It takes a Village

 

Some years ago now, Robert and I went to Avignon for a holiday during the first week of January.
As holidays go, it was a dismal failure, because I had flu, the hotel was horrible, and it snowed!
But one thing was very good, and that was that in the Town Hall, they had a Christmas crib.

Now, when we think of a Christmas crib, we usually think of a stable, with Mary and Joseph, the Christ Child, the shepherds, an ox and an ass, and perhaps the wise men if it’s nearly Epiphany.

But in France, and particularly in the South of France, they do things a bit differently, and their Christmas cribs show the whole village of Bethlehem, as they imagine it.

The one in the Town Hall was huge!
They do have the Holy Family, but they also have all the villagers going around their daily visitors;
you might have a milkmaid flirting with the baker’s boy;
someone fishing from a bridge;
someone else with a cart full of wood,]the old men sitting on a bench watching the world go by,
a couple of women gossiping outside a shop, and so on.
The more you look, the more you see.

I wish I could show you some of the pictures I took of it,
and of one I saw in an exhibition of cribs in a church in Alsace last year!
I love this Provençal tradition.
You see, unlike many crib traditions, it reminds us that Bethlehem was, and is, a village, and Mary and Joseph were not isolated.
We tend to think of them as travelling alone –
just Mary, Joseph and the donkey –
but of course they would have gone to Bethlehem with a group of other travellers;
it wasn’t safe, else.

And realistically, the manger would have been on the step separating the animal part of the house from the human part,
and there would probably have been a great many women,
mostly relations, helping Mary with the birth and afterwards.

We don’t think of animals as sharing living-space with humans, as we only do that with our pets,
but of course the cattle and horses or donkeys would have helped keep the house warm in the winter, and was the norm back in the day.

Yes, there were signs that this wasn’t just another human baby being born at a most inconvenient time.
Yes, the shepherds came to visit –
but they might well have been family, don’t you think?
And yes, Anna and Simeon did respond to the promptings of God’s Spirit,
and knew that they had seen their salvation.
But from the human point of view, Mary and Joseph were just doing what all Jewish families did –
they had their son circumcised at eight days old, and then, at forty days old, they took him to the Temple to redeem him from God –
the first and the best of everything belongs to God, so that parents would redeem him by paying a small sum and having ritual prayers said over him, these always invoking Elijah.
Everybody did that, if they could.

And then they went back to Nazareth –
again, travelling in a party for safety –
and Jesus would have grown up in an extended family, lots of aunts and uncles and cousins around, and, in due course, brothers and sisters.
He would have learnt to roll over, and to sit up,
and in due course to stand and walk, and talk, and be potty-trained;
he’d have had to learn when not to talk,
and when he needed to sit still and listen.
He’d have gone to school with the other kids his age,
and learnt to read and write, especially the Scriptures.
He’d probably have hung round Joseph, and learnt basic carpentry, even before his formal apprenticeship when he was 13 –
and, at that, he probably learnt some interesting words to say when he hit his thumb with a hammer!

And each year they would go to Jerusalem, to the Temple.
Again, they would travel in groups and caravans.
At first Jesus would be carried on his father’s back,
and then kept close to his parents,
but as he grew older, he’d be off with his friends,
running ahead and being told not to go out of sight,
or lagging behind and being told to keep up.

They’d gather round the camp fire in the evening and sing the traditional songs.

And then the kids were coming twelve years old.
Now, in Jewish circles, you were considered a man at the age of 13,
and from then on could be asked to read, and comment on, the Scriptures at any time.

These days they have a ceremony called a “Bar Mitzvah”, or a “Bat Mitzvah” for girls,
where the child in question reads a passage from Scriptures, translates it, and then preaches on it –
my daughter went to a friend’s daughter’s Bat Mitzvah last term, and was very impressed by her performance.
They also have a party, either immediately afterwards or later the same day.

In Jesus’ day, they didn’t have the ceremony, but every boy –
not girls, back in the day, alas –
every boy approaching his 13^th birthday knew he could be called on at any time after his birthday.
Their teachers would have been focussing on this during the school year,
and probably some of the boys were getting nervous.
It was probably their last school year –
they would be leaving soon to work with their fathers, and learn their father’s trade.
They weren’t children any more –
at thirteen, they would be considered men.

That year, they all went up to Jerusalem as usual, and attended the Passover festivities, and then gathered together to go home again.
And it wasn’t until next day they discovered that there Jesus wasn’t!
His parents had assumed he was off with his friends as usual,
but suddenly, horrifyingly, nobody had seen him.
His parents rushed back to Jerusalem –
they didn’t like to go on their own, but this was an emergency –
and found him still in the Temple, deep in discussion with the scribes.

You see, as Jesus had studied the Scriptures, he became engrossed in them.
God helped them become real to him.
And, of course, Jesus had endless questions.
I'm sure his parents did their best to answer him, but perhaps they didn't know all that much themselves.
And his teachers, perhaps, didn’t have the time they would have liked to answer his questions –
or perhaps he wanted to go more deeply into these things than they cared to do in an academic environment.
And when he reached Jerusalem that year, he found all that, for then, he was seeking with the scribes in the Temple.
They knew.
They could answer his questions, in the way that the folks back home in Nazareth could not.
They could deal with his objections, listen to him, wonder at his perspicacity at such a young age.

I hope the scribes didn’t laugh at him;
it's not clear from the text, but they might have.
But probably not, if his questions were sensible and to the point.

And Jesus, typically adolescent, totally forgets about going home,
forgets that his parents will have kittens when they find he's not with them, forgets to wonder how he's going to get home,
or even where he's going to sleep –
or, perhaps, thinks a vague mention of his plans was enough.
Anyway, Aunt Elizabeth and Uncle Zach will put him up, he’s quite sure.

