SERMON - Words of Affirmation 

As children, I imagine we probably all used the phrase: Sticks and stones make break my bones, but words will never harm me.  It is one of those interesting questions that struck me this week: I wonder who the first person was who ever used that phrase? It is certainly a pretty universal saying, that although we have all used it, we all know that it just isn’t true. 

We all know from our own experience that some of the most painful and long lasting pain that many of us have experienced have in fact words that have been spoken to us or about us, either intentionally or unintentionally. 

In around 2006, I remember sitting at my office desk reading church related emails. I had just received an email from a Church member who was very unhappy about something.  It was  quite painful to receive it and read it. I noted how quickly my sense of life and spirit took such a sudden dive and a sense of dread hit me. I also realised in that moment how often the negative feed-back so often out-weighed many of the positive messages I had received at other times. 

It amazed me at the time that I could receive 10 or 20 affirming, positive and grateful emails from other congregation members, but it took only 1 critical or unhappy email to almost completely obliterate the other 10 or 20.  I began to wonder, Why do our brains focus so heavily on the negative feedback so that it completely eclipses the many positive messages one may have had? 

I resolved on that day to keep a folder of positive feedback in my computers emails so that when I was feeling flattened or down because of a persons criticism (which would inevitably come again), I would be able to go back to that folder and remind myself of some of the positive feedback I had received. 

It was only a few years later that I came across a book that explained that our brains are designed to focus on the negative rather than the positive as a survival strategy.  The reason we focus on the negative is because our brains are hard-wired to help us identify danger in order to protect us from that danger.  The same is not true of positive messages. Your brain does not need to focus on them to protect you or for survival purposes because that is not where the danger lies. 

And so it is that negative voices and negative comments can sometimes loom large in our minds and often live on within us for years and years. 

Like those positive emails that I began to store up in a folder in my emails we all need to hear positive messages to affirm us and to help us know that we are on the right track. 

Words of affirmation are vital in the life of a child to help them grow and blossom, but if truth be told, we all need words of affirmation.  

In fact, as we touched on in last weeks introductory sermon, Gary Chapman regards Words of Affirmation as one of the 5 main languages of love, one of the 5 key ways in which we can show love to other people, and in which we can also receive love from other people. 

While all of us need to hear positive affirming words, for some people, affirming words constitute their primary way of giving and receiving love.  You may give such a person gifts, you may spend quality time with them, you may show them physical affection, or do loving acts of kindness toward them, but for some people, these are all secondary love languages.  Some of these things they may indeed interpret positively. Others of these things may actually make them withdraw and make them feel uncomfortable. For such people, if you really wish to speak to their heart, it will need to be through words of kindness, encouragement and affirmation.  For some people, until you have spoken with words of kindness and affirmation, they may not full interpret your actions as Love in the same way that you may intend them as love. 

Gary Chapman tells the story of a teenager that he was seeing for counselling.  His parents were very concerned about him. He had become a problem child for them. He had even threatened to run away from home. Interactions between the teenager and his parents had become constantly negative and acrimonious. 

In listening to the story of this teenager Gary Chapman asked him what life at home had been like when he was younger. The teenager shared that previously things had been good between him and his parents. He shared that they had been kind and supportive of him, constantly encouraging him and saying nice things to him, but in more recent times, he felt that his parents had become constantly critical of him and it felt like they never had anything good to say to him any-more. 

The way the teenager spoke particularly about the way his parents had spoken to him as a child and now how they would speak to him as a teenager made Gary Chapman alert and aware to the fact that it was likely that for this young person, affirming words could be his primary language of love, the primary way in which he not only gave love, but also received it.  As things began to deteriorate at home, his parents had begun to speak less and less in his primary language of love leaving him feeling empty and devoid of love at home and thus unable to respond in love back to his parents. 

In the Gospel stories, we see on many occasions how Jesus knew how to use affirming words to other people as an important language of love. 

