SERMON 38 - SUNDAY 19 JANUARY 2014

Sermon at Winterslow Baptist Church – Sunday 19 January 2014

This sermon can also be heard shortly at http://winterslowbaptist.org.uk/

Genesis 39:20 – Genesis 40:23

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

“The Chief Cupbearer, however, didn’t remember Joseph; he forgot him”?

I don’t know about you, but whenever I am in a hurry to have a meal in a restaurant, the service is always so slow!  Just a few weeks ago I was with the family in Marrakech and on our last day, before finally going to the airport to catch our flight back, we decided, well it was my decision actually, that instead of paying for an expensive meal at the airport or having a cardboard meal on the plane, we would go along to our little restaurant along from the hotel and have a final meal.  We had about an hour to do this and so thought that we would have plenty of time.  We arrived at the restaurant, sat down, our order was taken quickly and bread and olives brought out to us.  Great, we thought, we’ll get a decent meal and then be on our way.  Half an hour passed, and no meal arrived; after another fifteen minutes or so and after prompting we were finally served and bolted down our meal in order to rush back to the hotel, pick up our bags and jump in a taxi to the airport.  During that time I was feeling anxious and kept wondering whether they had transmitted our order to the kitchen, or had they simply forgotten it or forgotten us!  All was well in the end but those moments were indeed anxious ones.

In our reading today, Joseph has to wait another two years, after receiving the hope that the cupbearer will remember him, before he is eventually released from prison.  What frustration that must have been for him, especially as he never stopped believing that God was there for him and wouldn’t forget him.

When David and Bob asked me to come along and preach to you today they let me have a completely free hand in the choice of topic.  In the Anglican Church, where I normally preach, we use a very strict rota of scripture readings from the Common Lectionary and many other churches use a series of theme readings.  The freedom to choose was, therefore, quite a challenging one for me.  There are 66 books in the bible upon which to base a scripture talk – 39 in the Old Testament and 27 in the New - and so often I find that sermons are based on either one of the gospels or one of Paul’s letters.  Seldom, do I find that a sermon is based on an Old Testament reading.  Yet the Old Testament is so rich in lessons which we can apply to today’s modern world and the scriptures which Jesus used in his teaching had to be based on the Old Testament, after all, he was constructing the New Testament himself in the ministry he was then doing on Earth.  The Old Testament is full of prophesies and stories which would have been ingrained in the minds of the Jews at Jesus’s time and, in particular, the Torah, or the first five books of the Hebrew bible, which is read completely every year just as with the Common Lectionary, the Anglican Church reads through one complete gospel every year.  Therefore, the story of Joseph would have been well known to them and its lessons studied.

I have heard many Christians say “I don’t do the Old Testament”  or “I can’t see the relevance of the Old Testament in today’s modern world” – but I think those are sad statements – I believe more than ever that many of the failures and bad things which appear to happen in the bible only go to show the depth of God’s grace to us all as flawed human beings and the story of Joseph is a remarkable story of perseverance and faithfulness.

I recently attended a bible study class at one of the larger churches in Salisbury and the story of Joseph came up.  A few people expressed how fanciful it was – and something which could never happen today – that Joseph, wrongly accused and thrown into prison could be released and soar to the heights of prime minister of Egypt, second only to Pharaoh in so short a time.  My response to that was just two words – “Nelson Mandela”!  Indeed, Mandela became not second in importance in the land like Joseph - but President of a new multi-racial South Africa within four years of his release.  So stories like Joseph can indeed have modern parallels.

But let’s look more closely at today’s reading and what we can learn from it for ourselves.

First of all, we learn that Joseph has been thrown into prison by his master.  Even before that he has had something of a roller-coaster experience.  Joseph was the favourite son of Jacob, son of Isaac, who had swindled his brother Esau out of his inheritance for a pot of stew and who, himself, had been deceived by his father-in-law.  Jacob favoured Joseph above all his other sons because he was born to him in his old age by his second wife, the beautiful Rachel.   Jacob gave him the famous “technicolour dreamcoat” and made no secret to his other children of his favouritism.  As if that wasn’t enough to invoke sibling rivalry and anger, Joseph, who had the gift of interpreting dreams, interpreted a dream he had himself and told this to his brothers. Not content with telling them the dream about eleven sheaves of corn bowing down to his sheaf he has to emphasise his superiority over his brothers by then telling them about a second dream in which eleven moons bow down to his son.  No wonder they hated him so much – not only the favoured one but also the conceited boastful one.

