Release to the captives

O Clavis

Even in the darkness where I sit

And huddle in the midst of misery

I can remember freedom, but forget

That every lock must answer to a key,

That each dark clasp, sharp and intricate,

Must find a counter-clasp to meet its guard,

Particular, exact and intimate,

The clutch and catch that meshes with its ward.

I cry out for the key I threw away

That turned and over turned with certain touch

And with the lovely lifting of a latch

Opened my darkness to the light of day.

O come again, come quickly, set me free

Cut to the quick to fit, the master key.

Malcolm Guite.

Each one of us to some extent is still in Captivity. Enslaved in our own private Egypts. The old habits, which refuse to die, enchain us, We may be stuck in the miry swamp of depression, fear or guilt; each one fearsome gaolers . Or perhaps in some more tangible prison like the citizens of Bethlehem walled up by a regime where fear has extinguished compassion.
So how does Jesus release the captive? Perhaps Thomas Lovelace had the answer.

Perhaps the greatest  freedom that Christ gives is the freedom to forgive. The freedom to embrace your enemy.
Christ held out His arms of love on the cross, to empower us to be able to embrace the stranger, the enemy, the unlovable other.

The root of Jesse

O Radix

All of us sprung from one deep-hidden seed,

Rose from a root invisible to all.

We knew the virtues once of every weed,

But, severed from the roots of ritual,

We surf the surface of a wide-screen world

And find no virtue in the virtual.

We shrivel on the edges of a wood

Whose heart we once inhabited in love,

Now we have need of you, forgotten Root

The stock and stem of every living thing

Whom once we worshipped in the sacred grove,

For now is winter, now is withering

Unless we let you root us deep within,

Under the ground of being, graft us in.

Malcolm Guite.

It will also come about in that day
that the root of Jesse will stand
    as a banner for the peoples.
The nations will seek for Him,
and His resting place will be glorious.
11 It will also come about in that day that my Lord will again redeem—a second time with His hand—the remnant of His people Isaiah 11:11

There is a glorious line that stretches from Adam to Christ, from the first to the second Adam. All the while the serpent has been trying to destroy that line, by one ploy or another but always he is frustrated a remnant remains. He remembers the prophecy that: 
  On your belly will you go,

    and dust will you eat all the days of your life. I will put animosity  between you and the woman—between your seed and her seed. He will crush your head, and you will crush his heel   .

Cain murdered Abel, but God replaced Abel by giving Eve another son, another seed, Seth.

So a pattern was set right down the ages through to Christ. That wily old serpent always busily at work through the hands of wicked men and women. Trying to wipe out the chosen seed. Causing such evil on earth that God is left no option but to wipe out that evil. However He still finds one righteous family the obedient Noah who is cast out on the flood in the very precarious ark, the remnant that remains to repopulate the world, through righteous Shem.

Finally the people of God demand a king and Handsome Saul is chosen, but sadly not the man after God's own heart who would be that chosen root.

 Samuel is sent to Jesse's sons to anoint a true king but is disappointed by all where is that root that will carry redemption? Out in the fields feeding sheep. David spent most of his life evading people wanting to destroy him but miraculously manages to escape on every occasion. Towards the end of his life David offers to build a temple for God but his request is denied in favour of Solomon who would succeed him. However he receives a promise that one of his descendants would sit on his throne forever. Solomon's reign started started on a high note but sadly his love for foreign wives and their God proved his ruin and sadly the kings following him with some notable exceptions went from bad to worse bringing in the worship of foreign gods.
Finally God lost patience with His wayward people and the only way to bring them back was fifty years of exile in Babylon.
That was the end of the kingdom and the king the serpent had won the kings sons were killed before his eyes which were then burned with hot irons and he went blinded into captivity.
However God looked after his people in Babylon and God had not forgotten his promise, there was to be a return to the land under king Cyrus the Persian who overthrew the Babylonians and established his own empire.

 Once again root of Jesse is renewed under Zerubbabel to be the Lords signet ring.
Finally the root springs up into a fertile tree in Mary and Joseph, but Oh the fury of the serpent then as he sends a massacre down on all the babes in Bethlehem, but once again the root hides in Egypt to suddenly appear heralded by John as King of Kings Lord and Saviour.

O Adonai The handmaid of the Lord

O Adonai

Unsayable, you chose to speak one tongue,

Unseeable, you gave yourself away,

The Adonai, the Tetragramaton

Grew by a wayside in the light of day.

