All the Fat belongs to the Lord…

Been a bit hectic at Chez Tiffer and Amy this past couple of weeks so apologise for absence. All is a bit hectic with crimbo very soon so I will leave you with our “Christmas newsletter” for this year, wonderfully penned by my brilliant wife;

As you can see, we have changed our address,
And the reason for that, as we’re sure you can guess,
Is to start off at Ridley, at last the next station
On this very long journey to Tiff’s ordination.
We love our new cottage, though moving was tricky,
And we miss our three housemates, Leanne, Mark and Nikki,
But we managed, through various magical tricks,
To move our ten Leamington rooms into six.
Now Tiffer’s at college, fulfilling his calling,
And finding New Testament Greek is enthralling,
While Amy is teaching half-time, and delighting
In spending the other half doing some writing.
This letter is short, or so we intend it,
In the hope that this year we might actually send it -
But we do both write ‘blogs’, as perhaps you will know,
So to find out more news, try addresses below!
We wish you a Christmas of peace, love and grace!
(Will Hallmark employ me next year? Watch this space…)

And a merry Christmas to +Southwark also, with a few apologies for my rather flippant previous post – glad he is doing better and some answers about the incident are forth coming. *whistle*

Coming home in the car today I was just about to switch good ol R4 off when it started talking about this*. We were in hysterics. Bishop Tom Butler getting up to some rather drunken antics in the back of some poor fellows car! We especially liked the fact that, when he was asked why he was throwing toys from the car he replied “I’m the Bishop of Southwark. It’s what I do”.

The newsreader even took the oppurtunity, when he had handed over to someone else, to have a snigger fairly audibly to us listeners. This doesn’t happen much on R4.

I can’t find the updated story on the BBC website yet, although there are earlier reports where it was alleged he had been mugged (conveniently the Bishop can’t remember a thing), where a spokesman said “He is back at work and really wants to downplay it.”

Unfortunately he had left some personal belongings in said car and the owners very much wanted to come forward. Worryingly one of the witnesses said “I saw a picture of him in the paper. I don’t know if he was a bishop but that was the guy.” I’ll let that speak for itself.

Of course this sort of thing happens to all of us, and I won’t be one of the sillies calling for his resignation because it frankly isn’t as bad as it sounds, if he was having a few too many in his own home no one would have a problem with that, and of course there is always the possibility he was spiked. Of course one could go on about being a bad witness or being drunk in charge of clergy however in this case I just have to thank the Bishop for a jolly good laugh, and hope that it hasn’t affected his credibility and ministry.

Of course the real fault lies with his friends, who should have made sure he got home safe that night. Did they not teach them anything at theological college?

*once again I apologise for linking to such a silly newspaper and all the typos that are contained therein.

I was going to write something inspirational about censorship and free speech and all that, but I can’t seem to put anything to paper. So instead have my two favorite clips from the “That Mitchell and Webb look” show. They are fairly clean but if you are easily offended I apologise.

This first one is great for seeing how the creators of the sketch see the Church todaybeing perceived, which is interesting, although I have to point out that hellfire man is in fact a running theme and turns up in lots of different contexts and shouldn’t be taken too seriously.

This second one could be a great “ice breaker” for a marriage course, at any rate it is very funny.

Enjoy!

Update: Down the Line is a brilliant show on Radio 4 – a fictional phone in show which is absolutely hilarious – partly because it could be true! This week people are talking about religion and a new colour, particularily amusing caricatures of Christians.

Sermon given on 3rd Dec 06 to the lovely people in St Mary Magdelane Church, Madingley. A rewrite of a sermon I gave this time last year to a very different church.

