I recently took part in a dialogue with a small group of Baha’is. I was in fact the only Christian and more than a dialogue it was an account of the teachings of Baha’u’llah, the founder of the Baha’i faith but referring to some Christian scriptures. I learned a lot in the process about myself and about interreligious dialogue. 

Dialogue can be challenging especially when you see your faith from another perspective. Sometimes it challenges your very identity. This is especially true when it comes to supercessionism which is also called replacement theology, that is when one religion believes that it has a revelation that replaces or develops that of a previous one which can suggest a superiority.  Christianity did it to Judaism. Christians believed that Jesus was the Messiah promised in the Hebrew scriptures; the Jews didn’t recognise him, so those who did and followed Jesus fell heirs to the promises given by God to the People of Israel. Christians had in fact replaced Jews as God’s Chosen People.  Islam then did it to Judaism and Christianity when Muslims, while respecting the prophets of Judaism, including Jesus, claimed that Mohammed was the final prophet and the Qur’an the true expression of the Word of God. And the Baha’i faith reflects this attitude in believing that Baha’a’ullah is a further revelation from God which is appropriate for the modern age.

While in no way explicitly rejecting previous revelations it did feel a bit like supercessionism as I listened to an interpretation of the Christian scriptures which Baha’u’llah reinterpreted to show how he understood them or fulfilled them. This being accepted by Baha’is as the correct understanding of the scriptures. It raised for me questions about how to accept the integrity of another faith when one faith develops from another or is influenced by another. How do we accept the integrity of a faith’s understanding of scripture when it is shared or used by another faith but understood differently?

I had an experience of this a few months ago when I was involved in a project to interpret a scripture story depicted on a medieval tapestry which was to be put on display in the newly refurbished Burrell Museum in Glasgow. The story chosen was that of the story in Genesis 22 of Abraham being asked to sacrifice his son but being saved from doing so by an angel. The Christians and Jews shared the same text but interpreted it in different ways and even had different names for it. For Jews the story is called the Binding of Isaac or the Akedah and shows the total submission to God’s will of Abraham, the exemplar of faith. It’s because of Abraham’s obedience and willingness to kill his son that God tells him, “Because you have done this…I will bestow my blessing upon you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars of heaven and the sands on the seashore” (Genesis 22:16–17). Isaac was saved and a ram sacrificed in his place and in memory of this a ram’s horn is blown each year at the festival of Rosh Hashanah to remind God of the Akedah and his promise to bestow blessings on God’s People and safeguard their future.

Christians on the other hand refer to the story as the sacrifice of Isaac and see in it a prefiguration of the death of Jesus on the Cross. They approach the same story from a different viewpoint, from their own theological understanding of seeing Christ at the centre of revelation. For one person in our group this was a bit disconcerting – another faith interpreting her faith, not only differently but in a way that could suggest the Christian understanding was the correct one. It was very obvious that we are standing in different places with different mind sets even when we read the same scriptures.  

This was the case with my interaction with my Baha’i friends which was enjoyable and friendly but used passages from the Gospels and understood them in a way that was alien to me. It was obvious that our whole approach to the Gospels was quite different. For me the scripture was saying something about Jesus and the reality of God’s relationship with humanity, while for the Bahai’s the same scripture was used to show that the Christian understanding was inadequate and replaced by a further revelation.  Do I have the right to say that this was wrong?  Not really because I don’t own my scriptures. The scriptures of the world religions contain a wisdom that is universal and available to all and as such are not the property of any one faith.  For the Baha’is or Baha’u’llah to interpret the Christian scriptures as proof of the validity of his own faith is an act of faith in itself and it’s this that has to be acknowledged by saying Baha’is believe that this ……… means……….. Christians too have to acknowledge that their understanding of these same texts is based on their faith, perhaps even foundational to it.     
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What all this says to me is that we need to be sensitive when using scripture within the context of dialogue. We need to listen and acknowledge different understandings, be sensitive to supercessionist texts and what impact they can have on our dialogue partners. We also need to face up to the challenges that a replacement theology poses as we acknowledge our respect for the integrity of other faiths – a respect which is foundational to interreligious dialogue.

