The Arrival of the Wise Men is celebrated every year on 6th January and we shall keep the day in our worship on 7th January. This Adoration of the Wise Men is about making known to the whole world what God's love in human form can look like. At first the Magi were thought of as astrologers- hence their openness to the message of a star and were said to have arrived not in a threesome, but in droves. For Matthew they represented the Gentile world coming to worship Jesus. Over the centuries their number stabilised (stable-ised?) at three, simply because three gifts are mentioned.Certainly it wasn't until the 2nd Century that anyone thought of them as kings, coming to 'the brightness of the rising' of another king such as themselves. Not until the 9th century did names appear for them- Balthazar, Melchior and Caspar. As for their gifts; gold, frankincense and myrrh, it was some 400 years or more after Christ's birth that any mystical meaning was given to them. Gold was for a king, incense for a life arising like a prayer to God and myrrh to foreshadow Jesus' death.

For a real treat you could go to Autun cathedral in France and see a wonderful mediaeval carving of all three Magi tucked up in bed under one big blanket- like an ecclesiastical version of the Seven Dwarfs. An angel is waking them from sleep. One has his eyes wide open in wonder, the second is bleary-eyed and half asleep, the third is still deep in the land of nod. Each is dressed with a crown for a nightcap!

So we might want to dismiss the whole story as fantasy, imagination or worse. But, just hold on. Surely imagination is how we perceive every biblical image and our imagination is part of our God-given creation. We are part of 2000 years of christian imagination and we can't step outside it, even if we wanted to.

I think that using our imagination is extremely important in trying to understand God. When we talk about God we are trying to visualise that which cannot be pictured, trying to say in words that which is indescribable, trying to get a human handle onto that which, in the end, is too other, too different for us to comprehend in any other way than by a glimpse, a phrase, a picture, or a melody.

So we might want to dismiss the whole story as fantasy, imagination or worse. But, just hold on. Surely imagination is how we perceive every biblical image and our imagination is part of our God-given creation. We are part of 2000 years of christian imagination and we can't step outside it, even if we wanted to.

I think that using our imagination is extremely important in trying to understand God. When we talk about God we are trying to visualise that which cannot be pictured, trying to say in words that which is indescribable, trying to get a human handle onto that which, in the end, is too other, too different for us to comprehend in any other way than by a glimpse, a phrase, a picture, or a melody.

So with Christmas over and Epiphany upon us at the start of a new calendar year, why not let your imagination wander and ask yourself how God is being revealed in 2001 and what gifts will you bring to God this year?

I look forward to stirred imaginations at St. James's- hearts, minds and wills, for a new vision of God's reality.

Happy New Year

There is a Swiss inscription which says "Speech is silvern, Silence is golden" - to which Thomas Carlyle commented "Speech is of Time, Silence is of Eternity". For many of us, of course, we have become so used to noise being part of our everyday lives, that silence is a bit too much for us to test out. What do we do with it? You may well think that's all very well for someone else but you are 'not that sort of person' or it may be that you live on your own and feel you get enough silence. Ah yes: but how do you use your silence ?

Maybe we can use it when looking at the beauty of nature, a flowering bush or a softly-flowing stream. We can look out of a window and watch a bird tapping at the peanuts or we can sink into the picture contained in a library book. Be silent as you ponder over a lovely painting or sit entranced at the flickering flame of a candle. Silence doesn't mean emptiness. In fact, life in its real fullness can only be attained if we find true silence in our lives.

The difficult part is that silence requires discipline and in the present culture of instantaneity , perseverance does not come easily. Being useless and silent in the presence of God, says Henri Nouwen, belongs to the core of all prayer. In the silence , we hear all sorts of inner noises, inner thoughts, sometimes ones that are deeply irritating and difficult to cope with, thoughts we might prefer not to encounter.

Slowly, ever so slowly, however, we discover that the silent times create a quiet within us, a strange kind of peace. It is then that we discover our still point and in this way we are given a greater awareness of ourselves and God.

The silent still point is deep inside each one of us and we would do well to try and find it. God is the friend of silence. Jesus found it necessary to reach his Father in silence and went off on his own to pray. The more we receive in silent prayer, the more we can give in our lives and as Mother Theresa said "We need silence to be able to touch souls. The essential thing is not what we say , but what God says to us and through us".

