Conversations
  • Home
  • Books
  • Sustainability
    • Climate Action
    • Integrity
    • Rubbish Challenge
    • Mental health
    • Consultancy
    • Policy
    • Carbon
    • Waste
    • Plastic
    • Safe-to-fail
  • Creation
    • Awhi: Women in Creation Care
    • Climate Theology
    • Earth Day
    • Wellbeing and Climate Change
    • Heaven and Earth
    • Prayers
    • Worship resources
    • Life, the Universe, and God study
    • Eco Church Story
    • Maori & the environment
    • 12 Motivations for EcoMission
    • Motivation and Calling
    • Eco Mission
    • Eco-Mission in NZ
    • Science
  • Worship
    • Advent & Christmas >
      • Advent
      • Christmas
      • Nativity Plays
    • Easter >
      • Lent: Journey in Psalms
      • Maundy Thursday
      • Good Friday
      • Easter Day
      • Passover meal
    • Pentecost
    • Hold the World Gently
    • Kids & all-age worship
    • Call to Worship
    • Confession
    • Communion
    • Blessings
    • Bilingual & Te Reo
    • Baptism
    • Weddings
    • Funerals
    • Night Prayer
    • Trinity
    • Quiet
    • Worship songs
    • Kids songs
    • More Worship Resources >
      • Creeds
      • Lords Prayer variations
      • Little Linking Bits
      • Celtic Prayers
      • Harvest
      • Healing
      • Commissioning
      • A new ministry
      • Journal Reflection resource for Lent
      • Liturgy of the Elements
      • Spirit who defies defining
      • Pet Blessing
      • Psalms in Worship
      • Ephesians worship resources
    • Poem-Prayers >
      • Pictures in my home
      • Slow things
      • Does the sea love me?
      • Drop
      • Tipped out
      • Silence
      • The Swallowed Sword
      • More of You
      • Sometimes
      • Jerusalem Dawning
      • Hopewell Psalm
      • The Visitor's Psalm
      • The Seagull’s Psalm
      • Leunig
  • Psalms
    • Psalms 1-10 >
      • Psalm 1: The Two Ways
      • Psalm 2: Wrath on a hill
      • Psalm 3: The Shield around me
      • Psalm 4: I rest in you
      • Psalm 5: Coming Home
      • Psalm 6: Worn with weeping
      • Psalm 7: The fury of my enemies
      • Psalm 8: Out of the mouths of babes
      • Psalm 9: The weeds and the wheat
      • Psalm 10: Why, Lord, why??
    • Psalms 11-20 >
      • Psalm 11: The XBox Psalm
      • Psalm 12: As in the days of Noah
      • Psalm 13: How long??
      • Psalm 14: All fall short
      • Psalm 15: Be Do-ers of The Word
      • Psalm 16: Fullness of Joy
      • Psalm 17: Under attack
      • Psalm 18: Part A - In Christ
      • Psalm 18: Part B- The Volcano Psalm
      • Psalm 18: Part C- Jesus’ Resurrection Song
      • Psalm 18: Part D- The Superman Psalm
      • Psalm 19: Song of the Stars
      • Psalm 20: God bless you!
    • Psalms 21-30 >
      • Psalm 21: Honouring a godly leader
      • Psalm 22: The Crucifixion Psalm
      • Psalm 23: A Collection
      • Psalm 24: Lift up the Ancient Doors
      • Psalm 25: The Covenant Way
      • Psalm 26: True North
      • Psalm 27: Take courage, my heart!
      • Psalm 28: Are you listening?
      • Psalm 29: The Hurricane Psalm
      • Psalm 30: Joy in the morning
    • Psalms 31-40 >
      • Psalm 31: Strength in exhaustion
      • Psalm 32: The Horse-Trainer's Psalm
      • Psalm 33: Rejoice today!
      • Psalm 34: Always Praising!
      • Psalm 35: Trapped and slandered
      • Psalm 36: Far-Reaching Love
      • Psalm 37: Keep Calm and Carry On
      • Psalm 38: The Burn-out Psalm
      • Psalm 39: A crisis of purpose
      • Psalm 40: The Mud Psalm
    • Psalm 41-50 >
      • Psalm 41: Bad friends
