You learn new things about Christmas with every one that passes you by. I learn new things about how to keep these festivals each year. One Christmas builds on another. Perhaps we learn more about the God who came into the world each year that we live in it.

About a month ago, we started to gather together the figures which build up our nativity scene. Someone went down into the crypt and found them all and dusted them off and got them ready.

The tableau is over on your left this year, on a windowsill. Mary and Joseph and the baby.

I like the figures to gradually build up. First come the animals, waiting through advent. Symbolic of the world waiting for then Christ to be born. And whilst they wait, the Magi set off from the East and wend their way from the High Altar, getting nearer and nearer to Bethlehem until they arrive at Epiphany. The Holy Family appear on Christmas Eve in the morning, the shepherds hover around waiting to rush to Bethlehem and the babe himself arrives on the stroke of midnight. I always worry about losing him and not having him on hand at the appropriate moment. Indeed, in my last church he was small enough for me to hide him in the chalice, so that I would remember him at he appropriate moment. Of course, I then stopped worrying about losing the Christchild and started to worry about drowning him in wine instead.

Anyway, as the figures were being gathered together this year, one member of the congregation saw what was going on and said to me, “Time to go and get the shredded wheat then.” [Read more...]

I’ve had a huge amount of bother posting videos recently. My usual video host hipcast seems no longer to be working.

So, I’m trying out a new host, vimeo. If it works,  it may well be time to shift to vimeo and pay up for a premium account.

Anyway, there is now video of Akma (aka Fr Andrew Adam) preaching last Sunday over at the preaching page on St Mary’s website. Akma has come to these parts to teach Divinity at the University of Glasgow.

You can see his own blog over at http://akma.disseminary.org/ and see his sermon text here.

I forgot to set the camera up this morning (still needing a couple of people to be the camera team, I think). So, no video from this morning. Here is the text though:

The tradition in churches like this one is to try to make something special of Advent. Whilst the rest of the world is going tinsel crazy, we have a plain church to focus our minds on things that matter. Whilst the shops are full of presents for everyone and the jangly music of Christmas Carols is everywhere, we tend to go in the other direction. There will be no Christmas Carols here until we have kept four Sunday Advent Eucharists. The crib (which is over on the left hand side of the church this year) is bare. The animals are there alone and have nothing to do but munch from the manger. There is no baby there.

Once we have had our four Advent Sunday mornings, there will be a tree and decorations and Christmas Carols galore – though even that is a concession – there are those who belong here who think that is a concession too far and that we should be Christmas-free until the child is actually born.

We can have Advent carols though – and we will have them in plenty tonight at the Advent Carol Service. And I want to begin with the words of a good Advent Carol to make us think about what we really believe about the coming of Jesus Christ.

It goes like this:

You better be good, You better not cry
You better watch out, I’m telling you why
Santa Claus is coming to town. [Read more...]

Here is what I said in the pulpit this morning.

Hearing that Gospel, I always think how real it is.

If there are good seats, people always want them. And it seems very real that James and John were trying to secure for themselves the best seats in heaven.

People are funny about seats, aren’t they? I remember going to another church in Glasgow one week when I was on holiday from being here. And I got there earlier than anyone in the congregation. There I was. The church was full of empty chairs. And I chose one and sat down to have a bit of a pray and a think. And would you believe it, I’d sat down in the wrong seat. The next person though the door came over to me and asked me to move for he said (quite rightly, I’m sure), that I was sitting in his place.

James and John’s hubris lives on in many a seating plan and in many an order of precedence.

But what did they make of the answer that Jesus gave. [Read more...]

The video camera ran out of memory this morning before it recorded the sermon, so I'm afraid I can only offer the text. However, before it ran out, it did record me singing David's Lamentation which came between the first two readings. A useful reminder that it is not only by listening to sermons that we can directly encounter the text.

Here it is:

Here is the sermon itself:
For the last month or more, we have been getting snippets of a story from the Hebrew Scriptures which have been building up week by week. We have been reading the story of David. On Sundays, we have been treated to some of the big events in his life, whilst during the week, those who come to Morning Prayer have been dutifully ploughing their way through the whole of David’s story in the second book of Samuel.

It is a story with lots of action. And very often as we have been reading it, it has been hard to listen to.

Indeed, one day someone said to me, “Why do we get to read this stuff in the Bible. Did David ever do anything that was good?”

It is a good question. [Read more...]