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

Brute Force & God's Blessing

In the age of computers, brute force is a commodity who’s general value is in decline. We live in an age in which celebrity comes from a skill with smart and sassy one-liners, not from wielding a basic weapon to devastating effect.
Samson lived in a very different age to our own. With his violent temper, his rudely blunt way of talking, his weakness for prostitutes, and his love of killing, he doesn’t fit comfortably into our idea of a man (or woman) of God.
The story of Samson covers four chapters of our Bible. It follows him from his miraculous conception to his murderous death. His career of destruction spanned at least three disastrous relationships with women he fancied but never managed to love, and brought a violent end to thousands of human lives. Samson was rude. He was arrogant. He was stupid. And yet he was God’s chosen agent in that place and at that time.
Faith communities the world over tend to have very particular ideas about the kind of man or woman who makes a godly leader. There is a certain level of intelligence expected, a certain morality demanded, a certain social skilfulness required. We like our faith leaders to be clean-cut, polite, and pastorally sensitive. Samson was none of these things, and yet he was God’s chosen agent in that place and at that time.
God is the creator of the entire universe. He is the loving heavenly father of the entire human race. God does not travel along the same narrow pathways that we chose to tread, often consciously following where other generations have gone before us - mistakes included.
The brutal story of Samson is a reminder that God does not always pick the good people or the nice people. Samson’s talent was brute force. He excelled at it. And in that place and at that time it was precisely the skill-set that God required.
This is not an encouragement to grab the nearest fresh jawbone of an ass and slaughter as many people as you can. It is an encouragement to look again at the people who you don’t like, or don’t trust. God loves those people dearly, and in a certain place and a certain time, they may be just what he needs in this world.

Real-World Belief - Sunday 22nd October 2017

We have a set of new chairs at our church. They look robust and comfortable, and I believe that they will hold my weight, but just believing that doesn’t mean very much. For my belief in the chairs to be of any real value I need to trust my backside to them and sit down. That’s what chairs are for. If I do lower my rear end onto a new chair, I will be taking a risk. If it isn’t robust, I might end up on the floor in an undignified clatter of broken wood. It's a risk. But it's a risk I have to take or my faith in the manufacturer will be nothing more than a pointless waste of money.
In the Christian faith we talk a lot about believing in Jesus. That’s only a start, like ordering a chair on the internet, believing it will be what is needed. The next stage is the critical one: trusting our lives to Jesus’ message and teaching. That’s the risky part. If it doesn’t work, we might end up on the floor in an undignified clatter of broken expectations.
Jesus' message was real-world insight, not a selection of fanciful sacred mysteries. He told people they could trust God’s love and forgiveness, that they didn’t need to be afraid of breaking religious rules or missing religious rituals. He taught that the only thing which ultimately matters is loving and forgiving the people around us. Jesus was liberating people from the fear and oppression of overbearing religion, and drawing them into real-world relationship with his loving heavenly father.
In today’s world we have different fears. We fear that life may be meaningless, that we may just be a cosmic accident. We fear that if we are not happy, we might be wasting our lives. We need to trust Jesus. Life does have meaning; we are loved; and the purpose of life is to love other people, not just ourselves.
If we lean on these principles, we risk failure. Trust always involves risk. But my experience is that Jesus’ teaching, when put to real-world test, won’t let you down.