How to read more in 2024

 

 

If you’d like to read more in the coming year, some or all of these might work for you:

 

Have several things on the go. Sometimes read what you feel like reading. Have something light and fun and something more demanding. Something that is pure relaxation. Something related to your work. Something sacred and secular.  

 

Read a little each day, even if you don’t feel like it.

 

Try reading at a set time each day, even if just for a few minutes.

 

Always have something with you which you could read if you have a few moments spare.

 

Read something demanding when you have the most capacity (e.g. first thing after breakfast).

 

Find a space that works for you. Maybe you need to step away from your desk / laptop. Perhaps if you don’t want to fall asleep reading or you want to sleep in your bed, it’s not the ideal place for reading.

 

Read with a pen or pencil near by and mark the book / write a few words in summary of each chapter. You might keep a piece of paper in the book in case you want to write any notes.

 

Read with purpose / put your reading to use e.g. write a short review, recommend a book.

 

Get recommendations.

 

Read book reviews. Sometimes this will make reading the book itself unnecessary. Sometimes you will want to order if before you’ve finished the review.

 

Consider logging your reading.

 

Reading out loud may help you grasp something particularly dense and difficult.

 

Maybe read with others. Read the same book with friends or family and talk about it. Join a book group.

 

For some reading, you might use a reading plan (a chapter a day).

 

Try listening instead of reading. The play-back speed may be adjustable.

 

Feel free to skim, skip or give up. Reading page one of a book need not commit you to reading the next three hundred pages if it isn’t working for you. Some books deserve to re-read and slowly savoured. Some are not worth your time. Many are worth an hour or two and after that there are diminishing returns. If you had eight books on your reading list for this week, how much time would you spend with this one?

 

Sometimes a summary / guide / introduction can be of use.

 

Re-read something.

 

Read something new / outside your comfort zone / which you wouldn’t normally choose.

 

Cut out things you don’t really enjoy / need / regret which get in the way of reading. Maybe read less social media so as to read some Bible or Shakespeare.

'Twas The Week after Christmas Day

 Although this may be a quiet week for the clergy and the Vicar may be on leave, it is a busy one for the liturgical calendar. 

Today is St Stephen's Day. Good King Wenceslas and all that. We might recall Steve's vocation to service as a deacon and the importance of good administration and care for the poor and lonely even amidst our festivity. 

His martyrdom urges us to live not for this world alone but to look to the well done of the risen, ascended Christ. 

He helpfully gives us a review of Biblical history as pointing to the coming of Christ and beyond. 

Christmas week, then, quicky embraces Easter and the eschaton too. 

John, Apostle and Evangelist gives the week a cosmic scope and also focuses us on the life of Christ. We have have heard John 1 read a number of times at Advent and Christmas services, but it is worth reflecting afresh on the depths and implications of it, as well as on gospel, epistles and Revelation. Maybe love of Christ might be said to be a key note of what we can learn from this beloved disciple.  

The Holy Innocents confront us with a grim reality and drive us to prayer. We see here that the Kingdom of Christ and the kingdoms of this earth are not going to be on friendly nodding terms without radical repentance and transformation. Again, the cross stalks the manger. And we cry "Come, Lord Jesus!"

And though 1170 was a long time ago, if you are an Anglican or a Brit, Thomas Becket brings matters even closer to home. What of friendship? And final loyalties? Maybe we too will find a serious life's work and a cause worth living or dying for. 

And then, of course, on Sunday, it will be back to the Celebration of Christmas, and like every Lord's Day, Resurrection Day!

Merry post-Christmas week! 

Some jottings for a midnight Communion sermon

 

Isaiah 9:1-7 (p693)

Luke 2:1-20 (p1927)

 

Christmas for the children?

 

A child for us

 

To us

 

To all the people

 

To the whole world

 

To you

 

 To all who received him

 

The German Reformer, Martin Luther, said this in his Christmas sermon of 1521:

 

Listen! the angel says: "I bring you glad tidings of great joy", my Gospel speaks of great joy.

Where is it?

Hear again: "For there is born to you this day in the city of David a Saviour, who is Christ the Lord"...

How is it possible for man to hear of greater joy than that Christ has given to him as his own?

