Child in a Manger

The angel said to Mary: "He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David." When we think of greatness, most highness and thrones, our minds immediately conjure up images of power and wealth. It's how our brains have been trained.
But that's not how God's mind works. When God thinks of greatness, most highness and thrones, he thinks of a tiny baby, sleeping in a manger because other people have been allowed the comfort of the guest room.
The striking humility of Jesus' birth, which we celebrate at Christmas, is not God taking an uncharacteristic break from his usual divine grandeur. It is articulate expression of what the creator of the universe is really like. As that tiny baby grew into a man, his style never changed. Jesus remained humble, and consistently sacrificed his own comfort for the benefit of others - right up to the agonising end.
Take a moment to reflect on that vulnerable child, lying in an animal's feed box, and wonder at the character of God. This is what God is like. And this is what God would like us to be like.
​Happy Christmas

Also by Robert Harrison

'The Scruffy Disciple' 

the life and loves of a disciple of Jesus

Something's Coming

The run up to Christmas always carries with it a sense of anticipation. Something is coming. Christmas is coming. It can’t be dodged or avoided, and we need to be ready. When we were children, the anticipation of Christmas was exciting - there were parties and presents to look forward to, and there was nothing required of us but to contain our excitement. In adult life, the coming of Christmas is more complex. While we long for the innocent excitement of our childhood, we are all too aware that things need to be organised, presents need to be bought, cards need to be sent - the responsibility falls on us to be ready.
This sense of anticipation surrounds Christmas in other ways too. The traditional season of Advent focuses on the expectation of Jesus’ return as well as the expectation of his birth. Centuries before Jesus’ intriguing birth, prophets were telling their people that something was coming, God was hatching a plan and was about to do something significant.
There are numerous Old Testament expressions of this expectation, and in the centuries that followed there were countless theories about what exactly this ’something’ was which God was bringing about. Ancient Jews studied their scriptures and tried to predict God’s coming. With the same enthusiastic confidence many Christians today study the references to Jesus’ return. And try to work out what to expect.
However, when God did come - when he did do his thing - it wasn’t anything like what people were expecting. No-one was expecting a newborn child, lying in the manger of an ordinary home. No-one was expecting a bunch of shepherds and a handful of foreign mystics to be the first on the scene.
The adult Jesus reminds us that God still has more plan up his sleeve. There is another something which is coming - which we need to be ready for. But he advises us not to waste time speculating what that something will be like. God is the master fo the unexpected. We will know it when we see it, but it won’t be anything like anything we have imagined. We just have to be ready.

Just published:

'The Scruffy Disciple' 

by Robert Harrison

the life and loves of a disciple of Jesus

Silent Night - Christmas Eve 2017

There’s a saying, ‘It’s not what you do, but the way that you do it.’ This is particularly appropriate when it comes to the Christmas story. In so many parts of our lives, the way that we do things says far more about us than the actions themselves. There is a world of difference between a graciously given gift and a grudgingly given one - even if the gift itself is exactly the same.
The bare fact of the Christmas story - according to Christian tradition - is that God’s son was born in a human family. There were many stories in ancient mythologies of gods having children. The thing that makes the birth of Jesus stand out is the way that it happened. The demi-gods of Greek and Roman myth were the result of assaults and affairs by arrogant and manipulative deities. The story of Jesus’ birth, however, throws a very different light on the author of the Universe.
Putting aside the iconic images of a stable, a donkey, a kindly innkeeper and a star that could be seen even in daylight (these are all later, European embellishments), consider the baby, wrapped in strips of cloth, and lying in an animals’ food trough because there was no space in the house.
There are indeed a few remarkable and miraculous events in this story: an army of angels appeared, but only a handful of shepherds saw them; a significant star was spotted in the eastern sky, but only by a small group of mystics. Mostly, the story of Jesus’ birth is remarkably unremarkable.
One important detail is generally taken for granted: that Jesus was born in the middle of the night. A world-changing event was happening in Bethlehem, and 99.9% of the people in the neighbourhood were fast asleep at the time.
It’s not what you do; its the way that you do it. God did the most remarkable thing in human history so quietly that almost nobody noticed it had happened.
At Christmas time we are highly sensitised to the many traumas in our world. It is natural for us to ask what God is doing about such things. In answer to that question: whatever God is doing, he is almost certainly doing it very quietly, because that’s the way God does things.
Happy Christmas.