I have to remind myself that the human race is very young if you compare it to what we know of the age of the universe. Taking the evolution of the world as one year homo sapiens only appeared at three minutes to midnight on 31st December. That’s no time at all so perhaps it’s no surprise that in spite of the great innovations and creations of history we are just not good at living together.  We are still learning how to do it and making many mistakes along the way. Perhaps it’s because we don’t trust one another, are afraid of one another and see one another as a threat. There seems to be a deep zenophobia and distrust that leads us to think the worst of one another.

​I recently read Rutger Bergman’s book, Humankind, in which he tries to give a positive view of human beings and show that on the whole human beings are decent kind of beings. He does admit, however, that we also seem to be attracted to stories that shows the opposite – stories like William Golding’s Lord of the Flies that suggests children left to themselves on a desert island will deteriorate into animal and destructive tendencies. Bergman shows reality doesn’t support this but somehow it has grasped the imagination of people who seem to readily believe the truth behind the story.  It’s the same I think with the Christian belief in original sin which has also spoken to the imagination and influenced church attitudes for centuries.

Original sin, the story that at the beginning of creation human beings i.e. Adam and Eve disobeyed God resulted in the belief that all human beings are born in a state of alienation from God and in need of redemption. I should say that Judaism, which shares the same story in Genesis does not interpret it in this way and Islam which talks of Adam and Eve falling to earth from Paradise sees human beings as weak and to be tested but not in any way alienated from God. It only came into Christianity in the 4th cy and as far as the Catholic Church is concerned formalised in the 16th cy at the Council of Trent. It is associated with St Augustine who, while grappling with the problem of how sin could have come into the world when the world was created by a good God, devised the belief that the original sin of Adam and Eve was passed down biologically to future generations. Human beings could then only be saved by grace which came through baptism and belief in Jesus. Such a belief in the tainted nature of humanity lays the way open for control, a negative attitude towards the body and sex, forced conversions and baptisms, a rigid moral code which punished the sinner to say nothing of a lack of self -esteem and a poor self- image. It influenced the attitude of preachers and teachers and probably William Golding in writing the Lord of the Flies.

Of course, human beings are sinful and have tendencies towards greed, power, control. It’s very obvious in the world today and just this week I’ve heard stories from a Uighur woman about the genocide that it happening in China, from an artist who has worked  with the Rohingya in Myanmar and of the  antisemitism that stems from the very false but persistent reports about a fabricated document called the Protocols of the Elders of Sion. We are not doing well as human beings.

I’m glad to say, however, that as far as Christian theology is concerned there is now much more emphasis on the goodness of creation and the innate goodness of human beings, created as they are in the image and likeness of God. Religions are living traditions. They develop their understanding of faith in dialogue with the prevailing culture in which they live. That early story in Genesis is now understood as a myth, not to be seen as a fabrication but as a story which contains a truth and the truth is that human beings are created good as all of the created world is, that we are all made in the image and likeness of God, that we are made for fellowship with God and one another but we can also be sinful and determined to plough our own furrow ignoring the need to work for harmony among our brothers and sisters and forgetting our call to care for the created world. Is this not a much more positive  view of human nature and a good basis for transforming our attitude to one another?  What if we trusted that the men and women we met were essentially good and like us struggling to live as best a human life as they could?  Would we be more open to refugees, more concerned for the homeless, for those with addictions, those of our brothers and sisters without food, water, health care or whatever.  Would we be less likely to see those of other cultures and religions as a threat and different from ourselves? Would we be able to overcome the suspicion, racism and zenophobia that sets us against one another?
I would certainly hope so. 

