SERMON 36 - SUNDAY 29 DECEMBER 2013

Sermon at St. Mary’s Parish Church, Alderbury  – Team Eucharist - Sunday 29 December 2013

Isaiah 63:7-9;  Hebrews 2:10-18; Matthew 2:3-23

May I speak in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  Amen

Have you all had a Happy and Blessed Christmas?  I don’t know about you, but Christmas seems to take so long in arriving, with all the trappings of Christmas being found in our shops almost before the Summer has finished and then, after just a couple of days, Christmas Day itself and Boxing Day, it’s all over and we are eating cold left-overs for several weeks thereafter.  It is a strange time, between Christmas and New Year, when we look back at what has happened over 2013 and we start making those promises about what we will do, or not do, in the New Year.

The Church Calendar is also peculiar at this time as our gospel reading today is that difficult one about the Slaughter of the Innocents and the flight of Mary, Joseph and the infant Jesus into Egypt – and yet we don’t celebrate the arrival of the Magi, at Epiphany, for several more days.

Leading up to Christmas and on Christmas Day itself we celebrate Jesus’s birth in Bethlehem and we sing about lowing cattle and a baby who is so good he doesn’t even cry. We have shepherds coming with their gifts and, probably a little out of chronological context, three wise men arriving with exotic presents from the east.  A lovely story told year after year in little school playlets videoed by adoring parents. Indeed, the one time when the story of God’s incarnation reaches many people who probably never lift up a bible let alone read it and probably have little understanding of incarnation and salvation.  And now, when the large congregations have gone, we read of the darker side to the story – of a tyrant puppet king who, in trying to ensure the death of this little baby to secure his own succession, gives orders to kill every male child in the Bethlehem area under two years of age.  A terrible piece of genocide.

In all probability, as Bethlehem in those days was probably really a village no bigger than West Grimstead, the number of children who were put to the sword was probably no higher than 20 yet it illustrates the danger with which the ruling authorities viewed this infant child – a real danger to the stability of the Roman-collaborating Jewish hierachy.

Dreams feature a lot in the bible – remember Joseph and Daniel’s gift of interpretation of kingly dreams in the Hebrew bible - and in our gospel reading today both the wise men and Joseph are warned not to return to Judea. In the case of Joseph and Mary they are told to actually go into Egypt, the very country from which the Exodus had occurred all those centuries previously.  Poor Mary, how she must have been confused – first told by an angel that she will bear the Son of God, vilified by her close family and friends when she became pregnant, nearly rejected by her fiancé, Joseph, made to make an 80 miles journey to a town in the south she did not know, finding that all the hotels in that town were fully booked and then given a highly unsanitary room in which to give birth to this special child. 

Following the visit of some shepherds, and perhaps the wise men too – although it is likely that they would have appeared later – she treasures up all these memories of how special the birth is being treated – Joseph then informs her that they have to flee into a foreign country – the very country where their ancestors had been slaves.  Not a very propitious start for the life of the Son of God, the Messiah. It certainly didn’t seem that God’s favour was shining on any of them.

It has often been said that bad news is best buried under good news. I think this often happens at Christmas too.  As we sit here, replete after the festivities of Christmas in our comfortable western world, Christians are being persecuted and killed in huge numbers in other parts of the world and these stories often don’t hit our headlines in the way they might if the same things were happening here. In the South Sudan, a new country is still coming to terms with its political and religious agendas.  Millions of Christians in China are forbidden to celebrate Jesus’s birth unless they abide by strict state legislation in state registered and approved churches where the Good News of the gospel is sanitised to ensure that it doesn’t compromise Communist Doctrine.  Little has changed really, Bethlehem itself remains a divided city today with the conflicting claims of Jews, Christians and Muslims, situated on the west bank of the Jordan in Palestinian territory. 

The beginning of Jesus’s life, therefore, was as troubled as it was during Holy Week.  In the words of theologian Tom Wright - Matthew reminds us, and it is an important reminder, that God’s personal redeeming activity had, from the first to make its way in the disorderly and dangerous real world of violence and conspiracy.”