I think of the story of Simon, who Jesus gives the nickname ‘Peter’ which means ‘The Rock’. Jesus sees not just the surface of Simon’s life. He sees not just the impetuous, head-strong and impulsive person that he seems to be, but Jesus also sees all that Simon can become, the hidden potential that lies within him, and that, one day, he would become a strong foundational leader in community of Jesus. And so as a way of affirming Simon, and this potential which Jesus sees lies within him, and as a way of drawing out Simon’s deeper potential for stability and strength, Jesus gives him the nick-name Peter.  Jesus speaks to Simon, the language of affirming words to help him grow into his true potential as Peter, the Rock on which the Church would be built. Every time Jesus, and others would call him by this nickname, Peter, the Rock, it became a word of affirmation, affirming all that Simon could become. 

But there are many other stories of Jesus speaking the love language of affirming words. 

At the beginning of John’s Gospel, Jesus finds Philip and says to him “Follow me”. Philip then found Nathaniel and brings him to Jesus. We read that when Jesus sees Nathaniel approaching, he says to him: “Here truly is an Israelite in whom there is no deceit.”  Jesus in seeing Nathaniel perceives something of the essence of his character just by looking at him, perhaps seeing the expression on his face, perhaps it was something in the way in which Nathaniel walked and held himself. But as Jesus perceives this quality in Nathaniel, he doesn’t just keep it to himself, he speaks it out loud as a word of affirmation for who Nathaniel is. This is not Jesus trying to curry favour with Nathaniel, using words to manipulate Nathaniel and try and bring Nathaniel under his power. It is a statement free of any hidden agenda, simply an affirmation of the goodness that Jesus perceives within Nathaniel. The name Nathaniel means ‘The Gift of God’. Jesus sees into Nathaniel’s heart, looks for the gift that God has placed within him, and then affirms to him what he has seen, “Here truly is an Israelite in which there is no deceit.”

I think also of that passage where Jesus is nearing his death. The story appears in Matthew, Mark and John’s Gospels, with a similar, parallel story in Luke 7.  The details in John’s version are slightly different from Matthew and Mark. Whereas Matthew and Mark leave her unnamed and simply refer to her as ‘a woman’. In John she is referred to as Mary, the sister of Lazarus. In Mark and Matthew the story takes place in Bethany, the house of of Simon the Leper, whereas in John’s version the impression is given that the event takes place in Lazarus’s home. In Matthew and Mark the incident takes place on a Wednesday, two days prior to the Passover. In John’s version it takes place six days before the Passover.  But in both accounts she is criticised for her extravagant act of love towards Jesus of pouring expensive perfume upon him.  In Matthew, it is the disciples who are critical. Marks version simply says ‘some’ were critical, and in John’s Gospel it is Judas who is named as the one who speaks critically of her. But in all three versions, Jesus speaks affirming words towards her to deflect the criticism. In John’s Gospel “Leave her alone, it was intended that she should save this perfume for the day of my burial.”   The words in Matthew and Mark’s version are even more affirming, “Why are you bothering her? She has done a beautiful thing for me.” And Jesus goes on to say “Truly I tell you, wherever the good news is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told in memory of her.” 

Beautiful words of love and affirmation spoken in her defence in the face of criticism. 

Lastly, and very briefly, I think also of Barnabas in the book of Acts. The name Barnabas appears to be a nickname, and means the Son of Encouragement. His Hebrew name according to a number of sources appears to have been Joseph. The fact that he was known by the name Barnabas rather than the name of his birth suggests that Barnabas was one of those people who always had something positive to say to other people, always ready to offer words of affirmation and words of encouragement. It would seem likely, that Joseph received the nickname Barnabas because his primary love language was almost certainly the language of speaking loving and affirming and encouraging words to other people. 

In closing today, who are the people in your life who have spoken words of affirmation and words of encouragement to you?   How have you been touched by other people speaking affirming words as a language of love to you? Who are those in your life, whose love language may be the language of speaking kind, loving and affirming words? In what way may you become an instrument of God’s love as you speak that language of love, words of kindness, love and affirmation towards them. Amen. And lastly, may each of us also hear in our hearts today, those same words of love and affirmation that God spoke over Jesus at his baptism, “You are my beloved” Amen. 

