I washed and ironed our purple altar cloth this week, ready for the start of Advent. (Troy and I share the laundry duties for altar cloths.) Our cloth is a rich, full purple colour and I admired it as I ironed. Someone remarked once that people actually don’t celebrate Christmas, they celebrate Advent. All the decorations, shopping, food preparation and frenzy comes to a peak on Christmas Day, then seems to suddenly vanish with the Boxing Day sales – or even on Christmas Day afternoon, if you are returning stuff online!
 
The church calendar works very differently. We put out our purple cloths, not Christmas lights.. We focus on our internal preparation for the birth of the Christ Child - Emmanuel, God with us. This is a time of waiting, a time of longing. For me, it is a time of darkness, waiting for the Light of the World to come. I thought about that as I admired our purple cloth. It reminds me of the dark winter night, which will eventually be illuminated by a single bright star. Christian celebrations start on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day, and last for twelve days to the feast of Epiphany. This is when the Wise Ones, the Magi, visit the infant Jesus. His divinity and majesty are revealed by the gifts that they bring.
 
This Advent, we are using worship resources offered by the MCC Office for Church Life and Health. I love that every MCC has the freedom to develop its own liturgy and style of worship. We have inclusive language and the ‘open communion’ in common (this is God’s table, not ours, and all are welcome here). Apart from that, each church is free to worship in its own way. For me, there is something wonderful about knowing we are joining with other congregations around the world in using these Advent resources. We will be opening our worship with the same words, lighting our Advent candles together and sharing the same communion prayers. It is good to be different and diverse. Sometimes it is also good to feel as though we belong to something bigger.
 
That also takes us back to the purple cloth. Many folk in our congregation come from church backgrounds which do not follow the traditional seasons of the church year. Clergy collars, the liturgical colours and the lectionary are all new concepts to them. (The lectionary is a three year cycle of bible readings, agreed by different denominations). Many folk do come from traditions that do follow the patterns of the church year. For these folk, the purple cloth connects them with Christians all over the world, in MCC and beyond in our Advent preparation. Whatever our faith journey, we are all waiting for the same Jesus. May you feel connected and blessed as you prepare for ‘God with us.’

God bless

Cecilia 

Yesterday over 30 people were killed in a bomb blast in Yola City, Nigeria. Today 13 more were killed by two suicide bombers in Kano in the same country. The bombers were probably members of the Islamic militant Boko Haram group and targeted shoppers in local markets. No-one has yet formally claimed responsibility. Did you hear about these deaths? In all the coverage of the events in Paris, these two stories may have passed you by, or may not even have been covered at all. I heard the news about the Yola City killings on the BBC World Service. It is always fascinating to me to compare the news that I hear on this channel, compared with what is covered on BBC Radio 4 – my news channel of choice. The World Service brings me stories from Africa and Asia that might be given minor coverage elsewhere. It covers news from Central and South America which we never get to hear at all. In many World Service bulletins, the UK barely gets a mention and it makes me smile when the person who is normally described on our news as ‘The Queen’ gets her full title of ‘Queen Elizabeth II.’
 
Sometimes it does us good to look at life from a different standpoint. It reminds us that we are part of a large and complex world. We may get hear about certain events because they happen close to us, or in a culture that is familiar. It is important to remember that people all over the world are facing and overcoming all sorts of challenges every day. The terrible events that unfolded in Paris on Friday were shocking in their brutality and also are very close to us geographically. They are receiving so much coverage because of the implications for security in this country and our involvement in military action in Syria. The lives that were lost to brutal terror in Nigeria are no less valuable in God’s eyes. Families in both countries will mourn their loss and struggle to make sense of senseless killing. Politicians will make promises which they may not be able to keep. More lives will be lost before peace comes to Nigeria, France or Syria.
 
The evil of these violence acts infects us when we start to value some lives more than others, based on geography, social status, colour of skin or gender. In the early days of MCC, several of our premises were damaged, vandalised, or visited, in the USA, by the Klu Klux Klan. In June 1973, someone set a fire which trapped many LGBT folk in the Upstairs bar in New Orleans*. 32 people died in the fire, including the pastor of MCC New Orleans, Reverend Bill Larson and several members of the congregation. The chief of detectives in the New Orleans Police Department said this about the incident in a local paper at the time “Some thieves hung out there – and you know it was a queer bar”. All lives matter. We are ALL made in the image and likeness of God. 

God bless,

Cecilia

* You can find out more about the Upstairs Bar fire http://tinyurl.com/oby5bph
or read 'Don't Be Afraid Anymore' by Reverend Troy. D. Perry.
A documentary film has been made about the fire and its aftermath called 'Upstairs Inferno'

Today is Armistice Day, when, at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month in 1918, the guns finally fell silent along the Western Front in Europe. On Sunday we remembered those who have died in battle and who continue to suffer the effects of war. Both my parents served in the Second World War. I have their shoe polish brushes from that time, brown from my mother and black from my father, the lettering of their surnames and forces numbers still faintly showing on the wood. My mother used to tell me stories from this time in their lives, sweet stories of when they were courting and were newly weds, stories of air raids, food rationing and friends lost. My father volunteered when he was 18, and was sent with a pitchfork to guard the local reservoirs until he actually went into the army. Sheffield, my home town, was heavily bombed in the war, in an attempt to stop steel production, and the story of the big air raid was told to me again and again, over the years. If you would like to hear what it was like to live through World War II, talk to Eric one Sunday at church.
 
Most people don’t think that war is good thing. Many people who end up going to fight are ordinary folk, just like my parents were. For them, I think it was a mixture of patriotism and the chance for adventure. They certainly didn’t glamorise or glorify war. If each of us were called up to stand against a force that we were told was evil and threatened our very existence, how would we react? When I was mugged many years ago, I hit my attackers repeatedly and so hard that I broke my own hand. The instinct to survive is a very strong one. It takes strength to fight the enemy, it may take more strength to refuse to do so. There are many people of faith who will not go to war, such as Quakers.  Many pacifists served their country by being stretcher bearers and ambulance drivers, alleviating the suffering of war where they could.  
 
Christian theologians developed the Just War Theory to give an ethical framework for states when deciding on whether to go to war and how the war is to be conducted. It recognises that taking life is wrong, that states have a duty to protect their citizens and to defend justice, and that sometimes in order to protect innocent life and protect important moral values, force and violence may be needed. This doesn’t imply that war is good, only that it might be the lesser of two evils. On Sunday, someone was wearing a white peace poppy and a red remembrance poppy. He said ‘To me, the red one stands for the past, the white one for the future. They are both important.’ Let us thrive to make peace in our own hearts, in our own lives and pray for those who have responsibility for holding peace in the world.

God bless,
 
Cecilia