Preacher: Veronica
Readings:
Isaiah 11:6-9
The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid,
the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them.
The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together;
and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp,
and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den. They will not hurt or destroy
on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord
as the waters cover the sea.
Matthew 18:1-4
At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” He called a child, whom he put among them, and said, “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.
‘The cattle are lowing, the baby awakes But little Lord Jesus no crying he makes’.
How many of you here hate that line? Me too. I think it’s a glaring example of docetism - the belief that Jesus wasn’t fully human but only appeared to be. After all we can’t have God becoming a real child, one who soils his swaddling cloths and yells for hours, can we?
And another thing: it seems to suggest that for a baby to cry is actually a bad thing. But surely crying is the God-given way for babies to communicate their needs. When a baby is suffering severe malnutrition, it stops crying because it no longer has energy to do so. A non-crying baby is not always a good thing.
The other Christmas carol line we all love to hate is that one from ‘Once in Royal David’s City’:
‘Christian children all must be Mild, obedient, good as he’.
Given that the only story we have of Jesus’ childhood is when he gives his parents the slip and goes missing for three days, this doesn’t seem a very accurate description of Jesus as a child, let alone a goal for Christian children to aim for. In a world of child abuse, parents are not always worthy of obedience, and mildness is not always the safest characteristic for a child to have.
So when Jesus called a child to himself and made that child a model for how his followers should be in the world, what aspects of children was he thinking of? The traditional answer is that we should have the innocence of children. I’m not sure however whether we really know what we mean by innocence. We’re very apt to confuse it with ignorance. Which reminds me of a description I once found in the diary of a Victorian gentleman:
‘At the breakfast was an ancient Vicar, who was interesting as a specimen of the fast failing school of “Evangelical” clergymen, the immediate disciples of Wesley and Scott; men who clung to and preached a few strong and effective tenets, and under the honest pretext of “knowing Christ alone”, remained ignorant of most other things.’
Perhaps the writer was a bit premature in proclaiming the death of Evangelicalism, but his comment is one that still rings bells today. Jesus called us not only to be innocent as doves but to be wise as serpents: there is no particular virtue in ignorance.
In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus says explicitly in what way we should be like children to enter the kingdom of God:. He asks his disciples to become ‘humble like this child’. Children in his time had no social status until they were grown up. Child- centred education hadn’t been invented, and our idea that ‘Christmas is for the children’ would seem extremely strange to them, and not only because they would have no idea what Christmas is.
In the other Gospels, what it means to become like a child is left more open, but it’s always in the context of a discussion among the disciples as to who among them is the greatest. In fact in Mark, this incident is the place where Jesus utters his saying, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” So he’s focusing on the low status of children, the fact that they are dependent on others, that they are vulnerable and defenceless.
In other words, following Jesus is not a way to social respectability, to being looked up to by others, to exercising power over other people’s lives. It’s a way to being of no account, a way to service and suffering - the way that Jesus began to go even as a child when his family became refugees in Egypt.
But Jesus’ parables and sayings are always told in a way that leaves plenty to our imagination. So I don’t think it’s invalid to look at other ways in which children might be a model for our Christian life. I’ll just mention a few.
Children are trusting - and sadly that trust is often abused. Perhaps the worst aspect of cruelty to children is that they lose their implicit trust in adults who are meant to care for them, and become withdrawn from relationships. As adults too we may often be exploited, hurt or insulted. But perhaps Jesus asks us not to lose our trust as a result. Even in an untrustworthy world, we are to think the best of people and expect the best in people - because that’s the only way to get it.
Children are people of the moment. They get totally absorbed in the serious business of play. A normal, well looked after child might spend hours with a saucepan and a wooden spoon, or make a pebble from the beach their most treasured possession. They don’t , or shouldn’t need to, think about whether there will be food tomorrow or a place to sleep. And Jesus asks adults too, not to worry about tomorrow.
Children are intensely involved in the material world. It’s all fresh and new to them - in fact they see the world, as it were, with the eyes of God, as a creation with which God is ‘very pleased’. You’ll have to forgive me for turning yet again to Thomas Traherne, because he’s my hobby horse. Here’s his description of how he saw the world as a child, a vision which as an adult he struggled to recover:
'All appeared new, and strange at first, inexpressibly rare and delightful and beautiful. I was a little stranger, which at my entrance into the world was saluted and surrounded with innumerable joys. My knowledge was Divine. I knew by intuition those things which since my Apostasy, I collected again by the highest reason. My very ignorance was advantageous. I seemed as one brought into the Estate of Innocence. All things were spotless and pure andglorious: yea, and infinitely mine, and joyful and precious, I knew not that there were any sins, or complaints or laws. I dreamed not of poverties, contentions or vices. All tears and quarrels were hidden from mine eyes. Everything was at rest, free and immortal. I knew nothing of sickness or death or rents or exaction, either for tribute or bread. In the absence of these I was entertained like an Angel with the works of God in their splendour. and glory, I saw all in the peace of Eden; Heaven and Earth did sing my Creator's praises, and could not make more melody to Adam, than to me: All Time was Eternity, and a perpetual Sabbath. Is it not strange, that an infant should be heir of the whole World, and see those mysteries which the books of the learned never unfold?
'The corn was orient and immortal wheat, which never should be reaped, nor was ever sown. I thought it had stood from everlasting to everlasting. The dust and stones of the street were as precious as gold: the gates were at first the end of the world. The green trees when I saw them first through one of the gates transported and ravished me, their sweetness and unusual beauty made my heart to leap, and almost mad with ecstasy, they were such strange and wonderful things: The Men! O what venerable and reverend creatures did the aged seem! Immortal Cherubims! And young men glittering and sparkling Angels, and maids strange seraphic pieces of life and beauty! Boys and girls tumbling in the street, and playing, were moving jewels. I knew not that they were born or should die; But all things abided eternally as they were in their proper places. Eternity was manifest in the Light of the Day, and something infinite behind everything appeared which talked with my expectation and moved my desire. The city seemed to stand in Eden, or to be built in Heaven. The streets were mine, the temple was mine, the people were mine, their clothes and gold and silver were mine, as much as their sparkling eyes, fair skins and ruddy faces. The skies were mine, and so were the sun and moon and stars, and all the World was mine; and I the only spectator and enjoyer of it. I knew no churlish proprieties, nor bounds, nor divisions: but all proprieties* and divisions were mine: all treasures and the possessors of them. So that with much ado I was corrupted, and made to learn the dirty devices of this world. Which now I unlearn, and become, as it were, a little child again that I may enter into the Kingdom of God.'
Should we as Christians seek that same vision of the world as a glorious gift from God? If we believe God created it, then I think we should.
Finally, children are very ready to forgive. Children are wired for relationship, and a happy child will always put its relationship with caring adults above anything the adults may have done wrong or failed to do. Even the abused child still loves the parent or parents who have so betrayed the child. It’s as though children are programmed to love, which is one of the things that makes child abuse so harmful.
Centuries before Jesus came to us as a child, Isaiah’s vision is of a world where humans and nature are in harmony, where children can safely play with wild creatures, and where the way to wisdom is pointed out by a child. Or as Psalm 8 puts it, ‘From the lips of children and infants you have ordained praise’.
So instead of saying ‘Christmas is really for the children’, putting children (and Christmas) in a marked off compartment labelled ‘Not for adults’, perhaps at Christmas we should be watching children carefully and letting them lead us.
Showing posts with label Advent. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Advent. Show all posts
Sunday, 19 December 2010
Sunday, 28 November 2010
Advent and the environment - Alpha to Omega
Preacher: Veronica
About thirty years ago there was a series in a radical Christian magazine called The Other Side. The series was called The Reversed Standard Version. Basically the writer took a well known passage of Scripture and changed it to mean what people generally seem to think it means. This in many cases totally reversed its true meaning. I found this a very enlightening thing to do. When I read what Richard Bauckham has to say on Colossians in relation to ecology, in his book Bible and Ecology which we are studying, I immediately had the idea of doing the same with the passage he quotes. So here is the Reversed Standard Version of Colossians 1.15-20:
He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all humanity; for in him all people were created, all people have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all people,
and in him all people hold together.
He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in humanity. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself some human beings,
by making peace through the blood of his cross.
Thatʼs how Christians often appear to read this passage. Salvation is about rescuing a select few human beings from the dead world of this planet and taking them to heaven. The destiny of the non-human creation is to be burned up, or laid bare, according to how you translate one obscure verse in 2 Peter; and it will be replaced by a new heavens and a new earth.
Now letʼs hear what Colossians 1 really says - and while you hear it, Iʼm setting you a challenge: count how many times Paul uses the words ʻallʼ or ʻeverythingʼ, or the phrase ʻall thingsʼ :
He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers— all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things,
and in him all things hold together.
He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven,
by making peace through the blood of his cross.
Any answers? I made it eight, in five verses. This is a poem or hymn about the cosmic Christ, a Christ whose reach extends to all creation; and that is why Richard Bauckham, in Bible and Ecology, chooses it as a source for a biblical understanding of Christʼs relation to ecology.
Metanarrative
Bauckham begins with some background introductory remarks. He points out that most of the biblical theology of the created world is developed in the Old Testament, and is taken for granted in the New. Bauckham doesnʼt mention this, at least in the chapter weʼre studying today, but I would want to add that Jesus himself does often turn to the natural world for the images in his parables and teaching. As Thomas Hardy said in a poem about himself, ʻHe was a man who used to notice such thingsʼ.
What the NT does do is to give us a Christological, or Christ-centred, rendering of the OT theology of creation. In other words, the NT writers are re-reading the OT in the light of Christ, and in it they discover that Jesus Christ is intimately involved in the whole story of creation. Hence the repeating of ʻall thingsʼ in our Colossians passage - Christʼs work encompasses Godʼs whole creation, earthly and heavenly.
Bauckham sees this as part of a metanarrative, or overarching story, which is about the relationship between God, humanity and the rest of creation. This story is leading to a goal, and the goal is all of creation being taken into eternity. And this goal is being achieved through Jesus Christ, who is active both in the original creation and in the renewal of creation. As Revelation 22.13 puts it, ʻI am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.’
Lost narrative
Clearly this understanding of Christ’s role towards creation has not always been prominent in Christian thinking, in fact it’s been entirely obscured sometimes. This is because of the intrusion of philosophical ideas from other world views, in particular the world view of Plato, in the early centuries of Christianity. In Platonism, there is a strong dualism between matter and spirit, and spirit is always superior to matter. I’ve seen this expressed in another book as a simple diagram:
MIND SPIRIT = GOOD/IMMORTAL
BODY SEX = BAD/MORTAL
Now contrast the Christian view, based on Hebrew thinking, as expressed in another diagram:
MIND BODY SPIRIT = GOOD/TO BE RESURRECTED
When my friend Evelyn, who is normally quite prim and proper, saw this diagram she immediately asked, ‘Where’s the sex in the Christian one?’ Which is a pretty good question, so let’s add it in.
Early theologians tried to combat Platonism by a more biblical view of the goodness of material creation. But there is quite a lot of evidence that over the centuries, the battle was to a large extent lost. You only have to think of a chorus that used to be popular: ‘Turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in his wonderful face, And the things of earth will grow strangely dim, In the light of his glory and grace’. What’s so wrong with the things of earth, which God has created, that turning to Jesus has to turn us away from them? This is exactly the criticism environmentalists have made of Christian theology, that it sets humanity in opposition to nature.
