Sermon
delivered at All Saints’ Church, Whiteparish – Sunday 8 January 2025 – Epiphany
Sunday
Isaiah 60:1-6; Ephesians 3:1-12; Matthew 2:1-12
May I
speak in the name of the Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen
May I start this morning’s sermon by wishing you all a Very
Happy New Year and I look forward to continuing to minister to you in this
lovely church and parish for many years to come. A very special place indeed for Liz and I,
being where we got married just over eight years ago. How time races on!
As we enter this New Year let us continue to pray for peace
and prosperity not only in our own community and country but throughout the
world. Jesus came into the world to
bring light to a dark world and to proclaim the coming of the Kingdom of God
and so, as we enter 2025 let us, as his Christian Family do all we can to make
that dream a reality.
Last year, I took this same service with its same readings
and chose to concentrate on the gospel passage describing the coming of the
Magi – who are more commonly described as wise men, astrologers or even
kings. Last year we looked at where they
might have come from, and what celestial object they might have actually observed
in the night sky which led them to travel from, possibly, Babylon to
Bethlehem. I am still intrigued by what
it was, comet, planetary conjunction or was it simply supernatural. I am intending to put together an
astronomical talk on the subject for a future occasion, but today, as we enter
2025, a year which I think will see some monumental global changes, I would
like to concentrate on the passage of scripture from Paul’s letter to the
Church in Ephesus which we heard read out this morning.
I think it would be helpful and interesting if I read out
that passage again, but this time from Eugene Petersen’s paraphrased
translation of the Bible known as “The Message”:
1-3 This is why I, Paul, am in jail for Christ, having
taken up the cause of you outsiders, so-called. I take it that you’re familiar
with the part I was given in God’s plan for including everybody. I got the
inside story on this from God himself, as I just wrote you in brief.
4-6 As you read over what I have written to you, you’ll
be able to see for yourselves into the mystery of Christ. None of our ancestors
understood this. Only in our time has it been made clear by God’s Spirit
through his holy apostles and prophets of this new order. The mystery is that
people who have never heard of God and those who have heard of him all their
lives (what I’ve been calling outsiders and insiders) stand on the same ground
before God. They get the same offer, same help, same promises in Christ Jesus.
The Message is accessible and welcoming to everyone, across the board.
7-8 This is my life’s work: helping people understand and
respond to this Message. It came as a sheer gift to me, a real surprise, God
handling all the details. When it came to presenting the Message to people who
had no background in God’s way, I was the least qualified of any of the
available Christians. God saw to it that I was equipped, but you can be sure
that it had nothing to do with my natural abilities.
8-10 And so here I am, preaching and writing about things
that are way over my head, the inexhaustible riches and generosity of Christ.
My task is to bring out in the open and make plain what God, who created all
this in the first place, has been doing in secret and behind the scenes all
along. Through followers of Jesus like yourselves gathered in churches, this
extraordinary plan of God is becoming known and talked about even among the
angels!
11-13 All this is proceeding along lines planned all along
by God and then executed in Christ Jesus. When we trust in him, we’re free to
say whatever needs to be said, bold to go wherever we need to go. So don’t let
my present trouble on your behalf get you down. Be proud!
The essence of Paul’s message is that he finds himself in
prison for preaching a new message, one seeming to be at variance to ancient
Hebrew teaching and he refers to those who have changed their theology into
understanding and following Christ, as well as those who have not yet even
heard of Jesus as “outsiders”. Paul is reminding his readers, and thereby
through the study of the biblical scripture to us, that Christ came into the
world for everyone, not just those who felt chosen by following the law, but
very much those who appeared to be outsiders – the poor, the sinners, the sick
and so on. Those who seemed to be on the
outside of society just as the early followers had been placed on the outside
through their following Christ instead of simply following Hebrew law and
tradition.
This is emphasised, I believe, by those who were given
special notice of Christ’s coming into the world – the shepherds out in the
fields – shepherds were especially despised and looked upon as the lowest of
the low and the Magi who werer foreigners – outsiders pure and simple.
It always gives me such comfort that the light – Jesus –
came for the poor and outcast of the world.
“The word was made flesh and dwelt amongst us” as John puts it at
the beginning of his Gospel. “The
light shines in the darkness and the darkness does not overwhelm it; but the
darkness does not understand it”
This leads me to say, once again, something about how
Paul’s words and the Epiphany story have such a great significance and
relevance to us today – some 2,000 years later. Indeed, as we see global
politics polarising more and more with the left wing and the right wing seeming
to divide further and further apart, we see, through the influence of the
media, social and public, people flocking to their own kind - a type of herding
instinct often without discernment; something which I have mentioned before and
which the journalist James O’Brien has termed “footballing” - taking the
example of the tribal nature of football fans for the way in which we stick to
our own group come what may.
Everywhere in the world today we see people “footballing”
creating cultures of “them and us”. To
some extent that is human nature but is it the true nature of Christianity? Are
we not better than that?
Daily I pray for discernment – to be able to see the light
of True Christianity from the darkness of so many Fake Doctrines. The birth of Jesus was meant to break the
“Them and Us” culture by abolishing the word “Them” for ever, leaving only with
a society of “Us”.
He came for all – rich and poor, homegrown and
foreigner. We seem, today, to live in a
deeply divided and ungodly world. Once
more a very dark world with war and conflict between nations as well as civil
wars both over territory and culture/doctrine. Our Western culture seems to be dominated
by selfishness and self-centredness. Instead of being in a state of
self-awareness we seem to be living in a world of self-righteousness and blame
with people using terms like “woke” in a derogatory manner to discredit often
genuine concerns for people who are different from ourselves. Very often people look to blame others
because they cannot bring themselves to examine their own lives and sins.
So, in conclusion, in addition to prayer for the world and
the darkness of war, conflict, famine, climate change and natural disasters is
there an area of pain and darkness in your own life or the life of your family
and friends or community? How can you
ask God to bring his light within it to shine away the fear which that darkness
brings? How will you seek out that light
– be it bright or dim in your life just now? Finally, what will you do to bring
God’s message, the Good News, to those who haven’t heard it or who have
rejected it? How will you bring an outsider into the warmth of God’s love?
Let us pause for a moment and reflect upon this – PAUSE –
Let us pray
God of
light, we thank you that you are present everywhere, even when we cannot see
you. As the Wise Men saw the unusual light in night sky all those years ago and
followed it to Jesus please shine your light into the difficult places of the
world and our lives, and help us to listen and help those who are different
from ourselves to know and love you.
Amen
MFB/210/04012025
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