Lord, in your mercy:
Hear our prayer.
Lord, you came among us as light. We pray for wisdom for all in authority, that all who have power may use it with imagination and consideration for others. We pray for world leaders, and for each other in our own areas of influence and responsibility.
Lord, in your mercy:
Hear our prayer.
Lord Christ, you came that we should have fullness of life. We thank you for the life of this city, and our local community. We pray for all who are celebrating tonight in churches, pubs, clubs and at home. We pray that all of us, wherever we are, precious to you even when we don’t respond to your love, will know your stillness at the heart of our festivities, and be touched by your redeeming love.
Lord, in your mercy:
Hear our prayer.
Lord, you came to bring healing and wholeness. We pray for all who suffer. As we give thanks for our families and friends, we pray for those for whom Christmas is difficult: those who will wake to another day of loneliness or pain; those whose celebration has been marred by the death of a loved one, or the disappearance of a member of their family.
In a moment of quiet, we bring our own needs into your healing presence.
Lord, in your mercy:
Hear our prayer.
Whatever lies ahead of us, may we always hear the echo of the angels’ song, and help others to hear it too.
Merciful Father, accept these prayers for the sake of your Son, our Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen.
At the turn of the year
‘New beginnings are always delightful, the threshold is the place to pause.’ So said Robert Louis Stevenson. I’m not sure I fully agree with him. New beginnings, full of promise though they may be, are often close to endings which may have been painful. New beginnings always mean change, and there is something in all of us that makes us want to hold on to old, familiar, comfortable things. There may be quite a few of us who were given new slippers for Christmas, who are keeping them for best for the time being – they’re too good for doing the housework or the gardening in: thinly disguised excuses for hanging on to the old.
But the threshold is the place to pause, yes. Thresholds are places of promise. In biblical terms they mark off something holy, a place where God is. We stand at the beginning of a year, a year where we shall find God. We don’t have to take God with us into the new year, God takes us with him. That’s what Christmas is about. Emmanuel, God with us. We don’t have to cling on to Christmas, for Christmas is never over, God is with us.
Just before Christmas, the children came forward at the end of one service to report on their morning’s activities. They had been thinking about the Christmas story, and some of the words it introduces us to. One of the words was ‘Emmanuel’.
‘What does that word mean?’ asked the vicar.
There was a long pause, then a little boy said, ‘I love you.’
That’s not the official theologian’s answer, but he’d gone right to the heart of it. ‘I love you.’ What we take with us into the new year, as reassurance and also as challenge, is the unfailing love of God. God’s love isn’t always comfortable. It doesn’t always make things right for us. It doesn’t mean we won’t suffer, or find the world a difficult place to live in. God’s love means that God is with us, right in the pain and the mess as well as the joy and the laughter. Christmas will never be over, it is always just beginning.
Pause at the threshold, and remember that God’s love is new every morning: words worth pondering daily as we discover the riches and marvels of that love.
Epiphany
Picture the scene: a room with a large dining table. Three men in sumptuous flowing robes are watching a fourth man, obviously a servant, laying the table. Through a window, which by its shape tells us that this is a scene from the East, you can see a couple approaching in the distance, pushing a buggy with a child in it. One of the men explains the situation to the servant, who is looking a bit puzzled: ‘You see, last year we went to them, so this year they are coming to us.’
I admire the skill of cartoonists, who with a few strokes of the pen and some well-chosen words can make a comment about our human condition, and at the same time make us think about deeper truths.
Over the last few years, cartoonists have provided some interesting springboards for thought about this Epiphany story. The one I have just described latches on to a perennial anxiety about where parts of a family spend Christmas, and whose turn it is to be host. With luck, we can laugh about it. But the deep truth about Jesus spending Christmas with us is that he comes every year, and stays with us all the time. So the real question is not about whose turn it is, but about how we are going to respond to this amazing generosity of God in giving himself to us.
The Wise Men in the story responded by offering gifts to the Christ-child. Another cartoon shows them having a conversation with each other. Two of them are holding the traditional gifts, the third is holding an envelope. In response to their concerned looks, he says, ‘Yes, I know. But a token is so much lighter.’ Will our response to God be a token gesture? Or will we offer something precious? And what precious thing have we got anyway? We need to be wary about using this story as if it’s a prelude to a stewardship campaign – dig a little deeper into your pocket. It’s more profound than that. The most precious thing we have is ourself. That is what God longs for us to give him.
We perhaps don’t always think of ourselves as precious: we are quite good at putting ourselves down. But the gifts the Wise Men brought are our gifts too. Each of us is precious to God – in God’s eyes each of us is pure gold. We may have to dig deep to find it, but that is God’s truth about each one of us. Offer the frankincense of worship, and as we attend prayerfully to God, and learn more about God and ourselves, we recognize God’s truth about us: ‘You are precious in my sight, and honoured, and I love you’ (Isaiah 43.4).
That truth about being precious will be tested with the myrrh of suffering – all around us, and perhaps touching us more personally too. Faithfulness to God’s love is part of our response. As the carol puts it:
What can I give him,
Poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd
I would bring a lamb;
If I were a wise man
I would do my part;
Yet what I can I give him –
Give my heart.
That is a response to God not just for Epiphany, but for every day. Another cartoon takes us into the vestry, where the vicar is holding open a cupboard door. At his feet, the tiny crib figures process past him and the caption reads, ‘So it was back into the vestry cupboard for another year.’
Will that be how we deal with Christmas too? Has the celebration made any difference to us? The commercial world has moved on, Christmas has been put away, hot cross buns are on sale. But Christmas isn’t over. God is with us every day, the baby grows into adulthood if we will let him, and he challenges us to recognize him and respond to him in our daily lives.
Eucharistic Prayer for Epiphany
(The words at the Sanctus and at the end of the prayer come from the hymn ‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord’)
Father of all blessings, we give you thanks and praise
for Jesus the Light of the world, the light that
no darkness can overpower;
we thank you that you