Egypt plays an important link between our Old Testament and Epistle readings and the gospel.  Isaiah reminds his readers that it was God’s saving presence there, through the prophet Moses, that had saved the Jewish people from slavery in years gone by and that God would come again, by his own presence, to save them. The writer of Hebrews, in our second reading, talks about redemption through Jesus sharing in the same problems and troubles as the people.  This is a clear message – a golden thread which must run through our Faith – that God came down as man to redeem the world, to save us by sharing in our suffering and suffering himself for us.  It is therefore not surprising that shortly after his birth he should have to flee with his parents. 

As I read the Hebrews passage in preparation for this sermon I was reminded of a famous piece of newsreel shown during the Second World War.  I hasten to add that I am too young to remember it personally, but I do have a great interest in that conflict and in particular trying to fathom out human’s inhumanity towards itself.  That piece of newsreel shows King George VI and Queen Elizabeth examining the bomb-damaged Buckingham Palace which received no less than seven hits including the destruction of the Palace’s chapel.  After the most serious of these raids, in 1940, the famous newsreel was published in which the Queen is heard to declare “I’m glad we have been bombed. Now I feel I can look the East End in the face”.  

The East End, being close to London Docks, had been the first and most consistent target of the German bombers during the years of the Blitz and the Palace may have felt remote by comparison.

Jesus’s life and ministry was to share the despair of his people. To again bring salvation – but in a very different way to that which was expected by the Jewish religious leaders.  Ultimately he was to bring down the Jewish barriers between the sinful people and God.

It is during this Christmas period that the prophecies of the Old Testament are so important in confirming the true identity of Jesus.  Matthew refers to Jesus’s flight to Egypt as fulfilling another prophesy – he refers to Hosea 11.1 which reads “Out of Egypt I called my Son”. This and his birth in Bethlehem, also foretold in the Old Testament by Micah (5.2) are clear examples of prophesies being fulfilled.

As we now enter the New Year, we shall move away from the celebrations and tribulation surrounding Jesus’s birth and flight and during the next four months we head towards the other bookend of Christ’s life and ministry – the Passion and the fulfilment of the most important prophesy of all – that Jesus was sent, as the Son of God, to die for our sins and give us eternal life and leave us all with the Holy Spirit.

Let us pray:

 

Almighty God,

We thank you for sending your Son, Jesus Christ, to redeem the World

As we ponder on these pieces of Scripture let us remember that he shared our suffering so that we could bear whatever burden we might be asked to bear

That he came into the World so that through his death he might destroy the one who has the power of death and be an atonement for all our sins because he himself was tested by what he suffered

And that being alive and reigning with you is able to help those of us who are even now being tested.

Amen

SERMON 35 - SUNDAY 15 DECEMBER 2013

Sermon at St. John’s Parish Church, West Grimstead  – Parish Eucharist - Sunday 15 December 2013

Isaiah 35:1-10; James 5:7-10; Matthew 11:2-11

May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be always acceptable to you, O God.  Amen

As a child, these last few weeks before Christmas would conjure up two great emotions – frustration and the excitement which comes with anticipation.  The frustration was brought about by what seemed an indeterminable wait – Christmas never seemed to get any closer and the school term seemed to stretch on for ever and ever and ever – and the great anticipation of the hope and joy that the special present I had asked the real Father Christmas in Hull to bring me (we didn’t call him “Santa” – that was too American in our household and I was convinced that the real St. Nicholas could only be found in Hammonds store in Hull) would duly arrive under the Christmas tree.  Today, for me, Christmas seems to come around exceedingly quickly and as for hoping for that special present, well it is no longer a great issue for me – the special present we now hope for is that our children have a lovely time.

The three readings we heard today are linked by those same emotions – the frustration we often associate with waiting and the anticipation of the joy which will come about at some future time.

In our first reading, Isaiah is prophesying to those same exiled Jews to whom he had said earlier in Isaiah 6 that the Lord would “stop up their ears and shut their eyes”.  You will recall how the author of the book of Isaiah earlier described having a vision in which God asked who would go to his people with this unhappy message and Isaiah had replied “Here I am, Send me!” It is a popular piece of scripture at ordination and licensing services. The message is also captured in the hymn we often sing on those occasions, “I the Lord of Sea and Sky”.

