Thursday 23 December

Reflection

It’s been well said that the first question we hear in the Bible is not humanity’s question to God but God’s question to us, God walking in the cool of the evening in the Garden of Eden, looking for Adam and Eve who are trying to hide from him. ‘Adam, where are you?’ (Genesis 3.9) The life of Jesus is that question translated into an actual human life, into the conversations and encounters of a flesh-and-blood human being like all others—except that when people meet him they will say, like the woman who talks with him at the well of Samaria, ‘Here is a man who told me everything I ever did’ (]ohn 4.29). Very near the heart of Christian faith and practice is this encounter with God’s questions, ‘Who are you, where are you?’ Are you on the side of the life that lives in Jesus, the life of grace and truth, of unstinting generosity and unsparing honesty, the only life that gives life to others? Or are you on your own side, on the side of disconnection, rivalry, the hoarding of gifts, the obsession with control? To answer that you’re on the side of life doesn’t mean for a moment that you can now relax into a fuzzy philosophy of ‘life-affirming’ comfort. On the contrary: it means you are willing to face everything within you that is cheap, fearful, untruthful and evasive, and let the light shine on it. Like Peter in the very last chapter of John’s gospel, we can only say that we are trying to love the truth that is in Jesus, even as we acknowledge all we have done that is contrary to his spirit. And we say this because we trust that we are loved by this unfathomable mystery who comes to us in the shape of a newborn child, ‘full of grace and truth’.
— Rowan Williams, "The Words of Life, The Words of Prayer", Christmas Day Sermon 2011. In Choose Life. London: Bloomsbury, 2013, pp. 91-2.

Readings

Malachi 3.1-4, 4.2-3

See, I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me, and the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple. The messenger of the covenant in whom you delight—indeed, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts. But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears?

For he is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap; he will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the descendants of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, until they present offerings to the Lord in righteousness. Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the Lord as in the days of old and as in former years. . . .

But for you who revere my name the sun of righteousness shall rise, with healing in its wings. You shall go out leaping like calves from the stall. And you shall tread down the wicked, for they will be ashes under the soles of your feet, on the day when I act, says the Lord of hosts.

(For more music, see the carols service at the bottom of the page!)

Luke 1.57-66

Now the time came for Elizabeth to give birth, and she bore a son. Her neighbours and relatives heard that the Lord had shown his great mercy to her, and they rejoiced with her.

On the eighth day they came to circumcise the child, and they were going to name him Zechariah after his father. But his mother said, ‘No; he is to be called John.’ They said to her, ‘None of your relatives has this name.’ Then they began motioning to his father to find out what name he wanted to give him. He asked for a writing-tablet and wrote, ‘His name is John.’ And all of them were amazed. Immediately his mouth was opened and his tongue freed, and he began to speak, praising God. Fear came over all their neighbours, and all these things were talked about throughout the entire hill country of Judea. All who heard them pondered them and said, ‘What then will this child become?’ For, indeed, the hand of the Lord was with him.

Poem

A Christmas Card, by Thomas Merton

When the white stars talk together like sisters
And when the winter hills
Raise their grand semblance in the freezing night,
Somewhere one window
Bleeds like the brown eye of an open force.
Hills, stars,
White stars that stand above the eastern stable.
Look down and offer Him.
The dim adoring light of your belief.
Whose small Heart bleeds with infinite fire.
Shall not this Child
(When we shall hear the bells of His amazing voice)
Conquer the winter of our hateful century?
And when His Lady Mother leans upon the crib,
Lo, with what rapiers
Those two loves fence and flame their brilliancy!
Here in this straw lie planned the fires
That will melt all our sufferings:
He is our Lamb, our holocaust!
And one by one the shepherds, with their snowy feet,
Stamp and shake out their hats upon the stable dirt,
And one by one kneel down to look upon their Life.

Prayer

Blessèd are you, Sovereign God,
our light and our salvation,
eternal Creator of day and night,
to you be glory and praise for ever!
As we look for your coming in glory,
wash away our transgressions,
cleanse us by your refining fire
and make us temples of your Holy Spirit. By the light of Christ,
dispel the darkness of our hearts
and make us ready to enter your kingdom,
where songs of praise for ever sound,
Father, Son and Holy Spirit:
Blessèd be God for ever!
— Celebrating common prayer.

Advent Carol Service.

Service introduced by the Dean of Chapel, the Revd Dr. Andrew Macintosh,
1. The Advent Prose (“Rorate caeli”.
2. Hymn: Hail to the Lord’s anointed (“Crüger”)
3. Syon, at thy shining gates (G R Woodward, arr. George Guest)
4. A tender shoot (Otto Goldschmidt)
5. There is no rose (John Joubert)
6. Jesus Christ the apple tree (Elizabeth Poston)
7. Hymn: Lo, he comes with clouds descending (“Helmsley”)
8. King Jesus hath a garden (Dutch melody, arr Charles Wood)
9. The Linden Tree Carol (German melody, arr Reginald Jacques)
10. Hymn: O come, O come, Emmanuel (“Veni Emmanuel”)
11. Sans Day Carol (John Rutter)
12. Ding, dong, merrily on high (16th century French, arr Malcolm Williamson)
13. Magnificat in G (Herbert Sumsion)
14. Break forth, O beauteous, heavenly light (Johann Sebastian Bach)
15. Hymn: O come, all ye faithful (“Adeste fidelis”).

May the Lord, when he comes, find us watching and waiting. Amen.