O you who dared to be a tribal God,

To own a language, people and a place,

Who chose to be exploited and betrayed,

If so you might be met with face to face,

Come to us here, who would not find you there,

Who chose to know the skin and not the pith,

Who heard no more than thunder in the air,

Who marked the mere events and not the myth.

Touch the bare branches of our unbelief

And blaze again like fire in every leaf.

Malcolm Guite

How can the finite fathom the infinite,  the small imagine the unimaginably large?

Yet look, see, here he is, walking the garden in the cool of the evening.

Draw near to the bush which burns and is not consumed, but take off your sandals for you tread on holy ground.

Listen to the still small voice, after  the fiery earth quake and the thunder, "peace, be not afraid".

Kneel with Mary before the angel, and say, "behold the handmaid of the Lord".

Come weeping from the empty tomb, to grasp the gardener, and discover you are hugging the risen Lord .

    

The Magi

O Sapientia

I cannot think unless I have been thought,

Nor can I speak unless I have been spoken.

I cannot teach except as I am taught,

Or break the bread except as I am broken.

O Mind behind the mind through which I seek,

O Light within the light by which I see,

O Word beneath the words with which I speak,

O founding, unfound Wisdom, finding me,

O sounding Song whose depth is sounding me,

O Memory of time, reminding me,

My Ground of Being, always grounding me,

My Maker’s Bounding Line, defining me,

Come, hidden Wisdom, come with all you bring,

Come to me now, disguised as everything.

Malcolm Guite 

Who were the Magi? Strange mysterious people from the East.

 To the East of the Roman empire there were the Parthians one of a series of kingdoms, we can learn something about them in the book of Daniel , half a century before. There were a series of rulers coming down from the Asian Steppe, men such as Darius and Cyrus, advised by wise men who made a deep study of the stars a wisdom which formed a mixture of astronomy and astrology. Stars were important for a nomad people to navigate over the featureless steppe. For them the sun moon and stars were important deities that needed to be studied and worshipped. 

 Hence the writer of Genesis 1 had to emphasise that the sun, moon and stars were created entities subservient to the one true God.

So why is the story of these wise men so important to Matthew and what is it saying to us today?

What do we know about the wise men? Only two things, they were wise, and that they were humble. All of their combined wisdom pointed them to a stable containing a very poor and very un-royal couple with a very ordinary baby, yet they were humble enough to bow down and worship this baby who in fact was the creator of the star they followed and every star which they had studied.  

In Proverbs Ch 8 we see wisdom personified as the wise woman created before anything else calling out to people who have the humility to hear her; calling out through our best  and most humble endeavours to point us to the creator God.

Just as the Queen of Sheba came with humility and wonder, bearing gifts to marvel at the God given wisdom of Solomon, so these wise men come bearing their most precious gifts  to the Infant King.

We see the wisdom and humility of these wise men contrasted with the deadly pride and  selfishness of the puppet king Herod, who seeks only to hang on to the illusionary trappings of kingship by a ruthless determination to exterminate the true king and saviour of his people through heartless genocide.   

So how will we react to the baby king this Christmas will we follow the wisdom of the Magi, and the humility of Mary to worship, or will our pride and self centeredness cut us off from the mystery of the entry of the Creator into His creation. 

Will we make the discovery that this baby is our Saviour and our God.

Where will you find Jesus this Christmas

He did come, to that simple peasant house in Palestine, sharing sleeping quarters with the precious animals.  He was there just down our street, very close, a blazing fire of uncreated light pent up in the womb of a humble poor girl, but where is he now?
He was there with the refugee desperately fleeing bloody persecution, seeking a safe haven in the storm, but where is he now? 
He was there, feeding hungry families, healing the blind beggar, weeping over Lazarus's tomb before calling the dead back to life, but where is he now?
He was there, nailed to a cruel cross, giving new life to all who find Him.
Do not look in the cold tomb, He is certainly not there!

Listen, He is knocking on the door of your heart. He is calling each one of us, wanting to come in to be a living presence, to have a loving relationship with each one of us.
Look with the eyes of faith, He is there wanting to come in and live in you.
He is there, just humbly invite Him in, find Christ this Christmas.

The coming of the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.

What can I give Him, poor as I am?

If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb;

If I were a wise man, I would do my part;

Yet what can I give Him?

Give Him my heart. 

