O little town of Bethlehem

A powerful video of Palestinians telling of the birth of Jesus from Bethlehem.

 

h/t Graham Tomlin

Clearing up the dung

I took this photograph during yesterday morning’s presentation of The Journey in Great Baddow. The production told the story of the Nativity and began in our local shopping centre, before we journeyed to the graveyard for the shepherds and wise men and then entered church for the final part at the stable.

At first I was disappointed that the picture included the young man carrying the brush and shovel to clean up the donkey’s dung; it spoiled the shot. No problem, it wouldn’t have been difficult to crop him out of the picture. Then I decided to leave him in because there is something about clearing up the mess that gets to the heart of the story. How easily we are tempted to Photoshop Christmas.

killing me not so softly with her song

My first Christmas back in parish ministry and I’ve made it through the various school and playschool carol services and nativities. We have two crib services on Christmas Eve when the church will be packed with families and many of the children will come dressed as nativity characters. I’m just wondering if things are going to turn out anything like this?



h/t Revd Richard Coles

Sometimes 140 isn’t enough

Interesting Twitter experience yesterday. I read an interview with the writer behind the excellent T.V. series The Nativity which is being broadcast this week on BBC1. I was particularly struck by some of the writer’s comments and decided to tweet a couple of quotes with some interesting results. Here’s the quote that caused a bit of a stir:

Immediately some Twitter friends, mainly male clergy it has to be said, responded with amazement that Jordan had come up with such a profound insight. The Jordan they had in mind was the ubiquitous celebrity Katie Price not Tony Jordan the scriptwriter. A previous tweet had included the full name and a link to one of several interviews Tony Jordan has given about his experience of writing Nativity, but for this message I ran out of characters. Twitter only allows 140 character messages and sometimes that just isn’t enough.

Anyway the interview in The Telegraph is well worth a read and in it Jordan comments:

"If you accept that Jesus is Son of God, why would you not believe that Mary was a virgin, and that God must have had some hand in the impregnation.
''Quite how – whether it was a whiff of steam that came through the nostrils and into the semen, or whatever – is beyond my comprehension, but to me, as a sequence of events, it makes perfect sense." That's a big "if" he's starting with. I thought he wasn't religious. "I have a distaste for organised religions," he corrects me, "because they tamper with stories, add a bit here, take a bit off there, and then start killing each other because the other one doesn't agree. The only thing I know for sure is that the words I read as coming from Jesus Christ are the most truthful thing I have ever heard. As a blueprint for mankind, it is so smart that it couldn't even have come from a clever philosopher. Who would have been smart enough to say 'He who is without sin cast the first stone'? Wow! That's pretty cool."

Several people have drawn attention to Jordan’s more negative comments about the church in his interviews. I think we need to listen and hear how the church is perceived by those with a genuine spiritual yearning who nevertheless don’t see the church as a home for them.

“I have a distaste for people who say to me if you come through these doors, walk down this aisle, sit on that wooden bench, and sing these hymns in this order, I have got God in a little bottle under my pulpit and I'll let you have a look," he says. "I don't think was God's intention.”

Tony Jordan is right, this experience of the church is not God’s intention and if this is all church is then I want no part of it. Jordan’s observation is sobering and challenging.

But I wonder whether this is a rather safe caricature that some people employ to avoid some of the harder aspects of being a follower of Jesus Christ. Being a Christian involves a change of life, abandoning one’s own priorities and values and seeking to embrace God’s love and purposes for the world. Being part of the church, the body of Christ, means learning to love and serve one’s sisters and brothers who are also followers, even with all their faults. The ‘blue print for mankind’ that Jordan speaks of, calls on us to dedicate ourselves to proclaiming God’s Good News to those around us by our words and our actions. It means patterning our lives not just on Jesus’s teaching but on his life, the beginning of which Jordan so powerfully and creatively celebrates in his writing. This is much more than a message in a bottle, it is a life changing challenge.

The one who said ‘He who is without sin cast the first stone’ also said ‘Follow me’.

Natwivity: Tweeting the Christmas Story

Here’s a great way to follow the Christmas Story via Twitter.

Natwivity writes: We all have fond memories of taking part in the school nativity play. Now here’s your chance to revisit the 2,000 year story – this time online.

From December 1^st you can follow a day-by-day account of a nativity play on social media sites Twitter and Facebook. Known as the Natwivity, the online play aims to use the social media platforms to retell the 2,000 year-old story of the birth of Jesus.

Each day throughout Advent (1^st December to Christmas Day), different members of the cast will tweet a140-character update. They include Joseph, Mary, the shepherds, the three wise men and King Herod.