He does not only say Christ is born, but he makes his birth our own by saying, to you a Saviour.

Therefore the Gospel does not only teach the history concerning Christ; but it enables all who believe it to receive it as their own….

Of what benefit would it be to me if Christ had been born a thousand times… if I were never to hear that he was born for me and was to be my very own?

 

Not just a Saviour, but my Saviour

 

To be received personally by faith

 

Holy Communion

 

Christ offered to us

 

“Given for you”

Christmas Day Sermon Outline: Christmas Highs and Lows

 

https://www.faithinkids.org/christmas-highs-and-lows/

Carol Service Sermon 2023: Christmas has been cancelled in Bethlehem

 

Christmas has been cancelled in Bethlehem.

Or at least, celebrations will be kept to a minimum this year in response to the war in Gaza.

There will be no Christmas tree and no fairy lights.

 

Bethlehem’s economy is 90% dependent on tourists and pilgrims, but for months now souvenir sellers have been playing backgammon rather than running their stalls.

Normally 150 000 people would go Bethlehem during the Christmas period, but this year there are virtually no visitors.

In contrast to the first Christmas, the hotels are empty.

 

One church in Bethlehem has set up a manger scene surrounded by rubble.

Perhaps more than the tinsel and the glitter, that image of a manger in the midst of rubble, captures the meaning of Christmas.

Because Jesus came for a broken world.

He entered our mess.

 

If we imagine the perfectly curated Christmas, there might seem little need of Christ.

I’ve no idea how Jesus fits with Stacey Solomon's Crafty Christmas or Jamie Oliver’s Quick and Easy Christmas.

But when we think of the reality of our world, perhaps we can begin to understand why Christ came.

 

He was born in royal David’s city, but he came to be with the poor and meek and lowly.

He was born after a long, hard journey, in difficult circumstances, in an occupied land, his parents displaced from home.

An animal’s feeding trough in a borrowed room isn’t the beautiful nursery parents-to-be dream of.

And soon Jesus would be a child refugee, fleeing from Herod’s violence.

 

Christmas is for people walking in darkness, for those living in the land of the shadow of death.

It’s for those who know gloom, distress and oppression.

But it is a great light – a dawn which changes everything.

The true light has come into the world.

 

In the carol, O Little Town of Bethlehem, we sang:

in thy dark streets shineth
the everlasting light;

 

Jesus came into this world of sin, and he comes to all who will receive him still.

We need him to cast out our sin and enter in and be born in us today.

 

The Word became flesh and made his dwelling amongst us, in this world of mess and pain.

God himself came to our world in Jesus, that by believing in him we might have new life as the children of God.

 

Even when there are no fairy lights, the Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it.

Jesus could not be cancelled.

When they killed him, he rose victorious from the dead.

The Light wins!

 

Jesus is the Prince of peace, and of the increase of his government and peace there will be no end.

 

There’s still a long way to go before we see the message of the angels, of peace on earth, entirely fulfilled.

But their message is more than make-believe.

It’s not merely sentiment or aspiration.

It’s good news because it is the announcement of the favour and kindness of God: of God’s undeserved love for us and our broken world.

Something has happened which the Shepherds can go and check out:

The birth of the Saviour – Christ, the Lord, the long-promised rescuer-king, who alone can give us peace with God and peace within.

 

However terrible the pain and suffering of our world, we should never allow it to cancel Christmas.

According to the Bible, Jesus came to cancel the charge-sheet of sin for all who would put their trust in him.

 

The darkness, the shadow, mustn’t do away with Christmas.

It shows us our need of the Light.

 

So even amidst the rubble, look to the manger!

Perhaps especially when we’re conscious of terrible violence and suffering, Christmas is good news of great joy to all people.

 

May you know hope, joy and peace this Christmas. Amen.

 * * * 

Since preaching this sermon, I've seen online a a 1511 painting by Albrecht Altdorfer of the nativity amongst a somewhat derelict house. 

On the first Sunday of Advent 1943, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote from prison:

November 28, 1943

My dear Parents,

Although no one has any idea whether and how letters are presently being handled, I nevertheless want to write to you on this afternoon of the first Sunday in Advent. The Altdorfer nativity scene, in which one sees the holy family with the manger amid the rubble of a collapsed house—just how did he come to portray this in such a way, flying in the face of all tradition, four hundred years ago?—is particularly timely. Even here one can and ought to celebrate Christmas, he perhaps wanted to say; in any case, this is what he says to us.