And when his parents finally find him,
like any adolescent, he says “You don’t understand!”
And, rather rudely, “I have to be about my Father’s business!”

Poor Joseph –
not very kind, was it?
We aren’t told what happened next,
whether they hurried to catch up with their original caravan,
or had to wait until the next one was going in that direction.
We aren’t told whether Jesus was grounded for a few days when they did get home, or what.

Come to that, we aren’t told whether he actually knew anything about who he was.
He’d probably grown up in the normal rough-and-tumble of village life,
but then, when they started studying the Scriptures in good earnest,
something came alight in him.
He began to catch glimpses of God,
of That Which Is,
of the Thought that Thought the World…
and he longed and longed to know more.

Later on, of course, he would realise that
searching the Scriptures was not enough.
Remember what he said to the Pharisees:
“You search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life;
and it is they that testify on my behalf.
Yet you refuse to come to me to have life."

He knew that you needed more than just the words on the page –
but at twelve years old, this was what had intrigued him, fascinated him, to the point of ignoring anything else.

But why does this matter?
For me, it’s about Jesus being human as well as divine.
He didn’t come fully formed from his father’s head,
like some of the Greek or Roman gods are alleged to have done.
He didn’t grow up in splendid isolation, just with his parents,
and later, with his mother alone.

Even if, as it appears from Matthew’s gospel,
the family had lived in Bethlehem until they had had to flee into exile,
they would probably have resettled in Nazareth because they had family there, rather than just choosing it at random.

The thing is, he grew up in the midst of other people.
They say it takes a village to raise a child,
and Jesus grew up in that sort of village!
He had lots of examples to follow,
both of how to behave and of how not to.

I hope he didn’t know how special he was, not until much later.
But he did grow up loving God.

It’s not always easy, at this distance, to see the human Jesus, is it?
We see him as divine –
and so he is,
but he is also human.
His experiences may not have been exactly the same as ours,
as he grew up in a very different culture.

All the same, if he was 13 years old today, he’d be glued to his phone,
getting WhatsApp messages from his friends every few minutes,
gradually being allowed more freedom to go out with his friends, and so on, like my grandsons, who are 11 and 14, so just that sort of age!

And when my daughter was adolescent, I spent a LOT of time with this story!

(You may want to listen to the audio at this point, as I spent a few minutes talking about the fact that Jesus comes to us as communities as much as, if not more so, than as individuals)

And I do think it’s important to see Jesus as human as well as divine, because it makes him –
at least, I find it does –
much more approachable, much more real,
much more able to empathise with me, and plead my cause with God.
On Christmas Day, K reminded us, at Brixton Hill, that God came down into the mess and muddle of this world.
He’s been here; he knows what it’s like.
He’s not just the baby in the manger;
he’s not just the adolescent boy following his obsessions to the exclusion of all else;
at that, he’s not even the still figure on the Cross.
He is any and all of those things, he is Jesus Christ,
and he is our Lord and Saviour.
Amen.

Carol Service 2024

 

“So hush the noise, ye men of strife, and hear the angels sing!”

That is the theme the Methodist church has suggested we consider during the festive season this year, and really, what with one war and another going on around the world, it really couldn’t be more appropriate. The words come, as you know, from the carol “It came upon the midnight clear”, which we’re going to sing in a minute or so.

There is just too much war going on in the world this year – Ukraine, Israel, Syria, Sudan…. So it goes. We know that, even while we are celebrating, people all over the world are suffering. And, closer to home, we know that there are many people who will be struggling to put a festive meal on the table on Wednesday, never mind find presents for their family. Just ask those who help out at the foodbank each week! Father Christmas won’t be calling at those homes.

And for the rest of us, Christmas can be a bit manic – all that last-minute shopping, and you know as well as I do that the supermarkets will have run out of the one thing you really went in for…. And the stress of whether you have forgotten something vital!

There’s a poem that went round social media the other day – you may have seen it. But it resonated with me on this year’s theme of “hush the noise”. It’s by someone called Meredith Anne Miller, and goes like this:

Christmas is not here to offer
a four-week escape
from the pain of the world
with a paper-thin layer of twinkle lights.

It is not here to anaesthetise us
with bows and eggnog lattes.

Christmas is not offering us the chance
to escape the ache of life
through piles of presents.

Christmas is God saying,
“Yes, this pain is too much. Yes, it is too sad.
Yes, the ache is too great. Hang on.
I’ll come carry it with you.”
© Meredithannemiller

“I’ll come carry it with you.”
“Hush the noise.”

Let’s try to spend a few minutes each day hushing the noise, relaxing, and becoming aware that God has come to carry it all with us. Amen.

Preparing for Christmas

 

So today is Advent Sunday.
It's the first Sunday in the Church's Year, and, of course, the first in the four-week cycle that brings us up to Christmas.
Christmas is definitely coming –
if you go by what the supermarkets do, it's been going on since September!

It seems strange then, doesn't it, that the readings for this Sunday are about as un-Christmassy as you can get!
This from the Gospel we've just heard:

“There will be strange things happening to the sun, the moon, and the stars. On earth whole countries will be in despair,
afraid of the roar of the sea and the raging tides.
People will faint from fear as they wait for what is coming over the whole earth, for the powers in space will be driven from their courses.
Then the Son of Man will appear, coming in a cloud with great power and glory.
When these things begin to happen, stand up and raise your heads, because your salvation is near.”