Back in Isaiah 6, the Jews, who had been taken into captivity in Babylon after the fall of the Temple and City of Jerusalem, were given this terrible message and when Isaiah asked how long this would continue he was told in Isaiah 6.11 – “Until cities lie waste, without inhabitant and houses without people and the land utterly desolate” – In other words a long time.  In fact the Exile lasted for around 70 years and when the Jews did finally return with Ezra it was to find Jerusalem pretty much in the condition just described.

But in our reading in Isaiah 35, the prophet is now telling the exiled Jews that the long wait will come to an end and result in the reversal of all those things he was told by God to tell them would happen.  In our reading this morning he now says that “the eyes of the blind shall be opened and the ears of the deaf will be unstopped”. The period of the exile, of being in the wilderness, will end and that there will be rejoicing and singing – another hymn springs to mind - “You will go out with Joy”. But it took seventy years before the prophesy could be fulfilled.

The stories of the Hebrew bible are constantly ones of the Jews waiting for something to happen and often when they try and force the issue God’s wrath seems to be generated – for example, Abraham was told that he would found a great nation and that his descendants would be more numerous than the heavens – but he tried to force the issue by sleeping with his slave girl Hagar who was later sent into the wilderness with her son Ismael; David wanted Bathsheba, the wife of his good friend and brother-in-arms Uriah to produce an heir to the throne of Israel, and resorted to murder to cover his adultery.  The result was to cost the life of the illegitimate son and the delay in the building of the Temple. Time and time again, whenever God’s hand has been forced against his Will, things simply go wrong – wrong as far as we are concerned.

In our Gospel reading, John the Baptist is in a dark place. He has been imprisoned and, as we know, will eventually lose his head. He hears news of what Jesus is doing and his mind must have gone back to the prophesy of Isaiah – the blind will see and the deaf will hear.  News of the coming of the Messiah was long overdue.  And it is indeed very interesting that Matthew in this passage talks about “when John heard what the Messiah was doing” not Jesus or Christ but the Messiah.  John must have thought that the long wait was indeed over but still sent his disciples to Jesus to ask whether he was indeed the one who is to come - or did they have to wait for another?

Isaiah’s prophesy took some 400 years to be fulfilled in its entirety. 

But if Jesus could heal the sick, make the blind see and the deaf hear then why could he not or more precisely did he not free John from prison?  Surely that would have been an easy task for the Messiah.

And that, in the words of former Bishop of Durham, Tom Wright,  leads us to the “dark mystery of the ‘now-but-not-yet’ of the gospel” – both in Jesus’s ministry and after the resurrection – hence James’s call to Advent-style patience. 

I love the Book of James – his no nonsense black and white style and his clear pragmatic viewpoint on life and faith.  James harks back to the prophets of the Old Testament and praises them for their endurance.  And such praise is justified for the Jewish people went round and round and round – not only in their wanderings in the wilderness but also at times in their Faith as they conquered and were conquered.  No wonder God sent his only Son – he had tried time and time again through the prophets to keep his people on the straight and narrow and time and time again they failed. But God is patient with us when we don’t answer him and we, likewise, must be patient with Him when we pray and wait for our prayers to be answered.

This modern technological world has changed us greatly.  When I first started work in a lawyer’s office in the 70s I would dictate a letter, wait for it to come back from my secretary of the typing pool, correct it if needs be and then eventually send it off in the post.  Some five to seven days later I would get a response – possibly longer.  Today, that same message would be sent by email typed by me personally and I could expect a response within the hour.  That is how our patience has changed.  We no longer want to wait for anything – and this has led to terrible over extensions of credit.  My children now see the latest gadget and it takes quite a lot to convince them that often they must wait.

God often has a completely different time scale to us – he must also become frustrated with us too.  For example, my call to ministry came a good year, probably two, before I did anything about it. I kept putting it off and off until the nagging became more of a shout.  Once called, and after I did something about it and started training and so on, I then asked myself and God through prayer, why had he called me to this ministry so late in my life?  I am still figuring that one out but in all probability it has much to do with his desire to form me into the person he needed to do that ministry and that my lengthy formative years were as much about carrying out his ministry, it’s not mine, in the places I found myself then.  I am also grappling with and praying to try and discern where he might want to place me in the future.  But I have a great sense of calm and serenity about that because I know that, in the words of Jeremiah 29:11 he knows what plans he has for me and each and every one of us – but we must be patient – not like my wife who goes around feeling all the presents under the Christmas tree.  All will be revealed at the right time.