      • Psalm 42: As a deer
      • Psalm 43: A walk of faith
      • Psalm 44: A formal complaint
      • Psalm 45: The Royal Wedding
      • Psalm 46: We will not fear!
      • Psalm 47: A Shout of Praise
      • Psalm 48: Hymn to Jerusalem
      • Psalm 49: Death and Taxes
      • Psalm 50: True Worship
    • Psalms 51-60 >
      • Psalm 51: Standing under the shower of Confession
      • Psalm 52: God sees through
      • Psalm 53: No God?
      • Psalm 54: Help me now as you’ve helped me before
      • Psalm 55: Betrayed by your best friend
      • Psalm 56: The Worrywort’s Psalm
      • Psalm 57: Wake up the day
      • Psalm 58: The Snake Psalm
      • Psalm 59: Safe in the Tower
      • Psalm 60: The Earthquake Psalm
    • Psalms 61-70 >
      • Psalm 61: Can you hear me, God?
      • Psalm 62: Wait in Silence
      • Psalm 63: Hide and Seek
      • Psalm 64: It's not OK!
      • Psalm 65: He’s got the whole world in his hands!
      • Psalm 66: Come and hear!
      • Psalm 67: All you peoples praise!
      • Psalm 68: Gifts for his people
      • Psalm 69: The Mud Psalm
      • Psalm 70: Hurry up!
    • Psalms 71-80 >
      • Psalm 71: All our lives long
      • Psalm 72: Long live the King!
      • Psalm 73: The Jealous Psalm
      • Psalm 74: Destruction and persecution
      • Psalm 75: The pillars of the earth
      • Psalm 76: Weapons of war
      • Psalm 77: The Sleepless Psalm
      • Psalm 78: Tell our story to our children
      • Psalm 79: The terrible prison
      • Psalm 80: God’s shining smile
    • Psalms 81-90 >
      • Psalm 81: Honey from the rock
      • Psalm 82: The Judge’s Judgment
      • Psalm 83: The enemies of Israel
      • Psalm 84: How lovely is your house
      • Psalm 85: See what God is doing!
      • Psalm 86: An undivided heart
      • Psalm 87: The Census Psalm
      • Psalm 88: The Rejection Psalm
      • Psalm 89: The Chosen One
      • Psalm 90: A puff of dust
    • Psalms 91-100 >
      • Psalm 91: An Invitation to Deeper Prayer
      • Psalm 92: Saying thanks at bedtime
      • Psalm 93: Water rising
      • Psalm 94: Praying for a world in trouble
      • Psalm 95: Come let us sing for joy
      • Psalm 96: Words run out
      • Psalm 97: Rejoice, the Lord is King!
      • Psalm 98: Sing along a new song
      • Psalm 99: If you shake us
      • Psalm 100: The joyful parade
    • Psalms 101-110 >
      • Psalm 101: Call me loyal
      • Psalm 102: The time has come!
      • Psalm 103: Bless the Lord, O my soul
      • Psalm 104: Psalm for Aotearoa
      • Psalms 105, 106 & 107: History Psalms
      • Psalm 108: A wake-up call
      • Psalm 109: SO ANGRY!!
      • Psalm 110: All about Jesus
    • Psalm 111-120 >
      • Psalm 111: Praise the Lord, now and forever!
      • Psalm 112: Welcome to the good life!
      • Psalm 113: From the rising of the sun
      • Psalm 114: Skipping mountains
      • Psalm 115: Toy gods
      • Psalm 116: Death could not hold me down
      • Psalm 117: The Shortest Psalm
      • Psalm 118: Pointing to the risen Lord
      • Psalm 119: The Longest Psalm
      • Psalm 120: Speaking peace at home
    • Psalm 121-130 >
      • Psalm 121: The Bodyguard
      • Psalm 122: The Peace of Jerusalem
      • Psalm 123: Asking for help
      • Psalm 124: Like a mouse
      • Psalm 125: Good Balance
      • Psalm 126: A harvest of joy
      • Psalm 127: The Lord builds the house
      • Psalm 128: Live long and prosper
      • Psalm 129: Attacked and whipped
      • Psalm 130: The Dawn Psalm
    • Psalms 131-140 >
      • Psalm 131: Calm and Quiet
