Pilgrim Soldier

We’re now nearly at the end of a 2 week break from college! It’s been nice to have, especially after the handing in of 5 essays in 5 weeks that we had at the end of term. Thankfully, I’ve managed to pass both the two papers that we have had handed back! The next stage of the process will see a return to preaching and leading meetings as we will be having 7 Sundays at Chalk Farm corps over the coming weeks. Both Zoe & I are looking forward to this, even though it’s not quite what we’ve been used to in recent years as far as worship is concerned. It’ll be good to spend some time at another corps though and get to know some new people.

The break has been a time of family, friends and travel! For the first time, we were able to get round all the closest family. We spent Christmas Eve and Boxing Day at Zoe’s mum’s and on Boxing Day got to see our rapidly growing nephew, Oliver. It was then off to my family for a couple of nights which culminated with an invite to our eldest nephew’s 18th birthday party in April!! Despite the amount of travelling we’ve had to do, it was well worth the effort to spend Christmas with the family!

We’ve also managed to get some time with friends as well, which is always good. In fact the last three days have been spent with either friends who’ve been to visit us, or amongst the college community now we’re back in London.

And so we’re back! Still quite a bit to do before we restart lectures on Monday, but its been a great Christmas and a nice end to 2008. Here’s to 2009!

Those of you who have followed my blog for a while will know that I have mentioned my concern over the attitude of Western Christian’s to what is being called Christianophobia. Now don’t get me wrong, I do believe that this does exist, especially in places in the world that see Christians prevented from worshipping or being truly persecuted. I’m just not sure we can count things like “Jerry Springer – The Opera” and the fact that some aren’t allowed to wear crosses outside their uniforms as real persecution.

Two things have brought this subject back into the forefront of my mind. Firstly, an article by my former colleague, Jonathan Bartley, written just after Christmas. Picking up on the fact that there was the normal avalanche of stories in the lead up to Christmas about the downgrading of the season due to over political-correctness, he suggests that this was in reality achieved years, if not decades, ago. His conclusion is that:

Christmas is offensive, and for ever will be. It legitimates the undermining of those in authority. But it is also about looking after not just those who are “deserving” of our love, but those who may appear disreputable and unworthy.

The second was a piece by Nick Tomlinson in the September issue of Zoe’s Women Alive magazine which arrived from Latvia earlier this month. Tomlinson suggests that the typical suburban lifestyle is all about comfort. This striving for comfort is really the complete opposite to what real Christianity is about. One telling comment that leapt of the page as I read it is this:

…radical love and forgiveness become invincible weapons of evangelism when the Church is under fire. But when the Church is comfortable and safe, it becomes hard for its members to understand how to apply Christ’s commandments to daily life.

He goes on to suggest that maybe rather than responding by acting as if a slight on Christianity is a terribly offensive thing and insisting our status is protected from these slights, we should see an opportunity to publicly forgive and bless our ‘enemies’. Now that’s counter-cultural!

For the whole of December I’ve been reading a wonderful book by Maggi Dawn called Beginnings and Endings. A series of Advent readings that go from 1st December right though to Epiphany on 6th January, they have lit up the wonders of Advent in a way that hasn’t happened before. On 26 December she wrote the following when writing about the way Jesus was looked after after he was born; the way he was kept as safe as possible by being swaddled and kept in the cleanest available space.

“We expect Jesus to be where it’s clean, but he is born into the mess of human life. We think of Jesus as safe and calm and serence, but he grows up to be the kind of leader who has his sleeves rolled up, ready to face reality and connect the spiritual world to the material one. We try to restrain him and keep him clean, but he breaks out of those expectations. Our idea of ‘holy’ is to protect God from anything unpleasant and unmentionable, yet Jesus’ idea of ‘holy’ is to bring the fresh air of heaven into the dirtiest and messiest corners of our world. He will not remain restrained, swaddled, safe, warm and still for very long.”

I love that thought that idea of bringng “the fresh air of heaven into the dirtiest and messiest corners of our world.” This simple, yet profound statement, strikes to the heart of who we are as Christians. You see everything about our task as human beings is geared around trying to make our lives more comfortable.

Providing increased comforts has been one of the hidden driving forces of virtually every step forward in technology. This drive towards increased comfort has been either of the very practical sort, ie transport, or instead to provide increased wealth, which provides the money for us to buy the ‘home comforts’ so many measure success by.

However, comfort poses something of a problem to us. Jesus famously warns people that sought to follow him that whilst foxes have holes, the Son of Man had nowhere to lay his head. This makes the pathway of discipleship seem far from a comfortable lifestyle choice. Comfort does not easily go hand in hand with a gospel that seeks to reach into the dirty and messy places of the world. It doesn’t even matter whether these places are the physically dirty and messy places or those of our hearts and minds, either is an uncomfortable place to find ourselves in.