Lent is nearly upon us. It begins this Wednesday with Ash Wednesday designated as a day of fasting and abstinence, at least for the Catholic community. I always feel a bit embarrassed when it comes to fasting in Christianity when I compare it to Ramadan or the 21 day fast of the Baha’i community. For these communities fasting means no food or drink for the hours of daylight. The discipline of Ash Wednesday is no meat and only one meal though even then two small repasts are allowed. Doesn’t sound too penitential. The whole point of lent, as with the other fasts, is conversion of heart, an opportunity to reflect on life, consider our pattern of living and open ourselves to personal and spiritual renewal.  While a whole scale fast is not envisaged there is a tradition of fasting from or giving up some comfort or obsession. As children we always gave up sweets for lent though we did save them to be eaten on Easter Sunday. Nowadays people might give up alcohol, meat, sweet deserts, social media, television or fill a plastic bag with an item a day that can be taken to a charity shop when lent finishes. All this in an attempt to gain some kind of inner freedom.
 
There’s no doubt that a bit of discipline is a good for us but this year in these days of lockdown there has been a lot of discipline and renunciation. People have suffered because they haven’t been able to visit loved ones, meet friends, enjoy their usual methods of entertainment to say nothing of working from home while home schooling children. I’m lucky because I don’t have to do any of this but the invitations that come in thick and fast for interfaith and other events show that for many people lockdown has been as busy if not busier than usual.  The cessation of a lot of our activities has not meant much of a breathing space. So perhaps this is the discipline for this lent – to take a bit of time to allow ourselves to breathe, to relax, to be happy just to sit and savour a cup of coffee. In the busyness of life this can seem to be a luxury and extravagance that doesn’t fit in well to a daily timetable. 
 
There’s a suggestion within Judaism that after death God will ask us ‘ What use did you make of the good things of life?. I think, or hope, the expected answer would be ‘enjoy them’.  For many people fasting and enjoyment don’t go together but there’s a way in which they do and maybe there’s a Lenten lesson in that.
 
  Recently I watched the film Babette’s Feast which incidentally Richard Gere says is his favourite film of all time. I had already seen the film a good number of years ago and it had imprinted itself on my imagination.  The film is about a small puritanical Danish Lutheran community living in an isolated part of Jutland. The small sect is ruled and guided by a pastor with two beautiful daughters who renounce a future of love and fame to remain by their father’s side.  On their father’s death they become the leaders of the sect, taking an unappetising gruel to the poor and sick, offering a simple supper to the community in their home when it meets for worship. It’s a hard life, lived as it is in an unforgiving landscape and poverty but the believers, who have by now greatly decreased in number, are staunch and faithful living a strict asceticism devoid of pleasure and comfort - and sometimes even charity as they bicker amongst themselves and remember past hurts and infidelities. The climax of the film comes when the community sits down to a dinner to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the birth of their founder – a dinner cooked by a famous French cook, Babette, who had had to flee France fourteen years previously and had taken refuge with the sisters. Babette had won the lottery and spent all the prize money on ingredients such as turtle for soup, quails, blinis, china crockery, glasses and the finest of wines. It was a seven course meal from the finest of French chefs.

The community sat down to the meal determined to “eat as if we never had the sense of taste” to avoid falling into the sin of gluttony or indulgence.  The film is beautifully shot and while keeping to the promise of not commenting on the food the faces of the old men and women are transformed as they experience and obviously enjoy the exquisite taste of such good food and wine. They are in awe and wonder at the joy of this experience and it’s this transformation which I’ve never forgotten. I can see in my mind’s eye the closed, tight faces that relax into appreciation and wonder, the men and women who at the end of the evening join hands and dance round the fountain. It’s a miracle of sorts.
 