Bauckham says there is a modern version of Platonic idealism, which is our scientific quest to ‘conquer’ nature and bend it to our purposes. This creates a dualism of humanity versus nature, in which our goal is to become completely independent of nature, maybe by some form of everlasting artificial intelligence. In Bauckham’s words, ‘We should be deploying the Christian belief in the resurrection of the body against these anti-human technological aspirations’. Or to put it another way, ‘Salvation is not the replacement but the renewal of creation’.
Eco-narrative
Against this background, Bauckham explores the Colossian hymn as what he calls a Christological eco-narrative (sorry about all the jargon). It’s constructed in two halves, the first about the creation of all things in, for and through Christ, and then about the reconciliation of all things in, for and through Christ. The two parts parallel each other totally in language and structure, so that the scope of reconciliation is as wide as the scope of creation.
But this is not about some cosmic Christ figure set in eternity, but specifically about the crucified and risen Jesus of Nazareth, who embodies the universal in a particular human life. This Jesus shares God’s relation to the world: he is both creator and redeemer, and he has begun the reconciliation between God and all of nature. The key verse is, ‘through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross’.
Bauckham says this means that ‘the Gospel story - the story of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus - is focal and decisive for all creation. The fullness of God in him is the intensive presence of the God who fills heaven and earth. His sacrificial death identifies him with the whole of the suffering and perishing creation. His resurrection inaugurates the renewal of all creation’.
He goes on to list some ecological conclusions we can draw from this passage. Firstly, it gives a holistic view of creation, because all creation is integrated in Jesus Christ. Secondly, this vision relates to the actual human figure of Jesus, crucified and risen. This, he says thirdly, is the hidden mystery at the heart of creation. This mystery cannot be discovered in creation itself because creation is full of violence, but it can be seen in the way God transcends that violence in Jesus. By his non-violent, self-giving love, Jesus overcomes the violence of creation.
Fourthly, there is the mention of the ‘powers’ at the heart of the Colossians hymn. This is there to tell us that while earth may appear to be in thrall to powers of violence and injustice, they are in fact already conquered by the cross. And their conquest becomes a practical reality by God working through us as we seek to make a better world.
This brings him to the fifth point, which is really a question: is creation fallen? As modern people we now know that there was animate life long before humans emerged, so we can no longer hold to the idea that nature is corrupted because of some historic human action. In fact violence and death are integral to the processes of nature, and without them the evolution of species could not happen. So where did what we see as evil in nature, come from?
According to Bauckham, the Bible does not really attempt to answer this question fully, but what it does do is to prophesy that through Christ the creation will be liberated from the evils that it now suffers. It is focused on the creation’s future, not its past.
At this point we can turn to the other passage Bauckham examines in the first half of this chapter: John’s prologue to his Gospel.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.
All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life,
and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it....
The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him...
And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son,full of grace and truth.
All four Gospels begin by linking the story of Jesus to the story of the OT, but John goes back the furthest: to the beginning of Time itself. By starting his Gospel with the words ‘In the beginning’, he is offering us a way to read the Genesis story in the light of Jesus. He is also giving a nod to Proverbs 8, in which a figure identified as ‘Wisdom’ tells us:
The Lord created me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of long ago. When he established the heavens, I was there,
when he drew a circle on the face of the deep, when he made firm the skies above,
when he established the fountains of the deep, when he assigned to the sea its limit,
so that the waters might not transgress his command, when he marked out the foundations of the earth,
then I was beside him, like a master worker, and I was daily his delight,
rejoicing before him always, rejoicing in his inhabited world
and delighting in the human race.
Although this describes a created figure rather than an uncreated one, Wisdom in this context is often identified with ‘the Word’ who was with God and who was God in John 1. This is the Word who becomes flesh in Jesus: God incarnate entering into our created world, so that in the end our created world can be taken into God. Notice how that phrase ‘all things’ recurs in this passage: in both the creation and the Incarnation, Christ is related to the whole creation, human, animal and inanimate. This is the world which is to be redeemed, when in Bauckham’s words ‘creation finds its fulfillment in being taken into the divine life’.
Advent
Finally, Bauckham looks at some of the nature miracles in the Gospels, such as the calming of the storm, and at the wider meaning of the Kingdom of God in Jesus’ teaching. He points out that the phrase ‘the kingdom of God’ would have called out Old Testament echoes in the minds of Jesus’ hearers. There are parallels to it both in Isaiah, a book the Gospel writers quote a great deal, and also in the Psalms, which emphasize the kingship of God over all creation. For example in Psalm 95:
For the Lord is a great God, and a great King above all gods.
In his hand are the depths of the earth; the heights of the mountains are his also.
The sea is his, for he made it, and the dry land, which his hands have formed.
O come, let us worship and bow down, let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker
God is the King of all creation, and humans are invited to join in the praise which the animal and inanimate creation already offer. We are also told that creation looks forward to the coming of God to judge and rule the earth. Hereʼs part of Psalm 96:
Then shall all the trees of the forest sing for joy before the Lord; for he is coming, for he is coming to judge the earth. He will judge the world with righteousness, and the peoples with his truth.
So Jesusʼ nature miracles are a foretaste of the wholeness which will eventually come to all creation, and the Kingdom he proclaims is one that encompasses all creation. Which brings me to my conclusion, which I canʼt put better than Bauckham does: ʻWhen God does come to judge and to rule, all creation will rejoice at his adventʼ.
About thirty years ago there was a series in a radical Christian magazine called The Other Side. The series was called The Reversed Standard Version. Basically the writer took a well known passage of Scripture and changed it to mean what people generally seem to think it means. This in many cases totally reversed its true meaning. I found this a very enlightening thing to do. When I read what Richard Bauckham has to say on Colossians in relation to ecology, in his book Bible and Ecology which we are studying, I immediately had the idea of doing the same with the passage he quotes. So here is the Reversed Standard Version of Colossians 1.15-20:
He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all humanity; for in him all people were created, all people have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all people,
and in him all people hold together.
He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in humanity. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself some human beings,
by making peace through the blood of his cross.
Thatʼs how Christians often appear to read this passage. Salvation is about rescuing a select few human beings from the dead world of this planet and taking them to heaven. The destiny of the non-human creation is to be burned up, or laid bare, according to how you translate one obscure verse in 2 Peter; and it will be replaced by a new heavens and a new earth.
Now letʼs hear what Colossians 1 really says - and while you hear it, Iʼm setting you a challenge: count how many times Paul uses the words ʻallʼ or ʻeverythingʼ, or the phrase ʻall thingsʼ :
He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers— all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things,
and in him all things hold together.
He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven,
by making peace through the blood of his cross.
Any answers? I made it eight, in five verses. This is a poem or hymn about the cosmic Christ, a Christ whose reach extends to all creation; and that is why Richard Bauckham, in Bible and Ecology, chooses it as a source for a biblical understanding of Christʼs relation to ecology.
Metanarrative
Bauckham begins with some background introductory remarks. He points out that most of the biblical theology of the created world is developed in the Old Testament, and is taken for granted in the New. Bauckham doesnʼt mention this, at least in the chapter weʼre studying today, but I would want to add that Jesus himself does often turn to the natural world for the images in his parables and teaching. As Thomas Hardy said in a poem about himself, ʻHe was a man who used to notice such thingsʼ.
What the NT does do is to give us a Christological, or Christ-centred, rendering of the OT theology of creation. In other words, the NT writers are re-reading the OT in the light of Christ, and in it they discover that Jesus Christ is intimately involved in the whole story of creation. Hence the repeating of ʻall thingsʼ in our Colossians passage - Christʼs work encompasses Godʼs whole creation, earthly and heavenly.
Bauckham sees this as part of a metanarrative, or overarching story, which is about the relationship between God, humanity and the rest of creation. This story is leading to a goal, and the goal is all of creation being taken into eternity. And this goal is being achieved through Jesus Christ, who is active both in the original creation and in the renewal of creation. As Revelation 22.13 puts it, ʻI am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.’
Lost narrative
Clearly this understanding of Christ’s role towards creation has not always been prominent in Christian thinking, in fact it’s been entirely obscured sometimes. This is because of the intrusion of philosophical ideas from other world views, in particular the world view of Plato, in the early centuries of Christianity. In Platonism, there is a strong dualism between matter and spirit, and spirit is always superior to matter. I’ve seen this expressed in another book as a simple diagram:
MIND SPIRIT = GOOD/IMMORTAL
BODY SEX = BAD/MORTAL
Now contrast the Christian view, based on Hebrew thinking, as expressed in another diagram:
MIND BODY SPIRIT = GOOD/TO BE RESURRECTED
When my friend Evelyn, who is normally quite prim and proper, saw this diagram she immediately asked, ‘Where’s the sex in the Christian one?’ Which is a pretty good question, so let’s add it in.
Early theologians tried to combat Platonism by a more biblical view of the goodness of material creation. But there is quite a lot of evidence that over the centuries, the battle was to a large extent lost. You only have to think of a chorus that used to be popular: ‘Turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in his wonderful face, And the things of earth will grow strangely dim, In the light of his glory and grace’. What’s so wrong with the things of earth, which God has created, that turning to Jesus has to turn us away from them? This is exactly the criticism environmentalists have made of Christian theology, that it sets humanity in opposition to nature.
Bauckham says there is a modern version of Platonic idealism, which is our scientific quest to ‘conquer’ nature and bend it to our purposes. This creates a dualism of humanity versus nature, in which our goal is to become completely independent of nature, maybe by some form of everlasting artificial intelligence. In Bauckham’s words, ‘We should be deploying the Christian belief in the resurrection of the body against these anti-human technological aspirations’. Or to put it another way, ‘Salvation is not the replacement but the renewal of creation’.
Eco-narrative
Against this background, Bauckham explores the Colossian hymn as what he calls a Christological eco-narrative (sorry about all the jargon). It’s constructed in two halves, the first about the creation of all things in, for and through Christ, and then about the reconciliation of all things in, for and through Christ. The two parts parallel each other totally in language and structure, so that the scope of reconciliation is as wide as the scope of creation.
But this is not about some cosmic Christ figure set in eternity, but specifically about the crucified and risen Jesus of Nazareth, who embodies the universal in a particular human life. This Jesus shares God’s relation to the world: he is both creator and redeemer, and he has begun the reconciliation between God and all of nature. The key verse is, ‘through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross’.
Bauckham says this means that ‘the Gospel story - the story of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus - is focal and decisive for all creation. The fullness of God in him is the intensive presence of the God who fills heaven and earth. His sacrificial death identifies him with the whole of the suffering and perishing creation. His resurrection inaugurates the renewal of all creation’.
He goes on to list some ecological conclusions we can draw from this passage. Firstly, it gives a holistic view of creation, because all creation is integrated in Jesus Christ. Secondly, this vision relates to the actual human figure of Jesus, crucified and risen. This, he says thirdly, is the hidden mystery at the heart of creation. This mystery cannot be discovered in creation itself because creation is full of violence, but it can be seen in the way God transcends that violence in Jesus. By his non-violent, self-giving love, Jesus overcomes the violence of creation.
Fourthly, there is the mention of the ‘powers’ at the heart of the Colossians hymn. This is there to tell us that while earth may appear to be in thrall to powers of violence and injustice, they are in fact already conquered by the cross. And their conquest becomes a practical reality by God working through us as we seek to make a better world.
This brings him to the fifth point, which is really a question: is creation fallen? As modern people we now know that there was animate life long before humans emerged, so we can no longer hold to the idea that nature is corrupted because of some historic human action. In fact violence and death are integral to the processes of nature, and without them the evolution of species could not happen. So where did what we see as evil in nature, come from?
