Curate Conundrums

I love Christmas. Hands up who loves Christmas? Hands up who thinks Christmas is a little bit meh? Hands up who really doesn’t like Christmas? Hopefully I can persuade you why Christmas is a good thing. What if I told you that Christmas isn’t about presents, or commercialism, or stuff. I mean I’m a minister, so you’d probably expect me to say that. In fact most of us already know that, Christmas isn’t about presents. What is Christmas about then? It’s about love. What if I told you that Christmas is about God’s love for you, each and every one of you. The reason I love Christmas is because it’s a time of year when love between people is so obvious, people out buying gifts, thinking of others, spending time with families and loved ones, in the same way God’s love for us is so clear too. The baby Jesus being born is not just a distant event from a long time ago, but affects us today.  You might remember the words to O Little Town of Bethlehem ‘But in thy dark streets shi...

I wonder if John The Baptist was around today, what people would make of him? Would he get through the selection process criteria of the Church of England? Would he get through a Bishop’s Advisory Panel? I’m not really sure training residentially around lots of other people would have suited him, and then of course there’s his diet, would the kitchens be willing to provide enough locusts and wild honey? ‘And lo there appeared a Man named John, in Norwich city centre, he wore a crumpled and stained shirt, and ate out of bins, and people in the Norfolk countryside came to him to be baptised in the River Wensum.” Can you imagine it? The Christian story is littered with strange people, and strange stories, which gives me hope, if someone as strange as John the Baptist can find a place within the Christian story, then there’s hope for me too. The bizzare, the strange, the outcast, the prostitutes, the tax collectors, the unclean, the unwashed, the poor, these are all the kinds of peopl...