It's all about the end of the world!
The time when Jesus will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, as we say in the Creed.
Now, there are frequently scares that the end of the world is about to happen –
some cult or other claims to have deciphered an ancient text that tells us that it might occur on any given date –
Some years ago, people thought a Mayan calendar was predicting the end of the world, which would have been a serious waste of all the Christmas presents we had been buying and making that year!
Of course, it didn’t happen!
And it was only one of a very long line of end-of-the-world stories which people have believed.
Sometimes they have even gone as far as to sell up all their possessions and to gather on a mountain-top,
and at least two groups committed mass suicide to make it easier for them to be found, or something.
I don't know exactly what....
And because some Christians believe that when it happens,
they will be snatched away with no notice whatsoever, leaving their supper to burn in the oven, or their car to crash in the middle of the motorway, some people set up, half as a joke but also have serious, a register of pets, so that if it happened, non-believers, who would be, they thought, left behind, will look after your pets for you! I don’t think the site is still active, but it was for a couple of years, back in the day.

But the point is, Jesus said we don't know when it's going to happen.
Nobody knows.
He didn't know.
He assumed, I think, that it would be fairly soon after his death –
did anybody expect the Church to go on for another two thousand years after that?
Certainly his first followers expected His return any minute now.

What is clear from the Bible –
and from our own knowledge, too –
is that this world isn't designed to last forever;
it's not meant to be permanent.
Just ask the dinosaurs!
We don't know how it will end.
When I was a girl it was assumed it would end in the flames of a nuclear holocaust;
that particular fear has lessened in 1989,
but has returned a bit with Russia making ominous noises.
These days we also think in terms of runaway global warming,
or perhaps a global pandemic far worse than what we endured a couple of years ago,
or a major asteroid strike.
But what is clear is that one day humanity will cease to exist on this planet.
We don't know how or when,
but we do know that God is in charge and will cope when it happens.

Christmas is coming.
Jesus said, of his coming again,
“Look at the fig tree and all the trees.
When they sprout leaves, you can see for yourselves and know that summer is near.
Even so, when you see these things happening,
you know that the kingdom of God is near.
Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened.  
Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.”

No, we are still reading Jesus' words today.
And just as we know summer is coming when the days get longer and the leaves start to shoot, so we know that Christmas is near when the shops start selling Christmas stuff!
But Jesus goes on to give a warning:
“Be careful, or your hearts will be weighed down with carousing, drunkenness and the anxieties of life, and that day will close on you suddenly like a trap.  For it will come on all those who live on the face of the whole earth.  
Be always on the watch, and pray that you may be able to escape all that is about to happen,
and that you may be able to stand before the Son of Man.”

Certainly we appear to celebrate Christmas with carousing and drunkenness, more often than not.
And who isn't weighed down with thoughts of all the preparation for the big day that is going to be necessary?
Whatever am I going to give this person, or that person?
So-and-so wants to know what I should like –
what should I like?
Have I got all the turkey-pudding-mince pies-Christmas Cake-Brussels Sprouts and so on organised?
Who have I not sent a card to, and won't they be offended?
You know the scenario.

But what is Christmas really about?
In much of the country it's been reduced to an extravaganza of food and booze and presents.
And the Christians, like us, chunter and mutter about
“Putting Christ back in Christmas!”, as if He was not there anyway.
But even we tend to reduce Christmas to a baby in a manger.
We render it all pretty-pretty,
with cattle and donkeys surrounding the Holy Family,
shepherds and kings, and so on.
Which is fine when you're two years old, but for us adults?
We forget the less-convenient bits of it –
the fact that Mary could so easily have been left to make her living as best she could on the streets,
the birth that came far from home –
at least, in Luke's version of the story.
Matthew's version says that they lived in Bethlehem anyway.
We forget about the flight to Egypt that Matthew tells us about so dramatically,
and the children whom Herod is alleged to have had killed in Bethlehem to try to avoid any rivalry by another King of the Jews.
We forget that it was the outsiders, the outcasts –
the shepherds, outcast in their own society, or the wise men from the East, not Jewish, not from around here –
it was they who were the first to worship the new-born King.

But the point is, it's not just about that, is it?
We'll teach the babies to sing “Away in a Manger”,
and it's right and proper that we should.
We kneel at the cradle in Bethlehem, yes –
but we worship the Risen Lord.

We worship at the cradle in Bethlehem,
but we also worship Jesus all year round,
remembering not only his birth,
but his teachings,
his ministry,
the Passion,
the Resurrection,
the Ascension
and the coming of the Holy Spirit.
And we worship, not only as an abstract “Thing” –
what was that song:
“I will celebrate Nativity, for it has a place in history....” –
it’s not just about worshipping a distant divinity,
but about God with us. Emmanuel.

And that brings us full circle, for whether we are celebrating once again the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem,
or whether we are looking towards the end times,
as we traditionally do today,
what matters is God with us. Emmanuel.

Jesus said “When these things begin to happen, stand up and raise your heads, because your salvation is near.”
We know that we will be saved,
we have been saved,
we are being saved –
it's not a concept I can actually put into words,
as it's not just about eternal life but about so much more than that.
But “our salvation is near”.
Dreadful things may or may not be going to happen –
and they probably are going to happen, because Life is Like That –
but God is still with us.

Talking about the end of the world like that is called “apocalyptic speech”,
and very often, when people talked apocalyptically,
they were addressing a local situation just as much as the end times.
The prophets certainly were;
they had no idea we would still be reading their words today.
When Jeremiah said, as in our first reading,
“The people of Judah and of Jerusalem will be rescued and will live in safety,” he was thinking of a fairly immediate happening –
and, indeed, we know that the tribes of Judah did return after exile
and live in Jerusalem again.
But his words apply to the end times, too.

And the same with Jesus, I think.
Much of the disasters he spoke of will have happened within a few years of his death –
the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, for one thing.
Don't forget that he was in an occupied country at the time.
And all down the centuries there have been plagues
and wars
and floods
and famines
and earthquakes
and tsunamis
and comets and things;
every age, I think, has applied Jesus' words to itself.