So what does this have to do with lent. Well, there is a belief that to really appreciate what we have is a way to simplify our lives. To appreciate the clothes we have and take joy in them would lead to buying less, to savour and enjoy the food we eat would lead to eating less, to be attentive to the beauty of the created world would lead us to care for it, to savour and enjoy each minute would lead us to stop our rushing about and to give thanks for what we have. Gratitude, wonder, enjoyment are spiritual values and practices which are appropriate for lent – not exactly penitential but I suspect as transforming as any ascetical way of life.

Yesterday was Holocaust Memorial Day, that moment when the nation and indeed the world remembers the atrocities not only of the Holocaust that murdered 6 million Jews as well as Roma and people with disabilities but also the subsequent genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, Sudan and Darfur. As always the memorial services have been very moving and inspiring. We are now at a stage, 76 years after the liberation of Auschwitz – Birkenau, when many of the survivors of the camps, who for years have courageously told their stories, have died. Now we hear their stories from their children and grandchildren and stories of those saved by the kindertransport which, while saving their lives, separated them from their families whom many of them never saw again.
 
One of the constant themes of Holocaust Memorial Days in ‘never again’. We remember for a reason – to reflect on the degradation that we human beings can sink to and to hope and pray that it will never happen again.  But it is happening again. Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia happened after the Holocaust; the atrocities in Sudan and Dafur still continue; the world watches the discrimination and violence perpetrated against the Rohingya in Myanmar and the Uighar Muslims in China; we see refugees and asylum seekers turned away by affluent countries. And I am implicated in all of this because the perpetrators as well as the victims are related to me in this one human family of which we are all members. This connection and realisation are painful.
 
Joanna Macey talks about honouring the pain of the world, the importance of opening our heart to it and not running away from it.  This means lamenting my own sinfulness and that of my brothers and sisters and determining that things should be different. But what can I do to make a difference when so many of these atrocities are politically motivated and organised. Can I make a difference? 
 
The late Lord Jonathan Sacks has a story that he tells in an interview about the Holocaust. He calls it the butterfly story and it goes something like this: there was a holy, wise and distinguished rabbi who could see into the reality of things. On a visit to a certain village two troublemakers thought they could catch him out. One said to the other, see I have a butterfly cupped in my hand: I will ask the Rabbi if he knows what is there and, if he indeed answers that it is a butterfly, I will ask him if it alive or dead: if he says dead, I will open my hands and it will be alive: if he says alive, I will crush the butterfly and it will be seen to be dead. So they approached the Rabbi and asked what was in the fellow’s cupped hands- a butterfly answered the Rabbi. And is it dead or alive? The Rabbi looked them in the eye and said ‘the answer is in your hands’. Life and death – the answer is in our hands. What a good way to illustrate the verse from book of Deuteronomy which says “I call on heaven and earth to witness against you today: I set before you life or death, blessing or curse. Choose life, then, so that you and your descendants might live” (Deut. 30: 19).
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The theme of this year’s Holocaust events says the same thing in another way, ‘Be a Light in the World’ which we will do by always standing up for and promoting life wherever we are. In his latest encyclical, Fratelli Tutti, Pope Francis encourages us: “choose to cultivate kindness. Those who do so become stars shining in the midst of darkness”. Kindness is within the reach of all of us. It “frees us from the cruelty that at times infects human relationships, from the anxiety that prevents us from thinking of others, from the frantic flurry of activity that forgets that others also have a right to be happy……… (it) can create a healthy social atmosphere in which misunderstanding can be overcome and conflict forestalled…….it opens new paths where hostility and conflict would burn all bridges” (FT 224).

The Holocaust and other genocides succeeded because people, our brothers and sisters, were seen as less than human, described as vermin or cockroaches, classified as ‘them’ and not ‘us’. It’s not a long way from this kind of thinking to active discrimination and hate speech which we know from experience can lead to violence and even extermination. Kindness can rescue us from this path. It may seem insignificant but it has ripples and consequences that can lead our human family towards life, hope, peace and reconciliation. 

​The future too is in our hands.