I weave a silence onto my lips;
I weave a silence into my mind;
I weave a silence within my heart.
I close my ears to distractions;
I close my eyes to attractions;
I close my heart to temptations.

The four Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, each contain an account of Jesus' trial - its process, its outcome, its participants. Yet although it is clear that the outcome was Jesus' death, each of the Gospels seems to emphasise different elements within the trial. Of course the Gospel writers are recording a series of events which, at best, were marked by violence and confusion. They are not court records, but testimonies and descriptions imperfectly seen or understood. This was a rapid series of semi-legal procedures including deliberate humiliation and torture.

When we read these events of Christ's trial we need to enter into them. We are not dealing with transcripts, but with the treasured narrative of the earliest Christian communities. Each gospel writer seems to make a different emphasis. For Mark the trial occupies a very large part of his gospel, Luke lays stress upon the otherness of Jesus the outsider, while Matthew's account appears to stress the folly and the wisdom of this Jesus on trial. John seems to be asking in Jesus' trial - which world do we live in?

This year we are going to use Archbishop Rowan William's splendid Lent Book as our guide in Lenten House Groups. It is called Christ on Trial, and its sub-title indicates what impact the trial of Christ may have on us, with the haunting phrase 'How the Gospel Unsettles our Judgement'. It is a very challenging and rewarding book which will encourage each of us to ask hard questions about what we believe and how we implement our belief in following Christ today.

Everyone is welcome to participate in Lent Groups and we hope to have groups meeting in the mornings, afternoons and evenings. Details are in Church and copies of the book can be ordered.

Please think about participating in a group - your views and insight will help other people and others will no doubt challenge you. Most importantly, try reading the accounts of Christ's trial in each Gospel this Lent and you will be both challenged and changed.

With these words Jesus speaks to all who would listen. But that was exactly the problem - nobody seemed to listen to what he was really saying. In the days when Jesus spoke these words, just like today, Jerusalem was an important, life-giving city to several different communities. Of course, as the city of David, Jerusalem was the focus of temple worship and religious teaching for Jews. It was also a commercially vibrant city with people trading their goods and services from around the known world. The Bible tells us that people of all languages and races made their home in the city at this time. Furthermore, it was a city and land under occupation. The Roman forces imposed their will through vassal states and compliant rulers. Jesus' words, seen in this context, were to a diverse city and were about allowing such diversity to reflect the inclusiveness of God.

Jesus was concerned with the whole brood being defended under the hen's wings and not only with some of the brood. For me this picture was brought into sharp focus once again as I, with Ramani, spent a few days in Jerusalem in February. What we saw in Jerusalem and across the West Bank was an attempt at exclusivity. The powers of the State of Israel were using huge force to lay sole claim to the land which is shared by both Palestinians and Israelis. This force included road blocks, turning off water supplies, shelling homes, demolition of Palestinian property, confiscation of Palestinian lands to build Jewish settlements.

I am convinced that the only way forward for both Palestinians and Israelis is for peace to be built upon justice. Such justice must include the rights, hopes and responsibilities of both communities. Exclusivity does not create peace, for it is wholly unjust.

At Easter, we remember the events of Christ's trial in Jerusalem and his crucifixion outside its walls. We proclaim his resurrection which begins in this city and includes the whole world. At first the women who came to the tomb were frightened, for they didn't understand that new life is built upon costly sacrifice. The sacrifice which brings peace to Jerusalem and to all people is to allow God's generous love to reach every part of our lives. The good news of Easter is for all, as is the peace God gives to the world when we stop claiming for ourselves and proclaim his love through our actions.

HAPPY EASTER!

Having said that, I guess no one of us can live, even for forty days, at the intensity of joy and peace that Easter Day brings. Certainly the first disciples had huge ups and downs in their Easter experiences. For them the reality of new life proved a real roller coaster. Fear, disappointment, anger, punctured by moments of insight, a growing sense of presence, a developing realisation that this new life really could be trusted and passed on. It was no smooth road, but along it were milestones of hope marking the disciples growth in trust and obedience.

This year, as most years, Christian Aid Week falls within Eastertide. For me this is such a milestone, a marker of hope. Hope is easy to talk about, but in so many situations almost impossibly difficult to live. More than anything else the Christian Aid work that I have been privileged to see is about hope through change. In the desperate pain of downtrodden committees hope comes through our obedience to live Easter lives of reconciling love. It may not feel like it as we collect the little red envelopes from door to door but every collection is another milestone on the road to life in all its fullness, which is God's will for all humankind.