Recently, Phil Wall wrote an article on theRubicon that shows how comfort is something to be wary of because of its inherent ‘unrisky’ nature. He also made the powerful claim that,

“Taking faith filled risks within our comfort-oriented lives is a powerful antidote to spiritual impotency. … It is most often within the crucible of risk-induced challenge and hardship that God does his greatest work within us.”

Following Jesus’ lead in this is an inherently risky business. If Jesus was about reaching into the dirty and messy places of our world with the “fresh air of heaven” then surely, as his followers, we should be opening doors into these same areas so that the same fresh air reach those places too!

This is incredible and I hope it touches your heart this Christmas as it did mine! (Hat tip to Len)

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In the last post I wrote about some of the things we’ve been up to this Christmas! The other thing was on Sunday evening which was our Carol Service. Our normal Sunday night congregation is around a dozen people, but for our carol service we had 33 in the hall. This was wonderful as that is most who have been there since I’ve been at the corps!

This year the Carol Service was quite a traditional affair, with contributions from the band and songsters plus carols and readings. As is normal I did a short talk and it’s that I’d like to share with you!

I’m pretty certain that if you were to ask the majority of adults whether Christmas is about giving or receiving, then the answer that would come back is that it’s about giving.

This is true, but it seems that even giving is becoming detrimental to the Christmas spirit. There are various reasons for this but two stand out. Firstly, for many, it seems that each year they need to out do what they did last year. So the presents they give have to be bigger and better and more expensive than they did last year. What’s worse is that in a generation that seems to have everything available to them a lot of what is bought is simply unnecessary.

The second problem is in many ways a direct result of the first. At a time when the inhabitants of this country spent more than half a billion pounds on credit card last year and when the Citizens Advice Bureau has dealt with 1.7 million debt problems in the last 12 months, the follow up to Christmas this year is not going to be a happy time for many people.

But maybe that’s because the focus has got all screwed up! Maybe Christmas is not actually about giving after all! Maybe Christmas is actually about receiving.

Tonight we’ve sung carols and read parts of the Bible that talk about the arrival of Jesus Christ, the person who Christmas is all about.

You see Christmas is really about receiving the gift that God gave to us just over 2000 years ago. In a secular world it seems that maybe Father Christmas is the central figure of the Christmas story, but it’s not true, because really he’s just another symptom of a consumer led society!

The reality is that Christians believe that we are celebrating that God gave us the greatest gift that could ever be given. The first Christmas present was the best Christmas present ever, God’s own son.

God gave us the gift of Jesus so that he could heal the relationship between himself and us. He gave us Jesus so that the world would become a better place as those who believe in him live a life that reflects the gift.

The real meaning of Christmas is receiving this gift and accepting everything that comes with it!

This Christmas, what will be your response to the gift of that first Christmas?

Over the last couple of days the Christmas season has really kicked off here in Godalming. The size and age profile of the corps dictates that December is not the extremely busy season that some of my fellow corps leaders experience, but this changed this last weekend.

We kicked off on Sunday with a trip to a children’s care home for children with profound disabilities. The corps have been going there every Christmas for around 40 years and playing carols and giving out small presents. My task is to lead the singing and to get people to choose which carols they want to sing and then to encourage the children to shout for the Father Christmas who comes with us. To say that the place is noisy is an understatement and I was warned that it could be very difficult to cope with seeing children such as those who live there.

Anyway we spent about 30 minutes there and I would say that it has been my favourite moment of the Christmas so far. Seeing the excitement in some of the children’s responses to favourite carols was a joy to behold!

Were we full on evangelistic in our effort? Honestly, I can’t say we were. However, from the two or three conversations I had with the parent’s of the children I know how much they appreciated our efforts. Did we manage to put across something of the meaning of Christmas? I reckon we did! Did we bring some joy into the lives of those who were there? Without doubt!

For me this was about showing that we are around and that we are interested in everyone. It was an opportunity to say that we care! It was about being salt and light.

Then yesterday we went off to a women’s prison to play for their annual carol concert. Whilst the band’s role was to play for the carol’s, it was great to see the ministry that is going on there! One of the volunteers on the chaplaincy team did an unashamedly in your face talk and pointed out that Christmas was a chance to put the past behind and move on into the New Year with a new focus of following God’s true will for your life!

All in all an excellent couple of days! I haven’t touched on our Carol Service yet, but I’ll do that in another post!

Christmas Is Really For The Children

Christmas is really
for the children.
Especially for children
who like animals, stables,
stars and babies wrapped
in swaddling clothes.
Then there are wise men,
kings in fine robes,
humble shepherds and a
hint of rich perfume.

Easter is not really
for the children
unless accompanied by
a cream filled egg.
It has whips, blood, nails,
a spear and allegations
of body snatching.
It involves politics, God
and the sins of the world.
It is not good for people
of a nervous disposition.
They would do better to
think on rabbits, chickens
and the first snowdrop
of spring.

Or they’d do better to
wait for a re-run of
Christmas without asking
too many questions about
what Jesus did when he grew up
or whether there’s any connection.
Steve Turner, Up to Date, (1987) Hodder and Stoughton, London