I am sure you all know the story well.  His brothers instead of killing him outright threw him into a well and then later changed their mind and sold him to the Ishmaelites – that wandering tribe descended from Abraham’s liaison with Hagar.   They in their turn sold him into slavery in Egypt to serve in the house of Potiphar, a senior official at Pharaoh’s court.

Joseph was seventeen at the time of his arrival at Potiphar’s house and it seems that he spent several years there becoming no mere slave but put in charge of everything Potiphar possessed, except his wife, who had her own ideas about that.  The next stage in Joseph’s life resembles that film “Disclosure” starring Michael Douglas and Demi Moore – a modern day story which is as old as the Old Testament – yet another example of the Old Testament pointing to the “here and now”.   Having avoided temptation, he is falsely accused of having tried to have a sexual relationship, or as we once tried to explain to the Junior Church, a “special cuddle” with Potiphar’s wife.  Note how Potiphar’s wife shifts the blame on to Potiphar himself when she exclaims “Look what YOUR servant has done”! 

Such a crime would normally have led to Joseph’s immediate execution but it appears that Potiphar either didn’t entirely believe his wife’s story or that he saw something exceptionally special in Joseph, that he has him put in a special prison reserved for the Pharaoh’s  special prisoners.

Once again we can only marvel at God’s grace towards Joseph in that the warder of the prison grants joseph special favours enabling him to attend upon other prisoners – a sort of trusty – and in that position he meets up with the cupbearer and the baker.

I have often wondered what these two officials had done to warrant being put in prison and can only surmise that maybe Pharaoh had had, at some time, an upset stomach or symptoms of food poisoning and therefore had concluded that either the bread or the wine had been responsible.  Whatever the reason, these two were now incarcerated with Joseph.

The next bit of the scriptural text is, I think very revealing about the character of Joseph.  He notices that the two men look dejected – in his serving both in Potiphar’s house and again in the prison, he has learned the importance of discerning need and anxiety.  I think this is a good lesson for us all – in the New Testament, Jesus tells us that he came to serve, not to be served, and part of that ability to serve is to be able to listen and act pastorally.  Joseph himself had spent a life in servitude – first as a shepherd, then as a slave and now as a prisoner.  In each of those positions he had been given added responsibilities and I can only conclude that this was because he showed compassion and humility for those he served.  Jesus, in washing his disciples feet displays that self-same character which we should all try and emulate – although at times it can be quite hard. 

The two officials are clearly troubled by their dreams but are frustrated because there is nobody who can interpret them.

At this point Joseph, who clearly knows that God has given him the gift for interpretation, could so easily have made some sort of a deal with the officials to his own advantage – he could have accentuated his position as a bridge between God and these prisoners but he does not do so.  He simply says to them – “Don’t interpretations belong to God?”  In other words, only God can properly and accurately interpret dreams and when he asks them to “Tell me your dreams” he is putting himself as an agent of God and not trying to enhance his position.

We would all do well to remember this. Whenever we feel pulled to undertake God’s call, whatever that may be, and to use the gifts which he has given us – and he has indeed given each and every one of us one or more gifts – we are to remember that and to act with humility and love without thought for ourselves

Joseph did not “strike a deal” but went ahead with the interpretations which, the case of the cupbearer was easy but in the case of the baker must have been extremely difficult.  Joseph simply says, at the end of the interpretations, to the cupbearer; remember me when you are restored to your position.  And he doesn’t!

We can only guess that the cupbearer was so overjoyed to be put back into his important position that he simply forget all about the dream and Joseph.  Maybe he didn’t know what sort of reaction he might get from Pharaoh if he asked him any further furthers – after all the baker’s head had been parted from the rest of his body – Pharaoh was quite capable of changing his mind and ending the cupbearer’s freedom again – he had done it once already.  We don’t know but we can only guess at how Joseph must have felt – probably thinking every day that his reprieve was imminent.

Another two years was to pass.  God wasn’t ready yet to release him – the time wasn’t quite right as we shall see.