This has been a busy interfaith week but one of the most interesting events was a lecture from Professor Amy-Jill Levine who is Jewish but also a scholar of the New Testament. As a Jew she is fascinated by Jesus who is perhaps the most famous Jew of all times and who has led millions of people to a knowledge and worship of the God of Israel. What Professor Levine wants to do is to set Jesus within his Jewish context which can be refreshing but also disturbing. It challenges ways of reading the New Testament that can be anti-Jewish.

For centuries Christians have believed that Jesus was unique, that he challenged the prevailing culture of his time and had a revolutionary approach to life. He was the one who liberated people from the dictates of the law to initiate a new freedom in the Spirit, he was the one who revealed a God of love compared to a God of wrath found in the Old Testament. But seen from a Jewish perspective Jesus’ uniqueness was not so much in challenging the mores of his time but in his teaching. Jesus evolved as we all have done from the dust of the earth and lived as a Jew in a particular context of time and place. The place where he lived, Galilee, was not a backwater. It was cosmopolitan, situated on the silk road route, people living there would have encountered other cultures and beliefs and it is possible that Jesus spoke Aramaic, Hebrew, Greek and Latin.

A popular notion in Christianity is that Jesus had an intimate, filial relationship with God and called God Abba unlike the Old Testament God that was distant and transcendent.  But the God of Jesus is the God of Israel, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.  It is the Christian heresy of Marcionism to reject the Old Testament and to say there is a distinction between the God of the Old Testament and New is doing just that suggests Professor Levine. There are wonderful passages in the Old Testament that speak of God as Father and God’s intimate love for human beings. One of my favourites is from the Book of Wisdom “Yes, You love all that exists, you hold nothing of what you have made in abhorrence, for had you hated anything you would not have formed it. And how, had you not willed it, could a thing persist, how be conserved if not called for the by you” (Wis. 11:24-26). The God of the Old Testament is the God of Jesus and where else would Jesus have learned and developed his relationship with God if not within the Judaism of his time.

Recently christian feminist scholars, in their efforts to find a place for women in a patriarchal institution, have depicted Jesus’ relationship with women as unique and contravening the mores of his day. Jesus did have a relationship with women, they were among his followers, he taught them and they cared for him. A favourite story used to illustrate how radical Jesus was in his relationship with women is that of the Samaritan Woman. It goes like this: Jews and Samaritans were enemies; Jesus is crossing Samaria and asks a woman from Samaria for a drink – something no Jew or man would do in public; has a conversation with the women which shows he is the Messiah; the woman (who is declared to have five husbands) brings her townspeople to Jesus. Professor Levine gave us another take on the story. The woman comes to the well of Jacob at mid-day, not because she is an outcast but because she’s likely to have needed water. In the previous chapter of John there’s the story of Nicodemus who comes to Jesus by night. In contrast the Samaritan woman comes in the full light of day at the same time as Rebecca came to the well and was recognised as a fitting wife for Isaac, reflecting as so many of the stories about Jesus do a story in the Old Testament. She could not have been an outcast but must have been respected by her townspeople or they would not have accepted her message and come to Jesus to see and hear for themselves. Nor need she have been a prostitute or shamed woman because she had five husbands. We do not know her circumstances. Did she have a levirate marriage whereby she married the brother of her dead husband?  Was she widowed?

Professor Levine’s work shows a deep love and respect for Jesus. He is, she says, the first person to be called Rabbi in literature, his parables are outstanding teaching aids for adults that “are the best stories ever”. However, she also feels that if we christians get Jesus’ context wrong we get him wrong. To make Jesus out to be different from his time or a rebel against his culture and religion is inaccurate and a ruse to underline the uniqueness of Jesus. It can lead to a denigration of the Judaism of his time and a rejection of the Judaism of our time which can have terrible consequences, the worst of which we remember at the end of the month on Holocaust Memorial Day.
here to edit.