According to Bauckham, the Bible does not really attempt to answer this question fully, but what it does do is to prophesy that through Christ the creation will be liberated from the evils that it now suffers. It is focused on the creation’s future, not its past.
At this point we can turn to the other passage Bauckham examines in the first half of this chapter: John’s prologue to his Gospel.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.
All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life,
and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it....
The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him...
And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son,full of grace and truth.
All four Gospels begin by linking the story of Jesus to the story of the OT, but John goes back the furthest: to the beginning of Time itself. By starting his Gospel with the words ‘In the beginning’, he is offering us a way to read the Genesis story in the light of Jesus. He is also giving a nod to Proverbs 8, in which a figure identified as ‘Wisdom’ tells us:
The Lord created me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of long ago. When he established the heavens, I was there,
when he drew a circle on the face of the deep, when he made firm the skies above,
when he established the fountains of the deep, when he assigned to the sea its limit,
so that the waters might not transgress his command, when he marked out the foundations of the earth,
then I was beside him, like a master worker, and I was daily his delight,
rejoicing before him always, rejoicing in his inhabited world
and delighting in the human race.
Although this describes a created figure rather than an uncreated one, Wisdom in this context is often identified with ‘the Word’ who was with God and who was God in John 1. This is the Word who becomes flesh in Jesus: God incarnate entering into our created world, so that in the end our created world can be taken into God. Notice how that phrase ‘all things’ recurs in this passage: in both the creation and the Incarnation, Christ is related to the whole creation, human, animal and inanimate. This is the world which is to be redeemed, when in Bauckham’s words ‘creation finds its fulfillment in being taken into the divine life’.
Advent
Finally, Bauckham looks at some of the nature miracles in the Gospels, such as the calming of the storm, and at the wider meaning of the Kingdom of God in Jesus’ teaching. He points out that the phrase ‘the kingdom of God’ would have called out Old Testament echoes in the minds of Jesus’ hearers. There are parallels to it both in Isaiah, a book the Gospel writers quote a great deal, and also in the Psalms, which emphasize the kingship of God over all creation. For example in Psalm 95:
For the Lord is a great God, and a great King above all gods.
In his hand are the depths of the earth; the heights of the mountains are his also.
The sea is his, for he made it, and the dry land, which his hands have formed.
O come, let us worship and bow down, let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker
God is the King of all creation, and humans are invited to join in the praise which the animal and inanimate creation already offer. We are also told that creation looks forward to the coming of God to judge and rule the earth. Hereʼs part of Psalm 96:
Then shall all the trees of the forest sing for joy before the Lord; for he is coming, for he is coming to judge the earth. He will judge the world with righteousness, and the peoples with his truth.
So Jesusʼ nature miracles are a foretaste of the wholeness which will eventually come to all creation, and the Kingdom he proclaims is one that encompasses all creation. Which brings me to my conclusion, which I canʼt put better than Bauckham does: ʻWhen God does come to judge and to rule, all creation will rejoice at his adventʼ.
Friday, 25 December 2009
Reflection: Light has come into the world
Preacher: Lesley Misrahi
For many people, this has not been an easy year. The world has continued in economic crisis and we know that this has meant that some people have lost jobs and income. In some countries, for those whose livelihood was precarious at best, it has meant the difference between surviving and not surviving. There have been wars and rumours of war, droughts and floods, serious illness and signs of hope which came to nothing. This has affected some in our small community. For Phyllis and Ed, there has been bereavement. Could things be much darker?
Think about Israel at the time of the first Christmas. Things were as bad then as they are now. So what did God do? He did not choose to make people puppets by forcing them to believe in him. Augustus Caesar was the most powerful man in the most powerful country on earth. He easily had more personal power than any American president. After all, Roman emperors got away with things that they would soon impeach a president for. So did God do something to make Caesar his follower? Or did he make sure that the Romans were converted first so that they could impose order on the world? Did he send an exceptionally powerful prophet?
Well, we know, of course that God went himself, and not in power, but as a baby, an ordinary baby, who wasn’t particularly quiet or sweet or clean. And he was born to a young unmarried peasant woman in a turbulent province on the fringe of the Empire. As a man he lived a short, obscure life and was executed as a criminal at the age of 33.
It seems a weak and petty way to intervene in such a big mess as we’ve been imagining in the world. But this is the one whom John describes in the passage that we read as The Word, the expression of God’s thoughts. Jesus is the one who is the true light, who enlightens everyone. If he was there to bring the light to everyone, why didn’t he do it in a big way? Well let’s think. When we came in here this morning it was quite dark and quiet. And we quietly lit the candles and it gradually got brighter and brighter. It was lovely. What would have happened if someone had suddenly switched on the light and banged a drum? We would have been dazzled, we would have shut our eyes, maybe covered our ears. For a little while perhaps we couldn’t see properly.
When the light that was Jesus came into the world, it was not to dazzle anyone, but to help them see. And those who have seen who he is and have become his followers have become the children of God.
Unlike the other gospels, John doesn’t start with the birth of Jesus. He starts with the creation of the universe. He wrote, in the passage we have read: All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. Jesus is intimately involved in the process of creation. He keeps the universe going by his constant creative impulse. And it is the one who made the world, who became a baby in Bethlehem. He is the person who lived as a human being and died for the sins of all people. He is the one who went into the darkness of death and brought out of it resurrection and forgiveness for all who believe. This pattern of bringing light out of darkness, good out of evil, is not just there at Easter. It is woven into the fabric of the Universe, which the Redeemer sustains from moment to moment. So it is that though there is much darkness in the world, there are also amazing instances of hope. The light shines on in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.
When you look back at what God has done with what seemed like disasters in your life, sometimes you can see this. Even at the heart of darkness there is light if we are willing to see it.
Jesus is the hope for the world now because he can transform our existence on a day to day basis. We need to have eyes to see the things that did not happen that might have done. It can be very difficult to do this. It’s like thanking God for having enough food to eat. Unless we’ve known real hunger, we don’t really know how lucky we are. Just take a few moments to think about what might have happened in your life, given the circumstances, and which you have been spared or of the ways that God has managed to bring good out of evil for you.
And we are promised that one day he will come back in the fullness of his glory.. And this time he may well dazzle people. So it’s now that we need to get our eyes used to the brightness of his light. We need to look at him and learn to walk according to the light that he has given us. Like Mary his mother we need to be willing to say ‘I am God’s servant,’ so that his light can be born in us.
But the light is not just for us, nor even just for human beings. Jesus is involved in all creation. The one who was born in Bethlehem is able to bring us new life. He is the God of new birth. Paul writes that at present all of the created order groans as if in the pains of labour as it is waiting for God’s children to be revealed. There will be, we are promised, a new world – a new heaven and a new earth. It is here now, in part and sometimes we get glimpses of it in some of the stories of hope we have heard.
This Christmas let’s rejoice in the light that has come into the world. Let’s pass that light from one to another. Instead of cursing the darkness, let each of us use the light that has come into the world to kindle a candle of hope today and for the coming year.
For many people, this has not been an easy year. The world has continued in economic crisis and we know that this has meant that some people have lost jobs and income. In some countries, for those whose livelihood was precarious at best, it has meant the difference between surviving and not surviving. There have been wars and rumours of war, droughts and floods, serious illness and signs of hope which came to nothing. This has affected some in our small community. For Phyllis and Ed, there has been bereavement. Could things be much darker?
Think about Israel at the time of the first Christmas. Things were as bad then as they are now. So what did God do? He did not choose to make people puppets by forcing them to believe in him. Augustus Caesar was the most powerful man in the most powerful country on earth. He easily had more personal power than any American president. After all, Roman emperors got away with things that they would soon impeach a president for. So did God do something to make Caesar his follower? Or did he make sure that the Romans were converted first so that they could impose order on the world? Did he send an exceptionally powerful prophet?
Well, we know, of course that God went himself, and not in power, but as a baby, an ordinary baby, who wasn’t particularly quiet or sweet or clean. And he was born to a young unmarried peasant woman in a turbulent province on the fringe of the Empire. As a man he lived a short, obscure life and was executed as a criminal at the age of 33.
It seems a weak and petty way to intervene in such a big mess as we’ve been imagining in the world. But this is the one whom John describes in the passage that we read as The Word, the expression of God’s thoughts. Jesus is the one who is the true light, who enlightens everyone. If he was there to bring the light to everyone, why didn’t he do it in a big way? Well let’s think. When we came in here this morning it was quite dark and quiet. And we quietly lit the candles and it gradually got brighter and brighter. It was lovely. What would have happened if someone had suddenly switched on the light and banged a drum? We would have been dazzled, we would have shut our eyes, maybe covered our ears. For a little while perhaps we couldn’t see properly.
When the light that was Jesus came into the world, it was not to dazzle anyone, but to help them see. And those who have seen who he is and have become his followers have become the children of God.
Unlike the other gospels, John doesn’t start with the birth of Jesus. He starts with the creation of the universe. He wrote, in the passage we have read: All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. Jesus is intimately involved in the process of creation. He keeps the universe going by his constant creative impulse. And it is the one who made the world, who became a baby in Bethlehem. He is the person who lived as a human being and died for the sins of all people. He is the one who went into the darkness of death and brought out of it resurrection and forgiveness for all who believe. This pattern of bringing light out of darkness, good out of evil, is not just there at Easter. It is woven into the fabric of the Universe, which the Redeemer sustains from moment to moment. So it is that though there is much darkness in the world, there are also amazing instances of hope. The light shines on in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.
When you look back at what God has done with what seemed like disasters in your life, sometimes you can see this. Even at the heart of darkness there is light if we are willing to see it.
Jesus is the hope for the world now because he can transform our existence on a day to day basis. We need to have eyes to see the things that did not happen that might have done. It can be very difficult to do this. It’s like thanking God for having enough food to eat. Unless we’ve known real hunger, we don’t really know how lucky we are. Just take a few moments to think about what might have happened in your life, given the circumstances, and which you have been spared or of the ways that God has managed to bring good out of evil for you.
And we are promised that one day he will come back in the fullness of his glory.. And this time he may well dazzle people. So it’s now that we need to get our eyes used to the brightness of his light. We need to look at him and learn to walk according to the light that he has given us. Like Mary his mother we need to be willing to say ‘I am God’s servant,’ so that his light can be born in us.
But the light is not just for us, nor even just for human beings. Jesus is involved in all creation. The one who was born in Bethlehem is able to bring us new life. He is the God of new birth. Paul writes that at present all of the created order groans as if in the pains of labour as it is waiting for God’s children to be revealed. There will be, we are promised, a new world – a new heaven and a new earth. It is here now, in part and sometimes we get glimpses of it in some of the stories of hope we have heard.
This Christmas let’s rejoice in the light that has come into the world. Let’s pass that light from one to another. Instead of cursing the darkness, let each of us use the light that has come into the world to kindle a candle of hope today and for the coming year.
Sunday, 20 December 2009
Labour and birth
Preacher: Lesley Misrahi
Readings: Micah 5:2-5a, Psalm 80:1-7, Hebrews 10:5-10, Luke 1:39-45, Luke 1 (46-55)
Christmas is nearly here – only 5 more days. If you haven’t sent your Christmas cards yet, then tomorrow is the last day to post them First Class to be sure of them getting there by Thursday. I’ve managed to send most of mine, except to the people who have moved and I can’t find their new addresses. Some people don’t send Christmas cards as a matter of principle, but if I don’t my relatives notice and, I think, feel a bit hurt. I know because there was one year that I didn’t send out any Christmas cards at all and they commented on it.