Christian Aid's former Director, Michael Taylor, recently published a new book called Poverty and Christianity, and in it one phrase above all caught my eye. He says, "our obedience is the midwife of hope". This illustrates so poignantly that we are connected with each other in so many different ways - humankind is interdependent. This reality certainly works both ways. Our obedience through serving God in the needs of the world's poorest people can indeed bring to birth miraculous hope in communities across the world. But don't let's forget that the hope we can learn from such communities also proves a real milestone in our risen faith, not just for Easter but for every day of the year.

Think about that this Eastertide and this Christian Aid Week as in obedience to love each other hope comes both to giver and receiver.

The Holy Spirit was present, of course, at the very beginning of creation: the same Spirit to whom Jesus was referring the night before he died when he said to his disciples "And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever". Far from abandoning his disciples, he was reassuring them that he would send them the Holy Spirit, who brings hope, peace and reassurance.

Whatever happened on that Pentecost was clearly amazing and enabled the disciples to preach and teach, to reach out to those around them in such a way that huge numbers became Christians and were baptized. And there is no reason why the Holy Spirit cannot continue to effect change in the same way today. What is required is an openness to receive. We have lived in a culture of reason for too long where analytical minds have to explain everything and because of that, we have forgotten our humility, the immensity of God and the mystery of faith. If we can learn to be open again, to be vulnerable to where the Holy Spirit calls our own spirit to follow, there is where a new, invigorating life of freedom is.

There are some experiences in life that are beyond the words of human language when we wait in silence upon God and feel the Holy Spirit stirring the depths of our being, moving us to a response, love to love.

Irenaeus, one of the most important fathers of the church in the second century, said that where the church is, there also is the Spirit of God and where the Spirit of God is, there is the Church. Are our churches today responding to where the Spirit is calling us to be and enabling a full outpouring of its fruits which are love, joy, peace, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self control? As St. Paul said to the churches in Galatia: "If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit" so that the Spirit is demonstrated among us as we worship, empowering and enthusing us to acknowledge our Christian faith, reminding us of Christ's teaching and inspiring us to go out into the world to do his work, to be his people.

So let us remember that the story of God continues; we are part of that story. The Holy Spirit of initial creation is the Holy Spirit of today and tomorrow; be brave and vulnerable to open yourself to the Spirit for God delights in you, jealously looks upon you, and encourages with gentle joy every movement of the Spirit in you.

With acknowledgement to Jurgen Moltmann and Edwina Gateley

Just think what their titles are. 'The Weakest Link', 'Greed', 'Who wants to be a millionaire'. Then there is the family of 'reality' programmes in the 'Big Brother', 'Survivor' mould.

Those of us who are committed to follow Christ in every part of our living know that it is a full-time calling. As George Herbert's poem and hymn reminds us, it is 'seven whole days, not one in seven'. God calls us full time, which means at work, at home, at school, in the shops or the library, anywhere and everywhere, at work and on holiday. Business, for Christians, is always as usual. There is no part of living which is excluded from our attempts to live faithfully, re-interpreting Jesus' pattern of living for us and our world.

However, the 'business as usual' is not the same as busyness as usual. The biblical stories of God's business, loving people into responding in love, begin with, and for Christians culminate in, an antidote to busyness. At the very beginning of the Bible are the creation stories in which, with poetic beauty, God creates the universe in six days. Having done so God then rests on the seventh day: Business doesn't have to mean busyness. In the creation story God takes a rest. From this picture Jewish leaders developed a strict code of rest days (Sabbaths), fallow time for the Lord, and jubilee years when debts are cancelled and slaves set free. From early in the Christian story, Sunday became the first day of the week the day of new life, celebrating our recreation in the resurrected Christ. As such it became marked as a break from regular routine. Sunday became distinctive - for the Christian business without busyness, a holy day becomes a holiday.

So I'm keen to reclaim holiday as holy days, days in which we can realise anew our wholeness. Holidays are times of continuing deepening our Christian business without busyness. But holy days can just as well be made by an hour or an afternoon spent without busyness. A meal with friends, in the park with the children, a trip to the theatre or a concert really can make the difference between business and busyness, make a day holy and allow us a glimpse of God's grandeur.