​SERMON - The 5 Languages of Love - Introduction 

A few months ago I found a book in our local charity shop called “Why Love Matters”. It is subtitled “How affection shapes a baby’s brain”.   It is a book that explains why love is essential to the development of a baby’s brain in the earliest years of life, and how early interactions between babies and adults have lasting consequences both for good and for ill. 

It is not only a babies brain that is shaped by their relationships with adults and their primary caregivers, but also the baby’s entire nervous system. Those babies that receive an abundance of love, affection, care and nurture in these earliest years of their development are able to develop neural pathways in their brain that help them to blossom and grow in ways of greater wholeness and stability of character, whereas those babies that do not receive consistent love and affection are more likely to struggle later on in life in dealing with stress and are more susceptible later in life to struggle with things like anorexia, addiction and anti-social behaviour. 

What interests me about the book, written by Sue Gerhardt, a psychoanalytic psychotherapist in the UK, is that in a very real sense it provides, secular and scientific backing for the central most important value in Christianity: Namely Love. Christianity can’t be all that wrong. 

When asked about the most important commandment, Jesus in effect emphasizes the word love three times, the third time implicit within the statement “Love your neighbour as yourself”. In Luke’s version, the word love is only explicitly used once, but it is clearly emphasized in three directions Love God, and your neighbour as yourself. 

John’s Gospel 13:34 is the only Gospel not to include the greatest commandment, but in it’s place John has the new commandment, “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.” In this commandment, the word love is explicitly repeated three times. 

And In 1 Corinthians 13, Paul, who had once been a religious extremist before his encounter with the risen Christ on the road to Damascus, comes to the conclusion that there is in fact nothing greater than love. Faith Hope and Love remain he ends his beautiful hymn to love, but the greatest of these is love. 

Roughly two thousand years later, Sue Gerhardt provides psychological and scientific backing to the claim that love is of utmost importance in the healthy development of a child’s brain and nervous system and by implication their development as fully rounded and balanced human beings. 

Indeed, the root cause of many of our struggles is that in fact many of us do not know ourselves to be deeply valuable or valued. Over the weekend Wendy and I watched the 2019 hit film Rocketman, which is a portrayal of the early life of Elton John up to the point where he went into therapy for his addictions to alcohol and drugs.  His was a story of a home life with very little real love, affection and affirmation, apart from the love shown him by his grandmother who paid for his lessons on the piano.  He longed to be hugged by his dad who was cold and aloof and who ended up abandoning Elton John as a child getting married to someone else and having other children that he loved more. 

But his mother was not much better. As she is portrayed in the film, she was preoccupied with her self and so had very little warmth, love and encouragement to give to the little Elton. 

Elton John’s descent into drugs and alcohol and a wild life was clearly an attempt to fill the enormous hole that should have been filled with the love, kindness, affection and affirmation of his parents in his earliest years as a child. 

It is interesting, that the key moment of transformation and spiritual awakening in Jesus’ life, and which propelled him into ministry was at his baptism. What we have in the gospels is clearly a symbolic representation of an experience that was clearly difficult to put into human words, but the culmination of that story reveals that in that experience, was the profound and life-changing affirmation that he was God’s beloved. You are my Son whom I love are the words in Mark’s Gospel.  This experience of being bathed in Divine love in the Jordan River propelled Jesus life in a whole new direction with his primary purpose in life now proclaiming in word and deed, the Good News of God’s Divine Love that is available here and now to everyone, even the worst of sinners. 

Over the next 5-6 weeks I would like to explore the centrality and importance of love in what Gary Chapman calls the 5 languages of love. 

He writes that each of us through our conditioning and our particular personality types give and receive love in at least 5 different ways.  He calls these ‘Love Languages’.

