imagination of ‘how the world is’ was shaped by Jewish scriptures; but he lived in ‘Galilee of the Gentiles,’ alongside a Greek population, and would have been as familiar with Greek mythology as with his own cultural heritage.

So when Luke records Jesus saying ‘I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!’ his Greek audience would have immediately thought of Prometheus. Prometheus was a Titan, one of the ancient gods usurped by the younger — Olympian — gods. Prometheus himself had not fought against the Olympians, and so had been spared being thrown into Tartarus, the great pit deep within the underworld. Nonetheless, he had an uneasy relationship with Zeus. It was, so the Greeks told, Prometheus who had made humans — initially all male — from clay, and he loved his creatures dearly. In contrast, Zeus believed that humans were worthy only of making endless sacrifices to the gods. Prometheus tricked Zeus into being bound to accepting sacrifices of bones (wrapped in glistening fat) rather than choice meat (wrapped in an ox’s stomach) and in his capricious anger, Zeus withdrew fire — and with it, the means of technology, and ultimately civilisation — from humanity. But Prometheus stole fire back for his creatures. For this betrayal, Zeus had him chained to a mountain, where each day and eagle — symbol of Zeus, and later symbol of the Roman empire — would eat his liver, the seat of human emotion. Being immortal, each night his liver would regenerate, condemning Prometheus to an ageless torture. Zeus also created Pandora, the first woman, and tricked her into bringing misery into the human experience. Eventually, Prometheus is freed by Heracles, the half-human hero son of Zeus.

So when Luke records Jesus saying, ‘I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!’ — fire being a symbol of the divine presence, and a reference to the Holy Spirit — he is (also) making particular claims about Jesus with reference to Greek mythology. That is to say, that Jesus fulfils Greek stories as well as Jewish ones. He is claiming that Jesus is the god through whom humans were created; and a god who loves his creatures enough to suffer for them. He is making a claim as to what will happen on the cross, that instrument of torture on which the god of this age — the Zeus or Satan figure — is tricked out of his claim to all human life as an endless sacrifice.

The link to Prometheus is underlined by Jesus claiming that he had not come to bring uniformity to the human experience, but to differentiate between humans — claiming a right over and above family ties; this differentiation need not imply enmity — which points to the unfolding of the arts and sciences that flows from the gift of fire. The Spirit of Jesus will inspire great architecture, and scientific invention.

Luke is demonstrating that the stories of Prometheus make it plausible for Greeks to believe in a god who suffers for humanity. Nonetheless, Prometheus was not a god they venerated in any cultic sense. That a god who could be so humiliated, even for noble reasons, was worthy of worship was hard to imagine. At most, he was allowed to hang out with Athena, goddess of wisdom, and Hephaestus, god of invention.

But this is the choice Luke sets out, on which his audience must decide: to side with a capricious god who imposed his will through torture; or with the human god who willingly shared our suffering, transforming opposition to the divine will into God’s good purposes for us. Who suffered, died, and rose again.

It is just about plausible. But the choice must be made.

Luke 12.49-56

‘I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed! Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division! From now on, five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three; they will be divided: father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.’

He also said to the crowds, ‘When you see a cloud rising in the west, you immediately say, “It is going to rain”; and so it happens. And when you see the south wind blowing, you say, “There will be scorching heat”; and it happens. You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?’

 

stars

 

One of my favourite painters is Dutch preacher Vincent van Gogh. ‘The Starry Night’ was one of several paintings he created while recuperating from a mental health breakdown. It depicts a night sky, with stars, moon, and the bright planet Venus, over a sleeping village. In the centre of the village, a church spire points to the heavens. We know the window from which van Gogh painted this scene. We know that the village existed only in his imagination. The spire is a visual sermon, pointing us to hope in the darkness.

In Genesis 15, we read that God came to Abram in a vision, saying, do not fear. In response, being safe in God’s presence, Abram makes himself vulnerable before God. He says, I can’t see any future. Abram pours out his pain, his hurt and anger and bitterness, that he and his wife are childless. God listens, and then invites him to step outside of his tent. Look up at the night sky, God says: count the stars in the heavens, if you can: I will give you descendants as numerous as these.

Luke records a conversation between Jesus and his apprentices, where Jesus tells them that they do not need to be afraid, for it is the good will of the Father — his way of referring to God — to establish them as a kingdom, to give them treasure in the heavens — referencing the conversation between God and Abram about descendants as numerous as the stars. Jesus expands on this nocturnal imagery, inviting his apprentices to see themselves as servants waiting through the night for their master to return, at an unknown hour. Those who wait actively will experience the master coming to them and serving them: the servants find themselves guests and the master, host. But, Jesus warns, it is also possible to fall asleep, and to experience the treasure God bestows stolen away.

Last week Jo and I were camping in a field far from much light pollution. One night, the sky was cloudless. It was extremely cold, but you could see every star visible to the naked eye. The following night there was a blanket of low-lying cloud. It was markedly warmer, but not one single star was visible. The next night, there were some clouds, and some stars visible. The difference was the conditions.

After many generations of decline, there is surprising but statistically-significant evidence to suggest a marked increase in church attendance in England and Wales since the COVID pandemic, including a three-fold increase among young women and a five-fold increase among young men. The reasons seem to be multiple and complex, as are the reasons why my own age group continues to leave the church. But the narrative of inevitable decline — the extinction of the church in this part of the world in the near future — no longer seems, well, inevitable. People are questioning the secular script, and looking for alternatives, including though by no means only in the church.

We need the Vincent van Goghs, who will point to hope, specifically in the person of Jesus, in the darkness, holding hope and despair, faith and unbelief in honest and creative tension; who will help us imagine what we do not yet see with our eyes.

The Abrams, who are honest about their pain and their falling short — what we call sin — and in bringing these things to God receive, in exchange, comfort and peace, hope, forgiveness, cleansing for shame, renewed identity and purpose.

The apprentices, who prepare to receive Jesus turning-up in the face of the stranger, and in particular generations who have been estranged from the church.