But that doesn’t mean that we should abdicate all responsibility and do nothing whilst we await God to reveal his plans for us.  He very much wants us to get on with life and to act towards Him and each other in accordance with the Great Commandments which Jesus left us – “To love God with all our hearts and to love one another as he has loved us”.  In other words, to continue to do his work on earth. 

In a few days time we will celebrate Jesus’s birth.  In our hymns and carols we sing about the nativity and about his crucifixion and resurrection.  We sing about his coming for our salvation – but we should never forget all the other aspects of his ministry which he did over those three short years – ministry prophesied by Isaiah, Jeremiah Malachi and other Old Testament prophets.  A ministry which he has left us to continue here with the aid of the Holy Spirit.  As James says, the farmer nurtures his crops, he does indeed wait for the rain and the sun to do their work before harvesting, but he must also weed and tend to them too.

So as we wait for Jesus’s coming, let us remember that patience is indeed a virtue.  Let us listen out for God’s voice in those moments when the hustle and bustle of daily life slows down sufficiently to give us the time to re-connect with Him. 

Let us pray:

Almighty Father,

At this time you remind us once more of the joy you gave to the world in the coming of your Son, Lord Jesus Christ.

As we wait for the time when he will come again confirm our faith and fix our eyes on him until that day dawns

And Christ the Morning Star rises in our hearts.

Amen

 

SERMON 34 - SUNDAY 1 DECEMBER 2013

Sermon at All Saints Parish Church, Whiteparish, Evensong  – First Sunday in Advent - Sunday 1 December 2013

Psalm 9; Isaiah 52:1-12; Matthew 24:15-28

May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be always acceptable to you, O God.  Amen

Today is, as we all know, the first Sunday in Advent and begins a month’s long wait until Christmas Day. A period of waiting with great anticipation – a time of preparation whether you are a Christian or not because it brings with it those stressful shopping trips (well they are for me), the Christmas card writing, trying to think what to buy Aunt Agatha or that 14-year old grandson or nephew.  These next four weeks are probably the most stressful many will experiences other than a bereavement, marriage breakdown, job loss or change or house move.  It is a well documented fact, unfortunately, that Christmas brings with it, quite often, many family and marriage breakdowns in the New Year.  Not a very happy picture is it?  And the reading we heard from Matthew this evening does little to improve the mood – being part of a much longer speech by Jesus to his disciples prophesying the sacrilege and final destruction of the Temple and the suffering which will accompany the final times.

On the face of it, therefore, this seems to be an incredibly odd reading to have on the day when we light the first of the five Advent candles – the Candle of Hope.  It seems on reflection, that Jesus is indicating that there will be little hope for many at the end of the age.

Since March of this year I have waited with great anticipation the arrival of what has been heralded by many as the Comet of the Century.  Comet ISON was discovered as a dim smudge well out beyond the solar system but appeared to be remarkable in that it was extremely large and was heading directly towards the Sun.  Astronomers, myself included, expected it to become a brilliant object as it passed around the Sun and proceeded on its way.  During the last three weeks I have scanned the early morning dawn sky for a glimpse of it – but to no avail and when it passed by the Sun on Thursday it appears to have broken up and the remnants certainly will not shine with anything like the brilliance the comet would have had if it had survived its solar encounter.

Comets appear regularly in our sky but usually you need to hunt for them if you are going to see anything – and then it is often nothing more than a smudge of gaseous light – only infrequently, and with much excitement will a comet be near enough and bright enough to be seen clearly with the naked eye – the last really bright one being Hale-Bopp in 1997.

The emergence of Comet ISON from a dim distant object into what was hoped to be a brilliant splash of light across the sky has reminded me that the first Sunday of Advent is traditionally a celebration of darkness into light – moving from the long period after Trinity Sunday towards the celebration of the light coming into the world on Christmas Day.  It has often been said that it is always darkest before the dawn and this is, I think, what Jesus is saying in Matthew.  To some extent it is an echo of the passage from Isaiah we heard in our first reading.