So we are living in the end times no more and no less than any other age has been.
And in our troubled world, we hold on to the one certainty we have:
God with us.
Emmanuel.
Amen.

Becoming Ourselves

 

“So, friends, we can now –
without hesitation –
walk right up to God, into “the Holy Place.”
Jesus has cleared the way by the blood of his sacrifice, acting as our priest before God.
The “curtain” into God’s presence is his body.
So let’s do it –
full of belief, confident that we’re presentable inside and out.
Let’s keep a firm grip on the promises that keep us going.

He always keeps his word.”

©2000 Nathan Nettleton LaughingBird.net

That's a modern translation of part of our first reading today,
from the letter to the Hebrews.
I don't know how much you know about this letter;
it's thought to date from around the year 63 or 64 AD,
before the Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed
and before the Eucharist became a widespread form of Christian worship.
Nobody knows who wrote it, either;
arguments about its authorship go back to at least the 4^th century AD!
Probably one of Paul's pupils, but nobody actually knows who.

The Temple in Jerusalem is still standing when this letter is written.
The author uses it to contrast what used to be –
in the olden days only the High Priest could go into God's presence,
and he had to take blood with him to atone for the people's sins and his own.
Nowadays, it is only Christ, the great High Priest, who can go into God's presence –
but he can and does take us with him.
We can go with Jesus into the very presence of God himself, confidently,
just like you'd walk into your own front room.

The thing is, of course, that it's all because of what Jesus has done for us.
We can't go into God's presence, as the prayer says,
“trusting in our own righteousness”.
If we are to go in with any degree of confidence,
it is because of what Jesus has done for us,
arguably whether or not we recognise this.

The author of the Letter to the Hebrews tells us that Christ takes us in there in his own body.
I don't know about you, but for me that rather helps clarify what St Paul said about our being part of the Body of Christ –
and in that Body, we can go into God's presence.

There is nothing we can do to make it any easier or any more difficult;
it is all down to Jesus.
We are made right with God by what Jesus has done, end of.
It isn't about whether we have confessed our sins –
although I hope we have faced up to where we have gone wrong.
It isn't about whether we have asked Jesus to be our Saviour and our Lord –
although I very much hope we have done so.
Neither of those things will save us.
Only God will save us –
and as soon as we reach out a tentative finger to him,
and sometimes even before, he is there,
reassuring us that we are loved,
we are saved,
we are forgiven.

The trouble is, all too often we focus on sin as though that were what Christianity were all about.
We even tend to think the Good News goes
“You are a sinner and God will condemn you to hell unless you believe the right things about him.”

Erm, no.
Just no.
We do things like that.
We are quick to condemn, especially people in public life.
Just read any newspaper, any day.
Look how people’s careers can be destroyed by the revelation of an injudicious tweet they sent when they were a teenager!
We are slow to forgive –
we don't believe people can change, we keep on bringing up episodes in the lives of our nearest and dearest that might have happened a quarter of a century ago!

But God is not like that.
God is love.
God is salvation.
We don't have to do anything, only God can save us.
Yes, following Jesus is not an easy option, we know that.
If we are Jesus' person, we are Jesus' person in every part of our lives –
it isn't just something we do here in Church on Sundays.
It affects who we are when we are at work,
or at home with our families,
or going to the supermarket.
It affects what we choose to do with our free time,
who we choose to spend it with –
not, I hope, exclusively people who think the same way as we do.

You see, the thing is, you never know exactly what God's going to do.
An acquaintance of mine is a fairly well-known author whose books have been published both here and in the USA.
She is a few months older than I am, and some years ago she announced on
her blog that she had met Jesus and was now a Christian.
You don't really expect people to become Christians just before their 60^th birthday, but it happened to her.
God reached out to her and, as she put it, everything changed.

Yet she was still herself.

Another fairly well-known author –
well, well-known to me, anyway,
but if you don't read science fiction or fantasy you'll not have heard of either of these lovely women –
confirmed in the comments on this blog that she, too, is a believer,
although you couldn't have actually read some of her books and not realised that.
And one of her comments read, in part:
“I'm still who I was, probably more so. . . . I was scared of the other –
of becoming the cookie fresh from the cutter, just like every other cookie.
But individuality and diversity appears to be built in to the design concept.”

Individuality and diversity appear to be built into the design concept.
Yes.
God has created and designed each one of us to be uniquely ourselves.
When we are told that we will become more Christ-like as we go on with Jesus,
it doesn't mean we'll all grow to resemble a first-century Jewish carpenter!
We will, in fact, become more and more ourselves, more and more who we were intended to be.

Salvation comes from God, through nothing you or I can do, although we are, of course, at liberty to say “No thank you!”
But if we say “Yes please”, as I suspect most of us here have said, at one time or another, then everything changes.
I've spoken before, although not, I think here, about the consequences of healing.
For make no mistake, my friends, when God touches our lives, things change.
Sometimes it is our behaviour which changes –
perhaps we used to get drunk, but now we find ourselves switching to soft drinks after a couple of glasses.
Perhaps we used to gamble,
but suddenly realise we haven't so much as bought a Lottery ticket for weeks, never mind visiting a bookie!
Perhaps we used to be less than scrupulous about what belongs to us, and what belongs to our employer,
but now we find ourselves asking permission to use an office envelope.

Very often these sorts of changes happen without our even noticing them. Others take more struggle –
sometimes it is many years before we can finally let go of an addiction, or a bad habit or a wrong attitude.
But as I've said before, the more open we are to God,
the more we can allow God to change us.
Sometimes, of course, we cling on to the familiar bad habits,
as we don't know how to replace them with healthier ways of acting and thinking, and that's scary.

But the point is, when God touches our lives, things change.
They changed for my friend, I know they changed for me,
and they will have changed for many of you, if not all of you, too.