I’d like you to take a couple of minutes to chat to your neighbour and share with them a time when you have felt that God had abandoned you or wasn’t listening or didn’t answer your immediate prayer – and then having done that, perhaps share with your partner what the final outcome was…………………..

I’d like to share with you just one of many instances when that has happened to me.  I once applied for a judicial position which would have meant me having to give up my current employment.  Had I been successful it is unlikely that I would have met my wife and even more unlikely, I believe, that I would have been put in a place where I was able to fulfil a call to God’s ministry – but at the time I felt that an important door had been locked to me and that God was not answering my prayers.

I have no doubt that Joseph prayed constantly to God to be released.  It took Pharaoh having dreams and the cupbearer remembering the man who could interpret them to bring Joseph out of his cell.  The time was perfect for the dreams were such that Joseph could not only interpret them but could also provide this king with a solution to the forthcoming disaster.  Had the cupbearer remembered and called for Joseph’s release earlier it is probable that Pharaoh would have either ignored the plea or if he had released Joseph, Joseph would not have been of any importance and not in any position to save the country from famine.

The story of Joseph is one which can inspire us all and which can help us to keep our faith when times can seem grim.  The one main theme which runs through these chapters of Genesis is that of hope and perseverance.  These are admirable qualities in these days of fast consumerism when we are judged by our outward wealth and apparent contentment – but often keeping up with others, trying to climb the greasy pole of success and above all trying to plan and structure our lives and take control ourselves – can lead to burn out, frustration and unbelievable stress.

As Christians we can all take a leaf out of Joseph’s book.  Patience and prayer; faithfulness and friendship of Jesus; compassion and comprehension for others – trusting that God has a plan for all of us – in the words of Jeremiah 29 “not to harm us” and at those times when we most feel forgotten, as Joseph must have on several occasions – we can remember those wonderful words from Hebrews “Never will I leave you; Never will I forsake you”

We would all do well to remember those words whenever the going gets tough.

Amen

 

SERMON 37 - SUNDAY 12 JANUARY 2014

Sermon at St. Mary’s Parish Church, West Dean and St. John’s Parish Church West Grimstead – Morning Praise - Sunday 12 January 2014

Isaiah 42:1-9;  Acts 10:34-43; 2:10-18; Matthew 3:13-end

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

It is one of those quirks of the Church’s calendar that Jesus’s baptism by John in the River Jordan is placed before Candlemas when, as a child, he is presented in the Temple.  One would have thought that it ought to be the other way round – certainly chronologically.  However, as with so many things, theological, the emphasis is placed this way round for a specific reason.

We can divide Jesus’s life up into five episodes – 1. His birth which we celebrate at Christmas with the accompanying period of the Epiphany with the adoration of the Magi,  - 2. His early life with his family in Nazareth, probably learning carpentry skills as well as how to run a successful business – his later parables clearly indicate some knowledge of business acumen – the parable of the talents, lost coins, house building etc. ,  - 3. His ministry with his disciples over a fairly short period of three years – 4. The Passion – crucifixion and resurrection – and 5. The post-resurrection period leading to his final ascension into heaven.

With the exception of Christmas, we tend to concentrate heavily on number 3 – and the lessons which he taught us and which we frequently study in our house groups to try and understand what it was like to be around in Jesus’s time and understand how his ministry continues to affect our lives today.

Jews and Muslims just see Jesus as a prophet and many non-Christians as perhaps simply a good man/teacher – but as Christians it is axiomatic to our belief and faith that the readings of today form their very root.

John’s baptism of Jesus can so easily be seen as a mere starting point of the story. As we know, the first written gospel, that of Mark, starts right at the beginning with John the Baptist’s ministry and Jesus’s baptism.  No angelic visitation for Mary, no fully occupied hotels in Bethlehem, no manger, no lowing cattle – not even a baby that doesn’t cry.  No wise men, no star in the east or anywhere else for that matter.  Mark jumps straight in with Jesus’s baptism.  The significance of which becomes very clear when we look into the prophesies of the Old Testament.