      • Psalm 132: The Forever King
      • Psalm 133: Living in Unity
      • Psalm 134: A circle of blessing
      • Psalm 135: Come on, people, praise!
      • Psalm 136: Endless love
      • Psalm 137: By the rivers of Babylon
      • Psalm 138: Thank you for your love!
      • Psalm 139: The Omniscience Psalm
      • Psalm 140: Our God saves
    • Psalms 141-150 >
      • Psalm 141: The Goody-good’s Psalm
      • Psalm 142: Brought Low
      • Psalm 143: A Psalm for Easter Saturday
      • Psalm 144: Blessed are God’s People
      • Psalm 145: We will tell your praise
      • Psalm 146: God at Work
      • Psalm 147: The Winter Psalm
      • Psalm 148: Calling all creation!
      • Psalm 149: The Double Edged Sword
      • Psalm 150: Kiwi Praise!?
    • About Psalms >
      • Jesus and Psalms
      • Violence in Psalms
      • History Psalms, a discussion of 105 & 106
      • Brueggeman on Psalms
    • Psalms in Worship
    • Advent & Christmas Psalms
    • Lectionary Psalms
  • Word
    • Te Reo Māori and faith
    • Listen!
    • Nurture the Holy Spirit
    • The Bible >
      • Making Sense of the Bible
      • People and Stories >
        • Three Wise Men
        • Martha and Mary
        • Samuel & David
        • Bit Parts
        • James who??
        • Joseph
        • Peter's Wife
        • Bible Love stories
      • John
      • Acts
      • Christmas
      • Easter
      • Dramatic readings
    • God
    • Jesus
    • Life
    • Church
    • Spirituality
    • Identity
    • End Times
    • Israel >
      • Israel: Tough questions
      • Israel: Stories in Place
      • Theological Alleyways
      • Lovely Ladies
  • Ministry
    • Moving On
    • Ethics
    • Fatigue
    • Spirit ministry
    • Pastoral Preaching
    • Maori Ministry
    • Minister's Grief in Ministry Transition
    • When the shit hits the fan
    • This Sacred Moment
    • Poems on ministry
    • Leadership resources
    • Promoting church
    • Musings
    • Pandemic >
      • Short of Breath Theological reflection
      • Stress
      • Alone Together
      • Pangolins and the Fall
      • Mental Health factors
      • Church response
      • Psalm 91: An Invitation to Deeper Prayer
      • Quiet
      • Solitude
    • Burning Bush
  • Supervision
    • Should I sack my supervisor??
    • Supervision FAQs
    • Supervision with Silvia
    • Why supervision?
    • What to bring to supervision?
    • Methods in supervision
    • Ethics in supervision
    • Pastoral Supervision
    • Qualifications
  • Counselling
    • Counselling with Silvia
    • Non-Anxious Living
    • Relationship Repair Kit
    • Poems on therapy
  • Love
    • Love Poems >
      • How to say 'I love you'?
      • The Fabric of Love
      • Be at home in my heart
      • Falling
      • Out of thin air
      • After the waves
      • Mid-life Menagerie
      • How are you?
      • Vacuum
      • Marriage Maths
    • Marriage >
      • Wedding Vows
      • Anniversaries
      • Ethics & Commitment
      • Expectations
      • Desire
      • Emotional Needs
    • Personality
    • Listening
    • Creativity
    • Laughter
    • Trauma/Recovery
    • Stress
    • Motherhood and Spirituality
    • Growing: Human & faith development
    • Dementia
    • Grief >
      • Experience of grief
      • Making sense of death
      • A Grieving of Poems
    • The hardest thing: youth suicide
  • About
    • Contact
    • Family History
    • Pumpkins on the road
    • Trip >
      • Hong Kong & Freising
      • Italy
      • Israel
      • England
      • San Francisco
      • Ben's page
  • Heke te ua