Crib Service Talk Outline 2023

 

https://www.faithinkids.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/all-age-talk_-_christmasfeels_long_talk_3.pdf

The challenge of Christmas preaching

 Christmas preachers feel, I think, a struggle to have some kind of new way in or fresh angle. When we deal with similar themes and passages year after year, how will we be engaging and what are we going to do in the four or five new all age services we need each year?

More important, of course, to concentrate on proclaiming the central truths of Christmas: the Word made flesh, the birth of the Saviour, the long-promised rescuer-king.

And to pray for grace to do so in a way that is transparently sincere, to be moved again by these great foundational truths oneself. We want not merely to tick off the talks (great, I’ve got an idea, I’m prepared, that one’s done) but to speak to all who will listen of what matters most to us.

We may want some of our services, at least, to feel fun and happy, but we want the cosmic seriousness, the mystery, the mind-blowing world-remaking New Creation of this central fact of history to shine through too. More than entertaining or amusing, we want our hearers to check out this thing which has happened which we have been told about and to go home glorifying and praising God.

The social and religious status of the Christmas shepherds

The shepherds are literally outsiders when the angels come to them with the good news. Their marginal location out in the fields near Bethlehem, rather than at the heart of the town, would naturally mean that they are the last to hear what’s going on. Now they are the first to receive and then spread the good news of the Saviour’s birth.

 

If we think about the birth narratives as a whole, Luke’s local Jewish shepherds of relatively low status naturally form a contrast with Matthew’s (Gentile?) Magi from (far away?) in the East. The shepherds have a relatively short and easy journey, whereas the Magi’s journey presumably required means and leisure. Jew and Gentile, rich and poor, educated and uneducated are all invited!

 

The shepherds might be seen as the humble of Luke 1:52 who are lifted up or as the poor who have the good news preached to them according to 7:22 (Robert H. Stein, The New American Commentary, B&H 1992, p108).

 

In An Even Better Christmas (Good Book Company, 2018), Matt Chandler claims:

 

“In first-century Judea, shepherds were considered outsiders, on the edges of normal society. They were so mistrusted that their testimony was inadmissible evidence in a court of law. First-century Jews believed that God didn’t like shepherds—and they didn’t like them, either. The most pious of Jews would not buy milk, lambs or wool from shepherds; they assumed it was stolen. The religious elite of that day saw them as unclean, filthy, unwanted and outside of God’s favor. A philosopher in Alexandria, one of the centers of the intellectual world at the time, went so far as to say, “There is no more disreputable an occupation than that of a shepherd.”” [I’m not sure where this quotation is from. One online source cites Midrash Ps. 23.2, ed. Buber, Vilna 1891, 99b.12, cited by Jeremias, Jerusalem, p. 311, fn. 42. The next (different) quotation in the online text is from Philo of Alexandria. - https://www.jesuswalk.com/luke/apx1f-shepherds.htm#_ftnref1332]

 

https://www.thevillagechurch.net/resources/articles/who-did-god-come-for - the online excerpt at least gives no footnotes

 

Stein claims that “in general shepherds were regarded as dishonest” citing the Babylonian Talmud Sanhedrin 25b, which was initially compiled around 500AD. Sanhedrin 25b rejects the validity of the testimony of shepherds and seems to base this view on the idea that shepherds deliberately and routinely allowed their animals to graze in the fields of others. Stein adds that shepherds were “unclean according to the standards of the law. They represent the outcasts and sinners for whom Jesus came. Such outcasts were the first recipients of the good news.”

 

Kenneth Bailey (Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes, IVP 2008, p35-36) says that shepherds at the time of Jesus were poor, lowly, near the bottom of the social scale and rejected. He cites Joachim Jeremais, “Despised Trades and Jewish Slaves” in Jerusalem in the Time of Jesus (Fortress, 1969) pp304-12 to show that rabbinic sources regarded shepherds as unclean. Bailey says: “Five lists of “proscribed trades” are recorded in rabbinic literature and shepherds appear in three out of the five. These lists hail from post-New Testament but could reflect developing ideas alive in the time of Jesus. In any case, they were lowly, uneducated types.” (p35) Bailey imagines that the shepherds would fear that if they tried to visit the Messiah, his parents would send them away.

