“EPIPHANY – WHAT?”

           

            I couldn’t believe it!  No sooner Santa had left the stores, every one seemed to salivate for the hot cross buns (not you, of course). Yeek! What happened to Epiphany and Lent? And Christmas has been commercially truncated. It was supposed to go on for twelve days. Didn’t we sing about diverse things stuck in a pear tree? Didn’t 12 lords come leaping to us sent by our true love on the 12th day? Not that I saw any. All I saw on the 2nd day were not 2 turtle doves but a horde of manic shoppers treading over the door-openers of all the stores in town eager for bargains at the Boxing Day sales.

            And the Wise Men had not yet come. Perhaps that’s why they were wise.

They had not come to worship Santa or the hot cross buns. Timing, people, timing!

            Leaving out Epiphany! Shame! Now that Christmas is well and truly behind us even though contacting my annual list has been much delayed because certain surgeons wanted their cut first. We have ceased wishing people a Happy New Year now that all our resolutions, like giving up procrastination, have been put off for next time, and more than enough disasters have already sadly happened.

            Now that people are in doubt what to wish one another, I’ve taken to greeting everyone, “Happy Epiphany!” only to be stared back at with an awestruck look questioning my deteriorating sanity. Dear, dear, if only they knew about Epiphany they wouldn’t be missing one of the most exciting times of the year.

            Epiphany is the time of making known whom God unwrapped for us at Christmas. Jesus Christ is not just the gift for us but on the label we’ll find written the words, “For you and for the world, especially those who need good news.” How are all those needing good news going to receive good news? Santa’s reindeer or the Wise Men (whichever school you went to) have now departed to feed their camels or reindeer whatever, so we are left holding the great gift of God in our hot little hearts yearning to find the yearning hearts for whom the good news is also meant.

            The Christmas Bowl Appeal should now be on its way not so much in the guise of Santa or the Wise Men but represented in the bucket brigade across the gaps to those who wait for useful stuff that will help them renew their lives this year. Now, that is a resolution worth keeping because it becomes good news for those to whom this all was intended.

By the time Epiphany has finished in a burst of tossed pancakes, you would have then learned that Lent is not the stuff that’s left in a clothes-drier. So, Happy Epiphany!

Christmas letter 2016 - running late, sorry.

 *********************************************

Hope to you this Advent, Peace for Christmas 2016 & a positive 2016

“Arrunga” Uniting

307/334 Kissing Point Road,

ERMINGTON NSW 2115;

cnridings@gmail.com

How are you? Welcome to my soap opera Episode 77

May this Advent and Christmas fill you and those about you with peace.

            This must be for me a briefer epistle. I have travelled much this year but mainly to hospitals in St Leonards to learn new words such as prostatitis, parathyroid, and fistula. I was preparing for the removal of my parathyroid glands when my number on the waiting list for assisted care at our Uniting(care) home was available, so for the 2^nd time in my life I combined moving with surgery, a coincidence not advised. My poor son Andrew undertook the bulk of the downsizing (sniffle), the packing and moving and unpacking here before returning to Brisbane to unpack into his new shared slot in one those human filing cabinets somewhere up there.

            Prior to my move I had several falls requiring scans on both hips and left shoulder, pain in which visits me at many inconvenient times.

            I am on Facebook where I communicate during my peritoneal dialysis, which I perform four times a day before meals and bed. Glad to have you as a friend.

            This will have to do for now. What has your year been like?

                                                                                                                        Shalom !!!

Christopher N Ridings

"CHRIST IN A DANGEROUS WORLD"

       

            Back in 1978 our family were moving from Nedlands to Gosnells. At the same time my doctor whisked me into hospital for a biopsy on my thigh. I came home with a bandaged thigh propped with me on a chair while the home furniture was moved out from around me. I was the last piece of furniture moved to Gosnells and hobbled to the ringing ‘phone. The hospital was ringing me urgently to book me in for surgery for suspected melanoma so back I went for a fortnight.

By the time I was allowed out, Gosnells’ new minister had to conduct worship over a few weeks from a lazy-boy lounge.

            I remembered that little adventure recently. My number came up for a room at Arrunga, our new assisted care home centre in Ermington at the same time a surgeon took to me to remove my parathyroid glands from which I am hopefully recovering. My son flew back from Brisbane where he was moving to a new human filing cabinet and filing work applications. He stayed at the unit while caring for frail father and doing the bulk of clearing my unit putting his life on hold again like he did this time last year. He has fled exhausted back to move his own stuff into his new place.