Quite often I hear from Christians, often the more evangelical ones, that they “don’t ‘do’ the Old Testament”.  The God of genocide and smiting doesn’t fit in easily with the love of God and the teachings of grace and forgiveness – as though there are two Gods – a nice one and a nasty one.  Mark, in his no nonsense narrative-way wants to get straight into Jesus’s ministry with an acknowledgement that the Holy Spirit was very much part of that.

These three readings all hang together well. 

When practising law I make a very clear statement to my clients, at the beginning of any case, that it must all work together like a stick of rock.  Some people like to use the analogy of a golden thread but having been brought up in and lived most of my life in seaside towns, I prefer the stick of rock idea. 

Our statements and evidence, as presented to the court - whether prosecuting or defending, must be consistent.  If at any time there are discrepancies or inconsistencies, there is a strong chance that the case will fall apart. If we buy a stick of rock from Bournemouth, we expect that when we bite into it the word “Bournemouth” will appear right down to the last bite – we don’t expect “Brighton” to suddenly appear in the middle!  In all our readings today we see “Bournemouth” – well actually probably “Bethlehem”.  The baptism is a continuation of the message written by the author of Isaiah and continued as a message from Peter to Cornelius so that message continues right up until today – 12^th January 2014.

The baptism is a strong message to the Jews which later translates for the Gentiles.  In a recent house group I attended in West Dean, we looked again and again at parallels between the stories of the Old Testament and Jesus’s ministry.  The stick of rock was strong and consistent wherever we bit into it – feeding the five thousand, walking on water and especially the baptism.  And that for us Christians, is re-assuring and comforting.

Isaiah is prophesying that the Messiah, the chosen one, will be revealed when the Holy Spirit lights upon him – “Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen one in whom I delight. I will put my Spirit on him”.  It could almost be another translation of today’s Gospel passage.

We have to remember that in Jesus’s time they did not have the scriptures which we Christians have and use today.  The New Testament was still being formed and that the stories we have in it are written many years after the events.  The baptism of Jesus is such an important event, theologically, that it appears, unlike every story, in all four gospels – and especially in John who wrote more from a theological point of view than a biographical one.

John the Baptist is reticent about baptising Jesus – “surely”, he says “you should be baptising me” but it was necessary for John to do this otherwise we would have “Brighton” and not “Bournemouth” in our stick of rock.

I have, in the past, found it strange that the Son of God should be baptised – after all, why should that be necessary when we have the Trinity – one for all and all for one!  Yet this was a public declaration of his status, as the true Messiah, as prophesied in Isaiah.  It was also necessary for John to do this as John, it was also prophesied, would be the one who was to come first – to proclaim the way of the Lord – again to fulfil the prophesy and which John, the apostle,  at the beginning of his gospel, is at great pains to point out.  – The reading which we hear every Christmas morning.

But it doesn’t stop there. In our reading from Acts, the message is taken further – into the world of the Gentiles.  Peter is speaking to Cornelius and his household, one of the very first, Gentiles to convert to Christianity.  Cornelius, a Roman centurion, had a vision that he and his family should convert to Christianity – well ahead of any other Romans – and it was probably quite a dangerous thing to do in those days. It is because Peter has been filled with the Holy Spirit at Pentecost and had started his own ministry of healing that he is able to bestow that gift of the Holy Spirit through baptism to those whom, like Cornelius, had asked for it. 

Matthew clearly believed that Jesus’s baptism fulfilled the prophesy of Isaiah.  Peter in his act of baptising Cornelius and his household proclaims the truth about Jesus as the Messiah – bearing witness to the fact that Israel’s God has indeed “brought the people to this strange truth” – as Tom Wright puts it.

But doesn’t this also put out a challenge to us?  Those of us who have been baptised?  Matthew would expect us to go forward and teach and preach and bring others to that “strange truth” wouldn’t he?

As baptised members of the church it is our duty to profess our faith openly and enthusiastically.  To make others be like Cornelius, longing to be baptised to be filled with the Holy Spirit just as Jesus was on that day by the banks of the Jordan.

Before we re-affirm our faith in the words of the Creed, let’s take a moment’s silence to reflect upon the responsibilities and duties we, as baptised members of Christ’s Church, have and how we can each carry them out to God’s greater glory.