Christina Georgina Rossetti

One of my lasting images from a childhood on a farm was coming down stairs one morning to a wet and cold lamb being revived in the warming oven of our old Rayburn stove, with a pervading smell of wet wool filling the kitchen. Another early image was being pushed into the garden in my pram where a very large white sow would snuffle curiously around the pram wheels. We may not have shared our kitchen with the cows but we did share their flies! Even today in Rwanda the house and stable are often shared. So it is important to understand the Christmas story in its historical and cultural context, very ably done HERE. Jesus was born into the home of a poor but very hospitable family in Bethlehem, because the upper room (Greek: kataluma usually translated inn.) was crammed with guests already, they were squeezed in with the family into the communal living accommodation downstairs.

 As John says in his gospel, “the word became flesh and dwelt amongst us”. Remember this Christmas that Jesus came into the very midst of us, if you invite Him in, he is there, right in the middle with your family and friends sharing the feast, sharing in all the joys and all the sorrows.  

The shekinah glory had not been seen, since Ezekiel had seen it depart from the East gate of the Jerusalem temple, before its destruction in 586 AD. Revealed not to the priests in Herod’s temple but to humble, despised shepherds in the Bethlehem hills, who were treated to the most beautiful and terrifying revelation of the glory of God that has been seen. 

Calmed by the angel’s message they would have rushed down the hill into town to find the Saviour King, born in humble helplessness into a family home just like the ones in which they lived.    

They may have mused here was someone like one of them; could He be the servant shepherd, the one who would feed his flock like a shepherd; and would gather the lambs in his arms,
and carry them in his bosom, and gently lead the mother sheep; as Isaiah had prophesied in the fortieth chapter of his writings. Would He be the one prophesied in Jeremiah who would gather His flock still scattered in exile?

Jesus, however, was more than this, He was the Good Shepherd who laid down His life for the sheep, as He declared in JOHN 10:11-18 .

One of the little rituals I did as a child was to sneak quietly into the cow shed on Christmas eve to look at the cows who it was rumoured still knelt to the baby Jesus. Let us remember the living Jesus and invite Him again into the very centre of our lives.    

Abraham

 “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.”

Like Abraham we are all called to be pilgrims through life. It is up to us if we respond to the call; are we willing to go through separation and hardship to pursue a distant goal and achieve a prize?

This week I went to a book signing for a book, “ Walking to Jerusalem ” by Justin Butcher. Last year we had the hundredth anniversary of the Balfour declaration. A source of joy to the Jewish nation who were seeking a homeland, but sadness to the Palestinians who were largely displaced ending up in refugee camps. This was a pilgrimage and penance for all the injustices which have occurred since. The all way walkers had to commit to taking a 9 month slot out of their life and suffering all the blisters and hardships along the way.

My wife, Mary and I took part in two segments, it was a very moving experience, as we entered into a deep fellowship with our fellow walkers along the way. Walking through the battle fields of Northern France where so many lives had been pointlessly lost. Later we set off from Thessalonica walking the same roman road on which St Paul had walked , as he answered the call of the man from Macedonia to make his own journey to bring the good news about Jesus to the people of Europe. We were certainly walking in the footsteps of giants.

However back to Abraham, he obeyed the call. The original call had been from Ur where he set out with his father, Terah, however they only got as far as Haran where Terah died. God renewed His call to Abraham who obeyed and received the wonderful promise that all the families on earth would be blessed through him and his descendants would be as many as the stars in the sky.  This was the wonderful promise that directly, through his descendants, would come Jesus, born to redeem and save all nations worldwide.

So God appeared to Abram, as he was then called, when he arrived in the land which God had promised him and made a solemn covenant  with him but after many years of trying still no son and heir he must slowly have come to the realisation there was no way the elderly Sarai was going to bear him a son, so they decided to take matters into their own hands by Abram sleeping with his wife’s slave girl. This only caused more problems as his son by this liaison was not the one God had promised.  Finally, one day, he received three mysterious visitors, thought by some to be the three persons of the Godhead.  God once more renewed His promise and they were given the son through whom, all the amazing promises would come to pass.

 Abraham had slowly learned to patiently trust God, but this famous person of faith was going to be tested one more time, the request to sacrifice the very one who was so precious to him. He reluctantly obeyed and must have walked with heavy heart up the mountain, but at the last moment, as his hand was raised with the knife, a voice stopped him and as he prophesied, God did "provide a lamb" for the sacrifice, prefiguring the Father’s own precious son, Jesus, who took our place and died that we might live forever.