Anglican Down Under: Christmas 2007

Thursday, December 20, 2007

Christmas 2007

I have two opportunities to communicate via preaching this Christmas. Sunday morning 23rd December - Advent 4. I want to talk then about God's purpose (Romans 1:1-7; Matthew 1:18-25) and our part in response. A particular theme I will explore is 'family'. God placed Jesus in a family which nurtured him in his growth towards fulfilling God's purpose. At Christmas time 'family' is under examination; so why not do some reflecting on the course our family life is taking? The second opportunity is Christmas morning itself (Luke 2:1-14) when my theme will be 'Meeting Jesus for the first time'. The shepherds and others met Jesus for the first time. Have we met Jesus for the first time? Do we need to refresh our relationship with Jesus? One of the great insights of the Lukan nativity is that we can meet Jesus for the first time at anytime. The shepherds met Jesus in the middle of the night; Simeon met Jesus for the first time at the end of his life!

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Anglican Down Under

Welcome to this blog on Anglican, theological, biblical and other matters, mostly missional or liturgical (but I reserve the right to write about cricket). It is grounded in some islands at the bottom of the world which, together with a large island to our west, constitute fabulous Down Under.

Sometimes I pursue such a fine centrist line that I annoy people on either side of the line. If you do not like being annoyed then you know what to do.

I have two related blogs which I post on less frequently:

Hermeneutics and Human Dignity

Resourcing Preaching and Worship Down Under

I work for the Diocese of Christchurch and for Theology House, Christchurch. Views expressed here are not necessarily the views of either organisation. But I harbour the hope that what I say here is helpful to those with whom I am in fellowship because of the these two entities!

Pearls

Show us anything clearly set forth in Holy Scripture that we do not teach and we will teach it. Show us anything in our teaching or practice is clearly contrary to Holy Scripture, and we will abandon it.

Stephen Neill

For the glory of God is a human being fully alive, and the glory of humanity is the vision of God.
St Irenaeus

Fundamentally the Gospel is obsessed with the idea of the unity of human society.
Masure

We have returned to the Apostles and the old Catholic Fathers. We have planted no new religion, but only preserved the old that was undoubtedly founded and used by the Apostles of Christ and other holy Fathers of the Primitive Church.
Bishop Jewel

Preachers shall behave themselves modestly and soberly in every department of their life. But especially shall they see to it that they teach nothing in the way of a sermon, which they would have religiously held and believed by the people, save what is agreeable to the teaching of the Old or New Testament, and what the Catholic fathers and ancient bishops have collected from this selfsame doctrine.
Canon 6 from the 1571 Bishop’s Convocation

Kent: "See better, Lear, and let me still remain."
William Shakespeare

For the clarity that we are aiming at is indeed complete clarity. But this simply means that the philosophical problems should completely disappear. Wittgenstein

Justice is eternal, and doesn't depend at all on human conventions.
Montesquieu

The real challenge of Islam to Western intellectual discourse is for us to ask ourselves whether our unprecedented modern experiment of conducting political life with no transcendent values is really working out as well as we once hoped.
Harvey Cox

The long-term happiness of a society depends on how individuals behave towards each other, how families hold together, and how leaders keep the trust of people.
William Hague

Where orthodoxy is optional, orthodoxy will sooner or later be proscribed.
John Neuhaus

To be an evangelical is not, first and foremost, about doctrinal correctness, but about a passion for the gospel of salvation from sin through Christ for eternity.
John Richardson

Neither may we ... lightly esteem what hath been allowed as fit in the judgement of antiquity, and by the long continued practice of the whole church; from which unnecessarily to swerve, experience hath never as yet found it safe.
Richard Hooker (Lawes, V.7.1)

The function of the Christian canon was to separate the apostolic witness from the ongoing tradition of the church, whose truth was continually in need of being tested by the apostolic faith.
Brevard S. Childs

Every word of God proves true. (Proverbs 30:5)

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Thursday, December 20, 2007

Christmas 2007

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