Temple Cowley United Reformed Church
Oxford Road, Cowley, OXFORD, OX4 2ES
(in the interest of reducing spam there are no hyperlinks to email addresses on this
site)
"It is not the ecologists, engineers, economists or earth scientists who will save
spaceship earth but the poets, priests, artists and philosophers"
Lawrence Hamilton, Operation Noah
There is no ‘Planet B’
placard on ‘The Wave’
The Revd Dick Wolff launched a blog in February 2008, where he posts comments, short
articles, letters &c about current events and often about the relationship between
British society, organised religion (and ‘pseudo-religion’) and the life of Christian
faith, particularly in the light of the New Testament account.
On it, readers are able to post comments and responses.
The material here does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Reformed Church,
either locally at Temple Cowley, or nationally.
This site last updated December 22nd ’09
Members of the church took our banner to ‘The Wave’ asking for urgent action on climate change at Copenhagen.
Current sermons on ‘Articles & Sermons’ page interpret ‘The Wave’ march and Copenhagen summit in the light of Advent hope, as humanity enters the ‘end game’ of its existence.
Christmas is about God coming to the world we’re living in now, not a world 2,000 years away. Yet I’ve been unable to find any Christmas card that carries a 21st century nativity image : the images are all classic nativity scenes.
Whilst these classic scenes were loaded with meaning in the first few centuries after Jesus, they’re just fairytale now. Take a look at the classic nativity scene in the foreground of the picture below. The palm trees reflect an early Christmas story telling of a pregnant virgin Mary sitting under a date palm — a story picked up later in the Qur’an.
The ox and the ass (possibly Hebrew puns on ‘prince’ and ‘priest’, just as ‘manger’ is a pun on ‘Jerusalem’) aren’t in the bible story but have been in Christian art since the early days. In earliest images they deliberately mirror the enormous gold statues of winged creatures that stood either side of ‘God’s throne’ in the pregnant darkness of the ‘Holy of Holies’ in the Temple. This was the place that
only the high priest dare enter, and when he did, he became a ‘son of God’. So the ox and ass are coded messages telling us that God’s throne is now no longer hidden in the Temple accessible only to the High Priest but truly with God’s people. A stable has become the Holy of Holies, a manger God’s throne, and this baby the High Priest/Son of God who will offer his own blood as the sacrifice. But those images that meant so much then, now only suggest to us that God’s glory lives in a meaningless mythical past — a world of fairytales.
Where would we be most surprised to find God’s glory nowadays, in our self-centred, individualistic world — a world that has no longer has a ‘holy centre’ like the Temple? We’re told that people think the church (like the stable) is the last place you might find God, and sometimes I think we ourselves believe it. ‘You don’t need to go to church to be a Christian’. Christmas imagery reminds us that the world’s preconceptions of what ‘spirituality’ looks like can lead us to miss the moment.
Suppose God comes to us not when we are alone, but when God’s people are most together, worshipping God in church . . . I have to say, that has been my experience. We have many special worship services throughout December. Pray — expectantly — that God’s Spirit will open our eyes to the glory, and fill us with Life.
All good wishes for Advent and Christmas,
Dick Wolff (minister)