  

Leon Morris (Tyndale, IVP, 1974) similarly thinks that the nature of the shepherds’ calling kept them from observing the ceremonial law (p93). He assumes the shepherds to be “devout men… from a despised class.” (p93)

 

Bock BECNT 1994 on Luke 2:8 sees the shepherds as “an everyday group” (p214):

 

“The shepherds are often characterized as representing the “downtrodden and despised” of society, so that the first proclamation of the gospel is said to have come to sinners (Hendriksen 1978: 149; Godet 1875: 1.130; R. Brown 1977: 420 n. 38). The evidence for this view draws on material from rabbinic Judaism (SB 2:113–14; b. Sanh. 25b; Midr. Ps. 23.2 on 23:1 [= Braude 1959: 1.327]). But there are two problems with reading the shepherds as symbols of the hated. First, the rabbinic evidence is late, coming from the fifth century. More importantly, shepherd motifs in the Bible are mostly positive. The NT (Luke 15:4; Mark 6:34; Matt. 18:12; John 10; 1 Pet. 2:25; Heb. 13:20; Eph. 4:11) portrays shepherds in a favorable light, even describing church leaders with this figure. In the OT, Abraham, Moses, and David were all shepherds at some point in their lives.4 Thus, the presence of the shepherds is not a negative point. Rather, they picture the lowly and humble who respond to God’s message (1:38, 52; 4:16–18; Fitzmyer 1981: 408).” (p213)

 

Jesus will of course call himself the good shepherds and pastors are the be under-shepherds. 

Parish Magazine Item for January 2024

 

From The Rectory

 

I’m rather addicted to Radio 4 and I’ve heard their Christmas advert many times over the last month. It ends with a quotation from Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol: the resolve of the reformed Ebeneezer Scrooge: “I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.”

 

We have tended to front-load Christmas. As soon as the Halloween merchandise is cleared out, we’re confronted with mince pies and Santa hats. But Advent is intended to be a time of waiting and anticipation. Maybe as you read this, Christmas already seems a rather dim memory, but it is traditionally celebrated for Twelve Days leading up to the Epiphany on 6^th January. Epiphany commemorates the visit of the wise men from the East to the infant Jesus, and hence his manifestation to the Gentile nations. The Epiphany season runs until the Feast of the Presentation of Christ in the Temple (“Candlemas”) on 2^nd February. So, if you were so inclined, you could keep up your Christmas festivities – and your decorations – for forty days.

 

But what might it mean to try to keep Christmas all the year? Certainly we should say that Christ is not just for Christmas.

For Scrooge, keeping Christmas involves a great deal of chuckling and a new found generosity as he shares a bowl of smoking bishop (a kind of mulled wine which got its name from a mitre-like cup) with Bob Cratchit. In short, Scrooge becomes a good man. Although some people laughed at him, he little heeded it, because his own heart laughed. “It was always said of him that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge.”    

 

When the Shepherds meet the baby Jesus, they spread the news concerning what they had been told about the child and all who heard it were amazed. They returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told. “But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart.” (Luke 2:17-20)

 

If we seek to honour Christmas in our hearts, there is so much to treasure up and to ponder. The central mystery of Christmas is the incarnation: of God made flesh. This fact, which divides human history, tells us that God is for us and our world. He loves us enough to come to us and to share our condition. He was born for us that he might die for us. The Redeemer of the world has come. When we take a moment to reflect on the birth, death and resurrection of Jesus, an inward chuckle seems part of the right response.

 

In the spirit of A Christmas Carol, we might pray that the past reality of Christmas would give us a present joy and a future hope, and that the whole future course of our lives might be reshaped by Christmas. Even more than Dickens, the Bible writers hold out the possibility that even the coldest old sinner can be transformed, if not simply by Christmas, then by Christ. Not every day can be the Christmas feast, but the good news of the Saviour who is Christ the Lord ought to make a difference to us every day.

 

So today and all the year: Merry Christmas! And God bless Us, Every One!

 

The Revd Marc Lloyd