Good morning,

Do you know, shops are beginning to play Christmas Carols at the beginning of November now. Isn’t that horrendous? It’s a satanic conspiracy to get us to feel guilty about how ready we aren’t, in the hope that we will feel far more stressed than necessary and spend as much as possible. It must be worse with kids, who count down the days to Christmas with more and more excitedness, and in my family were always rebuked with “don’t remind me!”. Many an advent is spoiled by the pressures that preparing for Christmas brings. Last year was our first Christmas together, and we had my family to stay at our house, which was considerably bigger than the one we live in now. Most families have their own Christmas traditions, and it was interesting talking about which ones from our respective families we were going to bring into ours – watching either one of the home alone videos at some point during the day, for example. The never ending annoyance of the camcorder wielding father. In my family we have a tradition that starts earlier – every summer we all agree that we are all getting too old for presents and that we should all decide on one or two main gifts and not buy each other lots of little tokens, largely to save space rather than money. And every year I turn up having faithfully observed this rule only to find that everyone else has given in and I am presented with an abundance of presents, feeling more and more guilt as I tear off each strip of sticky tape.

What if the powers that be decided that Christmas was in two weeks time? Probably a large amount of us would suddenly jump out of our seats and run out of Church screaming, whilst thanking the Lord for Sunday trading.

There was a documentary last Christmas about some guy who liked Christmas so much that he made every day Christmas day – he re watched the most recent Queens speech, had turkey for lunch and wrapped and unwrapped presents for himself every day.

Christmas every day might seem like a nuts concept – but imagine that Christmas could come any day of the year – but you didn’t know when. You would only know it was Christmas on the day itself. There would be signs and rumours of Christmas which could help you know roughly when it was going to be, but these could all turn out to be nothing but hype. You’d have shops who would argue about the precise date of Christmas, some managers who would claim to have heard the date straight from Santa himself, homeless men wearing signs like this one here. You would have two options – either give up on it and ignore the worry and excitement going on around you – or actually be prepared for Christmas all year round – that means tinsel in every room, a decorated tree, presents under it combined with a lot of willpower not to open them and a large recipe book full of ideas for getting rid of turkey.

Today is the first Sunday in advent, and thankfully we do know well in advance when Christmas is, and the advent time is not just for buying presents it is also for preparing ourselves to celebrate the incarnation, and slowly getting our heads round what is ultimately quite a big concept. We begin this process of advent by looking not at Jesus first coming into this world but at his second coming, which is what our gospel reading today was about.

I think the stormy weather at the moment is very appropriate for our reading this morning, the more drama the better. So often when we hear the bible in Church it can seem so sterile and calm – I hear about the creation of the world in Genesis – God creating something out of nothing, and I shrug my shoulders and say “heard it”. Here Jesus is talking about the opposite event in history – the end of the world, or more accurately the redemption of the world. Thunder and lightning wouldn’t go down badly as a sermon illustration. What does Jesus tell us about – signs in the sun moon and stars, roaring and tossing of the sea, men and women will faint from terror etc. etc. It is very easy to look at the world around us and think of things which fit these predictions, the tsanami being one of them, global warming, but the reality is there has always been stuff like this happening, most notably at the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem 70 AD and when a lot of these prophecies were fulfilled. In Jesus words which we have heard this morning, the one message which seems to speak to me is just one word – Watch!

Jesus uses the imagery of the fig tree and its surrounding trees. Now in autumn we see few leaves on the trees, and soon there will be none. In a few months time the leaves will begin to come back, and people will begin saying “spring is coming awfully early this year” or “it’ll be summer soon”. For those of us who are merely back seat admirers of nature we might not hold too much importance to this, but to those hardcore gardeners amongst us and those who live off the land these signs of a new season will be crucial, and they will be waiting and watching for it. This is what Jesus asks of us, not so that we can predict the future – but so that we be ever humble to him, and look to him for help when things beyond our control begin to happen.

The second coming of Jesus is often referred to as the second advent, and I think this is why we are looking at this today. The way that Jesus comes to be amongst us in the two advents is very different, in one he comes as a defenceless baby, in the other as a powerful God, in one he comes in a filthy stable, the other he comes riding on a cloud with great glory and majesty. These two images must go together for us to go anywhere near understanding the story of Jesus- it is through Jesus becoming man that we can truly connect with the Son of man coming in glory on the last day, and it is only when we reflect on the glorious majesty of Christ arriving with his angels that we can start to see what an amazing thing the incarnation really is.

As we begin advent again this year, don’t let yourself forget about the advent we are always in, this age of preparation for when our saviour will come to gather us up from all the ends of the earth.