That wasn’t a matter of principle, though, nor even poverty. That was 1984, the year that I was expecting Adam. He was due to be born on January 18th, but I felt so huge and unwieldy and had had so many warning signs that I was absolutely convinced that he’d be born at least two weeks before then. You can tell that pregnancy can upset the ability to think straight as well as everything else. Anyway, I thought I’d send out New Year cards with an announcement of the birth.
True to form, of course, Adam arrived a week late on Jan 25th!
During advent and Christmas we see our faith through the lens of pregnancy and childbirth. In this sermon I want to explore what we can learn from this metaphor of pregnancy and birth and the coming of Jesus. With Mary we are waiting for the birth of a promised child; with the people of Israel we are waiting for the coming of a promised saviour. And like maybe every pregnancy throughout human history, the waiting seems interminable. When will the baby come; when will God send His saviour to us? In the normal course of events there is nothing we can do about when it happens. The whole process of medicalised childbirth which has developed over the past 100 years or so is an effort to bring under human control a fundamentally unpredictable process.
Although we can tell roughly when a baby is due to arrive, it is notoriously difficult to tell the exact time. I have just given away a comfortable reclining chair, with brown plush upholstery – except for the ragged footrest. During the time I was expecting Esther, I decided to recover the armchair. I was still doing it when I went into labour 2 weeks early and I spent most of a day trying to sew the remaining part to cover the footrest while waiting for contractions to become more frequent. But Esther arrived and I never did get the time or energy to finish the job. I’ve finally decided that I will never get around to it after 21 years.
So babies come early or late and, for the most part – and certainly not at the time of Jesus – we can’t control it at all. That’s one of the messages that this metaphor of pregnancy gives us. The Saviour is promised and he will come, but we can’t tell when and we can’t control it. So in the passage that was read from Micah, the Jewish people knew where the Saviour would appear. They knew it would be Bethlehem – and often we can decide where a baby will be born if we are able to respond in time to the early warning signs – but they didn’t know when. They knew it was at the end of labour, but when would that be? The people did not know and meanwhile they felt abandoned by God, as we heard in Psalm 80 that we read together. Like so many births, that of the Saviour of Israel was looked forward to with huge expectation and an increasing amount of stress and discomfort. In the case of the people of Israel it was a time of being humiliated as they were conquered repeatedly by different alien empires – Babylonian, Persian, Greek, Roman. “You have made us a source of contention to our neighbors, and our enemies mock us”, we read in Psalm 80. The people who believed they were chosen of God were despised and oppressed by others and wondering why God allowed this, and when their deliverance would take place.
Mary also faced disgrace and shame. The faithfulness of Joseph in response to the dream that was sent to him enabled her to escape the stigma of being an unmarried mother, although there was probably some whispering around the village. He saved Jesus from being born in abject poverty to a woman with little means of earning a living in Jewish society. Instead they were supported by a skilled artisan, so they were not quite at the bottom of the heap in Jewish society – but that would change.
Mary went to visit her cousin Elizabeth, who was pregnant with John the Baptist and there was instant recognition of the special nature of what was happening to the two women. Perhaps this was the only person who might have understood what was happening to her and who shared her amazement and apprehension. Pregnancy, in any case, tends to create a bond between women, as they are going through similar experiences. In fact, the kind of tension produced by waiting for something we both fear and long for can be reduced by sharing it with others in the same situation. I’m thinking about the kind of conversation you get between the people waiting outside the room before an exam or in hospital before an operation. As we wait for what God has in store for us, we may find that it helps if we share our expectations with others. For Mary this was also the occasion of one of the great songs of the Scriptures – the Magnificat - which we just sang as ‘My soul is filled with joy’. She shared her wonder and amazement at what God would do through her.
The possibility of reproduction is in any case a deep mystery. How is it that out of one human being can come another one, who has a separate consciousness and identity, who is so different genetically from the mother that her body must do complicated things to prevent the foetus from being destroyed by the mother’s immune system? Pregnancy is a strange state in which there is now a real human being who can respond independently – as John the Baptist leapt inside Elizabeth. But that new person is not here yet and cannot really be known. The baby has not yet been made manifest, except as an anonymous ‘bump’ yet increasingly the child can respond to sensations from the world. It is a picture of the Kingdom of God. Jesus coming inaugurated the Kingdom and it is here. Yet we know it is not complete. God’s rule is not fully manifest and so we wait the promised return of Jesus and the completion of his work. The phrase that is used is now and not yet. And so we wait, as someone does during a pregnancy, beginning to form a relationship with the unborn child, yet longing to know that person fully.
The other thing we know about pregnancy of course is that It almost always involves pain and suffering. Pregnancy can involve sickness, discomfort and pain Labour is called that because it is hard work. Throughout the Bible there is a recognition that childbirth costs a woman much anguish. Micah, in an earlier chapter than the one we heard, talks about Jerusalem, the daughter of Zion, as writhing in agony like a woman in labour, as it suffered defeat and the exile of the people. So the ‘one who is in labour in the prophecy refers to the people of Israel, as well as to the birth of the Saviour. In its’ relationship with God throughout the centuries the Jewish people are often portrayed by the prophets as an unfaithful wife. And all this time Micah says is the pregnancy and labour of a people who will eventually give birth to a Saviour. So the time of exile and occupation was equated with what can be some of the most excruciating pain that a person can suffer. However, the travail of a people gives birth to the Shepherd whose greatness will be known throughout the world.
In Mary’s case it was at the end of a long journey. We always assume she had a donkey because we can’t imagine her being able to travel all that way without one, but it’s not there in the Bible. Most people in those days could not afford such a thing; so it’s very possible that she walked all the way from Nazareth to Bethlehem – a distance of at least 80 miles, some of it up steep hills. And then she had to give birth in a stable – likely to be in one of the limestone caves in the area. Very poor people still live in some of those caves. It identifies Jesus as being in a position of abject poverty at his birth in a most unsuitable setting for childbirth.
We know that childbirth is a risky business. The period immediately before and after birth is the most dangerous time in anyone’s life. One of the leading causes of infant mortality in the developing world is tetanus, when the bacteria attack the baby through the severed umbilical cord. A stable is a place rich in tetanus bacteria. And it’s not without risk for the mother as well. A few months ago we looked at maternal mortality statistics and you might remember that in some countries, even today, the chances are one in ten or even one in eight that a woman’s life will end as a result of childbirth. Mary was, no doubt, exhausted from the journey. When I spent 30 hours in labour with Adam, I realised how it was possible that women in labour could die of sheer exhaustion – and I was in a modern hospital with all sorts of intervention and pain relief! It’s possible that the story could have been very different.
If we equate the birth of Jesus with the coming of the Kingdom of God into the world, in a new way, then we discover, as Micah told the people, that the coming of God does involve pain and suffering. It is risky and exhausting and hard. It is also inexorable. Once a pregnancy starts and goes beyond a certain point, even miscarriage or abortion involve a birth process. There has to be a birth or the mother and baby will die. She can’t say ‘Hold it. I’ve changed my mind.’ The woman and those around her are swept along in events which are in control of her and which she cannot stop. Just so God’s plans for the world. Having set in motion the process of incarnation – a plan motivated by love (for God so loved the world) – there could be no stopping it. God will accomplish that which God has determined to do and human intervention will not prevent the coming of the Kingdom.
A birth is something for which preparation is needed. At the least the child will need warmth and food. But Mary was unable to make adequate preparation. She had the swaddling clothes ready, but didn’t even know where this child would be born. Despite what she may have believed about the prophecies, she could have gone into labour anywhere between Nazareth and Bethlehem. So she could make only the most minimal preparation for the new arrival. And we also need to prepare for what Jesus may require of us, even if we don’t know what is going to happen.
Birth, then, is a revelation - a time when the new child is fully revealed for what he or she may be. If they had not been told by God neither Mary nor Elizabeth would have known they were having boys. Would they make blue swaddling bands or pink ones? We wait to see whether a child will be male or female, healthy or sickly, whole or with a congenital defect, taking after the mother or the father, or even whether he or she will be born alive or dead.
Each new birth carries with it a huge potential. Even if a baby is born into the most adverse social circumstances, there is a feeling at the beginning that this child could do anything. He or she could be an athlete or a scientist, a great poet or a wonderful cook or he could be the saviour of the world. He or she has the greatest potential immediately after birth. After that the world shapes and restricts what that individual may do and become. But every newborn baby usually embodies the longings and ambitions of the people close to him or her and can born with a huge burden of hope and expectation. And none more so than Jesus.
The Messiah, the Jewish Saviour, was expected to do so much. It‘s in that psalm that we read together: “Restore us, O God; make your face shine upon us, that we may be saved.” That was all bound up with saving the people of Israel from the nations that had conquered them. The Saviour was to be a political force to be reckoned with – a holy superman. Micah predicted; “And they will live securely, for then his greatness will reach to the ends of the earth.” The one that God would send would bring his people peace, relieve them from the shame of being subject to people who did not know the rule of God, and bring prosperity.
They could not imagine him as a baby in a stable. They could not associate him with a child’s bodily functions and lack of control. I remember my late husband’s Jewish father saying how he’d explored Christianity and read the New Testament, but he rejected the idea of God as a baby ‘doing pipi and kaka’. But the lectionary reading from Hebrews 10, which we did not read, insists that the coming of God’s Saviour as a human being, incarnated in a human body was essential for God’s salvation. Forever, Jesus’ willingness to become human and to undergo bodily suffering, releases us from any shame or fear of our human nature, as well as our sins, in action and in thought. There is no salvation for us without God’s incarnation as an ordinary Jewish baby.
Mary’s expectations, which we sang earlier, were much more in terms of social justice – putting down the mighty and lifting up the lowly; feeding the hungry and letting the rich taste emptiness. She was already seeing this coming into being as God had chosen someone as ordinary as she to be the mother of the Saviour promised to Israel for generations. And yet her expectations were even more far reaching than those of Jews who expected the Messiah to overthrow the Romans. It’s one thing to achieve peace by getting rid of one set of rulers and replacing them with your own people, but Mary was looking for the overthrow of the whole social order. She did not fully understand it, but she recognized that the hallmarks of the work of her holy God are justice, peace and joy.
But remember that for Mary there was a choice; she also welcomed what happened to her and was obedient to God’s intervention in her life. As a result she also welcomed the blessing which both she and Elizabeth recognized that God had given her. Maybe God thought of many Jewish maidens who could have been chosen, but knew that Mary would say yes. And we are also free to say no as well as to invite God to draw nearer. Though the plans of God are inexorable and will come to pass, we as individuals may fail to cooperate with them and so miss out on what God had hoped to give us.
Every year, as we wait for Christmas, we are also waiting for Jesus to come to us. Even if we have known him for many years, the Kingdom of God is both here now and not yet. It is always coming into being. We are enjoying God’s presence with us yet still waiting, not just for the second coming to the whole world, but his coming to us as a people and as individuals in a new and greater way. Especially at Christmas. As we celebrate Christ’s coming this year, what are our expectations? If we are drawn into the closer relationship with Jesus that our souls long for, what do we expect? Are we like those Jews who expected the Messiah to sort out their political and social injustice and to be a secular ruler? Do we expect Jesus to solve our personal problems and give us a good life? Are we like Mary who welcomed a time of social justice, but could not imagine that her son’s life would be that of an obscure religious criminal? Do we love God because we see the Almighty as a route to prosperity or success? Are we like Herod who was afraid of what might be demanded of him?
