Weekly Blog 

Here our minister shares a weekly reflection: 

Sunday 05 January - 'And the darkness comprehended it not' by Irim Sarwar

This year, as I scrolled through my Facebook newsfeed, I noticed a definite difference in New Year’s greetings: they were more subdued, leading with how 2025 will be a difficult year, the rise of authoritarianism, and as the song ‘Let the River Run’ has it, the ‘darkening dawn’. ‘Happy New Year’ felt tentative, and even I tiptoed, preceding mine with ‘May it land gently.’ Hope was hard to find, particularly across the pond, where a certain hotel magnate(?) won a second term.
 
Even here, with a new Labour government, the excitement and optimism of 1997 are missing. Our PM is very much one to rein in joy and expectation and soberly roll up his sleeves & get down to work, expecting everyone else to follow his example. In the former, he reminds me very much of my father, who ruthlessly curtailed any childhood exuberance and optimism, reminding me that the world is a hard, grey place, and only work brings security.
 
Keir Starmer and my father are very different men, but in this curbing of hope and joy, they are very similar on two counts: it is done out of fear, which can never bear fruit, and, quite simply, *they are wrong*.
 
They — and those anxious friends on Facebook — are not wrong about the darkness, nor are they wrong to face trouble head on; they are absolutely right. But they – we — are wrong in rationing joy and hope, for nothing lasting is done without either, or without that from which they spring: love.
 
And it is worth remembering that joy and happiness are not the same thing: joy is a fruit of the Spirit, something enduring & anchored in our relationship with G-d, a constant beneath the more fleeting emotions like happiness, which we often mistakenly chase, thinking it will bring us joy.
 
In dark times such as these, John 1:1-18, that beloved, well-known prologue read out every Christmas and Easter, lights our path:
 
All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people…to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of G-d
 
His life is the light of all people, and it is in relationship with G-d – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — that our joy is anchored. Not ease or comfort, we were never promised that, but joy, and His Light in us that allows us to become a light to a world in the darkness of ignorance, hatred, grief, pain — and yes, rising authoritarianism. We are human and we will feel afraid, angry, helpless, but if we always remember to fall back into our relationship with Him and let Him work through us, we can bring light to the world. As Jeremiah promises, He will gather us in and give us gladness for sorrow…though perhaps not as quickly as our human selves may wish. There is still much work to be done.
 
And for those who feel bone-weary and perhaps need to feel a little less alone, I leave you with a passage from one of my favourite childhood books, Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time:
 
“And we're not alone, you know, children," came Mrs. Whatsit, the comforter. "All through the universe, it's being fought, all through the cosmos, and my, but it's a grand and exciting battle. I know it's hard for you to understand about size, how there's very little difference in the size of the tiniest microbe and the greatest galaxy. You think about that, and maybe it won't seem strange to you that some of our very best fighters have come right from your own planet, and it's a little planet, dears, out on the edge of a little galaxy. You can be proud that it's done so well."

"Who have our fighters been? Calvin asked.

"Oh, you must know them, dear," Mrs. Whatsit said.

Mrs. Who's spectacles shone out at them triumphantly. "And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not."

"Jesus!" Charles Wallace said. "Why of course, Jesus!"

Sunday 29 December - A Christmas Blog by Roger Tatton

Before we start, I know I'm not the big story here. I'll come to that in a minute.

Back when I was a young man life was pretty hectic. I did my training, got my first job, then came this chance to set up my own business. That was hard work and it kept me busy for a few years.

I suppose I'd always wanted to settle down and have children - in an abstract sort of way. But you have to meet someone first, don't you, and there was sort of, nobody around. 
And then suddenly there was. Just a slip of a thing, not much more than a girl but with such a wise head on her shoulders. It’s not just that she's as straight as a die, that's only a fraction of it. She has a mind of her own – and more; an inner life too, an ability to think things through and see things like she’s looking through God's own eyes.
I just didn't know whether to admire her or adore her, so I did both. And that's how I got engaged to her, my Mary. I was over the moon I don't mind telling you. A new future ahead, maybe even one day a son to take over the business, maybe daughters as gifted as their mother. I was some happy bunny.