Very briefly, these love languages include the following: 

1. Words of Affirmation
2. Physical Touch
3. Quality Time
4. Acts of Service
5. The Giving and Receiving of gifts.

Gary Chapman suggests that for each of us, one of these love languages will be the primary way in which we give and receive love although all of us will have at least one other secondary love language.  

Our primary love language is our natural way of receiving and showing love.  We usually learn this language in our families growing up. Secondary love language is generally a learned pattern of expressing love that is not as natural.  Or it may be that 2 of these languages of love come naturally to us, but the other languages of love need to be learned. 

Gary Chapman theory of the 5 love languages means that other people may not share our primary love language which means that sometimes love can be lost in translation.

One of the difficulties of speaking different languages is that people don’t always understand one-another. And so it is with the 5 Languages of love.   If one person’s primary language of love is expressed through physical touch and another person’s primary love language is giving gifts, they may end up talking past each other.  The person who receives the gift may not fully recognise the gift as the profound act of love that it is, because what they really want and possibly need is a hug. But for another person, a hug might be interpreted as a bit of an invasion of their personal space and therefore may not realise that for someone else it is a primary expression of their love.

One of the ways that we can grow, is firstly to recognise what our own language of love is. And secondly for us to recognise that not all people have the same primary language of love as us. This growing awareness of ourselves and others can help to facilitate greater understanding and in the process help us to grow in our love for others. 

Learning another persons language is a great act of love. English speakers around the world have unfortunately not been very good at learning the languages of other people. In South Africa, generally English speakers are the least able to speak other people’s languages.  Most English speakers would expect other people to speak English rather than the other way around.  When I ministered in African Townships for 5 years of my early ministry I made a point of doing my best to learn at least a little of an African language. I wasn’t as successful as I had hoped but I could see that these fumbling attempts to speak their language were received as acts of love. 

And so it is, that if we wish to nurture loving relationships with others, we all need in some way to recognize firstly that other people’s primary language of love may not be the same as my own, and as an act of love towards others it will mean being willing to acknowledge and learn someone elses’s language of love. 

If I want to show love to someone whose primary love language is Words of Affirmation, if I am to love them for who they are, then I will need to learn to use Words of Affirmation in my dealings with them. And if someone elses’s primary love language is quality time, then if I am to truly love them as they are then I will need to learn in some way to speak that language of love, remembering how important quality time is to them. 

May God bless us over the next few weeks as we explore these 5 languages of love, learning perhaps a little more about ourselves, and a little more about others, and in the process hopefully learning a little more of God’s love for each of us and God’s Way of Love expressed in the life of Jesus, who in many ways was multilingual speaking fluently in all five languages of love.

SERMON TEXT - Holy Family, The Family of Jesus. 

In some Christian Traditions, the Sunday after Christmas is given the theme of The Holy Family, a reference to Jesus, Mary and Joseph.

What is it that makes this particular family holy one might ask? 

Probably the first answer that some might give is that this family is holy, because of the birth and the presence of the holy Child, the Christ Child, Jesus, the Son of God. 

But I think most of us would surely be aware that it takes more than one person to make a family holy.  It takes loving and caring and committed relationships to make a family worthy of the name family, let alone worthy of the adjective holy. 

Perhaps the holiness of the first Christmas family is in part, the result of Joseph's willingness to break Jewish Law and to marry the women he loves despite the fact that in the eyes of others, she would have been considered defiled having got pregnant out of wedlock.  Perhaps the holiness of this family also has something to do with Mary’s openess and willingness to play her part as the mother of the Christ-child and to not run away from the great task before her? 

The image of that first Christmas Family, remaining committed to each other, despite the odds that were against them, sharing a stable as their first family home, has been an important image in Christian cultures as a reminder of what family life could be and hopefully should be.  That first Christmas Family, the Holy Family if one wishes to use that term, has been a kind of archetype that has communicated a message to us of the true potential of every family that has ever been in this world.  All families have the potential for holiness, as places of love, tenderness, nurture and mutual care. Families have the potential of being places where divine love can be encountered and shared. 