            The moral of my story so far is to avoid moving and surgery at the same time. I have now done it twice 38 years apart. Between my long surges of self-pity which some of you have had to endure, I thought what has occurred to millions of people around the world this year.

            Millions of people have been desperately on the move fleeing for a chance to survive. Few end up at their preferred destinations. Organisations are unprepared and, dare I say it, unwelcoming, treat the refugees like plagues. Those of us who care have found ourselves challenged by unavailable resources and opposition from those with xenophobia. Our own little moving issues are like packing for holidays compared to the risky upheavals in their life. Fortunately, we can contribute through the Christmas Bowl to help.

           

            Being pursued by physicians and surgeons to spend time in hospitals is like an overseas holiday when we become aware of the brutal bombing of hospitals in Aleppo and other places. We look at our children and then watch the horror of little children rescued from rubble, traumatised by organised terror, often the only survivors of their families. They will need support for years. The Christmas Bowl and Act of Peace can be our conduit by which this support can come.

            We can think of Jesus born of a Middle Eastern family to flee to Egypt from a ruthless ruler and had a taste himself of what so many are going through right now as you read this. Jesus comes to us again this Christmas. We see his face on everyone experiencing and fleeing danger. Remember that when we celebrate this Christmas. May Christmas come to all of you.

"HOPE IN A DODGY WORLD"

           

Now and again we come across a Biblical passage that puzzles us and that recent one of the Parable of the Dodgy Manager (Luke 16:1-13) is a case in point. Here Jesus describes a manager who, like the Prodigal Son in the passage beforehand, fritters away the resources entrusted to him. Hauled up before the boss he is called to account for his irresponsibility. The manager slinks away and in inspired desperation approaches his boss’s outstanding debtors and, off his own bat, discounts their debts if they pay up straight away.

The debtors are happy to have to pay less than expected, the boss is pleased the debts have been settled, and the dodgy manager survives. Everyone is happy except perhaps the auditor. Jesus points out how self-interest brings out the cunning more readily, something we have ourselves ruefully discovered in life. In case we are tempted towards abandoning our scruples, Jesus sternly reminds us at the end of this passage that we cannot at the same time serve both God and wealth.

We find this all too true when we seek social justice. No matter what we say or do, the ones with the wealth are there hard on the hand brake to frustrate our best efforts. Funding to help others up is always in short supply while the wealthy, untouched by all this, invest everything into accumulating more. Nothing makes us angrier than this deliberately widening gap. Yet, we depend on income to survive. It seems a trap.

Note that Jesus talks about the perils of serving wealth. Once we know how to serve God, we find that it is wealth that becomes part of our serving God. Wealth is created to serve us not the other way round. Hence we are called to be good stewards of whatever wealth that comes our way. Jesus talks a lot about money. Here in this difficult parable, we can see that it is not wealth per se but how we use it that matters and in this world where social justice requires wise redistribution of our resources we see the proper place of wealth.

How wealth is used marks whether hope comes to this world. Several of us attended a recent study on Isaiah where there were several other difficult passages. In this the longest biblical book after Psalms, we read of intertwined messages of stern prophecy and utopian hope and it is difficult to separate them.

To cut a long story short, unless you wish to plough through the 66 chapters yourselves, we are promised eventual hope but there is no escaping the strings attached. The people are called to account because of dodgy practices and they are to have visited upon them the ruthlessness of even greedier powers and to be carted off into exile.

They are promised hope, conditional hope. In Isaiah’s vision is the lion lying down with the lamb. Something in us tells us that would take a lot of lambs to find one which would remain safe in leonine company. That is the point Isaiah is making. There is no hope unless it is for the lamb as well as for the lion. We cannot expect hope for us if we want it at others’ expense. We see this all too starkly in Syria where the dreams of rule are costing so much blood and terror.

To enjoy God’s love means ensuring that our neighbour is included in this love. This is social justice. This is hope. Throughout history our ancestors have reaped the whirlwind because they sought through fear to exclude others from this promised hope. Isaiah talks about hope in terms where all can come together in safety. If we are to embrace this hope we have much to do.

Such a task seems hopeless until we remember that one lamb who took that risk and became that self-sacrifice to enable us to seek this goal of his kingdom. May we enjoy hope by ensuring that it is distributed among others.