Then she sat me down one day and said we had to have a talk. Life was going to be different, she said. Even as she spoke, she seemed more aware of everything, with a quiet determination, excitement even, that just mesmerized me.

Out it came. She was pregnant. It’s not mine, we wouldn’t do that. And, she said, it’s not anybody else's either.

Just while you’re pondering that one, I’ll tell you about the sense of expectation that hangs in the air all over this country. Some Sabbaths in synagogue you could smell it. As if everybody knew something was going to happen. Of course, plenty of people saying what it would be; but in the end you got the sense that maybe none of them would be right.
So I'll be frank, my world was turned upside down by the news. I was more than a little put out, I can tell you! My plans and expectations suddenly all turned to dust. And I didn't know what to make of Mary. It wasn't that I didn't believe her. I did somehow believe her, even when I knew I couldn't. The best thing I could think of was to quietly let her go and draw a veil over the whole thing.

Then it hit me. Suppose this might just be the time? This world, well now, it’s OK maybe sometimes; but it so needs to be a better place. Why not just go with the flow, it that’s what’s going to get us there? If it all turns to dust, then at least it was a good cause. But don't you want the chance of something more mindful, honest, straight; someone redemptive, to set things right again? I know I did.

* * *

Then along comes this wretched census, the world turns upside down and everything's in a mess. You don't know where you are from one minute to the next. And here I am, trying to keep her safe, trying to obey the rules and now to cap it all, yes, here I am staring down on my newly-born son who's fast sleep in a cow manger.
And Mary's nodded off too, bless her.

So here I am, looking down on this well-lunged but tiny scrap of a thing and thinking how on earth can he change anything? And yet …  And I love him already; even though he’s not quite mine. I’m like a caretaker you see, looking after him for …  well, for someone so way out of my pay scale you won’t believe it if I tried to tell you.

I’ve been pretty reconciled now to my role I think. But all this strange stuff since we got here … I can't make head or tail of it. Shepherds have gone a while back, by the way. But now, would you believe it, there’s a troupe of foreign influencers coming tomorrow, all the way from Iran. Been travelling for ages it seems. Their tour manager person was here just now; free gifts, the lot it seems. What’s that all about? 

It’s not so much that none of this is in the script - or at least not in any script I’ve ever read. It’s more as though there isn't even a script at all and everything’s, like, starting over? That's a hard thing to grasp for a man with a practical turn of mind.

Maybe it's simple. Maybe it’s all about being good; and letting God do whatever he wants with that. And realising whatever happens next was meant to be all along. It a real struggle for me; it’s like I’m cutting the joints before I’ve chopped the tree down. But might it just work?

And to be here tonight, at this moment, looking down on a baby who might just be the best ever, wow! I’m scared as hell, but I’m on the brink of something so life-changing. And I now know I wouldn't swap that for all the Cedar in Lebanon.

Would you?


Sunday 22 December - The Light Returns
Once more we approach Christmas, and now COVID lockdowns are a few years behind us, it feels to me like we’ve settled back into some form of Christmas routine as a church. We move through Advent to Christmas, sharing our Toy Service, Carols on Bonn Square, a Festival Service, Carols by Candlelight, Midnight Communion, and a Christmas day celebration.
 
No doubt, families, academic settings, and other workplaces are a bit the same. There’s always a little change, minor tweaks and variations (often in families depending on whose turn it is to go where), but, on the whole, we settle into some form of yearly pattern.

There’s some security and comfort in this, in a world that is ever changing. We sing familiar carols and remember the well-known (often sanitised) Nativity story, in a society and church community that is always in flux. Sometimes, we arrive at Christmas whilst facing the pain and uncertainty of grief and illness close to home, but the story of hope, joy, peace, and love that we come to know through the birth of Christ remains the same.
 
As we gather to celebrate Christmas, all at different moments in our lives, facing different stresses, challenges, and anxieties, may we be able to share the ever-present, hope-bringing, and loving presence of Jesus with each other.
 