Whatever this month brings you, may it enable you to grow in the Christian business without busyness, in which any hour of holiday makes your day holy and you are more wholly Christ-like.

Not only do we need to cancel world debt and to re-consider the position of third world economies, we have to change our attitude towards world trade and recognize the necessity for us to pay what is a fair price for our overseas produce. We have a surfeit of newsreel showing how crops fail and we see floods on land which should have rice crops or maize. Life is hard enough for people in third world countries without us taking their goods at less than a reasonable price.

Nearer to home, we have seen areas of the countryside decimated by foot and mouth disease. Maybe it is difficult to imagine what it is like to live in a rural area so affected by the ravages of this disease or maybe we prefer to think simply that everything can revert to normal in a matter of time.

That is far from the case. For example, some breeds of sheep cannot be replaced because, through generations of breeding, they have adapted to the particular conditions of their local habitat. The animals needed that land just as the land needed them. So large chunks of our countryside stand to suffer enormously for many years. This disaster has occurred at a time when our attention has been drawn to the negative effects of pesticides on our produce and to the development of genetically modified foods. To add to those issues, we should now seriously consider the morality of exporting live animals - often in the most appalling conditions - and of transporting them miles across the country, and of keeping hens cooped up in unnatural caged areas so that we can continue to have the 'choice' of buying eggs at an abnormally low price. It does beg the question as to how cilvilized we really consider ourselves to be.

We have recognized the damage we have done to communities by patronizing the big retailers who will let us have the pleasure of shopping almost at any time of the day or night, at the cost of the small high street store. Perhaps the advent of farmers' markets with their home-grown, spray-free produce is helping to get the message through as to what is best for us.

These issues all point to our inter-dependence; we cannot continue to isolate ourselves in our own cocoons as though we have nothing to do with one another and treat the countryside as an interesting extraterrestrial place to visit occasionally. Each one of us should accept our responsibility to look beyond the cheapest price tag, to recognize what it means to purchase a bunch of "fair-trade" bananas and to press for the humane treatment of animals and birds.

From the time of Genesis we have been taught that we have a hand in caring for God's creation: we need to learn some lessons from the way each one of us has been responsible for letting our little bit of the world down. God is good and God is generous in letting us have second chances. We need to grasp that opportunity in the many different guises it will appear and so perhaps have a better understanding of what it means to celebrate harvest and to sing "Come, ye thankful people, come, raise the song of harvest home, all is safely gathered in, ere the winter storms begin; God our maker, doth provide for our wants to be supplied, Come to God's own temple come; raise the song of harvest-home".

• Do we have access to a version of the Bible which communicates its meaning easily and in a style which is relevant to our twenty-first century lives for children, youngsters, and adults?
• Have we got background information into what the Bible is and how it came to be as we know it and how to find our way around it?
• Have we got an open, discerning, and questioning mind in order to read the Bible both with faith and reason?
• Are there passages of the Bible which continue to perplex, confuse, or confound us?
• Do we have a scheme to read the Bible constructively, in manageable chunks with a feeling of making progress?

In order to help and encourage everyone in turning again to the treasury of wisdom, insight, surprise and challenge for our faith which we can find reading the Bible we shall be using:-

Sunday 28th October as a day to provide you with an array of Bibles and Bible reading possibilities and Mondays 5,12,19,26 November at 8.OOp.m. to have open meetings for anyone who wants a chance to discuss particular passages or Biblical approaches which prove difficult to understand. Please let me have suggestions for such passages for study by 21st October.

Of course, three passages of the Bible are read everyday at Morning Prayer and the readings for every Sunday are shown in advance on the weekly notice sheets. The prayer for Bible Sunday urges us to -

'read, mark, learn and inwardly digest the truths of the Bible' - our aim is to help.

P.S. Well, how many Bibles did you find in your possession, and more importantly, do you read them? And reading them, what difference does it make to living our Christian lives?

It was a liberating experience for most of us. Whoever we are, a huge human weakness is to be judgmental and to label people without even knowing them. In this instance, about 130 people were able to meet and spend time together as committed Christians without pondering over whether someone was charismatic or evangelical or anglo-catholic. What do those labels mean, you may say. Well, exactly. Most of us are complicated beings so to label us is to put us in a strait-jacket.