In a way, as we wait in expectation we only know three things about what the coming of Jesus means. Firstly, we can predict that when Christ comes into our lives in a new way, what happens will transcend anything that we might have expected. Jesus will not fulfil our superficial desires, but the deepest longings of our hearts, which we can scarcely admit to ourselves. Secondly, it is as much likely to involve suffering as prosperity. The more that we admit Jesus and allow him to be born in us day by day, the more this will involve challenge and change.
So the third result is that once Jesus is born for us, either coming into our lives for the first time or in a new way, with a closeness that we never dared before, our lives will be changed. After a first baby, life is never the same again. Even parents who have grown up with small children in their family of origin will seldom have had the burden of responsibility for another completely dependent life 24 hours a day. And being part of Jesus’ life is a 24/7 commitment.
A birth changes priorities. Joseph would not have taken his small family to be refugees in Egypt if Jesus had not been born. Or he could have just given up his child to Herod’s soldiers to save his skin and preserve his livelihood, but his every instinct is to protect the new life. If parents cannot set aside their own needs to some extent, they become the substance of child abuse scandals. For those of us who invite Jesus to be born in our lives in a fresh way this Christmas, our priorities must change. We are called to live not just for ourselves, but to work for the coming Kingdom of God, which is always expected, here now but yet to come, always defying our expectations, always pregnant with the promise of justice, peace and joy for us and the world.
And may God grant us all a wonderful Christmas with Jesus being born for us again this week and growing in our lives over the year to come.
Readings: Micah 5:2-5a, Psalm 80:1-7, Hebrews 10:5-10, Luke 1:39-45, Luke 1 (46-55)
Christmas is nearly here – only 5 more days. If you haven’t sent your Christmas cards yet, then tomorrow is the last day to post them First Class to be sure of them getting there by Thursday. I’ve managed to send most of mine, except to the people who have moved and I can’t find their new addresses. Some people don’t send Christmas cards as a matter of principle, but if I don’t my relatives notice and, I think, feel a bit hurt. I know because there was one year that I didn’t send out any Christmas cards at all and they commented on it.
That wasn’t a matter of principle, though, nor even poverty. That was 1984, the year that I was expecting Adam. He was due to be born on January 18th, but I felt so huge and unwieldy and had had so many warning signs that I was absolutely convinced that he’d be born at least two weeks before then. You can tell that pregnancy can upset the ability to think straight as well as everything else. Anyway, I thought I’d send out New Year cards with an announcement of the birth.
True to form, of course, Adam arrived a week late on Jan 25th!
During advent and Christmas we see our faith through the lens of pregnancy and childbirth. In this sermon I want to explore what we can learn from this metaphor of pregnancy and birth and the coming of Jesus. With Mary we are waiting for the birth of a promised child; with the people of Israel we are waiting for the coming of a promised saviour. And like maybe every pregnancy throughout human history, the waiting seems interminable. When will the baby come; when will God send His saviour to us? In the normal course of events there is nothing we can do about when it happens. The whole process of medicalised childbirth which has developed over the past 100 years or so is an effort to bring under human control a fundamentally unpredictable process.
Although we can tell roughly when a baby is due to arrive, it is notoriously difficult to tell the exact time. I have just given away a comfortable reclining chair, with brown plush upholstery – except for the ragged footrest. During the time I was expecting Esther, I decided to recover the armchair. I was still doing it when I went into labour 2 weeks early and I spent most of a day trying to sew the remaining part to cover the footrest while waiting for contractions to become more frequent. But Esther arrived and I never did get the time or energy to finish the job. I’ve finally decided that I will never get around to it after 21 years.
So babies come early or late and, for the most part – and certainly not at the time of Jesus – we can’t control it at all. That’s one of the messages that this metaphor of pregnancy gives us. The Saviour is promised and he will come, but we can’t tell when and we can’t control it. So in the passage that was read from Micah, the Jewish people knew where the Saviour would appear. They knew it would be Bethlehem – and often we can decide where a baby will be born if we are able to respond in time to the early warning signs – but they didn’t know when. They knew it was at the end of labour, but when would that be? The people did not know and meanwhile they felt abandoned by God, as we heard in Psalm 80 that we read together. Like so many births, that of the Saviour of Israel was looked forward to with huge expectation and an increasing amount of stress and discomfort. In the case of the people of Israel it was a time of being humiliated as they were conquered repeatedly by different alien empires – Babylonian, Persian, Greek, Roman. “You have made us a source of contention to our neighbors, and our enemies mock us”, we read in Psalm 80. The people who believed they were chosen of God were despised and oppressed by others and wondering why God allowed this, and when their deliverance would take place.
Mary also faced disgrace and shame. The faithfulness of Joseph in response to the dream that was sent to him enabled her to escape the stigma of being an unmarried mother, although there was probably some whispering around the village. He saved Jesus from being born in abject poverty to a woman with little means of earning a living in Jewish society. Instead they were supported by a skilled artisan, so they were not quite at the bottom of the heap in Jewish society – but that would change.
Mary went to visit her cousin Elizabeth, who was pregnant with John the Baptist and there was instant recognition of the special nature of what was happening to the two women. Perhaps this was the only person who might have understood what was happening to her and who shared her amazement and apprehension. Pregnancy, in any case, tends to create a bond between women, as they are going through similar experiences. In fact, the kind of tension produced by waiting for something we both fear and long for can be reduced by sharing it with others in the same situation. I’m thinking about the kind of conversation you get between the people waiting outside the room before an exam or in hospital before an operation. As we wait for what God has in store for us, we may find that it helps if we share our expectations with others. For Mary this was also the occasion of one of the great songs of the Scriptures – the Magnificat - which we just sang as ‘My soul is filled with joy’. She shared her wonder and amazement at what God would do through her.
The possibility of reproduction is in any case a deep mystery. How is it that out of one human being can come another one, who has a separate consciousness and identity, who is so different genetically from the mother that her body must do complicated things to prevent the foetus from being destroyed by the mother’s immune system? Pregnancy is a strange state in which there is now a real human being who can respond independently – as John the Baptist leapt inside Elizabeth. But that new person is not here yet and cannot really be known. The baby has not yet been made manifest, except as an anonymous ‘bump’ yet increasingly the child can respond to sensations from the world. It is a picture of the Kingdom of God. Jesus coming inaugurated the Kingdom and it is here. Yet we know it is not complete. God’s rule is not fully manifest and so we wait the promised return of Jesus and the completion of his work. The phrase that is used is now and not yet. And so we wait, as someone does during a pregnancy, beginning to form a relationship with the unborn child, yet longing to know that person fully.
The other thing we know about pregnancy of course is that It almost always involves pain and suffering. Pregnancy can involve sickness, discomfort and pain Labour is called that because it is hard work. Throughout the Bible there is a recognition that childbirth costs a woman much anguish. Micah, in an earlier chapter than the one we heard, talks about Jerusalem, the daughter of Zion, as writhing in agony like a woman in labour, as it suffered defeat and the exile of the people. So the ‘one who is in labour in the prophecy refers to the people of Israel, as well as to the birth of the Saviour. In its’ relationship with God throughout the centuries the Jewish people are often portrayed by the prophets as an unfaithful wife. And all this time Micah says is the pregnancy and labour of a people who will eventually give birth to a Saviour. So the time of exile and occupation was equated with what can be some of the most excruciating pain that a person can suffer. However, the travail of a people gives birth to the Shepherd whose greatness will be known throughout the world.
In Mary’s case it was at the end of a long journey. We always assume she had a donkey because we can’t imagine her being able to travel all that way without one, but it’s not there in the Bible. Most people in those days could not afford such a thing; so it’s very possible that she walked all the way from Nazareth to Bethlehem – a distance of at least 80 miles, some of it up steep hills. And then she had to give birth in a stable – likely to be in one of the limestone caves in the area. Very poor people still live in some of those caves. It identifies Jesus as being in a position of abject poverty at his birth in a most unsuitable setting for childbirth.
We know that childbirth is a risky business. The period immediately before and after birth is the most dangerous time in anyone’s life. One of the leading causes of infant mortality in the developing world is tetanus, when the bacteria attack the baby through the severed umbilical cord. A stable is a place rich in tetanus bacteria. And it’s not without risk for the mother as well. A few months ago we looked at maternal mortality statistics and you might remember that in some countries, even today, the chances are one in ten or even one in eight that a woman’s life will end as a result of childbirth. Mary was, no doubt, exhausted from the journey. When I spent 30 hours in labour with Adam, I realised how it was possible that women in labour could die of sheer exhaustion – and I was in a modern hospital with all sorts of intervention and pain relief! It’s possible that the story could have been very different.
If we equate the birth of Jesus with the coming of the Kingdom of God into the world, in a new way, then we discover, as Micah told the people, that the coming of God does involve pain and suffering. It is risky and exhausting and hard. It is also inexorable. Once a pregnancy starts and goes beyond a certain point, even miscarriage or abortion involve a birth process. There has to be a birth or the mother and baby will die. She can’t say ‘Hold it. I’ve changed my mind.’ The woman and those around her are swept along in events which are in control of her and which she cannot stop. Just so God’s plans for the world. Having set in motion the process of incarnation – a plan motivated by love (for God so loved the world) – there could be no stopping it. God will accomplish that which God has determined to do and human intervention will not prevent the coming of the Kingdom.
A birth is something for which preparation is needed. At the least the child will need warmth and food. But Mary was unable to make adequate preparation. She had the swaddling clothes ready, but didn’t even know where this child would be born. Despite what she may have believed about the prophecies, she could have gone into labour anywhere between Nazareth and Bethlehem. So she could make only the most minimal preparation for the new arrival. And we also need to prepare for what Jesus may require of us, even if we don’t know what is going to happen.
Birth, then, is a revelation - a time when the new child is fully revealed for what he or she may be. If they had not been told by God neither Mary nor Elizabeth would have known they were having boys. Would they make blue swaddling bands or pink ones? We wait to see whether a child will be male or female, healthy or sickly, whole or with a congenital defect, taking after the mother or the father, or even whether he or she will be born alive or dead.
Each new birth carries with it a huge potential. Even if a baby is born into the most adverse social circumstances, there is a feeling at the beginning that this child could do anything. He or she could be an athlete or a scientist, a great poet or a wonderful cook or he could be the saviour of the world. He or she has the greatest potential immediately after birth. After that the world shapes and restricts what that individual may do and become. But every newborn baby usually embodies the longings and ambitions of the people close to him or her and can born with a huge burden of hope and expectation. And none more so than Jesus.
The Messiah, the Jewish Saviour, was expected to do so much. It‘s in that psalm that we read together: “Restore us, O God; make your face shine upon us, that we may be saved.” That was all bound up with saving the people of Israel from the nations that had conquered them. The Saviour was to be a political force to be reckoned with – a holy superman. Micah predicted; “And they will live securely, for then his greatness will reach to the ends of the earth.” The one that God would send would bring his people peace, relieve them from the shame of being subject to people who did not know the rule of God, and bring prosperity.
They could not imagine him as a baby in a stable. They could not associate him with a child’s bodily functions and lack of control. I remember my late husband’s Jewish father saying how he’d explored Christianity and read the New Testament, but he rejected the idea of God as a baby ‘doing pipi and kaka’. But the lectionary reading from Hebrews 10, which we did not read, insists that the coming of God’s Saviour as a human being, incarnated in a human body was essential for God’s salvation. Forever, Jesus’ willingness to become human and to undergo bodily suffering, releases us from any shame or fear of our human nature, as well as our sins, in action and in thought. There is no salvation for us without God’s incarnation as an ordinary Jewish baby.