So where does this leave our reading?
Jesus, in our gospel reading, reminded us that we mustn't go running this way and that way,
convinced of doomsday scenarios every time we hear a news bulletin.
Yes, the world as we know it is going to end some day –
it wasn't built to be permanent, just ask the dinosaurs!
We don't know how and why it will end;
in my youth, I would have assumed it would end in a nuclear war that would destroy all living things.
These days that is, perhaps, less probable,
but what about runaway global warming or an asteroid strike?
Or just simply running out of fossil fuels and unable to replace them?
And who knows what a second Trump presidency will do to the United States, never mind to the rest of the world?
The answer is that we simply don't know.
Unlike the first Christians,
we don't really expect Jesus to return any minute now –
although I suppose that is possible.
We do, however, accept and appreciate that this world is finite and that one day humanity will no longer exist here.

And we mustn't be scared all the time, either.
Yes, our news headlines can be very scary –
but isn't God greater than terrorists?
Isn't God greater than Russia, or Hamas, or Israel, or even the USA?

And we musn't get bogged down in details, either.
A few years ago there was such a silly row in the USA this week because Starbucks hadn't put Christmas symbols –
not Christian ones, but snowflakes and so on –
on their red cups that year.
Too silly – the God we worship is so very much bigger than whether or not a corporation has decorations on its cups.
There are many good reasons not to go to Starbucks, but that really isn't one of them!
And at the moment there are huge rows going on in the Church of England about reaction to historical abuse scandals, and failures in safeguarding. People are calling for the Archbishop of Canterbury to resign, as indeed he apparently considered doing, but another cleric has pointed out that it’s not a scalp that is needed, but a complete change in safeguarding culture.
Methodists have been working very hard on safeguarding –
just last week I did a course, as all local preachers and others in positions of responsibility must do, about safeguarding and how to ensure vulnerable people are not abused or exploited.
And that is a very important thing, and to know who to contact if you become aware of such things going on, and see what systems and so on need to be implemented to make it more difficult for people to abuse or exploit others.

It is, of course, vital to our life on earth to be aware of such things. But when we are also taught that we will be raised from death and go on Somewhere Else, it almost pales into insignificance.
We don't know what that Somewhere Else will be like,
nor who we'll be when we get there –
although I imagine we'll still be recognisably ourselves.
But we do know that Jesus will be there with us,
and that we will see Him face to face.

But eternal life isn't just pie in the sky when you die, as it is so often caricatured.
If we are Christians, we have eternal life here and now;
so often, it's living it that's the problem, as I expect some of the examples I’ve given have shown.
So I'm going to conclude with part of the quote from Hebrews with which I began:
“Jesus has cleared the way by the blood of his sacrifice,
acting as our priest before God.
The “curtain” into God’s presence is his body.
So let’s do it –
full of belief, confident that we’re presentable inside and out.”

Let's do it!
Amen.

Remembrance Sunday 2024

 

Photo of Oradour-sur-Glane 

Today is Remembrance Sunday.
It’s not an easy day to preach on, although I have done so many times over the years.
But what do you say that doesn’t appear either a facile glorification of war, or a total dismissal of those who lost their lives, or were injured, or, worst of all, lost their faith during them?

Here in Britain we’ve been relatively lucky.
There hasn’t been a battle fought on British soil since Culloden in 1745.
We suffered the Blitz, of course, when many of our cities were badly damaged, or even destroyed –
you can see the scars to this day, even around Brixton.
So many streets of Edwardian terraces have a sudden more modern block in the middle.
But we haven’t had jackbooted soldiers marching about the place, or tanks running through our back gardens.

You know, the more I think of it, the more awful I feel, because I know that many of you had to endure, or your parents had to endure, exactly that!
British troops strutting about the place, issuing orders, interfering with your daily lives, generally behaving as if they owned the world!

It isn’t just the British, of course!
In fact, in 1944, British soldiers were warmly welcomed into Normandy by the local people, who had suffered for four long years of Nazi occupation.
But that, of course, was not the end of it –
much of the local area was destroyed by the troops fighting for dominance.

Today we are supposed to remember those who fought and died, those who fought and were wounded.
And indeed we must and should –
whatever side they fought on;
whether they enlisted voluntarily or were conscripted;
whether they thought their cause was right and just, or whether they went unwillingly in service to a regime they hated. Many of us will know of family members who were killed or wounded in one of the two great wars of the 20^th century, or one of the many lesser conflicts.
Perhaps you have family members involved in the current wars in Ukraine or Gaza or Sudan, or again, in many of the lesser conflicts around the world.
Today is the day we honour them and remember them.

But we also need to remember the civilians;
those whose houses or livelihoods were destroyed by enemy action;
those whose homes were requisitioned by the armed forces, whether their own, or the enemy;
those who lost loved ones;
those whose lives were totally disrupted by having to serve as nurses, or in factories, or down the mines.

This summer, we visited the village of Oradour-sur-Glane in France, which has been left as a memorial to the 641 people who were killed by SS troops there in June 1944.
You go into the village through the visitor centre, and past a wall with photographs of all those who were killed.
From old men down to small children.
Many of the photos were formal pictures, wedding shots, first Communion pictures, that sort of thing.
It really didn’t bear thinking about, and yet it was only one of many atrocities committed in that war.
Allies as well as Axis powers, I may say –
both sides did awful things, as happens in any war.