Amen

 

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

SERMON 33 - SUNDAY 24 NOVEMBER 2013

Sermon at Holy Trinity Church, East Grimstead – Christ the King Sunday - Sunday 24 November 2013

Psalm 72; Jeremiah 23:1-6; Colossians 1:11-20; Luke 23:33-43

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

Today is, as we have seen, the last Sunday before Advent and is traditionally the day when we celebrate Christ as our King – the one to whom we pray, frequently – “Your Kingdom Come” in the words of the prayer which he left us.  But what exactly does that mean?  And especially, what does that term mean to you and to me?  In the next few minutes I’d like to explore those questions further.

Many terms are used to describe Jesus in the bible – Lord, Saviour, King, Messiah, Emmanuel and so on.  Indeed, Jesus was all of these things but above all he came to save us from our sins by dying on the Cross – a Cross upon which the Roman authorities, in the form of Governor Pontius Pilate, had placed, as a description of his crime, “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews”.  The Jewish authorities had denounced Jesus to the Romans as a traitor of the Roman Empire by stating that Jesus claimed kingship over a Jewish people who had, as their ruler, a puppet King beholden to Caesar already. When questioned by Pilate during his trial as to whether he was indeed a King he responded that his Kingdom was not from this Earth – something which we Christians now understand but which puzzled and concerned the Roman Governor.

Today we live in a world of relatively few monarchies.  In just under a year’s time we will be commemorating the 100^th anniversary of the outbreak of the First World War in 1914.  At that time Europe was largely governed by a plethora of Royal and Imperial families – in Russia, Germany, Turkey, the Balkans, Scandanavia, United Kingdom -whose colonising extended sovereign or imperial rule much farther afield – notably in Africa, the Middle East and parts of Asia.  It has to be said that the fall of many of those imperial dynasties and royal families was brought about by a realisation that absolute monarchy was no longer suitable to nations which craved some measure of democratic rule.  The absolute rule of monarchs was something which could no longer be tolerated to enlightened people.

It is interesting to reflect that in the Old Testament we read that originally the Hebrew nation had been governed by Judges but the supreme ruler had always been Yahweh/Jehovah – the one true and living God of Abraham, Jacob and Moses.  God was the King not only in Heaven but on Earth. Yet the Jewish people had sought and were given a King (Saul) to rule over them and ultimately their system of monarchy became divided and fell with the people being taken into exile.  God had warned the people, through Samuel that one day they would “cry out for relief from the king they have chosen and the LORD will not answer you on that day” [1 Samuel 8:18]. And so, eventually they were taken into captivity by the Babylonians and ultimately ruled by the Romans after a succession of bad kings and foreign occupations.  So, the idea of earthly kings has not, in biblical terms, been an entirely happy one.  Furthermore, the absolute authority of some tyrant kings in our more modern day history has not been without a great deal of accompanying suffering. 

Now let me make it clear, I am not a republican!  When I use the term “king” I use the term loosely to encompass many autocratic rulers or unfair systems of totalitarian government which have existed.  Those monarchies that have survived have done so because they have realised that they need to rule within a democratic constitution.

I have recently come back from a holiday where I had the uninterrupted opportunity to read a fascinating book of speeches and sermons by former Archbishop Desmond Tutu entitled “God is Not a Christian”.  This rather bizarre title is easily understood when you read the speeches and sermons from which this phrase is taken – Desmond Tutu says that God is not the sole property of Christians but because he created the world and all that is within it, he is the God of everyone and everything.  Many of his speeches and sermons contained in the book are concerned with criticising the Apartheid system in South Africa – an unjust system perpetrated by an unjust regime.  Quite often, he refers, in the arguments he had with the regime to Psalm 72 the first lines of which reads

Endow the king with your justice, O God,

The royal son with your righteousness.

He will judge your people in righteousness

Your afflicted ones with justice

The mountains will bring prosperity to the people

The hills the fruit of righteousness.

He will defend the afflicted among the people

And save the children of the needy

He will crush the oppressor.

He will endure as long as the sun

As long as the moon, through all generations.

Tutu says that, any ruler or regime which shows these qualities has no need of extensive or oppressive security forces to keep it in control – the people will themselves want to ensure that such a regime prospers and continues in power.  The Archbishop was often cited by members of the Apartheid government of South Africa as being a Communist sympathiser and was accused of quoting from Communist literature. I think it came as quite a shock to them that his manifesto, if that was what they wanted to think of it as, was actually taken from scripture contained in the bibles on which many of the Apartheid supporting politicians would have sworn an oath of allegiance!