Clearing Up the Mess - Sunday 3rd December 2017

The world is full of mess. We know that. From the rubble of Syria to the floating islands of plastic in our oceans there is plenty of evidence that our world is in a mess. Is it a hopeless mess? Or - as we limber up for the Christmas season - is there a thread of hope that things can, and will, get better?
The core message of Christmas is that God came into the world to address this problem, to deal with the mess. This sounds like good news, but how does his clear-up work?
We have a tendency to think of God as a divine chief executive of the heavenly council. We expect God to devote his infinite resources to a large scale clean-up of humanity’s messiness. Then we look around us and wonder what on Earth God is doing about the problems that we see.
One quick look at the Christmas story shows us that God didn’t come as a political power broker; he came as a powerless child, born into poverty and obscurity. God didn’t show himself to be an all achieving chief executive, instead he came into this world with just a proverbial bin bag and a sturdy pair of figurative gloves.
When we see litter in our streets, we can hope that the council will pay someone to clean it up. They may. We can lobby the council to devote more funding to street cleaning. They might. Alternatively, we can bend down and pick it up ourselves. This is the approach that God took in the birth of Jesus. He came among us as one of us and taught us to care for and forgive one another.
There is hope. We are that hope. If we want our world to be less of a mess, we need follow God’s example, and roll up our symbolic sleeves, and start making a difference.

Who Owns Christmas? - Sunday 26th November 2017

Love it or hate it, Christmas is coming. In Christian circles the arrival of Christmas is accompanied by a raft of complaints that the birth of Jesus has been squeezed out, that commercialism has taken over, and that Christmas isn’t about Jesus any more.
The truth is that Christmas didn't start out as a Christian festival. Long before Christianity came to northern Europe, people celebrated Yule on midwinter's night. They decorated their homes with evergreen plants, and lit lights to mark the resurgence of the sun and it’s victory over death and darkness. In Scandinavia, they believed that the god Odin rode across the sky that night on his 8 hoofed horse, reassuring humanity that light and life were on their way. With the arrival of Christianity, the traditional Yule decorations were reinterpreted as symbols of God’s light coming into the world, and Odin was rebranded as St Nicholas.
As Christmas didn’t originally belong to Christianity, Christians don’t need to feel resentful about it’s secular features. We would do better to follow the good example of our forebears, who accepted the enduring popularity of the festival and used it as an opportunity to draw attention to the good news about Jesus.
The European winter festival has always been about hope and good news. Deep in the heart of Yule was a belief that good is stronger than evil, life is stronger than death, and light stronger than darkness. These same themes lie at the heart of the Christian good news. As St John put it, "The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.”
The key task for Christians at Christmas-time is to draw attention to the real hope that the world can be a better, brighter place if people follow the example and teaching of Jesus. And we need to do that, not by getting grumpy, but in the same quiet, humble and gentle manner that God came into our world.

God's Self-portrait - Sunday 18th December 2016

What is God really like?
Words and images concerning God infuse our consciousness from early childhood and combine in to form a potent but unexplainable impression. For those who pray, that impression governs the way we pray. For those who consciously seek to serve God, it governs the way we live our lives. Meanwhile there are others who simply can’t believe in a god like the one they imagine, and opt out.
So what is God really like?
Many of the images that shape our understanding of God are expressions of power. Christianity features terms like: Almighty; omnipotent; King of kings; all seeing; all knowing; Lord. These terms have their roots in the dynamics of human politics. God is presented as an absolute and unrivalled power broker - President of the Universe.
Is that really what God is like?
This week we celebrate the birth of Jesus. If you look through the glitter and greenery of the ancient winter festival, you will catch a glimpse of a newborn child, wrapped in strips of cloth by inexperienced working class parents, and lying in a manger because all the beds were taken by others. There is no hint of power or wealth in this image, yet this is how “the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.” This, therefore, is what God is really like.
The Christmas story is God setting the record straight. God wants us to see that he is not at all interested in wealth and power. He is only interested in faithfulness and love.
The story of Jesus’ birth is God’s self-portrait. This is what God is really like.