Messages for Christmas

Advent themes are also covered in the 'End Times' section.
​
Epiphany is covered on the 'Three WIse Men' page

The power of the Nativity 
This Christmas saw public controversy over whether a primary school should get kids acting out the nativity story. Much comment revolved around the need to keep religion out of our schools. So what do we really think about this story? Could it be dangerous for children? Is it myth, or history, theology or nonsense?
​
... What really fascinates me about all of these characters in the nativity drama is that between them they reach across the whole breadth of human society, from the lowest dirtiest homeliest shepherds to the rich and learned, scholars from a distant land. From the gold to the dung, they come to stand together at the manger, bringing with them all the breadth of humanity. No one is excluded. These figurines stand in for us, all of us.
And it’s not just the human, but all the created world also. 

Picture
Mary and Joseph and an inconvenient birth
​
Let’s ask questions of the old familiar story … Do you really know it as well as you think you do??
Here's an excerpt:
... But back to Joseph’s family in Bethlehem. How did they deal with the situation? Our traditional reading of scripture is that Mary and Joseph were not welcome at all. There was, we read, ‘no room at the inn’. Were Joseph’s family so callous that a 9-month pregnant woman would be turned away at the gate? Of course not, don’t be rediculous. This was a large and respectable family, and Joseph an important son. Of course they would have been welcomed in.
But there was a problem; overcrowding. So many members of the extended family had already arrived that there was no room in the guest room. The word translated ‘inn’ here is the same word translated ‘upper room’ later in Luke as the disciples are setting up for the Last Supper. It is not the word for a public hotel, which is a quite different word used in the story of the Good Samaritan, who pays for the wounded man to stay in a commercial ‘inn’.
What Luke describes as the setting of Jesus’ birth a normal house, a private family home. So when they arrived in the crowded home Mary and Joseph were brought right in to the very back of the house, down some steps to the room cut into the rock behind the house, just a cave really, where the animals slept the night. Every family had a stable in the back of the house where their animals would be safe from theft and cold.
Here, with lamps being lit and fresh water brought in, here surrounded by family, with the midwife coming running, here Jesus was born. Not ideal conditions, certainly, but with family.
But it was not Mary’s family though. She came into that house as a stranger, and not a very welcome one. ...

Tell me how Mary would have felt: she was not safe in her home town and not very welcome in Joseph’s home town. She has travelled all this way, been through labour with no familiar faces holding her through it. Her baby is born … what is Mary feeling?
And how might Joseph have felt? He is home again, possibly the place where he experienced great grief, with people he knows so well but who hardly know him at all any more, with this new young woman he loves passionately, and this baby that is not his but … what is Joseph feeling?


Christmas and our environment
Bible Reading: ​Luke 1:46-55​, the Magnificat


The problem is, Christmas has become bad for our environment. Millions of children the world over will be given plastic toys which will quickly break and be thrown in the bin, mountains of rubbish, used for a few minutes or hours and then taking hundreds of years to break down.
Santa is the god of the disposable. Our Santa myth drives our consumer world. In the Santa myth the elves manufacture and produce from an infinity of resources, with no care or concern with what happens to all the stuff once it’s delivered.
Our world is not an infinity of resources. Our world cannot cope with all the stuff we are thowing away.
I’m sorry. I’m not trying to make you feel bad, especially at Christmas time. Or maybe I am trying to make you feel bad, because actually I think we have to feel bad. It’s not OK for this to be somebody else’s problem. All of us, every human on the planet, has a share in this problem, and in finding solutions.

... linking back to Mary and her song magnifying the Lord
At Christmas time we focus our gaze in one tiny spot, a baby lying in a manger. And somehow this tiny spot magnifies all of God’s unutterable greatness. 

God pitched a tent
"And the Word became Flesh, and pitched a tent among us"
John 1
Interactive all-age: put up a tent in church for the children to play in, and talk about tenting.

The incarnation is pretty much like that camping in a tent. In being born as a baby God chose a thin layer between himself and the world; a huge vulnerability. He pitched a tent in the stable, in the village, by the lake, in the temple, in the court, and felt and heard this crazy world of ours in the first person, as one of us.
And he came in order to be on the move. He rejected the temple with it’s great walls and gold and chose a manger – he chose a donkey rather than a chariot – he chose to walk everywhere. Because he chooses to walk with us. 
And he chose intimacy, connection, being with people and enabling a whole new way of being with each other, a living in community, a love for one another to be the defining characteristic of his people.  


The names of Jesus: Christmas Day message 2017
Sermon on Matthew 2: Jesus is Saviour, Jesus is Emmanuel, Jesus is Christ
with full order of service.