When I was made a Freeman of the City of London I was obliged to swear an oath of allegiance to Queen Elizabeth and to the Lord Mayor and Common Council of the City.  But above this, I was first and foremost to swear obedience to God – in other words to my Heavenly King – and to me that also means reading and following scripture and particularly the words of Jesus in the gospels.

Jesus was crucified because he spread the news about the kingdom of heaven – no earthly domain but a place where the king of David’s psalm would rule with that justice and compassion which was spoken of.

The two robbers on each side of Jesus couldn’t have been more different.  The first, who taunted Jesus to save himself if he was truly Christ – meaning, in Greek, “the anointed one” the king and son of God - had completely missed the point – unlike the second robber who actually received more than he asked for.  Realising that Jesus was indeed what he claimed to be, and knowing that he himself deserved the punishment of crucifixion meted out to him, he simply asks Jesus to remember him when he reaches the kingdom of heaven and probably was thinking in terms of some form of redemption at a future time; but he gets far more than he asked for, for Jesus responds that the criminal will enter paradise with him that day. 

The importance of this passage is, I think, that Jesus is demonstrating that the kingdom of heaven is not something in the future and he is not the monarch of some future kingdom but he has authority as the king of heaven today – at the present time.

I fear that many people today, many Christians, think in terms of heaven as a place to which they aspire to go by the good works they do – to earn a place in the kingdom when their earthly life is over – by doing good works and generally being nice people.  

Of course there is nothing wrong in that as it stands, but I think as Christians, in contrast to simply being nice people, we are expected to live as though the kingdom of heaven is here – not to concentrate on finding a way to mount the staircase to heaven but to act and think in ways of bringing the kingdom of heaven down to earth now.

As we progress through Advent I think we need to think and reflect beyond the Nativity.  We need to remember that the Jesus of the manger was to have a short ministry of just over three years culminating in his cruel death and resurrection.  Those tiny hands and feet in the manger would, just three decades later, be driven through with those awful nails.  And we need to reflect upon the resurrection – which is the fundamental episode which, by our belief, defines us as Christians, and finally the Ascension and Pentecost when we were left with the means by which we can indeed be the subjects of a heavenly kingdom here on earth.

Empires and regimes may come and go, but Christ’s kingdom, will, in the words of Psalm 72, endure for so long as the sun rises and sets and the moon shines in the evening sky… and beyond.

Let us be kingdom people and acknowledge, daily, our service to that kingdom and our love and loyalty to Christ the King.

 

Amen

SERMON 32 - SUNDAY 10 NOVEMBER 2013

Sermon at St. John’s Church, West Grimstead - Remembrance Sunday - Sunday 10 November 2013

2 Thessalonians 2: 1-5; 13-End

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

Whenever I stand in silence for those two minutes on each Remembrance Sunday I not only remember those who have died in  those two World Wars and other conflicts since then, but I also reflect on the fact that I belong to a very privileged generation for whom those great and devastating wars are no more than pages in history books. Having been born only 8 years after the plutonium bomb was detonated over Nagasaki, I have lived in a period of relative peace and prosperity for which I regularly, through worship, give thanks to God.

When I was a child a regular event in our household was to watch the Royal British Legion’s Festival of Remembrance from the Royal Albert Hall on our small 9-inch black and white TV.  Back then in the 1960s a large number of veterans from World War I, together with veterans of my own parents’ age (or slightly older) from World War II, would march into the Arena.  They would include Chelsea Pensioners who had been at Gallipoli, Jutland, Ypres and so on – servicemen and women who had real and vivid memories of the horrors of war – who had seen, for themselves, comrades killed and companions maimed and many who had seen the legacy of evil and inhumane regimes in Europe and Asia.

As a child, the war held a great fascination for me and many of my schoolboy friends and invoked a great interest in modern history – especially as many of my friends’ parents and my own family members could remember vividly the Blitz and Battle of Britain – when the Second World War came to our shores. Today, whole generations have grown up having little or no understanding of those horrors although, of course, here in Wiltshire there are many families involved in the armed forces which, today, have personal experiences of the effects of warfare in far off lands; where our servicemen and women continue to fight for justice and peace. 