Mary’s expectations, which we sang earlier, were much more in terms of social justice – putting down the mighty and lifting up the lowly; feeding the hungry and letting the rich taste emptiness. She was already seeing this coming into being as God had chosen someone as ordinary as she to be the mother of the Saviour promised to Israel for generations. And yet her expectations were even more far reaching than those of Jews who expected the Messiah to overthrow the Romans. It’s one thing to achieve peace by getting rid of one set of rulers and replacing them with your own people, but Mary was looking for the overthrow of the whole social order. She did not fully understand it, but she recognized that the hallmarks of the work of her holy God are justice, peace and joy.
But remember that for Mary there was a choice; she also welcomed what happened to her and was obedient to God’s intervention in her life. As a result she also welcomed the blessing which both she and Elizabeth recognized that God had given her. Maybe God thought of many Jewish maidens who could have been chosen, but knew that Mary would say yes. And we are also free to say no as well as to invite God to draw nearer. Though the plans of God are inexorable and will come to pass, we as individuals may fail to cooperate with them and so miss out on what God had hoped to give us.
Every year, as we wait for Christmas, we are also waiting for Jesus to come to us. Even if we have known him for many years, the Kingdom of God is both here now and not yet. It is always coming into being. We are enjoying God’s presence with us yet still waiting, not just for the second coming to the whole world, but his coming to us as a people and as individuals in a new and greater way. Especially at Christmas. As we celebrate Christ’s coming this year, what are our expectations? If we are drawn into the closer relationship with Jesus that our souls long for, what do we expect? Are we like those Jews who expected the Messiah to sort out their political and social injustice and to be a secular ruler? Do we expect Jesus to solve our personal problems and give us a good life? Are we like Mary who welcomed a time of social justice, but could not imagine that her son’s life would be that of an obscure religious criminal? Do we love God because we see the Almighty as a route to prosperity or success? Are we like Herod who was afraid of what might be demanded of him?
In a way, as we wait in expectation we only know three things about what the coming of Jesus means. Firstly, we can predict that when Christ comes into our lives in a new way, what happens will transcend anything that we might have expected. Jesus will not fulfil our superficial desires, but the deepest longings of our hearts, which we can scarcely admit to ourselves. Secondly, it is as much likely to involve suffering as prosperity. The more that we admit Jesus and allow him to be born in us day by day, the more this will involve challenge and change.
So the third result is that once Jesus is born for us, either coming into our lives for the first time or in a new way, with a closeness that we never dared before, our lives will be changed. After a first baby, life is never the same again. Even parents who have grown up with small children in their family of origin will seldom have had the burden of responsibility for another completely dependent life 24 hours a day. And being part of Jesus’ life is a 24/7 commitment.
A birth changes priorities. Joseph would not have taken his small family to be refugees in Egypt if Jesus had not been born. Or he could have just given up his child to Herod’s soldiers to save his skin and preserve his livelihood, but his every instinct is to protect the new life. If parents cannot set aside their own needs to some extent, they become the substance of child abuse scandals. For those of us who invite Jesus to be born in our lives in a fresh way this Christmas, our priorities must change. We are called to live not just for ourselves, but to work for the coming Kingdom of God, which is always expected, here now but yet to come, always defying our expectations, always pregnant with the promise of justice, peace and joy for us and the world.
And may God grant us all a wonderful Christmas with Jesus being born for us again this week and growing in our lives over the year to come.
Sunday, 13 December 2009
Turning Around
Preacher: Sue
Readings: Zephaniah 3:14-20, Isaiah 12:2-6, Luke 3:7-18
Two weeks ago Veronica preached our first Advent sermon. Peter and I weren’t here - we were at his mother’s Anglican church for the dedication of an altar frontal which she had made in memory of Peter’s father. It’s a beautiful purple cloth and the Anglican tradition of “liturgical colours” meant that its first use was on the first Sunday in Advent. It’s instructive to note the other occasions when purple can be used in Anglican churches: Lent and funerals.
Because, as Veronica reminded us, Advent is a time of mourning and fasting as we prepare to celebrate the incarnation. That’s hard for us to remember, as even those who protest against the appearance of Christmas decorations, Christmas merchandise and canned Christmas carols in September have, by the end of November, usually begun the trail of Christmas parties and mince-pie eating themselves. So Advent often feels like a time of indulgence and too many invitations. Quite a few non-church goers give up something for Lent but whoever heard of giving up something for Advent? So it’s easy to neglect the mourning, fasting and waiting of Advent but at the very least we can give attention to those aspects of the season when we meet for worship.
And our two Old Testament readings today help us with that, particularly if we try to take them in context.
The book of Zephaniah is a sustained prophecy of doom, for Judah’s enemies who have scorned God and oppressed and mocked God’s people. Chapter one tells us (1:14a, 15-16)
The great day of the Lord is near, near and hastening fast… That day will be a day of wrath, a day of distress and anguish, a day of ruin and devastation, a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness, a day of trumpet blast and battle cry against the fortified cities and against the lofty battlements.
And by the beginning of chapter three Zephaniah is still in full flow, but now it’s not just Judah’s neighbours and enemies who are in trouble, Judah herself is in the firing line:
Ah, soiled, defiled, oppressing city! It has listened to no voice; it has accepted no correction. It has not trusted in the Lord; it has not drawn near to its God… Therefore wait for me, says the Lord, for the day when I arise as a witness. For my decision is to gather nations, to assemble kingdoms, to pour out upon them my indignation, all the heat of my anger; for in the fire of my passion all the earth shall be consumed.
This is a dark and sobering vision, fitting for a time of mourning and fasting. Right now you may be wondering where our reading from Zephaniah, full of comfort and hope, fits into this dark picture. And that’s where we come to one of my favourite Advent themes. Judah is in darkness, ripe for disaster as she turns her back on God, and living in fear of enemies on her borders who look poised to execute God’s judgement. But quite unexpectedly God is going to turn it all around, turn away Judah’s enemies and create a people who live in safety and serve God.
At that time I will change the speech of the peoples to a pure speech, that all of them may call on the name of the Lord and serve him with one accord… On that day you shall not be put to shame because of all the deeds by which you have rebelled against me… I will leave in the midst of you a people humble and lowly. They shall seek refuge in the name of the Lord - the remnant of Israel; they shall do no wrong and utter no lies, nor shall a deceitful tongue be found in their mouths. Then they will pasture and lie down, and no one shall make them afraid.
This is a powerful promise in the midst of uncertainty and danger. God will put things right in spite of Judah’s faithlessness and corruption: “On that day,” God says, “you shall not be put to shame because of all the deeds by which you have rebelled against me.”
Some commentators credit Zephaniah with prompting king Josiah's reforms which for a while did indeed encourage the people of Judah to turn back to God, although this faded away again under successive kings until the people were taken into exile. But as with many of the Old Testament prophecies I think we are invited to see a second fulfilment of this prophecy in the coming of Jesus which we long for as we wait expectantly through Advent to celebrate the incarnation at Christmas. And perhaps we can also look for a third fulfilment in the future as we long for God’s kingdom to come fully and for disasters and fear to be banished.
The Isaiah reading is similar. It follows a mixture of warnings of punishment for Judah’s wayward behaviour and beautiful promises: of light coming into the darkness, of a child who will establish justice and righteousness and of an age to come in which “they will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea” (Isaiah 11:9). The verse just before our reading reflects thankfulness that in bringing about this vision God is choosing not to act on anger but to restore and purify: (Isaiah 12:1) “You will say in that day: I will give thanks to you, O Lord, for though you were angry with me, your anger turned away, and you comforted me.”
So in both passages God appears on the point of leaving Judah to her fate but relents, deciding to transform her situation, to rescue her and lift her graciously into safety and light. These passages reassure us in the darkness and waiting of Advent that God will turn things around in spite of us. Veronica reminded us two weeks ago that although in Advent we prepare for the coming of Jesus as if for an honoured guest, “the guest turns out to be the host” and “Jesus invites us to take part in his new, overflowing life”. And our passages from Zephaniah and Isaiah make a similar point. Although Judah has turned away from God and made herself vulnerable to her enemies, God plans to rescue her. God will establish a peaceable way of life with service and worship at its heart and will graciously invite Judah into that. I think that gives us a hope to hang on to, for ourselves when we fail time and time again to follow Jesus faithfully and for our world when it seems such a mess.
But the passage from Luke shows us the other side of the coin. It majors on people turning themselves around. It’s pretty strong stuff. “You brood of vipers!” John the Baptist castigates his hearers. Yet they flock out to hear him preach. What is that all about? Did they just like being harangued for some kind of catharsis, rather like the congregation in a book some of you may know, Cold Comfort Farm? They turned out Sunday after Sunday to “quiver” as Amos Starkadder preached fire and brimstone. Of course we all know that butter is disastrous treatment for burns, but for his audience which still swore by it, Amos Starkadder had a warning for anyone who thinks they’ll survive hell-fire by slapping butter on their scorched bodies: “there’ll be no butter in hell”.
Well, maybe that was the attraction for some but I think we can guess at some other reasons. John came into a time of fevered anticipation among the Jews in Palestine. As some of the elite collaborated with Rome, many struggled under the yoke of Roman occupation. Some longed to get back to the golden age of Israel’s power under David and Solomon and were willing to resort to violence to do so. They were hoping for a Messiah who would come in power and restore the Davidic tradition of kingship. Maybe this was in the minds of those who, verse 15 tells us, “were filled with expectation, and… questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah”.
In this turbulent time, maybe others who knew their bibles had a sense of déja vu. Although they were in their own land, surely the misery of living under occupation was much like the misery of living in exile six or seven hundred years earlier? And what had brought about the exile? The people’s own failure to live the way God wanted.
So for this group, the best response to Roman occupation was for the Jewish people to turn back to God and live holy lives. John’s call to repentance may have been music to their ears: at last another prophet (who even dressed in iconic prophet clothing of “camel's hair with a leather belt around his waist” and ate authentic prophet food, “locusts and wild honey” (Matt 3)), had come to call the people back to God and thus to open up the hope of return from exile. So perhaps for both groups John gave hope that a new age was dawning.
And we too can have that hope as we wait through Advent for Christmas. In fact we have the benefit of knowing the next few chapters in the story and knowing that with the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus a new age does indeed dawn. So Advent is a time of preparation, not just for a special guest as we thought about two weeks ago but also for a whole new age. It’s also a time to remember particularly that although the new age has begun to dawn with the coming of Jesus, it is not yet fully come. So in Advent we wait not only for Christmas but also for the second coming of Jesus to fully inaugurate that new age.
So perhaps this is a time of preparation for the future kingdom too. In thinking about that preparation, I am struck by John the Baptist’s practical challenge to his listeners to live honestly and generously. He told tax collectors "Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you" and soldiers "Do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation, and be satisfied with your wages."
And for those who are comfortably off he had those stern words about sharing excess: "Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise."
As I read these words on Monday I was struck by their resemblance to a passage from the writings of Dorothy Day, founder of Catholic Worker, which we heard read at the end of Urban Table where five of us helped out this time last Sunday.
Love of brother means voluntary poverty, stripping one’s self, putting off the old man, denying one’s self, etc. It also means non-participation in those comforts and luxuries which have been manufactured by the exploitation of others. While our brothers suffer, we must… suffer with them. While our brothers suffer from lack of necessities, we will refuse to enjoy comforts. These resolutions, no matter how hard they are to live up to, no matter how often we fall and have to begin over again, are part of the vision and the long-range view… And we must keep this vision in mind, recognize the truth of it, the necessity for it, even though we do not, can not, live up to it. Like perfection. We are ordered to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect, and we aim at it, in our intention, though in our execution we may fall short of the mark over and over.