And even if you escaped being bombed, or shot, or anything, there were still awful things.
I’ve read my great-grandfather’s diaries.
His elder son was wounded so badly in 1916 that nobody thought he would live –
although he did, or I wouldn’t be here to tell the tale.
He only lived because the surgeon said he would remove his leg if he thought it would save his life, but it probably wouldn’t.
So he was left in the pile of soldiers who were going to die which, it is thought, is what saved him, as the cold protected him from shock.
Anyway,
my great-grandfather got permission from the War Office and went over to France to visit him.
And then it became clear that he would live, after all, so my great-grandfather came home again, only to hear that his other son had been killed on the Somme.
And, twenty years later or so, my grandparents had to suffer the agony of knowing their only son –
my father –
was on active service, as was a daughter’s fiancé.
Not only that, but their home had been requisitioned by the War Office and they had ten days to get out – and the troops that occupied it damaged it and destroyed many old family records.

I’m not saying this to elicit pity.
It happened, and we were very far from the only family it happened to.
Many had things far, far worse.

So where, then, is God in all this?
To quote St Paul:
“I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
But it’s difficult, isn’t it?
Many people, I know, lost their faith during and after the World Wars, feeling that if God could allow such horrors –
well….

But then, we were never told life would be a bed of roses.
In fact, rather the reverse.
In fact, Jesus explicitly said it wouldn’t be easy.
He said, “Blessed are the Peacemakers”
But he also said that there would always be wars, and rumours of wars.
We are told to make peace, even while we know we will be unsuccessful.

Many years ago now, Robert and I visited New York less than a fortnight after the World Trade Centre was destroyed.
We had planned our holiday months earlier, and decided not to allow terrorism and war to disrupt our lives more than was strictly necessary.
Besides, what safer time to go, just when security was at its height?

Anyway, the first Sunday we were there, we felt an urgent need to go to Church, to worship with God’s people.
Not knowing anything about churches in Brooklyn, we went to the one round the corner from where we were staying, which turned out to be a Lutheran Church.
And I’m so glad we went –
the people there were so pleased to know that people were still visiting from England.
They knew they faced a hard time coming to terms with what had happened, and that the future was very uncertain for all of us, yet they knew, too, that God was in it with them.

And God is in it with us, too.
Whatever happens.
God was there in the trenches with those young men in the first War;
God was there in the bombing and occupations of the Second War.
God was there in the Twin Towers that day, and in the hijacked planes, too.
God is there in Ukraine, and in Russia;
in Gaza and in Israel.

We, who call ourselves Christians, sometimes refuse to fight for our country,
believing that warfare and Christianity aren’t really compatible.
I am inclined to agree, but for one thing –
do we really want our armed forces to be places where God is not honoured?
That’s the big problem with Christian pacifism –
it leaves the armed forces very vulnerable.

But we must do all that we can to make peace.
I don’t know what the rights and wrongs of most current conflicts, but I do know that people are suffering.

They are suffering in Ukraine.
They are suffering in Gaza, and that conflict may yet escalate –
British troops have been sent to Cyprus to help if British subjects need to be evacuated from Lebanon.
At that British troops are training, with others, all across Europe in case the Ukraine conflicts escalate.

War causes suffering.
It is never noble, or glorious, and I’m not quite sure whether it is ever right.
Even if it is, it is horrible.
And inevitable.
And we Christians must do all we can to bring peace,
and we must wear our poppies
and remember, each year, those who had to suffer and die, and those who continue to suffer and die.

And above all, we must pray for our armed forces –
for any value of “our”, by the way;
I certainly don’t mean just British ones!
We need to pray, and to remember, with St Paul, that nothing, absolutely nothing, can separate us from the love of Christ.
Amen.

All Saints Year B

 

The Children's talk at the start of the recording was "winged", as I forgot there would be children present!!!  They sit at the back with their own activities, and are extremely good, so I like to include them a bit if I can.

So today is All Saints’ Sunday. All Saints’ Day itself was last Friday, and there was the annual service to remember those who died during the past year, either from our churches or people dear to church members. I expect there’s considerable overlap between the two! But, you know, while that is a wonderful thing to do, and can help enormously when people are grieving, in fact, All Saints is a celebration of life, not a memorial of death!

After all, we believe that this life, wonderful though it is, isn’t the end, but that we are raised from death to new life with Christ. We become part of what’s called the Church Triumphal – here on earth, we’re known as the Church Militant. And that’s what we’re celebrating today. Our hymns and readings are reflecting that, I hope.

Our first reading came from that part of the Bible known as the Apocrypha. Those are the books that Catholic and Orthodox Christians consider part of the Bible, but Protestants don’t, although we are encouraged to read them, but not necessarily to consider them doctrinally sound. This particular book is called Wisdom, or the Wisdom of Solomon. They don’t know who wrote it – spoiler alert: it wasn’t King Solomon – but they think it came from Alexandria between the first century BC and the first century AD. It’s one of the books where Wisdom – Sofia – is personified and equated to God herself!

We read part of chapter 3 this morning, which tells us that the righteous who have died are with God: “They leave us, but it is not a disaster. In fact, the righteous are at peace.  It might appear that they have suffered punishment, but they have the confident hope of immortality. Their sufferings were minor compared with the blessings they will receive.”

St Paul said much the same thing, if you remember, in his letter to the church in Rome: “I consider that what we suffer at this present time cannot be compared at all with the glory that is going to be revealed to us.”

I believe that, in very ancient times, the Hebrew people didn’t really have the concept of an afterlife. You can see that in the Psalms, when they write things like “No-one praises you when they’re dead”, and words to that effect. But gradually, over the centuries, as they were taken into exile, as they were persecuted, they began to believe that the God they believed loved them wouldn’t just let them suffer without some reward. They could, after all, “eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die!” They could curse God and die, as Job’s wife suggested he might want to. But instead, they gradually began to realise that this life wasn’t all there is. And in the passage we heard read, we are told that “the righteous” will be in God’s presence, and will be rewarded.

As Christians, of course, we believe that Jesus is our righteousness. We can’t, and won’t, get into heaven on our own merits, but because of Jesus’ death and resurrection. I’m sure our merits will be acknowledged, but our tickets to heaven have already been paid for by Jesus!