But sadly, as recent news stories have reminded us, not all families live up to this potential. Families are not by default places of love, care and mutual support.  Sometimes, families can be places of terrible abuse, neglect, toxic manipulation and even violence. It has been a tragic reminder to hear some teachers and social workers say that the potential closing of schools in further lockdowns would do enormous damage to those children for whom school is a welcome relief and break from a toxic and abusive home environment. 

For me, home was always better and emotionally safer than being at school, even though I had quite a positive school experience. It is tragic to think that for some children, it is school that provides the safety and the emotional support that is lacking at home. 

And so, the so-called ‘Holy Family’ of Jesus, Mary and Joseph is a religious reminder that should hopefully inspire each of us to make our own families places of holiness, where the love, nurture, goodness and care of God can be known. 

But unfortunately, there are some for whom their own families will never be places of the kind of love, care and support they might hope for.  Families cannot be made holy just by the efforts of one person, it requires a commitment from all members of a family. 

The story of Jesus in the Gospels reveals that family for Jesus was never a closed concept.  In fact, closed insulated families are ultimately not healthy places either.  If Mark’s Gospel is anything to go by, Jesus lived with an open concept of family, a concept of family that was meant to be open and ready to include and embrace others. We see this when Mary and some of Jesus brothers and sisters come to take charge of Jesus. They think he has gone a little off the rails and a little over-board with his religious commitment and so they come to bring him back home to try and keep him under control. And in response, Jesus asks the question: Who is my brother and sister and mother? And in reply to his own question he continues:  Those who do the will of my Father in heaven are my brothers, sisters and mothers.

And in a way, that is part of the good news of the message of Jesus, that we are all invited to become part of a much larger family, the family of Christ, where hopefully, those who have not experienced the goodness and support of their own families of origin, can find something of the love and support they have failed to receive at home amongst those who consider themselves part of the family of Christ. 

And so may it be, that each of us, in even those most ordinary of settings and even in fleeting encounters, may be for others in this world the love, kindness, care and support which they should have received at home, but for various reasons, beyond their own control, never received. And in doing so may we become part of God’s wider holy family. 

In the name of Christ. Amen. 

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CHILDREN'S STORY AND SONG

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​SERMON 

SERMON TEXT - CHRISTMAS DAY - The Prince of Peace

In the past week I saw a video that Wendy thinks she has seen shared previously. It is a school or Sunday School nativity play and it must be near the end, because they are all gathered around the manger, a heart-warming and peaceful scene as one would expect in a re-enactment of the Biblical story, that is until one little girl can’t contain herself any longer.  Perhaps it was boredom? Maybe jealousy? O maybe just child-like exuberance… in an unscripted moment, she reaches into the manger and takes out the baby Jesus. At first she holds him proudly and rocks him from side to side, tapping into her mothering instincts, and then as she grows a little more excited, she begins to wave him about.  

At that moment, Mary, who has clearly begun to look a little bewildered and perhaps a little concerned about what is happening stands up to save the baby Jesus and the nativity play. At first she does so gently and firmly taking the baby Jesus from the other little girl, who I suspect was meant to be an angel. But rather than getting the Nativity play back on track, Mary ends up getting into a bit of a tug-of-war and a wrestling match with the other little girl who has made the decision that she is not ready to give the baby Jesus up.  

When it begins to look like things are getting serious, the video ends with some of the parents rushing up on stage to intervene. 

Peace on earth and mercy mild!  Maybe one might conclude, the Christmas story doesn’t always work. 

But one occasion when the Christmas story did work has always moved me. It is the story of the 1914 Christmas Day truce between British and German soldiers when for a few precious hours, fighting on the Western Front came to a halt.  Instead of exchanging gunfire, British and German soldiers traded gifts of tobacco,  and goodwill, all in the middle of No Man’s Land 

Private Thomas Nash, of the East Lancashire Regiment is recorded to have wrote: “We shook hands and fraternised, exchanging Christmas greetings, cigarettes, cigars etc, several of the Germans exchanging their watc­hes for our jackknives.” 