God is at work
In Advent we get the toughest Bible readings. They are tough because they speak of the ending of things. Life as we know it is framed by God, from the origins of time to an ultimate consummation of time, which Jesus described in the most vivid of ways:24 “In the days after that time of trouble the sun will grow dark, the moon will no longer shine, 25 the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers in space will be driven from their courses. 26 Then the Son of Man will appear, coming in the clouds with great power and glory. 27 He will send the angels out to the four corners of the earth to gather God's chosen people from one end of the world to the other.”
We don’t tend to focus much on “the days after that”, though there are many in our world today who believe that we are living in these ‘end times’. I am not particularly apocalyptic in my theology. But to me this is an important frame for all reality, that God is Lord of all, Lord of time and space and destiny, and that in due course Jesus Christ will return and the stars will fall and the full power and glory of God will be blatantly obvious, fully revealed. It is within this frame that we must learn to see the work of God in the here and now. 

Order of service includes  
‘Song to the Holy Spirit’, by James K. Baxter (excerpt)

The Opposite of Happiness
Sadness? No, actually anxiety:
Christ was born into an anxious world.
God’s in-breaking into the world was met with fear.
Each time God spoke with angel voice
the first words were “Be not afraid”.

Short reflection for a nativity service
​

Picture
​Layers of meaning in the Nativity
 
Jesus’ birth was God come down, God-with-us, the inbreaking of God into human history.
When I see a nativity set I see 5 layers of reality woven together to form together the incarnation.
 
First, the stable and the star, the setting in space and time, the cave, the home, the stable together with the star above encompassing all the world that God has made, earth and sky, our own immediate place in the vast universe, this is where God enters in.
 
Second, the ox and ass, the sheep and the camel, the animals who ate from the manger and who grazed on the hill, these have a central place in the nativity, bringing with them all living things into the purposes of God. The animals connect us with our own bodies, as we share the need for food and warmth. In the physicality of a manger God enters in.
 
Third, the angels. Ah, the angels. Through half-remembered dreams, through confronting surprises, through sky-splitting glory the angels at our nativity express the spiritual layer of reality, no more and no less real than the manger. Through mystery and majesty God enters in.
 
Fourth, the shepherds and the wise men come, to represent all of human community, from the lowest of the low to the heights of weath and education. The shepherds and the wise men bring with them humanity, from our near neighbours to those far away, both global and local. In the complexities of human society, God enters in.
 
5th and perhaps the most important, Mary and Joseph holding their newborn baby; the most intimate of human relating, woman and man becoming husband and wife, woman giving birth and breast feeding, father holding newborn child. In the touch and smell and depth of human love God enters in.
 
Physical and spiritual, contextual, communal and personal, these are woven together in our Christmas story and are together the mat on which Christ is born. This is how God is with us. 


Last year I got to visit the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, and was stunned by how amazingly important this has been in world history, and how complex. The birth of Jesus is possibly the single most celebrated event through human history. The historical site of Jesus’ birth is one of the most visited places on the planet. It is a seriously bizarre place, packed with crowds, a huge and very ancient church rising above, you push through the squash of crowds, step down into a stuffy small hot womb-like space hung with candles and paintings and gold fabric and you bend down for the shortest moment and touch a big silver cross on the floor under an altar set into the rock and then you’re pushed on out and through and you’re left feeling like you’ve been hit by a truck.
That silver star, I’m told, sparked the Crimean War in 1858.
The Church of the Nativity embodies all the contradictions and paradoxes of our faith; the conflict between Palestinian and Israeli; the tension between the simplicity of Jesus’s birth and the global faith he founded; Jesus born in a manger and Jesus who rejected earthly fame and wealth and the wealth and power of the church that carries his name; the vast heart of love shown by God in being born in Christ, and the conflict and division that continues to split his people.
Picture
Picture
Photos of the Church of the Nativity, Bethlehem: the tiny external door through which every one must enter and exit, and the mind-numbing chaos inside the main church, crowded with hundreds of people.
Classic Isaiah texts for Christmas:
Isaiah 9: 1-7
"The people walking in darkness have seen a great light"
"For a child will be born to us, a son given to us, and the government will be on his shoulders,
and he shall be called Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace."
Isaiah 52: 7-10
"How lovely on the mountains are the feet of the herald who proclaims peace, who brings new of good things, who proclaims salvation, who says to Zion, 'Your God reigns!'"
"The Lord has comforted his people ... and all the ends of the earth will see the salvation of our God."

Isaiah 62
"Instead, you will be called "My Delight is in her'"
"God will rejoice over you"
"Look, your salvation is coming"



www.conversations.net.nz
Written by Silvia Purdie 

Resources for life and faith
Proudly powered by Weebly