Graffiti on the wall surrounding Bethlehem ( (c) HolyLand-Gifts.com )

An h/t to Phil Groom for bringing Martin Leckebusch’s modern take on the Christmas Carol, O Little Town of Bethlehem to my attention. What I love about this is that it starts as many a “modern Christmas retelling” does: by almost pointing out how the message of Christmas (hope, love and peace etc.) is almost conspicuous by its absence in the town of Christ’s birth.

And yet it still manages to usher in the hope that Christ coming would have all those centuries ago. The world hasn’t changed that much after all. The message of Christmas (the real one without the tinsel) is still valid and still needed.

O West Bank town of Bethlehem,
how still thy victims lie;
the grieving weep, deprived of sleep;
militiamen roam by;
for through thy dark streets rageth
the never-ending fight:
such hopes and fears, such bitter tears
are met in thee tonight.

O morning news, O papers,
report the dreadful dearth
of saints who sing to praise the King,
of peace across the earth;
where Christ was born of Mary
‘midst wondering angels’ love,
in anguish deep, sad mortals keep
few thoughts of things above.

How violently, how violently
the hope of peace is riven;
can God imparts to these torn hearts
the blessings of his heaven?
Who now recalls his coming
to this dark world of sin?
Where harsh words still promote ill-will,
can Christ now enter in?

O Child once born in Bethlehem,
draw near again, we pray;
you died to win this world from sin -
yet sin persists today.
May we, like Christmas angels,
annouce Immanuel,
till all are given a glimpse of heaven
and not a taste of hell.

Martin Leckebusch
Copyright © 2010 Kevin Mayhew Ltd

Reproduced under the terms of Kevin Mayhew’s fair use copyright policy.

Image by Joelk75 - CC:By

In the past couple of days I’ve seen the subject of worship come up on Twitter a bit more than usual. Initially it was a series of joke #machoWorshipSongs and this seemed to evolve into a discussion about the use of masculine/feminine/romantic language in worship songs.

In the first instance I and a few others commented to each other that the “joke” was somewhat lost as so many of the songs we use in worship have a masculine or (as one person put it) pseudo-aggressive tone to them. In the second it emerged from a comment about how men don’t like the “Jesus is my boyfriend” type songs intoa debate about the appropriateness of this language and how it’s not just men who dislike them.

What I find interesting is that both fell into the standard trap of presuming “worship” is a) collective/corporate and b) uses words and language. Yes it’s true we get as many “Worship is more than singing!” declarations as we do “The church is the people not the building” ones and to the most part both are valid statements but what these discussions reminded me of was something I preached about a few years back.

What is worship?

It’s a well known meme that wroship derives from worth-ship, that is when we worship we are giving God worth, telling him what he is worth to us. This is interesting because it makes it easy to extend worship into the rest of our lives. Sometimes I struggle to think of worship in any other context than singing, praying, making, painting, playing etc. in a collective sense. It’s easy for us to say our lives should be worship but how do we do that.

The answer – I believe – is found in the following passage:

“You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven. _{Matt 5:14-16 NIV}

When we shine, when we show our best in service to others we are giving God value in our eyes and in theirs (note v16). This is something that I find very important and it’s the inspiration behind #EntertainingAngels (formerly known as Give Up bad Coffee For Lent).

We give God worth.
We worship.

Service is worship, worship is service

Serving others is worship. Putting the needs of others before yourself is worship. Look at how that passage appears in the Message (emphasis mine):

“Here’s another way to put it: You’re here to be light, bringing out the God-colours in the world. God is not a secret to be kept. We’re going public with this, as public as a city on a hill. If I make you light-bearers, you don’t think I’m going to hide you under a bucket, do you? I’m putting you on a light stand. Now that I’ve put you there on a hilltop, on a light stand-shine! Keep open house; be generous with your lives. By opening up to others, you’ll prompt people to open up with God, this generous Father in heaven. _{Matt 5:14-16 The Message}

So let’s stop worrying if Church doesn’t appeal to our particular tastes and start figuring out if we leave a good taste in the mouths of those we meet. Because I have a sneaky feeling that in heaven people will spend a lot more time interacting with each other than they do standing beside each other singing.

As a side effect of this, once we also start to think of worship emerging from service it puts our roles in church in a new perspective, particularly if we are “worship” leaders.

