1 Almighty God has done great things,
an angel proffers stunning news,
the news of human hope he brings,
her baby heaven and earth shall fuse;
and she will give her life for that,
O, Mary, sing magnificat.
2 A mother and her unborn child,
a man who ought to let her go
to save his face, stay undefiled,
as love and duty taunt and flow;
and Joseph will consider that
as Mary sings magnificat.
3 And all the greatness of a God,
distilled to love, sets captives free,
a single liberating Word:
those born in darkness now can see;
as human power considers that
let Mary sing magnificat.
Piecing Peace Together by Barbara Glasson is one of the most profoundly helpful pieces of writing that I have read in years – totally apt and pertinent in the world today. From the Blog Theology Everywhere
Some churches, on the Sunday before Advent, celebrate the Feast of Christ the King. It offers a high spot before we descend into the darkness as we prepare for the coming of the Light of the World at Christmas. The more I think about this, the more strange it seems.
Once the Kingship of Christ made sense. I loved to sing ‘Majesty, worship His majesty’. Now it seems a bit out of kilter with what we read about Jesus. Let me reflect for a moment.
We read that 2000 or so years ago bureaucracy uprooted people. Foreign troops occupied a country. Native politicians and religious leaders juggled their own privileges and prejudices with advancement and preferment. And common people became pawns to be taxed, manipulated according their economic value to the ruling class. People counted, and needed to be counted.
Times don’t change it seems.
If we take the story literally Mary and Joseph were subjects of a census.
Set aside for a moment the Magi and shepherds, the angels and the star. ‘Long way from your home’, a baby was born. Within a short time, days? More likely a year or two, that baby was threatened as babies have been, and have been killed, in our own time, in our so called civilised world. Politics demand that difficult decisions have to be made.
Difficult decisions: so often a euphemism for oppression, diminution or judicial killing.
Majesty? A child threatened with death in the arms of his parents seeking asylum in another country. Not Majesty as we would recognise it, not a life-style choice.
If we believe that this child was God born among us, this is no majestic king, victorious, but a vulnerable baby trusted to parents fleeing persecution and death. And it challenges me to see Christ this Christmas, not in the palaces of the powerful but, more likely in the vulnerable and persecuted.
Remember that this baby grew up to be a man. Entrusted to those young vulnerable parents he was later to say ‘the son of man has nowhere to lay his head’. He understood poverty and homelessness. Then when he says, ‘whatever you did for the least of these, you do it for me’, he knew what it was like to be least in society. No wonder, in the title of an Anglican report some years ago he had a ‘Bias to the Poor’; not to ‘Lord’ it over one another.
Our God trusted human parents to care for him, and lived out an example for humanity to follow his example of trust, reliance and care in relationship to each other. ‘Love one another’.
So as we move toward Christmas let us hold onto something of the reality of the Biblical story, a story that is is awe-inspiring. This is much more than a time for children dressing up and playing games. More a wake-up call for us all, to realise that whenever we visit the prisoner, welcome the stranger, feed the hungry, provide water for the thirsty we again meet Christ, see God in those we greet… It is a wake-up call, a reminder that we find God-head, not in the powerful or majestic, not in the robes and honours of politics or religion, not in places of domination or repression, but in vulnerability and love. Truly within us and among us.
May God in Christ bless us all.
Andrew Pratt (originally written for the Mid-Cheshire Circuit of the Methodist Church 27/11/2023)
A Sermon related to the Parable of the Talents (Matthew 25: 14 – 30) – Patricia Billsborrow – Pickmere 19th November 2023
Last Sunday, rather than go to a local church service as I was not on the Plan, I went to have a time of peace and reflection at the Friends Meeting House at Fradely. It was something one of my church members in Birkenhead did every Remembrance Sunday and it was for her and for me a time of quiet where I could share silence with others, remembering and also praying for God’s presence in a search for peace. As I went in, with a friend from Davenham I was handed this little card which speaks of what the Quakers say: ‘There is something sacred in all people, all people are equal before God, Religion is about the whole of life, Each person is unique a precious child of God’.