However, for many of our younger generation, there is no real concept of why those whose names are engraved on our war memorials gave up their lives.  Indeed, recently, during a discussion with a school friend of my 12-year old daughter, it became clear that she had no idea who Winston Churchill was, let alone the role he had played for this country in those dark days of the 1940s. 

Remembrance Sunday, then, is such an important occasion – not just for those veterans to recall what they went through or to remember companions who never survived the conflicts, but also so that those generations from my own onwards may clearly understand why so many lives were given,  and can continue to give praise and thanks that so many stemmed the tide of evil which could have so easily engulfed the world.

Today, those conflicts in which our troops are engaged are largely in far flung parts of the world and the issues which have provoked them are complex.  Again many young people have no real understanding or concept as to why or where these conflicts are taking place – indeed many adults, including some politicians it could be argued, don’t, either.  Although these modern conflicts may be remote, the battles now often fought with technology,  and the victims largely unknown to us, the horrors are still the same.

The true reality of those horrors perpetrated by the Nazis in World War 2 was brought home to me and to my 16-year old son, Thom, quite recently.  He and I spent a short break in Poland last summer and during our trip we arranged a visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau – the infamous extermination camp about 50 miles from Krakow in the south of the country.  In this terrible place, 2.3 million people were sent to the gas chambers – many from Western European occupied countries including the Channel Islands  - and to where an estimated 700,000 British Jews and other “undesirables” would have been sent had the Germans ever successfully invaded and occupied the United Kingdom. 

Thom had read about the Holocaust in history books but I don’t think had any concept of the scale of the atrocities committed in that one single camp.

As we approached Birkenau in our minibus, the first thing to be seen was the infamous Hell’s Gate – the railway gatehouse into the camp. His face dropped and his complexion was ashen.  He turned to me and simply said “Dad it’s in colour, it’s real!”  Up to that point he had only seen it in black and white photographs in history books. In that split second, his perception of the horrors of that evil regime turned from the recorded pages of history to the reality of the suffering and horrors beyond that real gate.

And so, the importance of today cannot and should not ever be trivialised.  We owe it to forthcoming generations to keep alive the memory of those brave fallen and the causes for which they fell – to remember the evil which could have engulfed us.  In the words of the Kohima they gave their today so that we, all of us and the generations to follow, could have our tomorrows.

And this is what, in effect, Paul is saying in our passage from his second letter to the Thessalonians, read this morning.  I could speak at great length about the Christian ethical doctrines on the justification for war – but I’ll leave that for the moment for my academic essay writing – there is also a good article in this month’s Christianity magazine in the context of Syria.  Instead I simply want to re-iterate Paul’s thoughts here.

Paul reminds us that the return of our Saviour Jesus Christ will only come after the “lawless one” is revealed through rebellion.  In other words, as Christians we are expected to uphold the ethics which we have been taught by Jesus and should stand up against and expose all  who would deceive the truth as revealed by him.  Throughout history leaders have waged war and oppressed people either in the name of Christianity or by pretending to be Christians themselves.  In Nazi Germany, Hitler and his regime tried to appeal to Catholics and Lutherans alike that there was a score to settle against the Jews because the Jewish leadership had been responsible for Jesus’s crucifixion.

I have just finished reading a wonderful book of sermons, lectures and speeches by former Archbishop Desmond Tutu with the interesting title of “God is not a Christian”.  In it he reminds us that there is only one omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent God – creator of all thing and all people, everybody, black white, and yellow.  He appeals to Christians and God-fearing people everywhere, just as Paul does, to stand up against tyranny and oppression.  He puts it simply – If the Church is not going to stand up for the poor, the hungry, the oppressed, the discriminated, then who is?

This brings me back to the two-minute silence.  During those two minutes I try to recall all the battles of the two world wars, all the sites of oppression, all those areas of suffering, the blitz, the death camps, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Hamburg and so on and especially members of the church like Bonhoeffer and Maximilian Kolbe.   Two minutes is simply not long enough.

I praise and thank all those who have so courageously given their lives to oppose tyranny and evil.  Let us never forget them.

Amen