​Christmas has been different and difficult for many of us this year but we’ve survived it and we’re now in a period of recovering from card writing, parcel posting, shopping and cooking  – all of which somehow became more insistent this year.  Now we’re back to lockdown and, for some perhaps, a feeling of isolation, even with skype and zoom possibilities. It feels rather flat and quiet with no new year celebration to look forward to. It’s so different from last new year when I was invited to bring in the new year at a 1920’s themed party. We put together clothes that somehow expressed the spirit of the 20s and even attempted to dance the Charleston. There was a sense of excitement and hope as there often is at new year as we entered what might turn out to be another roaring twenties decade.  This was the  decade which followed on from the Spanish flu of 1918 and was a time of economic growth and prosperity after the devastation of the First World War. It was not to be. 

Unknown to us (but not to everyone) there was lurking a tiny, deadly virus which would disrupt the economy, cause chaos and reveal to us all the vulnerability of humanity and the cracks in our societies with the widening  gap between rich and poor.  The Coronavirus has been the topic of conversations, a motivation for social action, given us a recognition of our dependence on key workers and a growing sense of thankfulness and neighbourliness.  Now as we move into another calendar year there’s much to reflect on and hope for as we dream of a better world which will demand a change in all of us if that dream is to become a reality.

New Year is a time for resolutions and new perspectives. So what might they be?

For me one of them is to try to stand in the shoes of my brothers and sisters who are suffering because of poverty, war, abuse, discrimination, neglect, isolation. I was very aware in writing the first paragraph of this blog that the reality I described of Christmas cards and presents, family and celebrations was not everyone’s reality. Any flatness I might feel is a consequence of not having the opportunity to meet friends and family as would normally happen at Christmas. In itself that’s a sign these things are a reality for me but they’re not for everyone. There are people with whom I live cheek by jowl who have no family, no home, no money, no possibility of the kind of family and community relationships that I have. Life is flat for them all the time. There are neighbours who are lonely, friends for whom Christmas evokes sad and not happy memories and for whom all the razzmatazz around Christmas is painful. This is as true of the reality of Christmas as the joy.  Others for whom the virus has exacerbated mental health issues and the many who in this year are grieving because of the death of loved ones, made even more painful by their inability to be there as their family member died of be consoled by the presence of family and friends at funerals.

Another is to deepen my understanding of ecology. Covid 19 and its restrictions have shown us how much we humans pollute our atmosphere. We heard bird song more than we have done for a long time, we saw blue skies. Some in India saw the Himalayas for the first time in years. We rejoiced in cleaner air as airplanes were grounded and cars were left at home. But now as restrictions are easing we can see the pollution creep back again. Can I feel the pain of this world on which I depend and to which I am intimately related? Can I walk on this earth with reverence and respect doing my little bit to overcome pollution and waste?  Can I cut down my consumption to live a more simple lifestyle?  

There is so much that needs done that it can seem overwhelming. At my age and stage I can do little but I can pray a prayer that feels the pain of the world, offers compassion and hope  to a world and society that I hold in my heart, believing that this  good energy can have a positive and transforming effect. Tibetan Buddhism has a name for this kind of meditation. It’s called Tonglen and is a practice in which we breathe in the pain of others and our world, perhaps visualising this pain as a dark ribbon and breathe out compassion and love, again perhaps visualising this as a light coloured ribbon.  
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Tonglen and similar  meditations  make tangible the reality that we can never pray or meditate as isolated individuals, that we approach God or that Reality in which we live and move and have our very being united to our sisters and brothers and indeed the whole cosmos. It also reminds us that our desire for justice, love and compassion is united to that of many, many good people whose kindness and generosity have been so visible during this past year.  We are part of a great movement towards wholeness and reconciliation. We can have confidence that “the love, courtesy, generosity and beauty that is put into to the world will never vanish from the world. And when it’s time it will restore itself instantly” a quotation from Cynthia Bourgeault that can give us hope as we let go of one year and welcome another. 