By reading these daily tweets, followers can learn more about each character’s thoughts and feelings, from Mary’s angst as she rides on a donkey over the hills of Bethlehem right through to the night the shepherd’s saw their familiar hills illuminated by an angelic host.

The Natwivity has been made possible through collaboration between Share Creative, a creative design company, and the Evangelical Alliance. Huw Tyler, of Share Creative, says: “We want to tell the Christmas story, an amazingly exciting story in a way that is not only accessible, but is fun and relevant to today’s internet generation.”

Followers can read daily accounts by logging onto Twitter and clicking ‘follow’ or visiting the page on Facebook.

The play is suitable for everyone and begins on 1^st December running up until Christmas Day.

paperless Christmas nativity

The Adventures of Mary and Joseph – The Road Movie presents a re-telling of the nativity with a series of nine short videos. Simply go to the Paperless Christmas website and the story should load (I had to use IE to view it). The screen displays an open road with a series of billboards to either side which is a neat alternative to the atheist billboard campaign. Click on the arrow to travel down the road and as you come to each billboard, click on play and a video tells part of the nativity story. It’s a great way to explore aspects of the Christmas story and resources have been produced to make use of the videos by Barnabas in Schools.

Paperless Christmas is produced by Jerusalem Productions and the Bible Reading Fellowship and Richard Fisher chief executive of BRF comments:

We hope it’s something that will cause people – both within and outside the church –to think afresh about the Christmas story. Already, since the beginning of October when the website went live, the videos have been viewed just over 15,000 times by visitors from 61 countries. They’re being enjoyed by all ages, and a growing number of churches and schools are telling us that they plan to show some or all of the video episodes in services and assemblies in the lead up to Christmas.

I particularly liked the humour, choice of actors and the contrast between traditional costumes and modern settings. The videos can be downloaded from the Barnabas in Schools site, so even if your venue doesn’t have internet access you can use the material.

are the Christmas stamps Christian?

There has been much rejoicing in the Christian press in the last couple of weeks with the news that this year’s Royal Mail Christmas stamps will feature the Nativity story. The stamps take images from stained glass windows by artists associated with the Pre-Raphaelite movement. Dr Christian Baxter greeted the news with the following: ‘a wonderful narration of the Christmas story, through some of the country’s best examples of stained glass’. Well, they may be great examples of stained glass window art, but are they Christian? Do they really reflect the story which is part of the foundation of the Christian faith?

I fear these images contribute to the maintenance of a fantasy which is very far from the reality of the story of the birth of Christ and therefore will never really challenge people to engage with what that story is about. The stain glass images reinforce a Christmas sentimentality that makes the story seem like a romantic fairytale. Take for example the portrayal of Mary; Revd Neil Spencer, the vicar of the church from which the image of Mary is taken, comments: ‘What I love about it is that she’s surrounded by angels and cherubim, but she looks like a real person. She reminds everyone that this isn’t just some imaginary, mythical figure, but actually a real woman.’ No she doesn’t. Mary in this image is an idealised Pre-Raphaelite depiction of a white, western European woman not a Semitic young girl from the ancient Near East who has just endured the trauma of a pregnancy outside marriage and child birth. A better image would have been of a young Palestinian mother struggling with a baby in the Bethlehem of today. A Bethlehem surrounded by a wall and barbed wire, patrolled by soldiers and with a population experiencing the tensions and turmoil of occupation. A Bethlehem in which the shepherds would never have got near Mary from their fields because of the barriers that prevent movement between workplace and home. The Bethlehem I experienced when I visited the Holy Land this time last year and wrote about in my blog.

Until we are prepared to depict the Christmas story in ways that connect with the real world and the pain, suffering and mess in the world, we deny the incarnation and reduce the greatest story ever told to a Christmas pantomime. That is why I welcome the bus stop advertising campaign Christmas Starts With Christ organised by ChurchAds.Net. The holy family is portrayed in a traditional nativity scene, but that image is then located in a bus stop surrounded by ordinary people. A thought provoking representation placing the birth of Christ in the everyday world.

nativity

O.K. I know we've only just got bonfire night out of the way but sometimes you have to plan ahead. I've already seen the trailer for the film Nativity and now Steve Goddard has drawn my attention via Twitter to a set of resources being produced by Damaris Media to link in with the film. The resources include:

• A full service outline of an all-age service, using footage from Nativity!
• Full notes for a primary school assembly using footage from Nativity!
• A specially created short video for use in or before church services, telling your congregation about the film
• A specially created short video for focusing your congregation in advance of your Advent Sunday service
• A specially created short video for use in a children’s slot in a Sunday service
• Open access Tools For Talks resources with downloadable clips from the film and suggestions for use in your meetings

Here's the trailer for the film which will be released at the end of November.