This sounds like a tall order. Maybe that’s why none of us has decided to embrace voluntary poverty. But I think there are at least some principles to draw from John the Baptist and Dorothy Day, about living and working honestly, not trying to exploit any privileged position or loophole to our advantage, not profiting at the expense of others, and about reflecting on where and how our comfortable life is really paid for and being generous with our plenty. This week we may be particularly aware of that as we reflect on who is responsible for climate change and who suffers most from it.
As I say, this is a tall order, but we have the comfort of knowing that God’s grace is there for us when we fail. Our reading from Luke sets us a high target, calling us in Advent to prepare ourselves with great seriousness, striving for perfection. But our readings from Isaiah and Zephaniah remind us that in Advent we also wait for God’s intervention against the odds and in spite of all our failings.
Readings: Zephaniah 3:14-20, Isaiah 12:2-6, Luke 3:7-18
Two weeks ago Veronica preached our first Advent sermon. Peter and I weren’t here - we were at his mother’s Anglican church for the dedication of an altar frontal which she had made in memory of Peter’s father. It’s a beautiful purple cloth and the Anglican tradition of “liturgical colours” meant that its first use was on the first Sunday in Advent. It’s instructive to note the other occasions when purple can be used in Anglican churches: Lent and funerals.
Because, as Veronica reminded us, Advent is a time of mourning and fasting as we prepare to celebrate the incarnation. That’s hard for us to remember, as even those who protest against the appearance of Christmas decorations, Christmas merchandise and canned Christmas carols in September have, by the end of November, usually begun the trail of Christmas parties and mince-pie eating themselves. So Advent often feels like a time of indulgence and too many invitations. Quite a few non-church goers give up something for Lent but whoever heard of giving up something for Advent? So it’s easy to neglect the mourning, fasting and waiting of Advent but at the very least we can give attention to those aspects of the season when we meet for worship.
And our two Old Testament readings today help us with that, particularly if we try to take them in context.
The book of Zephaniah is a sustained prophecy of doom, for Judah’s enemies who have scorned God and oppressed and mocked God’s people. Chapter one tells us (1:14a, 15-16)
The great day of the Lord is near, near and hastening fast… That day will be a day of wrath, a day of distress and anguish, a day of ruin and devastation, a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness, a day of trumpet blast and battle cry against the fortified cities and against the lofty battlements.
And by the beginning of chapter three Zephaniah is still in full flow, but now it’s not just Judah’s neighbours and enemies who are in trouble, Judah herself is in the firing line:
Ah, soiled, defiled, oppressing city! It has listened to no voice; it has accepted no correction. It has not trusted in the Lord; it has not drawn near to its God… Therefore wait for me, says the Lord, for the day when I arise as a witness. For my decision is to gather nations, to assemble kingdoms, to pour out upon them my indignation, all the heat of my anger; for in the fire of my passion all the earth shall be consumed.
This is a dark and sobering vision, fitting for a time of mourning and fasting. Right now you may be wondering where our reading from Zephaniah, full of comfort and hope, fits into this dark picture. And that’s where we come to one of my favourite Advent themes. Judah is in darkness, ripe for disaster as she turns her back on God, and living in fear of enemies on her borders who look poised to execute God’s judgement. But quite unexpectedly God is going to turn it all around, turn away Judah’s enemies and create a people who live in safety and serve God.
At that time I will change the speech of the peoples to a pure speech, that all of them may call on the name of the Lord and serve him with one accord… On that day you shall not be put to shame because of all the deeds by which you have rebelled against me… I will leave in the midst of you a people humble and lowly. They shall seek refuge in the name of the Lord - the remnant of Israel; they shall do no wrong and utter no lies, nor shall a deceitful tongue be found in their mouths. Then they will pasture and lie down, and no one shall make them afraid.
This is a powerful promise in the midst of uncertainty and danger. God will put things right in spite of Judah’s faithlessness and corruption: “On that day,” God says, “you shall not be put to shame because of all the deeds by which you have rebelled against me.”
Some commentators credit Zephaniah with prompting king Josiah's reforms which for a while did indeed encourage the people of Judah to turn back to God, although this faded away again under successive kings until the people were taken into exile. But as with many of the Old Testament prophecies I think we are invited to see a second fulfilment of this prophecy in the coming of Jesus which we long for as we wait expectantly through Advent to celebrate the incarnation at Christmas. And perhaps we can also look for a third fulfilment in the future as we long for God’s kingdom to come fully and for disasters and fear to be banished.
The Isaiah reading is similar. It follows a mixture of warnings of punishment for Judah’s wayward behaviour and beautiful promises: of light coming into the darkness, of a child who will establish justice and righteousness and of an age to come in which “they will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea” (Isaiah 11:9). The verse just before our reading reflects thankfulness that in bringing about this vision God is choosing not to act on anger but to restore and purify: (Isaiah 12:1) “You will say in that day: I will give thanks to you, O Lord, for though you were angry with me, your anger turned away, and you comforted me.”
So in both passages God appears on the point of leaving Judah to her fate but relents, deciding to transform her situation, to rescue her and lift her graciously into safety and light. These passages reassure us in the darkness and waiting of Advent that God will turn things around in spite of us. Veronica reminded us two weeks ago that although in Advent we prepare for the coming of Jesus as if for an honoured guest, “the guest turns out to be the host” and “Jesus invites us to take part in his new, overflowing life”. And our passages from Zephaniah and Isaiah make a similar point. Although Judah has turned away from God and made herself vulnerable to her enemies, God plans to rescue her. God will establish a peaceable way of life with service and worship at its heart and will graciously invite Judah into that. I think that gives us a hope to hang on to, for ourselves when we fail time and time again to follow Jesus faithfully and for our world when it seems such a mess.
But the passage from Luke shows us the other side of the coin. It majors on people turning themselves around. It’s pretty strong stuff. “You brood of vipers!” John the Baptist castigates his hearers. Yet they flock out to hear him preach. What is that all about? Did they just like being harangued for some kind of catharsis, rather like the congregation in a book some of you may know, Cold Comfort Farm? They turned out Sunday after Sunday to “quiver” as Amos Starkadder preached fire and brimstone. Of course we all know that butter is disastrous treatment for burns, but for his audience which still swore by it, Amos Starkadder had a warning for anyone who thinks they’ll survive hell-fire by slapping butter on their scorched bodies: “there’ll be no butter in hell”.
Well, maybe that was the attraction for some but I think we can guess at some other reasons. John came into a time of fevered anticipation among the Jews in Palestine. As some of the elite collaborated with Rome, many struggled under the yoke of Roman occupation. Some longed to get back to the golden age of Israel’s power under David and Solomon and were willing to resort to violence to do so. They were hoping for a Messiah who would come in power and restore the Davidic tradition of kingship. Maybe this was in the minds of those who, verse 15 tells us, “were filled with expectation, and… questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah”.
In this turbulent time, maybe others who knew their bibles had a sense of déja vu. Although they were in their own land, surely the misery of living under occupation was much like the misery of living in exile six or seven hundred years earlier? And what had brought about the exile? The people’s own failure to live the way God wanted.
So for this group, the best response to Roman occupation was for the Jewish people to turn back to God and live holy lives. John’s call to repentance may have been music to their ears: at last another prophet (who even dressed in iconic prophet clothing of “camel's hair with a leather belt around his waist” and ate authentic prophet food, “locusts and wild honey” (Matt 3)), had come to call the people back to God and thus to open up the hope of return from exile. So perhaps for both groups John gave hope that a new age was dawning.
And we too can have that hope as we wait through Advent for Christmas. In fact we have the benefit of knowing the next few chapters in the story and knowing that with the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus a new age does indeed dawn. So Advent is a time of preparation, not just for a special guest as we thought about two weeks ago but also for a whole new age. It’s also a time to remember particularly that although the new age has begun to dawn with the coming of Jesus, it is not yet fully come. So in Advent we wait not only for Christmas but also for the second coming of Jesus to fully inaugurate that new age.
So perhaps this is a time of preparation for the future kingdom too. In thinking about that preparation, I am struck by John the Baptist’s practical challenge to his listeners to live honestly and generously. He told tax collectors "Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you" and soldiers "Do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation, and be satisfied with your wages."
And for those who are comfortably off he had those stern words about sharing excess: "Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise."
As I read these words on Monday I was struck by their resemblance to a passage from the writings of Dorothy Day, founder of Catholic Worker, which we heard read at the end of Urban Table where five of us helped out this time last Sunday.
Love of brother means voluntary poverty, stripping one’s self, putting off the old man, denying one’s self, etc. It also means non-participation in those comforts and luxuries which have been manufactured by the exploitation of others. While our brothers suffer, we must… suffer with them. While our brothers suffer from lack of necessities, we will refuse to enjoy comforts. These resolutions, no matter how hard they are to live up to, no matter how often we fall and have to begin over again, are part of the vision and the long-range view… And we must keep this vision in mind, recognize the truth of it, the necessity for it, even though we do not, can not, live up to it. Like perfection. We are ordered to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect, and we aim at it, in our intention, though in our execution we may fall short of the mark over and over.
This sounds like a tall order. Maybe that’s why none of us has decided to embrace voluntary poverty. But I think there are at least some principles to draw from John the Baptist and Dorothy Day, about living and working honestly, not trying to exploit any privileged position or loophole to our advantage, not profiting at the expense of others, and about reflecting on where and how our comfortable life is really paid for and being generous with our plenty. This week we may be particularly aware of that as we reflect on who is responsible for climate change and who suffers most from it.
As I say, this is a tall order, but we have the comfort of knowing that God’s grace is there for us when we fail. Our reading from Luke sets us a high target, calling us in Advent to prepare ourselves with great seriousness, striving for perfection. But our readings from Isaiah and Zephaniah remind us that in Advent we also wait for God’s intervention against the odds and in spite of all our failings.
Sunday, 29 November 2009
Be prepared
Preacher: Veronica
Readings: Jeremiah 33.14-16, Luke 21.25-36, 1 Thessalonians 3.9-13
Today as you have heard is the first Sunday of Advent, and this is the first of a series of sermons following the common lectionary readings for the day. This means that all over the world, Christian churches are hearing and pondering the same Bible passages at some time today. Which is kind of exciting.
The three readings we have heard today are about someone special coming. Jeremiah calls him the Branch of David. Luke calls him the Son of Man. Paul, writing to the Thessalonians, knows his name, and gives him a title: our Lord Jesus, who has come to us already, and yet is still to come.
What do you do when someone special is coming to visit? In the mid-sixties, my parents were due to receive a visit from the novelist E M Forster. They were friends with a Coventry couple whom he used to come and stay with for a while every year, and they asked this couple to bring him to our house. My mother always made a lot of effort when she was expecting visitors, but this time she excelled herself, making what she regarded as a ‘real English tea: white bread, cucumber sandwiches with the crusts cut off, as well as lots of other delicacies. She didn’t think he’d like her normal continental fare which was more likely to be rye bread with salami.
As it happened, he never got inside our house; our friends brought him to the door but he was well into his nineties by then and wasn’t feeling well enough to visit. So he shook all our hands through the car window, signed a couple of books and was driven away again. Still, I like to think a bit of literary greatness might have rubbed off on me.
Advent is all about being prepared. But for most of us, it’s preparing for Christmas, with all the food, the parties and the presents, that takes priority. Ironically , at this feast of Jesus’ coming to us, we might end up thinking less about what it means to welcome Jesus than we do in the rest of the year. We even think Christmas is really for children, and to get too excited about it is not a very grown up thing to do.