Another certainty at this time of the year is the transition between days shortening and days lengthening. There can surely be no coincidence that those who set the Christian calendar in the northern hemisphere chose to celebrate the birth of Christ and the coming of the light to the world so close to the winter solstice. In the darkest and bleakest of times, we remember once more that hope and new life was brought to earth in that Bethlehem stable all those years ago. In the darkest of times, through the presence of Christ with us, light returns.
 
So, it seems fitting that I share with you a poem written by Rev Dr Simon Woodman, that reflects on the longest night, and the hope of new life that we remember and celebrate through the changing times and seasons.
 
A Poem for the Longest Night – Simon Woodman
 
Long night ahead?
Nah, just a short day.
 
It's not the hours of darkness
that bother me,
but the passing of the day:
'Life's little day',
ebbing swiftly to its close.
Too soon, too soon.
 
The light of new life
flickers
in a baby's eyes.
Then years flicker past,
and light dims to dark.
 
But the baby, ah, the baby.
The eternal baby.
Every year crucified,
every year reborn.
 
New life in the cycle of life,
death undone
and robbed.
 
Longest night.
shortest day.
 
And from today,
light returns.


Sunday 15 December - Nativity: an invitation to welcome and celebrate the presence of God

As we approach our Festival Service this weekend, followed by our carol service next Sunday, we are well and truly into the time of year when we will hear the very familiar Nativity story once more.
 
I’ve already encountered it quite a bit this week, as Becca had her school nativity play on Wednesday. You could hardly hear a word as all the children either excitedly or nervously rattled through their lines, but thankfully, we all know the story by now!
 
It’s easy to switch off and skip through a story that you know so well. Yet I hope, as we reflect on that first Christmas once more, that we will encounter again the God who comes to us, and have our eyes opened to his presence in the world around us.
 
Through the story we come across people who are invited to take part in God’s story of restoration. Mary faithfully accepts the call to be the one who bears Christ (although it doesn’t seem that she has much of a choice!). Joseph heeds the instructions of the angel to support her, even though he would have been expected to break off their engagement. The shepherds, awestruck after the noisy disruption to their nighttime watch over their flocks, go to see the child in the stable. The Magi, attentive to the signs in the night sky, follow the star to Bethlehem, and take gifts for the newborn king.
 
Even the traditional additional characters in the story, the innkeeper and the animals in their many forms, are faced with the same invitation, to play their part in preparing the way for the imminent birth, and to celebrate the arrival of the word made flesh, in the form of a vulnerable human baby.
 
On Sunday, we will hear the folk tale of Papa Panov. This old widower is lonely at Christmas time, reads through the nativity story, and then hears someone speak to him, telling him that Jesus will come to him the following day. He watches out for the arrival of Jesus, but doesn’t see him. He welcomes a street cleaner, and a mother and child, and gives shelter, warmth, and a gift to the boy. Yet he ends the day disappointed that Christ did not come to him, that is, of course, until he realises that he was there in all the people he assisted through the day in which he attentively looked out of his window at passersby.
 
As we encounter the story of Christmas again this year, may we too be reminded that the one who first came to us as an infant child so many years ago still comes to us today. May we heed the invitation to welcome him in, as we offer shelter, warmth, peace, food, and drink, to those who need it. When we do so, as we attentively look out for Christ in our city, we will share God’s love and play an active part in God’s restorative work in the world.
[A group of people standing outside Description automatically generated]
Carols on Bonn Square with the Salvation Army and gifts
 
Many thanks to all of those who helped to make last Sunday an enjoyable occasion, despite the wet and windy weather. The gifts that were given to the Salvation Army present appeal were well received and will bring some Christmas cheer to a wide range of different recipients in Oxfordshire in the coming weeks.


 
I recorded a couple of the carols sung on the square, and they will be appearing in our online Advent calendar. You can check it out here:

https://newroad.churchinsight.com/Groups/388396/Advent_Calendar.aspx