As Martha realises, in our Gospel reading. You know the story, of course –
Lazarus was the brother of Martha and Mary, and Jesus seems to have been a frequent, and beloved, visitor to their home in Bethany, just outside Jerusalem. It’s possible, if not probable, that he stayed there most years when he came up to Jerusalem for the Passover, and they certainly seem to have been among his closest friends.

Anyway, Lazarus falls ill, and they send to Jesus to come and heal him. But Jesus, unaccountably, delays for another two days. And when he does set out to go there, the disciples are rather worried, as they fear for his safety. But he explains that Lazarus has died, and God wants him raised from the dead.

And when he gets to Bethany, both Martha and Mary disobey tradition, and come out to meet him. Normally, relatives of the deceased were expected to stay seated on low stools while the visitors came to them to offer their condolences – it’s called sitting shiva, and I understand it’s done in Jewish families to this day. Anyway, Martha and Mary run out to meet him, Martha first. Jesus has this wonderful conversation with her which culminates in him saying to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” and Martha replying with that wonderful declaration of faith: “I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God who was to come into the world.” Martha said this. Martha. A woman – and not only a woman, but a traditional woman, usually more concerned with getting a meal for Jesus and the disciples than in learning what he had to say! It’s amazing.

And, as you know, the story goes on and we learn how Mary comes out to Jesus in her turn, and Jesus weeps at his friend’s grave. And then he calls for the stone to be rolled away and Martha, wonderful, practical Martha, complains that it’s going to stink quite dreadfully after four days.... but the stone gets rolled away, and Lazarus comes forth, still wrapped in his graveclothes.

Now, it’s a wonderful story, and I expect you, like me, have heard many great sermons and much wonderful teaching on it. But for today, it’s about life. Lazarus is raised to life, and he will continue his life on earth until the day comes when he really is ready to go and be with Jesus in heaven.

He wasn’t the only person Jesus raised from the dead, if you remember. There was Jairus’ daughter, who was only twelve years old, so Jesus called her back from the dead. And there was a young man who was his widowed mother’s only support, and Jesus called him back, too. Someone once said that he disrupted every funeral he ever attended. I’m not sure how true that is – there must have been many funerals he went to where the person’s time had really come, and it was only right to bury their body. But certainly, the ones we are told about.

His first disciples did that, too – Peter certainly raised Dorcas, or Tabitha – her name depends on what language you were thinking in, as she’s Tabitha in Aramaic, but Dorcas in Greek – anyway, Peter raised her from the dead. I got a grin out of re-reading the story, as I’d never noticed before that Peter has turfed everybody out of the room, and kneels down to pray, and then, we are told “he turned to the body and said, “Tabitha, get up!” She opened her eyes, and when she saw Peter, she sat up.” I can’t help but wonder what she thought he was doing – I can just picture her sitting up, most indignantly, demanding to know what this strange man was doing in her bedroom!

However, that’s beside the point. What is the point, though, is that it’s all about life. We believe that, like Lazarus, we shall be raised from dead. But unlike him, we shall probably be raised to eternal life with Jesus, and God will wipe away every tear from our eyes. And we are also told that Jesus came so that we might have life, and have it abundantly. And that applies to the here and now, too; it’s not just pie in the sky when we die! Our whole lives now have that eternal dimension.

That doesn’t mean, of course, that we won’t experience great sorrow, and quite possibly great suffering, here – sadly, that is part of human existence.
And it doesn’t mean that we can live just as we like, doing whatever we like, because God has saved us. Rather to the contrary, I think personal holiness is very important. We need to do all we can to avoid sin.

Jesus shows us in some of his teachings what his people are going to be like:
poor in spirit – not thinking more of themselves than they ought; mourning, perhaps for the ungodly world in which we live; meek, which means slow to anger and gentle with others; hungry and thirsty for righteousness; merciful; pure in heart; peacemakers and so on.

St Paul gives other lists of characteristics that Christians will display;
you probably remember from his letter to the Galatians:
Love, joy, peace, patience and so on. And he gives lots of lists of the sort of behaviour that Christians don’t do, ranging from gluttony to fornication. Basically the sort of things that put “Me” first, and make “me” the centre of my life.

But the wonderful thing is that we don’t have to strive and struggle and do violence to our own natures. Yes, of course, we are inherently selfish and it’s nearly impossible to put God first in our own strength. But the whole point is, we don’t have to do it in our own strength. That is why God sent the Holy Spirit, to come into us, fill us, and transform us. We wouldn’t be very happy in heaven if we were stuck in our old nature, after all!

But if we let God transform us, we can have abundant life here on this earth, and then we leave our bodies behind and go on to be with Jesus. And that, we are told, is even better! As St Paul said, “What we suffer at this present time cannot be compared at all with the glory that is going to be revealed to us.”

Jesus asks us, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?”

Can we reply, with Martha, “I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who was to come into the world.”?

Looking for God

 

Our two readings today are both about people who can’t find God.
Firstly Job, and then the man who we call “The rich young ruler”.

So, Job.
It's a funny old story, isn't it, this story of Job.
Do you know, nobody knows anything about it –
what you see is totally what you get!
Nobody knows who it was written, or when, or why, or whether it is true history or a fictional story –
most probably the latter!

The Book of Job is incredibly ancient, or parts of it are.
And so it makes it very difficult for us to understand.
We do realise, of course, that it was one of the earliest attempts someone made to rationalise why bad things happen to good people, but it still seems odd to us.
I think one of the oddest things is that picture of God as almost an earthly King, with his court around him.
And Satan as one of the heavenly beings belonging to that court.