But traditionally, Advent was a season of fasting, like Lent: it was meant to prepare us spiritually for celebrating God breaking into our lives in Jesus. It was definitely a season for adults: people who soberly weigh up their own fitness to meet the King of creation. Yes, Christmas is an occasion of joy, just as having E M Forster visit was going to be an occasion of joy for my family; but getting ready to celebrate the Incarnation was and is a serious business.
So what do our readings tell us about being prepared? Let’s begin with the Gospel reading from Luke. This is one of a number of so-called apocalyptic passages in Jesus’ teaching, which appear in different forms in all the Gospels. ‘Apocalypse’ simply means ‘unveiling’ or ‘revealing’, and in these passages Jesus is revealing to his closest disciples what he can about the destiny of the world and the part he plays in it.
Now apocalypse teaching is very popular among some Christians today, especially in the United States. There are those, as there always have been, who make it their business to work out an exact timetable of what will happen in the end times when Jesus returns. They write endless sermons and even novels about the Tribulation and the Rapture, a doctrine which is based on a single verse of Scripture and which didn’t even feature in Christian theology till the 19th century. You can at times detect a note of glee or Schadenfreude in contemplating the awful sufferings the rest of the world will go through while we Christians are supposedly snatched away into heaven. Some even seem to know when all this will happen - which even Jesus said he didn’t know.
Jesus’ teaching about ‘the Day of the Lord’, which we also call the Day of Judgment, certainly contains predictions of frightening, world shattering events: floods and earthquakes, even disturbances in the sun, moon and stars which we regard as constants in our lives. In this he is speaking in the tradition of the earlier prophets who warned that the Day of the Lord would not be solely a day of blessing, but also a day of judgement and destruction of evil.
How can we be prepared for such a day? Maybe by stockpiling tinned food and guns in mountain hideaways, as some have done? I don’t think this is quite what Jesus means by ‘Be on your guard’. Our enemies, as Paul says elsewhere, are not flesh and blood, but spiritual powers of wickedness. Jesus tells us that to stand firm in the time of trial, we need to be travelling light. We need to make sure that the focus of our life is not on our anxieties, our responsibilities, but also not on making things as comfortable as possible for ourselves and having fun. The focus of our life should be on following him, and because it’s a challenging journey, we need to minimise the baggage we are carrying. We need to be alert, watching out for signs of God’s kingdom in the world and lending our support to them. The late Jim Punton once described this as what Jesus did: he had his antennae out, looking for what God was doing in the world and joining in.
Most of all, we need to be praying for Jesus to come into our world, which is actually his Father’s world, and to set its many wrong things right. And that means not only praying for ourselves to follow Jesus more closely, but praying for others to recognise him and follow him. Paul sets an example in this to the Thessalonians, praying for them that God will ‘strengthen your hearts in holiness that you may be blameless before our God and Father at the coming of the Lord Jesus with all his saints’,
But there’s the rub. I find this a distinctly frightening prayer. I can’t even manage to prepare the perfect Christmas, so how am I supposed to prepare myself for Jesus’ coming and be blameless as I stand before him? Well I can’t. And that’s where the reading from Jeremiah comes in.
Jeremiah prophesies that a descendant of David will ‘execute justice and righteousness in the land’ -’the land’ meaning the two kingdoms of Israel and Judah, even though at this point the northern kingdom of Israel barely existed any more. We know from other prophecies that in the Jewish religion this promise of a righteous kingdom is not meant to apply just to the historic land we now call Israel/Palestine, but to the whole world. But note one thing: creating this peacable kingdom is not our work, though we are invited to join with God in the work of creating it. It is the coming king, not the people of God, who is to bring about a world free of oppression. In fact Jeremiah goes further, saying ‘The Lord is our righteousness’.
There is no way that we can present ourselves blameless at the coming of Christ. It’s God’s job to transform us into kingdom people, and God has sent Jesus to lead the way and by his Spirit to strengthen and equip us for kingdom life. How we are changed into people who can receive our special guest, is through the mystery of the cross. Paul puts it this way to the Corinthians in his second letter to them: ‘For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God’. I don’t pretend to understand fully how this divine exchange works, but I once wrote a poem which stated it in terms of God exchanging clothes with us, so God wears our tatty, stained, worn out rags, and we get to wear Jesus’ beautiful robe. Maybe that image will work for some of you.
So, to change the metaphor, we are not to worry about how we get the house of our spirit ready for the visit of God. God sends us a housekeeper - the spirit of Christ - to clear out all the rubbish and lay out a fabulous feast.
Just one more thing I want to say: we are talking in terms of Jesus being in some sense our guest in the world. But actually it’s in some sense the other way round: the guest turns out to be the host. I recently expressed this on my Facebook status like this: ‘I have never invited Jesus into my life. He invited me into his.’ Not for a moment should we think how good we are for graciously inviting Jesus to be in our life. It’s really the opposite: Jesus invites us to take part in his new, overflowing life. So let’s pray during Advent that we may be able to follow his call into a new world. That’s worth waiting for.
Readings: Jeremiah 33.14-16, Luke 21.25-36, 1 Thessalonians 3.9-13
Today as you have heard is the first Sunday of Advent, and this is the first of a series of sermons following the common lectionary readings for the day. This means that all over the world, Christian churches are hearing and pondering the same Bible passages at some time today. Which is kind of exciting.
The three readings we have heard today are about someone special coming. Jeremiah calls him the Branch of David. Luke calls him the Son of Man. Paul, writing to the Thessalonians, knows his name, and gives him a title: our Lord Jesus, who has come to us already, and yet is still to come.
What do you do when someone special is coming to visit? In the mid-sixties, my parents were due to receive a visit from the novelist E M Forster. They were friends with a Coventry couple whom he used to come and stay with for a while every year, and they asked this couple to bring him to our house. My mother always made a lot of effort when she was expecting visitors, but this time she excelled herself, making what she regarded as a ‘real English tea: white bread, cucumber sandwiches with the crusts cut off, as well as lots of other delicacies. She didn’t think he’d like her normal continental fare which was more likely to be rye bread with salami.
As it happened, he never got inside our house; our friends brought him to the door but he was well into his nineties by then and wasn’t feeling well enough to visit. So he shook all our hands through the car window, signed a couple of books and was driven away again. Still, I like to think a bit of literary greatness might have rubbed off on me.
Advent is all about being prepared. But for most of us, it’s preparing for Christmas, with all the food, the parties and the presents, that takes priority. Ironically , at this feast of Jesus’ coming to us, we might end up thinking less about what it means to welcome Jesus than we do in the rest of the year. We even think Christmas is really for children, and to get too excited about it is not a very grown up thing to do.
But traditionally, Advent was a season of fasting, like Lent: it was meant to prepare us spiritually for celebrating God breaking into our lives in Jesus. It was definitely a season for adults: people who soberly weigh up their own fitness to meet the King of creation. Yes, Christmas is an occasion of joy, just as having E M Forster visit was going to be an occasion of joy for my family; but getting ready to celebrate the Incarnation was and is a serious business.
So what do our readings tell us about being prepared? Let’s begin with the Gospel reading from Luke. This is one of a number of so-called apocalyptic passages in Jesus’ teaching, which appear in different forms in all the Gospels. ‘Apocalypse’ simply means ‘unveiling’ or ‘revealing’, and in these passages Jesus is revealing to his closest disciples what he can about the destiny of the world and the part he plays in it.
Now apocalypse teaching is very popular among some Christians today, especially in the United States. There are those, as there always have been, who make it their business to work out an exact timetable of what will happen in the end times when Jesus returns. They write endless sermons and even novels about the Tribulation and the Rapture, a doctrine which is based on a single verse of Scripture and which didn’t even feature in Christian theology till the 19th century. You can at times detect a note of glee or Schadenfreude in contemplating the awful sufferings the rest of the world will go through while we Christians are supposedly snatched away into heaven. Some even seem to know when all this will happen - which even Jesus said he didn’t know.
Jesus’ teaching about ‘the Day of the Lord’, which we also call the Day of Judgment, certainly contains predictions of frightening, world shattering events: floods and earthquakes, even disturbances in the sun, moon and stars which we regard as constants in our lives. In this he is speaking in the tradition of the earlier prophets who warned that the Day of the Lord would not be solely a day of blessing, but also a day of judgement and destruction of evil.
How can we be prepared for such a day? Maybe by stockpiling tinned food and guns in mountain hideaways, as some have done? I don’t think this is quite what Jesus means by ‘Be on your guard’. Our enemies, as Paul says elsewhere, are not flesh and blood, but spiritual powers of wickedness. Jesus tells us that to stand firm in the time of trial, we need to be travelling light. We need to make sure that the focus of our life is not on our anxieties, our responsibilities, but also not on making things as comfortable as possible for ourselves and having fun. The focus of our life should be on following him, and because it’s a challenging journey, we need to minimise the baggage we are carrying. We need to be alert, watching out for signs of God’s kingdom in the world and lending our support to them. The late Jim Punton once described this as what Jesus did: he had his antennae out, looking for what God was doing in the world and joining in.
Most of all, we need to be praying for Jesus to come into our world, which is actually his Father’s world, and to set its many wrong things right. And that means not only praying for ourselves to follow Jesus more closely, but praying for others to recognise him and follow him. Paul sets an example in this to the Thessalonians, praying for them that God will ‘strengthen your hearts in holiness that you may be blameless before our God and Father at the coming of the Lord Jesus with all his saints’,
But there’s the rub. I find this a distinctly frightening prayer. I can’t even manage to prepare the perfect Christmas, so how am I supposed to prepare myself for Jesus’ coming and be blameless as I stand before him? Well I can’t. And that’s where the reading from Jeremiah comes in.
Jeremiah prophesies that a descendant of David will ‘execute justice and righteousness in the land’ -’the land’ meaning the two kingdoms of Israel and Judah, even though at this point the northern kingdom of Israel barely existed any more. We know from other prophecies that in the Jewish religion this promise of a righteous kingdom is not meant to apply just to the historic land we now call Israel/Palestine, but to the whole world. But note one thing: creating this peacable kingdom is not our work, though we are invited to join with God in the work of creating it. It is the coming king, not the people of God, who is to bring about a world free of oppression. In fact Jeremiah goes further, saying ‘The Lord is our righteousness’.
There is no way that we can present ourselves blameless at the coming of Christ. It’s God’s job to transform us into kingdom people, and God has sent Jesus to lead the way and by his Spirit to strengthen and equip us for kingdom life. How we are changed into people who can receive our special guest, is through the mystery of the cross. Paul puts it this way to the Corinthians in his second letter to them: ‘For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God’. I don’t pretend to understand fully how this divine exchange works, but I once wrote a poem which stated it in terms of God exchanging clothes with us, so God wears our tatty, stained, worn out rags, and we get to wear Jesus’ beautiful robe. Maybe that image will work for some of you.
So, to change the metaphor, we are not to worry about how we get the house of our spirit ready for the visit of God. God sends us a housekeeper - the spirit of Christ - to clear out all the rubbish and lay out a fabulous feast.
Just one more thing I want to say: we are talking in terms of Jesus being in some sense our guest in the world. But actually it’s in some sense the other way round: the guest turns out to be the host. I recently expressed this on my Facebook status like this: ‘I have never invited Jesus into my life. He invited me into his.’ Not for a moment should we think how good we are for graciously inviting Jesus to be in our life. It’s really the opposite: Jesus invites us to take part in his new, overflowing life. So let’s pray during Advent that we may be able to follow his call into a new world. That’s worth waiting for.
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