As I sat in the quiet space I was facing a window which had a lovely tree outside still fully leaved with beautiful autumn colours………….I noticed something I don’t think I have ever noticed before that every leave was different, the colours, the shapes the twists and turns were all unique and yet all of those leaves were attached to the one tree, they would soon be beginning to fall but behind them would be the buds of new life………………..an image which made me think of those words I had just read, but also my own belief in the words from Scripture that all of us are made in God’s image whoever we are, and are all attached to the “one tree” so to speak and how important it is to endeavour to pray for God’s guidance as we all travel the same journey whatever colour we are, whatever language we speak, however we recognise God and all of us must seek to become the world that was envisaged at the time of Creation……………………….it was quite a lesson, I then came home and read the Gospel set for today about the talents. I don’t think we every really go into the parables seeking to look more deeply into the words but it is perhaps important to seek what those talents actually were……………according to the foot of the page in my Bible the note says that it was more than 15 years of wages for a labourer……………….an awful lot of money which was given for the workers to care for on his behalf, and I am sure many of us would sympathise with the man who buried it so that it did not lose value rather than get caught up in more risky endeavours………………however Matthew was not meaning the people listening, or indeed we in our own time to think of it in those terms, but in the terms of the many gifts we are given by the God who comes to us in the person of Jesus willing to give so much even to go to the cross for the salvation of the people………………..and how we are to react to the gifts that we ourselves have and how we should use them in accordance with the Gospel of Love………….of God, quite easy…………..of our neighbours…………………….how do we do that……………well as we ourselves would want to be loved (cared for). There is of course a temptation to feel comfortable in the faith community into which we have either been born or have come to know having met Jesus and heard him say to us, follow me, and therefore, and to some extent that has become more tempting since the pandemic, to close ourselves away within the community where we feel comfortable rather than share the gifts which come through faith with the wider community, those who have needs sometimes physical through things like the food bank and homelessness projects, those who are lonely and lost in the wider world, those who are afraid, I could site many other examples, and yet the parable is saying that is not what the Owner of the vineyard is asking them to do, he is asking his workers to use the very generous gifts he has given them to create growth and to develop the work he has entrusted to them. In more everyday terms that we, who have heard those words and heard Jesus call to us through his life and witness of which we read in the Gospels, should use the love we have for our creator to make a difference through our interaction not just with the familiar but with those people whose lives are very different from ours, whose journey has been very different from ours, to make them feel part of the world wide family, the kingdom of God, which was envisaged when God created the world, the one world, the multicoloured and experienced world, we are living in today. When I looked at that tree, and those amazing coloured leaves and reflected on them, I saw beyond the natural beauty to the world as it is today, and that whichever journey we find ourselves on, we should be aware of the journies of others and seek to build a world where instead of suspicion and hatred there is kinship and peace so that we might play our part in building that world which was intended at the beginning. All of us whoever we are of different understandings of faith, of different nationalities and understanding are on the same journey with the same end in view. Let us play our part in building that wonderful vineyard where all participants have value and are part of the one family one of the many leaves, attached to the same tree and be thankful. Amen
Challenged about the rightness of paying taxes, Jesus showed the Pharisees a coin and then said to them, “Whose head is this, and whose title?” When they replied correctly he responded, “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” So what do we owe to the State? And what to God?
1 What is our ultimate concern? Where is the centre of each soul? What are the things that matter most? What single sense will make us whole?
2 We recognize the depth of love, the grace that held us from our birth, but all too soon we lose our grasp and other things have greater worth.
3 The things we own, the clothes we wear, usurp the place that God should hold, become our idols, cloak our minds as if our faith was lost or sold.
4 The God that we purport to serve, to love with heart and soul and mind, is lost within our self concern yet still is there to seek and find.
5 So God, we come to start again; to clear the clutter from our lives, to see you in each neighbour’s face, to find the faith that holds and strives.
hymnsandbooks 