You know the story, of course – how God allowed Satan to kill all Job’s children, destroy his crops and herds, and ultimately give him a plague of boils – some sort of blood-poisoning, perhaps, or monkey pox or something like that. His wife, who must be suffering equally as much as Job, if not more so, says “Curse God and die!” but Job refuses to do that, although he does, with some justification, curse the day he was born.

And you will remember how his three friends come to “comfort” him (in quotes), and spend their time trying to make Job admit that he has done wrong and deserved everything that had happened. Job knows quite well he hasn’t, but he is stuck. He can’t see where God is in all this.

“If only I knew where I could find God,
I’d pound on the door and demand a hearing.
God would have to listen to me state my case
and argue my innocence.
Let’s see what God would have to say to that!
Then I could get God’s answer clear in my head.

Would God simply pull rank and rule me out of order?
I don’t think so. Surely God would listen.
Surely if an honest bloke like me gets a fair hearing,
God would judge in my favour
and clear my name once and for all.

But I can’t find God anywhere.
I look up, down, forwards, backwards – nothing.
I think I catch a glimpse to the left, but no;
I rush to the right, but God vanishes like a mirage.”
©2000 Nathan Nettleton LaughingBird.net

That’s a modern paraphrase of part of our first reading.

We know what happens in the end, of course –
God does eventually answer Job, and, in some of the loveliest poetry ever written, tells him that he’s all wrong.
He’s looking in the wrong place.
He’s looking at all his problems and trying to find a reason for them,
but where he should be looking is at God, at his Creator:

“Do you give the horse its might?
Do you clothe its neck with mane?
Do you make it leap like the locust?
Its majestic snorting is terrible.
It paws violently, exults mightily;
it goes out to meet the weapons.
It laughs at fear, and is not dismayed;
it does not turn back from the sword.
Upon it rattle the quiver, the flashing spear, and the javelin.
With fierceness and rage it swallows the ground;
it cannot stand still at the sound of the trumpet.
When the trumpet sounds, it says "Aha!"
From a distance it smells the battle, the thunder of the captains, and the shouting.”

Wonderful stuff, and it goes on for about three chapters, talking of the natural world and its wonders, and how God is the author of them all. My father loved these chapters so much that he asked me to read chapter 39 at his funeral, which I did – in the Authorised Version he had grown up with, and preferred. It is very lovely, whichever version you read it in, but the Authorised Version has unicorns:
“Will the unicorn be willing to serve thee,
or abide by thy crib?
Canst thou bind the unicorn with his band in the furrow?
or will he harrow the valleys after thee?”
Sadly, all the more recent translations say “wild ox” instead of “unicorn”, but I prefer unicorns, don’t you?

If you ever want to rejoice in creation, read Job chapters 38, 39 and 40.
And at the end, Job repents "in dust and ashes", we are told, and then his riches are restored to him.

Job, you see, was looking at his problems, so he couldn’t find God.

And so we turn to the Gospel reading, the story of the rich young ruler.
Well, all three gospels tell us that the person who came was a rich man, but Matthew tells us that he was young and Luke tells us that he was a ruler.
He was probably a ruler in the synagogue.
So we call him the rich young ruler.

Anyway, he comes running to Jesus just as he –
Jesus –
is about to leave town.
I wonder why he left it so late?
Perhaps he really didn’t want to ask.
If he was a ruler in the synagogue, he probably thought he ought to know better than this travelling preacher who has come to town.
Or perhaps he was held up by looking after business –
people with a lot of money do seem to have to spend an awful lot of time looking after it.
But whatever, he comes racing up, falls at Jesus’ feet, and addresses him as “Good Teacher!”

Jesus fends him off by saying “No one deserves to be called ‘good’ except God”.
But he sees that the young man is in earnest –
he really does want to know how to gain eternal life.
He is looking for God.

So Jesus reminds him of the Commandments, and the young man says he’s followed them all since he was a boy.

Jesus looked him straight in the eye and, filled with love for him, he said, “One thing you lack. Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”

And we are told that the man went away, very sad, because he was very rich.
The rich young ruler was looking at his money, his property, his business, not at his Creator. And when he did try to find God, he was looking at the rules, not at any kind of relationship.

Job was looking at his problems, not at his Creator. He couldn’t find God, because God was not in his problems. God was absolutely there with Job, but Job was focussing on what was wrong. All too easy to do, isn’t it? And please, I’m not saying that if we turn to God, all our problems will magically vanish – you know, and I know, that that isn’t how God works! What I am saying is that God is there with us, even if it totally doesn’t feel like it, and if we possibly can, we need to look at that. “In all things,” says St Paul, “Give thanks.” That doesn’t mean being thankful for the bad things – what sort of a monster would God be if we were expected to do that? But we can still remember that God is there with us. We can still praise God – using other people’s words if we can’t find any of our own just now; that, after all, is what the various hymn and prayer books are for!

John Wesley reminded us of what he called “The means of Grace” – prayer, Bible Study, fellowship and the Sacrament. These are still the foundation stones to help us grow our faith – but Wesley points out that they are only means to an end. They are not ends in themselves. But as a structure, they can really help when our problems threaten to overwhelm us.

In one way, that was where the rich young ruler went wrong. He was focussing on the commandments as ends in themselves, not looking past them to the One who gave them. And he was also focussed on his wealth. We don’t know – we can’t know, at this distance – what the problem was. Was he insecure, and felt that he needed his money, his familiar things, to be safe? Did he want to keep his money safe to pass on to his children when the time came? All we know is that for him, his money was an obstacle that came between him and God.

What are you looking at that comes between you and God? Obviously we’re all going to be looking at our problems much of the time, because we’re human. But if we can, even for moments, look past them and reach out to God, God will be there with us. “Lord, I believe, help thou my unbelief!”

What, if anything, is stopping you from finding God?