Far more important that we should ponder the question put to Jesus by an unnamed person: Who is my neighbour? His answer was the parable of the good samaritan which indicated that my neighbour is the stranger in our midst. Someone who may be very different from me and from you and not necessarily the person next door. From the earliest books of the Old Testament, the teaching has always been that we should love the stranger so what we need to develop is a dialogue with our neighbours whoever they are, and especially if they are different from us. To get to know them can only enrich our lives and break down barriers.

Arising from the ashes of September 11th is an emphasis on the importance of dialogue. We have seen an armed response; yet we know that the quest for peace overrides retaliation and rightly so. All of us are aware from personal experience how relationships deteriorate with lack of communication. Telephone conversations have their place as do e-mails but nothing can replace face to face space. It is a reason why we all have a responsibility to use each opportunity available to break down barriers born of ignorance and fear of the unknown. It is not only the task of world leaders. It is easy to attach religious labels to groups of people who carry out fanatical actions which bear no relationship to that faith. Centuries ago, we had the Crusades and then the Inquisition and the Reformation. Much of that history makes depressing reading. In our own lifetime, we have seen actions carried out in Northern Ireland by supposedly Christian groups which bear no resemblance to the teaching of Jesus. It is necessary for us to separate faith from what is done in the name of religion and to promote dialogue on our own doorsteps.

It is also necessary for us to look honestly at the root causes of the depth of hatred towards others that we saw on September 11th and to consider what we can do to rectify them. We each have a voice and an opportunity in a democracy to make representations to Government.

Peace is what we all want in our hearts. November begins with the feast for all the Saints and the commemoration of All Souls. Shortly afterwards, we observe Remembrance Sunday and those who fought valiantly for our peace. There can be no better time to consider how we can follow in the footsteps of the good. Many of the Saints were missionaries who trod foreign paths and worked with people of other faiths and languages.

We need to follow their example, relating to people whoever they are, discovering what their difficulties and pains may be, learning about their faith and in so doing enriching our own and believing it unashamedly. On the Mount of Olives, Christ made it clear that he might well be the stranger in our midst. Will he say to you and me "I was a stranger and you welcomed me" or will we be like the disciples on the road to Emmaus and fail to recognise him?

Balancing this on the right hand side of the window is a panel showing the arrival of the Wise Men, bearing their gifts and having followed the bright shafts of the star across a vivid blue sky. In this window Jesus is slightly older and is sitting up on Mary's lap.

The other image was from Afghanistan. It was a news report which began by tracing the plumes of a B52 bomber across a bright blue sky and then focussed on the warplane dropping its arsenal of explosives. The camera then panned down to earth to a mother with a crying child on her lap. The child is hungry and ill. Mother, father and children have trekked across a dusty landscape to the shell of a destroyed former clinic, but in vain. They have no milk, no medicine and the extended family have no gifts to offer, other than their sticking together.

Two images, but we live in one world, God's world, in which God chose to show limitless solidarity with us his creatures by becoming at one with us. We even call Jesus 'Emmanuel' which means 'God with us'. But there is more. We believe that God becoming one with us was not without purpose, far from it. God comes to us in human form in order that we might help reconcile the world to God's way of living. God's generosity challenges us to live generously. God's gift to the world of himself must make us ask the question, what do I give in return? Do I give only what I can comfortably afford? Do I give informed prayful support? Do I give of my own skills and resources to mirror God's endless generosity?

Can all our Christmas gifts this year be an expression of that divine generosity we see portrayed in the stained glass window in order that we can also see God's love portrayed today in meeting the needs of all humankind, such as that Afghani family on the TV news.

In her famous Christmas carol Christina Rossetti asks
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.

Only you can answer that question 'What can I give him?' for yourself. But it does need an answer. Perhaps during Advent, the four weeks before Christmas we can ask that same question as we purchase and wrap presents for family and friends. Can you give God more of your energy, skill, attention or resources truly to celebrate the enormous generosity of God and the needs of our world in which we again sing 'Emmanuel', God is with us.

Come in and see the windows, come in and catch a glimpse of God and go out to give God of yourself. You are most welcome to join us at St. James's at any of our services to mark Advent and Christmas. The details are on the on-line magazine section and on display around the church.

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