I have noticed an increase of problem caused by these people:

These people are the ones we blame when we’re too lazy to give an appropriate name to those we accuse.
These people exhibit behaviour we deplore but that we rarely have evidence of.
These people follow whatever thought processes (if any) we wish to assign to make our point.
These people are a group of varying size but rarely do we think they really count.
These people are a convenient way for us to write real people off by lumping them together and not treating them as people.
Jesus said “Treat other people the way you want them to treat you.” Fortunately for us he didn’t specify how we should treat these people.

Too often we lump people into groups of our making so we can dismiss them out of hand and write them off. We decide what these people know, what they think, how they act and how they should be treated. At no point do we consider whether those we group together as these people actually want or – better yet – deserve to be in that group.

We owe them more than that. We owe them what we’d like them to owe us. A chance. A non-judgemental, open minded chance to be treated as an individual. Probably like you, I have had my turn at being grouped with these people and on occasion I have looked at those I am grouped with. Rarely do I find much in common with them. Other than being a human being who is being stereotyped by another human being of course.

This video is pretty well known and speaks for itself. But it’s good. Let’s stop talking about these people. Let’s talk about a person. Let’s look at them in the way Jesus did: one at a time.

Another quality video. Although sometimes these types of productions can become a bit “samey”, I think the presentation here really brings the text to life and in the end it is a cracking text.

( h/t @biblefresh )

The passion in the message here is excellent as is the quality of the video. ( h/t @theeruditefrog )

Thanks to Robb (@changingworship) for highlighting this brilliant and cutting piece by Bill Maher in the US. Be aware that it has swearing in it. Also I feel it will probably make us Christians feel a little uncomfortable – if it’s only the swearing that does that then I applaud you.

The thing is that non-Christians have long been able to better tell how Christians should be behaving than we seem to be. “That’s not a very Christian thing to do”, “I thought you were a Christian?” – that kind of thing. We dismiss it with “I’m not perfect” and “God isn’t finished with me yet” but we need to ask are they right when they make such accusations and also why do they make them in the first place? For some reason they expect more of us than we often expect of ourselves. Maher says: “If you ignore every thing Jesus commanded you to do then you’re not his followers, you’re just fans” and he’s right. Yes we can laugh at the idea of “fundementalist Christians” holding babies under the baptismal water until they talk but let’s be careful not to distance ourselves too far from the message behind it. If the rest of the world has a poor view of Christians and Christianity then there really is only one place to lay the blame: at the feet of the Church – which we keep on telling ourselves is the people and not the building.

Recently I had a conversation with a new Christian (for want of a better term). They expressed a concern that they felt they still weren’t getting it right (after 3 weeks!). After 35 years of being in the same boat all I could say was “join the club”. In the end though we must remember that the message we bring (and should live) is that all fall short of the standard Jesus set and that God loved the entire world so much that he gave his only Son to make up the difference. This does not give us an excuse to stop trying and to live in ways that the person we claim to follow would not have done.

Photo by Slideshow Bruce CC:By

So everybody knows that Harold Camping was wrong, the rapture didn’t happen and I got to watch Doctor Who after all but even so the whole scenario has got me thinking about heaven again. Camping predicted that on Saturday 21 May the process of Heaven coming to earth would begin. He chose to focus on judgement, scaremongering and some kind of divine favouritism (as he has done before) but was he so wrong about Heaven coming to earth?

I think Heaven did come to earth last weekend. It didn’t come with earthquake and rapture but it came. It does every day and we who are aware of it are sometimes guilty of keeping it to ourselves. Allow me to explain.

• Heaven came to earth when people came together in friendship in a world of enemies
• Heaven came to earth when those who were heavy with tears were, for a moment, given a chance to smile without feeling bad about it
• Heaven came to earth when those who are having a rough time were able to share with each other and gain strength from it
• Heaven came to earth when people were able to serve each other without condition or alterior motive
• Heaven came to earth when people sang, prayed, worshipped, laughed, cried, hugged and played together
• Heaven came to earth when candles were lit and memories were shared
• Heaven came to earth when silence was permitted and hands were held
• Heaven came to earth when God was spoken of, remembered and invited
• Heaven came to earth when evil was overcome with good
• Heaven came to earth when doors were open and meals were shared
• Heaven came to earth when generosity overcame selfishness
• Heaven came to earth when the church-stuff was not allowed to interfere with church

Yes I am aware that some of that will have happened outside of church – in fact it has to – but I believe that every good and perfect gift comes from the Father above. Sadly we must also remember that for each of those situations there were times when hell came to earth as well (and too often within churches) but as Christians we have a chance every day to bring Heaven to earth and to bring earth to Heaven.