Advent is a time of spiritual preparation for Christmas when Christians live in a spirit of expectation and anticipation. It’s a time to remember and to give some extra time to prayer and reflection.  This year I’ve had two interesting Advent moments.
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One was with a Shia Muslim group who wanted to show their support for Christians celebrating at a difficult time and with reduced family gatherings.  At Eid we had had a shared prayer to give support to Muslims who were unable to meet with their extended families. Our Muslim friends wanted to reciprocate by supporting us and assuring us of their prayers.
We heard about the significance of Jesus in the Qur’an and how much he is loved and respected by Muslims who see him as one of the greatest prophets and messenger to humanity.  The prophet Mohammed felt a special closeness to him and the tradition records him as saying, "Both in this world and in the hereafter, I am the nearest of all the people to Jesus, the son of Mary”.  Within the Christian tradition we are used to having different stories about Jesus, especially stories around his birth. The gospels of Mark and Luke tell different stories about the birth of Jesus though popular tradition has merged these into one so that many Christians don’t recognise the diversity in the gospels. This should make us open to the different account in the Qur’an, realising that it is the significance and truth Jesus does not belong solely to Christians though the realisation that Jesus is greater than any religious system and cannot be contained within it can deepen our understanding of the impact of Jesus in the world.
The other moment was an Advent/Hanukkah celebration with a reflection on Advent and the story behind Hanukkah.  Hanukkah is a festival recognising the importance of religious freedom when the Maccabees cleansed and rededicated the Temple that had been desecrated by the Syrian King Antiochus Epiphanes. The miracle remembered at this festival is that purified oil, enough for one day, lasted for eight until it could be replenished. A candle is lit on each day of the festival so, as it was the fifth day of the festival, we lit five candles and heard a Hanukkah blessing and song.
The advent reflection showed us once again how similar the Christian and Jewish traditions are. It came as a surprise to some that the first Sunday of Advent is the beginning of the Christian year, not 1st January.  Some were surprised that there is such a thing as a liturgical year. And like at the festival of Simchat Torah the Christian church begins a new series of gospel readings. This year it’s the gospel of Mark and it will be read on most Sundays throughout the year apart from special feasts and seasons such as lent. The gradual lighting of the hanukkah candelabra or hanukkiah is a little like the four candles on the advent wreath that are lit each Sunday during  church services or during personal prayer if there is a wreath at home.
The word Advent means ‘coming to’ and traditionally Christians think in terms of three comings of Jesus who for them is an image of the invisible God and the One who brings God near and reveals God’s presence amongst us. The season begins by remembering that at the end of time we believe that Jesus will return to bring about the establishment of God’s kingdom.  We also remember the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem in present day Palestine.   Like the Jewish tradition this is not remembering a past event but rather a recognition that through his Spirit and in his community Jesus still walks amongst us and that God comes to us in the events of our everyday lives.
Christians use each of the Sundays in Advent to focus on a theme or character from the infancy narratives as a focus for prayer and reflection.  The readings from our Sunday worship, which during advent includes the prophets, particularly the prophet Isaiah, gives us something to reflect on as well as a disposition to live by.
This year we have been aware of the effects of Covid 19. For example we’ve heard in Church the message to ‘stay awake for we know not the day not the hour when God will come and call us’. There will be few of us this year who don’t know someone who has unexpectedly been called to eternal life either because of or with the virus and we know that this is a call that we will all face some day. Are we ready? But there is also a call that comes to us in our everyday lives. Covid 19 has been such a call – it came unexpectedly but has given us the opportunity to reflect on and perhaps even change our priorities.  
For Christians the journey through Advent in a spirit of prayer and reflection affects all the practical preparations for Christmas, hopefully transforming them into acts of love. And this year an act of love will be to have reduced family celebrations  - as all other faiths have been doing throughout this unusual year. But I for one will be remembering the support of our brothers and sisters from both the Jewish and Muslim faiths. That’s something to be grateful for.