One of the most moving stories to have come out of that day is that soldiers from both sides engaged in a football match. I was surprised to read this week that there is some doubt whether this part of the story is accurate or not. One report suggests that on that Christmas Day a further truce was proposed for New Years Day with a proposed football match to take place, but that it did not in fact happen. 

Whether or not there was a football match on that Christmas Day of 1914 what had unfolded on that day was something quite remarkable. For a few hours on that Christmas Day, the story of war and conflict was dropped in the minds of those who had been fighting on that small section of the Western Front. And in it’s place, the story of Christmas, the story of One Born to bring peace on earth eclipsed the hearts and minds of those soldiers causing soldiers who had been firing at each other just a few hours before, to exchange Christmas greetings. 

May it be so for us as well. May it be that in our lives too, even if for just a few moments, the stories that live and swirl around in our heads and that define our lives in ways that bring brokeness, anxiety and division, could be eclipsed by another story, the story of the coming of One who would be called the Prince of Peace. And in the dawning of that story within our hearts and minds, may our hearts become a few more places in this world where where the Light and Love of God can get in and shine through. Amen. 

Advent 3 - People's expectations begin to Rise: John the Baptist's Levelling Up Agenda.
Luke 3: 10-18 & Philippians 4:4-7

Last week we read from Luke 3:1-6 about John the forerunner, preparing the Way for the One who was to come. 

His message was a baptism of repentance, a washing and a cleansing of the people’s inner life… The King is coming, was his message, mend not your roads, but your hearts. 

It is interesting, that in England, there is a lot of political talk about levelling up: the encouragement for the government to make strategic decisions to make sure that no part of the country gets left behind, and the wealth and development be spread more equitably across England to avoid a continuing slide whereby one part of England, the South East around London grows ever more wealthy and the rest of the country grows ever poorer. 

It has long been a problem in South Africa where I come from, but in fact it is a global problem. Just this week in the Daily Mail I think it was, I saw an article that says that global inequality is currently at its greatest.  

The message of John the Baptist in Luke’s Gospel also carries strong overtones of a levelling up agenda.  We saw it last week in the quote from Isaiah; every valley shall be filled, mountains and hills brought low, crooked ways made straight and the salvation of God will be seen. 

Now last week we interpreted these things primarily from the standpoint of our inner lives. 

There are valleys within us that need to be filled. There are mountains within that need to be brought low. There are also crooked paths within that need to be straightened.  And this is a legitimate interpretation of a passage like this. If there is no change within the human heart, then change in the world will never come. 

Wendy and I were listening to a BBC Radio 4 lecture on the dangers of Artificial Intelligence in the context of war and conflict. And the point that was being made is that this is not just science fiction stuff. This is not just future technology that our children and grandchildren are going to need to confront and address.  It already exists today and some of these AI weapons can be easily bought on the internet. 

After listening to the program and the discussion on how new international conventions need to be urgently signed to have common international agreement on the use of such weapons, (in the same way that happened with the existence of chemical weapons), the thought struck me is that what this world desperately needs is a new revolution of the spirit. We need a pandemic of inner transformation to sweep across the world where people’s hearts and changed and transformed into more altruistic modes of being. Old ways of thinking need to be transcended. There needs to be a global metanoia, a global change of heart and mind, a global change in the way people think to be more spirit driven, more driven by altruism and selflessness, and less driven by selfishness, self-protection and an ever increasing greed for more and more and better and better stuff. 

The revolution or metanoia, or change and transformation of the human heart and mind is perhaps more urgent today than it has ever been for the sake of the future of world peace and our common future together. 

And so, interpreting John’s message from an inner perspective is vital.  Change does indeed come from within. 

But the question we may equally ask, is what does change look like on the outside once a change takes place from within?

John has some very clear ideas, that sound very much like an outward levelling up… and indeed in some instances, a levelling down. 

