I hope you all had a good Sunday. It is nothing to do with me. If I could delete it I would. Unexpected Graves. Poor Mark and his wife Judy, who live in Paris, have been caught out by the closure of flights, and are in Massachussets sp? I think they have family and friends there, but all the same, it must be hard for him to be separated from his flock at this time! He joined us for our Zoom service which I think was very generous of him, considering it was about 4. He was going on to join in other online services from the Convocation.
ETA: The sermon is now posted at the site. If you joined us, then thank you. We had a couple of unrecognised phone numbers joining in. If that was you, I hope you felt welcome and blessed. I plan to blog later about my 40 Acts so far or rather, my lack-ofActsβ¦. I was right! Jeremiah Psalm 84 Ephesians ,a Matthew 2: And immediately Herod felt threatened. He feared that everything he knew would be taken from him, and that he would lose his power and his riches.
Whatever your politics, I am sure that you can think of an example for yourself, for regardless of political beliefs this appears to be the way of the world. From his very birth onwards Jesus challenges people. He turns worlds upside down. Although the Jewish people had an idea of a God who saves, a God who would, one day, come again as the Messiah, the thought of him breaking into humanity was unthinkable.
But the question that faced Herod is the one that faces us: how will you react to the child who has come to bridge the gap between the Divine and the human? Of course there will be fear: as Herod was afraid of losing all that he held dear, when facing the Almighty we too might fear losing control, losing security, of being asked to give things up. But we can choose to enfold ourselves in this fear, and close ourselves off from the wonders that Jesus offers us, or we can choose to stand, naked and shivering before God, afraid yet open to all that he will give us.
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc()/young-couple-kissing-sunset-getty-twitter-1023-b97aa55635114d48bf31d2c21c14f1ce.jpg "SEX ESCORT in Clermont-Ferrand")
If we accept that Jesus is the bridge of hope and redemption we can move from despair to hope, from emptiness to fulfilment and from darkness to light. Jesus, Word made flesh, the physical presence of God, takes us from the reality of the incarnation to the unfolding realisation of who and what God is and does as we approach Epiphany.