How about today?

Sometimes I wonder if I understand what trusting in God means.

Food for thought as we approach the time when we make a significant effort to “celebrate the resurrection”

( h/t Rev’d Lesley & Phil’s treehouse )

The Give Up Bad Coffee For Lent twibbon.

This is a follow-up post to the one on Give up bad coffee for lent (which increasingly becoming a misnomer). It’s been good to see support for churches showing their best in their service. I’ve heard reports of churches experiencing increased activity and participation in their post-service refreshments time (or whatever you call the time coffee is served) just by serving fresh coffee. Indeed some have reported that they have people turn up after church just for the coffee! It’s amazing how the smell (and taste) of good fresh-brewed coffee (and maybe the prospect of some cake) can get people together and it’s important to ensure visitors and regulars alike can share in this most vital but oft neglected part of our church service.

But again it’s more than just serving coffee and cake. We have to be welcoming in all things. This does not mean (as I recently read about) “ushering” first-time visitors into an office to await an “official welcome” by the church leader. Neither is it inundating the poor souls with repeated questions about their personal life. The trouble is in our attempts to not do these things we can often go too far the other way. A friend of mine on (and off) Twitter, tweeted the following:

@Kneewax RT @revmaryhawes: Visited a church. Stayed for coffee 15 minutes later no one had spoken to me <<< #gubc4l it's all about gospel hospitality

The first part was @revmaryhawes experience and the second part the response of my friend @kneewax. I like that term Gospel Hospitality so I’m borrowing it. I did a bit of digging around on it though and found some useful articles. One in particular stood out in the context of GUBC4L. Written by David Black in 2005 and entitled ‘Gospel of Hospitality’ it says:

This Gospel of Hospitality invites people to come with their hopes and failures and questions to a place where they will be unconditionally accepted and, over time, brought to an understanding of their failings and God’s forgiveness. It is a place of refuge for the weary traveler. It welcomes the stranger, the neighbor, the pilgrim. Our only motivation is the fact that, being ourselves recipients of God’s hospitality that made us members of His household, we now have the joy of becoming conduits of His hospitality to others. (emphasis mine)

There’s a lot more to that piece so do go and read it. As you’d expect it also quotes 1 Peter 4:9 regarding hospitality “Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling” _{1 Peter 4:9 NIV}. Other versions speak of doing so “cheerfully” or “without complaining”. Again though I’m going to come back to The Message and widen the context slightly:

⁸Most of all, love each other as if your life depended on it. Love makes up for practically anything. ⁹Be quick to give a meal to the hungry, a bed to the homeless – cheerfully. ¹⁰Be generous with the different things God gave you, passing them around so all get in on it: ¹¹if words, let it be God’s words; if help, let it be God’s hearty help. That way, God’s bright presence will be evident in everything through Jesus, and he’ll get all the credit as the One mighty in everything – encores to the end of time. Oh, yes! _{1 Peter 4:8-11 MSG}

Serve coffee as if your life depended on it? Well yes. Because it’s not just your life. Making somebody welcome could mean a big difference in their life. As Mother Theresa said “We cannot do great things but we can do small things with great love” and “Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies.”.

So how do we respond to newcomers?

Many – better than I – have tried and failed to answer this trickiest of questions so I’m largely ducking out of it here too. Mostly that’s because the how depends upon the where and the who. It’s something we should “play by ear”. We should respond to people as people and not just another new face. They’ve come through our door for a reason, they may not wish to share it but if we are to make their visit worthwhile then how we treat them is vital. This should be a no-brainer but sadly it’s not. All too often we can be too busy running around doing stuff that we forget the people the stuff is for.

I would say that whenever I have been to a church for the first time the coffee time is the place where I have been able to get to know more about it than at any other. The friendly churches are not those that have “newcomer spotters” who prey upon strange faces. The friendly ones are the ones where you are engaged and involved in a non-threatening way. More oftne than not that will happen over coffee making it a decent cup means you have given value to those to whom you are serving it. Serving is where we will “entertain angels unawares”. But we shouldn’t serve our best just on the off chance that this is an angel in dire need of a latte. We should serve our best because the people we are serving are God’s children and because like it or not we are His representatives at that moment, in that place.

You can show your support for Give Up Bad Coffee for Lent via the Twibbon on your facebook or twitter avatars. You can also use the twitter hashtag of #GUBC4L but above all you can show support by being generous, serving your best and showing some Gospel Hospitality.