We read in Luke’s Gospel that the people came to be baptised, and then began to ask John about those outward questions. Inner change is only true and real when it begins to bear fruit on the outside. And so they begin to ask John, what must we do. 

In other words, what does this life of repentance or metanoia look like in practical terms. John is very direct: 

His first answer: “If anyone has two tunics, he must share with the one who has none, and the one who has something to eat, must do the same”

This is about sharing and redistributing wealth to make sure that none are in need.  The spiritual life is not truly spiritual if it does not consider the well-being and needs of others. 

I grew up reading Peanuts comics.  We had Peanuts comics around the house that went back to my Dad’s teenage. Charlie Brown, Linus, Lucy and Snoopy were like extended family members in our house. One of the Peanuts comics has always stood out.  Brian Zopf describes it very well on an internet post. He writes: 

“In the 1st frame Snoopy stands shivering next to his doghouse in the snow. In the second frame Charlie Brown and Linus come by, all bundled in their warm winter clothes, scarves, hats and gloves. Upon seeing Snoopy freezing, Linus leans down to pat his head and says: “Be of good cheer, Snoopy.” To which Charlie responds: “Yes. Be of good cheer.” They walk on together and the final frame shows Snoopy, still freezing, outside in the cold.

The message is quiet, but clear--powerful, and convicting. The tragedy wasn't their lack of compassion, but their lack of action. They didn't do anything. Well-wishers are one thing; but actions speak louder than words.”

When the people ask John the Baptist, his message is clear, powerful and convicting, that people’s compassion should be expressed in clear outward acts of care:

“If anyone has two tunics, he must share with the one who has none, and the one who has something to eat, must do the same”.

One of the things that Christians have been encouraged to do for centuries during the season of Advent and Christmas is to give generously towards the poor and those who are struggling. 

The figure of Father Christmas was originally modelled on St Nicholas, who had a reputation for generosity and kindness expressed towards the poor and the needy. 

It is interesting that after the Reformation, devotion to St Nicholas disappeared in all the Protestant countries of Europe except Holland, where his legend persisted as ‘Sinterklaas’ (a Dutch pronunciation of the name St. Nicholas). From Holland, Sinterklaas was exported to the new colonies in America where he became Santa Claus and who we know today as Father Christmas. And so the very origin of Father Christmas was not the giving of gifts to family members and those who will give gifts back to us in return, but the giving of gifts of love and care for the poor and the needy, those unable to return the favour. 

Even Mark Twain’s English Classic “A Christmas Carol” which centres on the inner transformation of Ebenezer Scrooge, is a reminder of the message of John the Baptist that in preparing for the coming of Christ, and for us, preparing for the celebration of Christmas, we too are encouraged to act in ways that contribute to the long term levelling up of the world and society.  

“If anyone has two tunics, he must share with the one who has none, and the one who has something to eat, must do the same”.

But John’s message does not stop there: 

When the Tax Collectors who were baptised asked John what they should do his reply was equally direct: “Take no more than what you are required”.  This is a message of restraining the bottomless pit of greed. 

When some soldiers asked him in their turn “What about us? What must we do?” He said to them “No intimidation! No Extortion! Be content with your pay!” 

A message again of curbing the never ending cycles of greed and finding contentment in what one already has. 

And that take us to our Philippians passage: In it, Paul reminds the Philippian Christians of the peace that passes understanding. A reminder that the birth of Jesus at Christmas in a stable and laid in a humble manger, points us to a contentment and a peace that comes from a deeper source.  And it is in being baptised, or immersed into that peace of God that passes all understanding, that we can be released from our fears and which enables us to trust more deeply in God’s provision and so enables us to be generous towards others and especially towards those who are struggling. 

Luke 3:15 says that a feeling of expectancy had grown among the people.  As we follow John’s advice, as we express generosity to those who are struggling this Christmas, which includes people in our own communities, may a feeling of expectancy grow within us this Christmas, the expectancy of God moving in new ways within us and amongst us. Amen.