Included

Misha is desperate. She came to the UK from the Czech Republic because she had heard that there was work. She's been here six months and is still paying back the loan she took out to fund her ticket. Four days ago she got a letter from home. Her little sister, Anya, has taken ill and her parents can't get hold of the medicine she needs in Prague. Misha goes to the local health centre and asks if they can provide the medicine Anya needs. At first she can't even make an appointment, but she makes such a nuisance of herself that eventually the receptionist persuades the doctor to see her. The doctor explains the situation to Misha. Anya isn't even in the UK, and the NHS has a definite rules about the limits of where it can work. It wouldn't be fair to UK tax payers to pay for medicines for people all over the world.

Sean is desperate. He's just completed a five year sentence in prison. Because one of the things that got him into trouble were the lads he used to hang out with, part of his bail conditions are that he's had to move away from his home town. He's got a little bedsit, but no friends and no family to support him. Sean missed his daughter growing up. She's seven now. He wants to be able to keep in touch with her, and his ex is OK for him to visit, but he can't afford to pay the train fare.

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Tabernacles

I don't know if this ever happens to you, sometimes I get home from an evening meeting and my wife will be sat watching the TV. Now, if it's Casualty, then it's fairly straightforward. I know basically who everybody is, the plot is fairly predictable and so, if I wanted to, I could pick up what's happening and sit and watch it. If, however, it's an adaptation of a Jane Austin novel that I haven't read then it might take me a bit longer, and a few questions, to work out what's going on and who everybody is.

Sitting down to read this passage made me feel a bit like I was walking into the middle of a story, and quite a complex one at that. There's lots of characters, there's a whole cultural, historical, and religious context that I'm not that familiar with, and there's obviously some more immediate stuff that's been going on that I'm not aware of.

So, what I'd like to do tonight is to go through this passage and fill in some of the background, identify the actors and work out what's going on and what themes we can take and use to shed light on our own lives.

The setting is the Temple in Jerusalem at the time of the feast of the Tabernacles. This is a major, 8 day, festival in the Jewish calendar when the people remembered the tabernacles, or tents, that they lived in the desert following the flight from Israel. What is important for us is that this was a feast of pilgrimage. Lots of Jews from all over the known world had come to Jerusalem for the festival.

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Christmas 2 - Epiphany

Tonight, getting towards the end of the Christmas season, we’re thinking about Epiphany. On Christmas day we celebrated what is called the Incarnation, that is when God became human. But in some senses today’s celebration is more important . That’s because it’s only through Epiphany that we know what God is up to.

A baby in a manger is all very well, but so what? Now, with the benefit of hindsight we know something about the, “so what”, because of what Jesus did and said, because of what he showed us about himself. And this is what Epiphany means. It means a revelation of something, usually something spiritual, to someone. Celebrating Epiphany is about celebrating the fact that God is a God of revelation and about considering what our response to that revelation will be.

In the reading we’ve just had we had an example of an Epiphany. This was when the Magi, or Wise Ones, from the east came to worship Jesus.

From this story I’d like to concentrate on two things. Firstly how does God make revelations, that is, from where will epiphanies come to us? Secondly, what are possible reactions to these revelations?

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