The Word Became Flesh

 Something changes on Christmas night.

I mean, yeah obviously Mary becomes a mother and Jospeh a presumably still-confused stepfather and the boy who is to be King of the World is in a manger and angels and shepherds and Magi and all that stuff.

But something changes for God.

It's like this - in the beginning God created the heaven and earth. And it was all good. It was all good.We can debate what we mean by "good" in a universe where life can only exist because stars have died, on a planet where it's the geological movements that create volcanoes and earthquakes that also recycle the essential elements of life. But we don't have all night. I think it's somewhere in that the universe is beautiful and also terrifying. And in that respect, I suspect, it resembles its creator just as the creator has put the divine image into all of us. And because we have the divine image, we work to understand this amazing world that God created. And because it's good, our science and our art all work to build our understanding.

And God has created this universe like an artist. God can stand back from the creation and admire it.

Until Christmas Night.

Because now, God the Son, the Word - the one through whom everything was created - is seeing it all from the inside. Not just as a creator - as a creature.

The blobby brown shapes of Mary and Joseph as they care for him.

The smell of warm milk. The odd-for-a-newborn whiff of animal droppings and fresh hay.

Reaching out and touching, as best as the swaddling bands would allow him - touching the hay. Grabbing the finger of the shepherd who has dropped in to wonder.

The sounds of the womb, replaced with the sounds of breathing, the wind outside, maybe some angels still allowed in the area around where the little family rested.

So God found what it's like to be a human being. To be in it with the rest of us. To be one of us.

Something has changed for God. He becomes made of the stuff that he himself made.

He will discover what it's like to be part of a human family. To have brothers and sisters. Friends, and enemies. The taste of wine and the smell of blood. The joy of weddings and the sadness of funerals. What it is to be loved and what it is like to be hated. What it is like truly to live - and what it is like to die.

Something has changed for God. God has drawn close to this world. Become part of it. Our struggles are also Jesus's. 

And this world has changed. We have been touched with the divine. And we are called to follow him where he has gone. And because of Christmas night, we can follow him.

Have a very blessed Christmas.

A Christmas Message for Church Ministers

Just one day to go.

You've done 3 lots of carolling, umpteen assemblies, Christingles, Nativities, Advent Study Groups, crib Services, and written next month's "Thought" for tha parish magazine.

You've eaten your own weight in mince pies and stollen. Drunk more coffee and mulled wine than would comfortably fit in Willen Lake.

You fitted in two weddings and six funerals.

Now you’ve just got three Midnight Masses, a dawn service, and a mid-morning service to go.

(And, quite likely, Christmas and Boxing Day meals to cook).

Then it's "you time". Time to relax. Let all the adrenaline go.

It's time to  go down with the 'flu.

Enjoy it. You've earned it.

Litany for People Stuck in Waitrose Car Park on the Night Before Christmas Eve

Oh dear God
We just thought we'd slip out for a last-minute almond parfait
and a Basque Cheesecake

and a corn-fed organic free-range Duchy goose

with brandy and chestnut gravy

How happy we were

dreaming of picking up a nice Louis Jadot Chassagne Montrachet Premier Cru for Christmas lunch

with a 20 year old tawny port to sip alongside our Reblochon de Savoie.

But now here we are

Unable to find a place to park

with 7-seater Landrover Discoveries occupying approximately 1.5 spaces each.

You watch over our not going in

and over our not going out 

As the Porche Cayennes roll in off the bypass

so that no-one can move.

But you are the One who made heaven and earth from nothing

Surely it's not beyond you to vaporise a Toyota Corolla estate?

(Although if it's the hybrid you will give more material to the conspiracy theorists, so maybe go for an old Jaguar instead)

But we know in your eyes a thousand ages are but an evening gone

so you probably think we've only just arrived 

and we're not gonna be on your list until about April

So we will dwell in this car park

all the days of our lives

or at least until the Gruyere sells out.

Winter Solstice Ceremony

Archdruid: Like our ancestors before us

Hnaef: And beside us

Charlii: And beneath us

Keith: Tactless.

Archdruid: We stand at the still point of the year. Nature dies.

Charlii: The earth dies screaming.

Keith: The earth dies screaming.

Archdruid: I told you. No UB40.

Hnaef: And yet nature will rise.

Burton: Sunrise, sunset. Sunrise, sunset.

Archdruid: And it's too early for Fiddler on the Roof.

Charlii: Yes, why are we holding this Solstice Ceremony two hours early?

Archdruid: 9am's the only slot I could get from Tesco.

Keith: You've transferred a major festival because of a clash with a grocery delivery?

Archdruid: It's got your Christmas cheese on it.

Charlii: And a traditional Beaker brandy-infused Yule log.

Keith: It's the reason for the season.

The Apple Tree

I went out in the Orchard this afternoon. Where the bare twigs of the apple trees were stark against the steel gray of the solstice sky.

The apple trees were empty. All the leaves gone. And at first you think they're as near dead as a living thing can be.

Except you look slightly more closely, and they're not. Next year's buds are there already. The small leaf buds, of course. But also the chubby flower buds are already there. The tiny signs, in the winter darkness, of the pink and white glories of spring, and the rich, glorious fruit of late summer and autumn.

The promises are all there. 

A child is born. A bud from the branch of Jesse. An offspring of mighty David. Such a tiny thing, in such a dark world. Such a tiny, tiny thing. What is there to see, that angels sing about and Magi worship? What are the hopes of the stepson of a carpenter, the baby of a newly-wed young woman from a conquered race?

Those apple buds will go through the winter cold, to a quick glance dead. This child will go through the death of a cross until he rises in the spring. And now our old world still waits. And the buds of new life wait. And wait, till the Sun of Righteousness will shine and bring new life back into this world.

There's an old hymn that calls Jesus Christ the Apple Tree. He's the one who reverses that old curse of the fruit tree at Eden. The new Adam who faced temptation. The one on whom we feed to receive eternal life.

He came to earth and broke the power of death. He will come again to make all things new.

But for now, he's just a baby in a manger.  We start our story at the beginning. And we will follow him through his life, once again.

Death of Kirsty MacColl (2000)

Imagining Kirsty, halfway through her 60s, writing songs about how the Government have short-changed the Waspi women after saying they'd support them.

She hated injustice and she hated women being betrayed.

And she was thoroughly let down by the system. 

It's pouring with rain, so we won't be dancing the Mambo de la Luna.

Not in these shoes.

And so the Magi Followed the star...

... which led them over the house where the child lay.

And Caspar said to the others,

"Are we sure this isn't actually a secret drone?"

So Balthasar and Melchior went in and offered their gifts and worshipped.

But Caspar spent the next three months on a Reddit, speculating on whether it was Eleazar Musk or the Martians that was behind it.