Thought for the Week

by Roberta Topham minister at Christchurch Methodist/URC partnership Church.

“OUT with the old and in with the new” is a popular saying at the turn of the calendar year. Doing something new can be really energising. Over Christmas this year I enjoyed two new experiences. The first was sourcing and putting up the Christmas tree since the usual sorter of the Christmas tree was away. Having found a tree at the eleventh hour, my son and I had then to saw it to fit it into the holder. It was very satisfying to manage this, for all that the tree was then leaning rather precariously and the angel at the top looked as if she was about to start a serious bungy jump! The second new experience was getting my mother-in-law to teach me how to make lemon-curd. Simple and delicious and rather good for inter-family relationships!

I’ve heard it said that it's very important to keep learning new things if we want to keep our minds alert. As I am sure you know already, it can also be a great way to make new and different friends. Making new friends and moving on is at the heart of the Bible stories we will be reading this coming Sunday (7th January) in our churches as we celebrate Epiphany.

Epiphany is when in the Christian calendar we remember how the Magi, (wise men) came from the east in search of the infant Jesus who they understood to be a new King. It’s thought that these Magi came from the Arabian desert, Mesopotamia or Persia, that is Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Kuwait or Iran in modern terms. They are associated with astrology and certainly in Matthew’s gospel it is their reading of the stars that has led them to find Jesus as the new King. From the biblical account it seems clear that the infant Jesus captures their hearts as they kneel before him and offer their gifts. But as T. S. Eliot imagines in his poem The journey of the Magi they also now find themselves ill at ease with their old ways of life, and their ancient religion, most probably, Zoroastrianism. Instead they take on something new. At Epiphany we see a multi-cultural, inter-religious relationship begin between a Jewish family from Palestine and Zoroastrians from what we now consider an Arab country. New friends and a new way of life. Such an honest, curious, life-changing encounter can still make the world a better place today. May 2018 bring us all many such experiences.