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holy innocents

12/25/2014

Jon Inkpin for Holy Innocents, Sunday 28 December 2014

Today’s feast of Holy Innocents is an alternative in our church’s lectionary. For we could use other readings today. Perhaps some of us would feel more comfortable with them. After all, today’s Gospel is a tale of terror. It speaks about Jesus as a refugee. It tells of immense political violence. It recounts the massacre of children. What kind of a ‘good news’ and Christmas is this?...

Well, actually, it is very much a ‘good news’ story: both for our own day and for eternity.

Let me briefly share three things which are important about today’s Gospel reading: three things which make the otherwise terrifying feast of Holy Innocents a vital element of Christmas good news….

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out of the womb of darkness

12/25/2014

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Jon Inkpin for Midnight Mass, Christmas Eve 2014

Who among us, I wonder, is afraid of the dark?…
All of us I suspect. For if we are not afraid of actual physical darkness, then we are prone to fear the darkness of so much in our world, and in ourselves: the darkness of the unknown, the darkness of loss and separation, the darkness of pain, the darkness of death. So as we gather here today, we bring such darkness with us and we also share the darkness of our wider world.

Christmas, of course, like Easter, begins in darkness, which is why we perhaps spend so much time trying to avoid that darkness: putting up lights etc, which, wonderful though they are, can be but veils over our sadness, our separations and our sufferings…

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learning to say 'yes'

12/21/2014

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by Penny Jones, for Advent 4 2014

I don’t what your experience is of toddlers, but in my experience most toddlers go through a phase where they like very much to say ‘no’. Usually in a very definite way. Now partly of course this is because they discover that people say ‘no’ to them in a fairly firm way, and they like the noise and intensity of trying that for themselves. They also discover pretty rapidly that they receive far more attention, whether good or bad, when they say ‘no’ than when they say ‘yes’.

Now of course there are circumstances in life when it is very , very important to be able to say ‘no’. In all situations of abuse and violence; whenever our legitimate boundaries are threatened or our rights to liberty and free speech are at stake. It is right at the present time for example that we say ‘no’ to intimidation and violence, and that we resist racism and prejudice in all its forms.

However ‘no’ is never the end of the story. In some senses the whole Christian journey of maturity and spiritual development is about growing beyond our toddler selves and learning how to say an appropriate ‘yes’ – to say ‘yes’ to the promptings of the Spirit; to say ‘yes’ to the just needs of others, even when these conflict with our own self-interest; to say ‘yes’ even, and perhaps especially when we are afraid of what God may be asking of us...

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beyond separation - the light that heals

12/12/2014

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by Jon Inkpin, for Advent 3, Year B

What does light mean to you? Let us reflect upon it. For light is at the symbolic heart of Advent and Christmas, as it is of our Gospel reading this morning. Indeed the Gospel writer John says of John the Baptiser, ‘he came as a witness to the light.’ So what is this light and what difference does it make to our lives?

Our Gospel reading today is not entirely helpful. For a number of reasons, our lectionary compilers missed out 11 verses between the first few verses (verses 6-8) and the following ones (19-28). Which is a bit of a shame. For verses 9-10 especially, are, for me, key to understanding both the light of John’s Gospel and John the Baptist’s role. For verses 9-10 say this: ‘The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world, He was in the world, and the world came into being through him: yet the world did not know him.’ In other words, John’s Gospel is saying that what we know as the light of Christ is that which lights up everyone, but we, as human beings, fail, so often, to grasp this. As a result we become separated, or feel ourselves separated, from true reality. This is the root of the brokenness and divisions of our world, of our personal relationships, and of our own personalities. If we are not connected, or do not know ourselves as connected, to eternal light, then how can we shine to our fullest.

This is at the heart of the ministry of healing in which we share in our eucharist today. As we pray, we do so to be reconnected and renewed in the light of Christ. For, in the light of Christ, all things are interconnected and re-illuminated. The ministry of healing, you see, is not a special separate act. It is an affirmation and demonstration of our deepest reality: that we all come into being through the light of Christ and that we all shine best when we allow that light to flow through us and between us...

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veriditas - the greening of our souls

12/7/2014

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by Penny Jones for Advent 2 year B

It gave me great joy yesterday to see everything so green after the rain. I am sure we are all taking delight in the clean fresh scent and the signs of new life. It would not be too fanciful I think to say that our bit of the world has been ‘baptised’ over the last few days.

The great medieval Christian mystic Hildegaard of Bingen coined a particular word for such ‘greening ‘ of the earth. She called it ‘veriditas’, from the Latin word for green. For her it best described the first shoots of green leaves poking through the white snow after a long winter in her native Europe. It was the sign of new life. And so too for us, as rain restores life to our parched land we see fresh potential for life in the renewed greenness of our land.

When we think about baptism and the ministry of John the Baptist which we recall today, veriditas, the ‘greening’, is a good picture to have in our minds. It is a picture that works at many levels. It describes the ‘greening’ of the outer world, the created order on which we rely for daily life. It describes the ‘greening’ of our inner world, the work of God in our individual souls. And it describes as well the transformative work of the Holy Spirit within our society and wider political systems...

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holy innocents

out of the womb of darkness

learning to say 'yes'

beyond separation - the light that heals

veriditas - the greening of our souls

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