Isaiah is more upbeat but the situation and the times in which he was writing were, for the Jews at least, much more desperate.  Isaiah is writing at the time of the Great Babylonian Exile.  The Jewish people had largely been expelled from Judah and were living in Babylon.  They saw this as a punishment for their failure to adhere to the Godly laws given to Moses.  However, Isaiah in this passage reminds them that they were taken into captivity before – into Egypt as slaves and more recently by the Assyrians, yet God took them out of Egypt and he assures them that they will be restored to their lands again and Jerusalem will be rebuilt.  He prophesies that the return will not be like the hasty flight which accompanied the flight from Egypt or the Exile to Babylon but an orderly peaceful procession.  This message is repeated in Chapter 55 in the words of the famous song “You shall go out with joy and be led back in peace…”

Jesus’s message seems to be the complete opposite.  The beginning of Chapter 24 of Matthew starts with the disciples asking Jesus to look upon the Temple in all its glorious architecture.  In complete contrast to Isaiah, Jesus pronounces that the Temple will be destroyed so that no stone will be left one on top of another.  Here he is prophesying precisely what would happen in 70 AD when the Romans under Titus finally destroyed the city and Temple.  Jesus also predicts a hasty flight which was indeed what occurred. A complete contrast to Isaiah.

So what is the connection between these two passages and how do they link into the theme of today?

As so often happens, when faced with a difficult lectionary passage I can be tempted to put it aside and try and find something simpler but as I read these passages again and again, and indeed even discussed them with my house group – a message did begin to emerge.

Much of our world is in a deep darkness.  We hear on the news of wars and rumours of wars, death and destruction at the hands of tyrants, natural disasters such as flooding, typhoons, hurricanes, tornadoes and earthquakes.  Many charismatic Christians point to this peace of scripture and indicate that the “end is nigh”.  In fact, Christians and non-Christians alike have pointed to scripture to support their own view that the world must be coming to an end soon.  Indeed, 39 members of a religious cult in America called the Heaven’s Gate Cult committed mass suicide when Comet
Hale-Bopp appeared in the sky. 

Yes we are indeed living in the end times but not in the way these cults would have us believe.  Just as we celebrate the coming of Jesus at Christmas, we also await his second coming but until that occurs he asks us to live in hope, in the knowledge that we can continue to have a relationship with him through the power of the Holy Spirit if we seek out and maintain that relationship. God, Jesus is within us and through the power of the Holy Spirit we can produce those glimpses of the light of Christ in the world today.  We live in the end times because by his crucifixion and resurrection he punched a hole through between Heaven and Earth and we can see Heaven shining through – sometimes dimly like ISON when it was way off and sometimes like Hale-Bopp – illuminating the darkness.

Lights are more use in the darkness.  What use is there to carry a lighted torch in the middle of a summer’s the day.  Jesus asks us to carry a torch with us to light up the darkness.  His great disciple and apostle Peter also takes up this message in his first letter when he says to the new converts to Christianity. “You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvellous light” [1 Peter 2:9].

There is a wonderful poem by Robert Louis Stevenson which I had the privilege of hearing a great theologian once recite – and I want to quickly share it with you.  It is entitled “The Lamplighter” :

My tea is nearly ready and the sun has left the sky.

It's time to take the window to see Leerie going by;

For every night at teatime and before you take your seat,

With lantern and with ladder he comes posting up the street.

 

Now Tom would be a driver and Maria go to sea,

And my papa's a banker and as rich as he can be;

But I, when I am stronger and can choose what I'm to do,

O Leerie, I'll go round at night and light the lamps with you!

 

For we are very lucky, with a lamp before the door,

And Leerie stops to light it as he lights so many more;

And oh! before you hurry by with ladder and with light;

O Leerie, see a little child and nod to him to-night!

I have a very strong image of a Victorian foggy night with Leerie, the lamplighter, lighting the gas lamps one by one and, little by little illuminating, the dim foggy street – punching holes of light into the gloom.

Jesus will return, like a bright comet, but in the meantime we are left here to punch holes of light into this dark world with the torch provided by the Holy Spirit.  Dim comets may come and go but we must be ready for the big one.

As we embark upon Advent, and the coming of the great light, let’s do our bit to light the way for the kingdom of heaven – let’s bring the hope of that light to all we meet.

 Amen