Check out Radio Leicester website for Sing Christmas - we are one of almost 70 venues hosting public access to this unique outreach event.  If you know where 'Dibley' is you can see our venue; if you don't well, it's a pub.  As well around 20 residential centres are hosting the service for the residents.  You too could joint in, anywhere, by the wonder of internet.  How about North Yorkshire?  Or New Zealand?

If we equal last year, we'll get 50 folk along; typical numbers reported last year seemed to be 20 -100, dependent on venue.  Imagine a congregation of the order of 2000 to 10000 all singing praise to God and celebrating Christmas.  And all in a midlands county with one of the lowest recorded number of church attenders.  Now if you all joined in...

I have a confession to make - I actually like Christmas carols.  Some of what some of them say is not the greatest theology nor yet the finest of poetry, but they do seem to have the ability to move people to some kind of repsonse, at least for a few moments.  Among the few, in regular use, I cannot abide, is 'Away in a Manger' yet when I see a group of 90+ year olds sing it, it does manage to bring a lump even my cynical throat.

For some reason today I found myself recalling some of those dire things written in the 1970s (?) we sang in the school choir that thankfully have fallen from use.  Does anyone else recall the 'Cowboy Carol' with its relentless 'bing-a-bing-bang-bong' at the end of each line, and that deeply meaningful chorus 'yoi yippee, we're gonna ride the trail, yoi yippee, we're gonna ride today, when I climb up to my saddle, gonna take him to my he-a-r-t... there'll be a new world beginning from tonight!'

Maybe you loved this carol and it worked for you.  Maybe there are others, in use or not, that drove/drive you nutty.  Anyone want to share their best or worst?

Lunch club day and another new member. 

Today we gave out personalised Christmas cards, handwritten by one of my loyal helpers - one for every year of her age, and she's as old as my mother.  We also gave out token Christmas gifts - two sample size Divine chocolates in a little gold organza bag (which is quite possibly a meeting of fairtrade and slave trade, but we'll not push it too far) to each diner and slightly larger gifts to the restaurant staff.

As I walked round from table to table giving out the cards, the new member did an in depth study of the table and was truly amazed when I handed her her card (my loyal helper is quick at writing, and our timing is suitably cunning).  The gentleman sitting next to her, who has only been coming a couple of months himself, but who received a birthday card on his first visit, looked her and said gently, 'see, I told you...'

All the helpers were exhausted before we began today, and minor mistakes abounded, but we had a good time.  If our members go away feeling valued and included, then we've got something right.  Most of them we'll see again in just over a week for our carol outreach event... this, I always claim, is pay back time because they have to listen to me speak for five minutes telling them God loves them and that Christmas is a celebration of Jesus, the Light of the World.  My prayer, as in previous years, is that in 'church' they will find the inclusion and warmth we endeavour to model at lunch club.

Now to lie down in a darkened room and recover enough to read a smidge more Baptist history!

Jim Gordon has posted one of my favourite Advent hymns today.  Others include 'O Come, O Come, Emmanuel', the beautiful setting of the Great Advent 'O' Antiphons, and this one (if you can excuse the odd bit of military imagery): -

And the day is at the spring,

When our eyes shall see the beauty

And the glory of our King;

Weary was our heart with waiting,

And the night had seemed so long,

But his triumph day is breaking,

And we hail him with a song.

There’s a hush of expectation,

And a quiet in the air;

And the breath of God is moving

In the fervent breath of prayer;

For the suffering, dying Jesus

Is the Christ upon the throne,

And the travail of our spirits

Is the travail of his own.

He is casting up the way;

He is calling for his angels

To build up the gates of day;

But his angels here are human,

Not the shining hosts above,

For the drum-beats of his army

Are the heart-beats of our love.

And it comes with fuller swell;

It’s the triumph song of Jesus,

Of our king Immanuel;

Zion, go now forth to meet him,

And my soul, be swift to bring

All the sweetest and the dearest

For the triumph of our King.

My musicians say they don't like Advent hymns, asserting they are 'too gloomy,' but I love the somewhat poignant, unresolved mood they set, as we wait in the dark and gloom for the coming of the light.

This Sunday I am indulging myself with several I love, including this simple offering from Taize: -

Wait for the Lord,

Whose day is near

Wait for the Lord,

Be strong, take heart.

Jacques Berthier © Presses de Taizé

Anyone else want to suggest their favourites?

Sean shares with us some thoughts from a sermon for Advent 1 he heard on Matthew 24, which suggests a less familiar (if well supported) reading of verses 37 - 41, notably that as in the days of Noah it was those who were 'eating, drinking...' who were 'taken' (v 39) whilst Noah was 'left behind,' so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man.  In other words, left behind is good, not bad!  (Check it out, it is the more natural reading).

This prompted me to take a look at some of the other texts that find their way into shaping so much popular End Times theology - and realising some of the quantum leaps in interpretation we sometimes make.

1 Thessalonians 4, for example, says nothing about scooping up believers to live in heaven, but (as my interlinear Greek puts it)  'we shall be seized in clouds to a meeting of the Lord in air; and so always with the Lord we shall be.'  I have no idea what the Greek word 'aera' might mean other than 'air' but it clearly isn't either sky or heaven - and there is no mention of going thence to heaven.  Re-reading this I am reminded of Acts 1:11 - the 'oi you lot don't just stand staring into space' bit.

I also checked out 1 Corinthians 15: 49-55 - which speaks of resurrection and transformation 'in the twinkling of an eye' at the last trumpet - but not escape from planet earth.

I guess I don't want to push all this too far, because it takes us beyond eschatology to theologies of death, and I haven't the time or inclination to explore that interface right now.  What it does do is, once again, remind me how readily we stop reading what the Bible actually says and see what we expect.  If there is one message that Ihave been hearing over and again this year, it is to come to the Bible as if I'm reading it for the first time (which almost fits with another aspect of the sermon Sean refers to).  I'm a firm believer that 'the Lord has yet more light and truth to break forth from the Word' - just that I never cease to be amazed how much more.