I have a bicycle across the road at number 13. It has two hubs which get the power from my legs to the wheels and speed me up New England Road. With Anne I’m also helped by two hubs that empower our neighbourhood - Bentswood Hub where I help with digital access and Presentation Church where we drop in on Mondays and were blessed by last week’s festive meal. We’re a giving church at Presentation and as such we’re receiving more interest and commitment from the neighbourhood.
‘Give and it will be given to you’. Luke 6 verse 38 is the Christian one liner. It’s easier said than done but when it's done the Holy Spirit flows. Through Sally, Michael, Geraldine and the team love ripples out from here making a difference in Bentswood to many who live alone, sometimes hungry, sometimes cold.
‘Give and it will be given to you’ summarises our Christmas Gospel. ‘God came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God’ (John 1:11-12) God, who made us, gave to us his Son, Jesus, and through this sacrifice is receiving new children, those gathering here this morning ‘given power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God. And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory’ alleluia!
Everyone in Church this morning has been born naturally ‘of blood… the will of the flesh… the will of man’ but if we have made Christ the hub of our life there is within us an empowerment to love from beyond our natural life, the life of the Holy Spirit flowing from our baptism which we seek to see renewed within us this morning in Christmas Communion. As today’s Collect prayed: ‘grant that we, who have been born again and made your children by adoption and grace, may daily be renewed by your Holy Spirit’.
‘Give and it will be given to you’. God who gave us life at Christmas offers us his life and when we accept that life into our hearts we are made a gift back to him. We are made to be his children, part of the never ending fellowship we call the communion of saints which, when time ends at Christ’s return, will be presented to God who will then be made everything to everyone.
If my bicycle has two hubs and Bentswood has two hubs in its drop in centre and Presentation Church, so does my soul. One here (my mind) and the other here (my heart). To get these hubs to work together the mind must lower 15 inches into the heart where God lives. Every human being carries something of God. Not every human being knows of the 15 inch journey Christmas invites so we can receive power to become children of God and run better on both hubs, mind and heart.
It is these two powers of mind and heart that together lift us to God and into living for others and for ourselves in the best way through the empowerment of the Holy Spirit.
‘Give and it will be given to you’ Becoming a Christian is no surrender of the mind though sadly the behaviour of some believers might encourage that perception. With a past career in Chemistry I am aware of many convergences between science and religion such as belief in the cosmos having a beginning. Mind comes before matter in Christianity. The world traces back to the Big Bang in science. The difference is in the second creation celebrated at Christmas necessitated by the folly of human minds and the disastrous consequences of sin. ‘The Word became flesh and lived among us’. The Son of God became the Son of Man so children of men could become children of God. The Baby bound in the Crib foreshadows God’s binding upon the Cross to break the bonds of sin and open the life of the Holy Spirit to all believers. In giving his life the Son of God is able to receive you and I into that deathless fellowship if we choose to enter it.
We have a mission at Presentation. Our mission, though, our giving out of love, will be ineffective unless it comes as an overflow from what is being cultivated within and among us. The Christmas Feast is a reminder to keep ourselves at that 15 inch missionary movement from our heads to our hearts where God is. Many of us here welcome Jesus week by week in word and sacrament. How are we savouring that gift in our daily prayer? In our discipline of bible reading, reading the lives of the saints, self-examination and confession or generous service as individuals to those in need?
Where people are meeting deep down with Christ his life, his joy takes hold of them so all they say and do gets permeated by that life and joy, energising them like a hub, getting their lives more on the move as they pedal away at being Christians. Our minds and hearts are set to work together within the wider working of the Holy Spirit pouring love across the world starting where we are in Haywards Heath and its surrounds. God’s kingdom come, God’s will be done here - through us!
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