Gold, frankincense and myrrh

 

The text of this sermon is substantially the same as the one I preached here, although there are some minor changes.  And I added in a bit, too, so you might want to listen... 

Hanging in there

 

There is a video recording of the service, but I can't make it link.  Search for "Brixton Hill Methodist Church", and 14 December - the service starts at 20 minutes in.

Today is the third Sunday in Advent.
We’ve lit three candles in our Christmas Countdown –
er, I mean Advent Wreath.
Christmas is coming –
only another fortnight!
I expect you’ve already had some Christmas cards –
we have.
And maybe you’ve already been to a Christmas party.
Robert had one during the week.
Maybe you’ve even finished all your Christmas shopping, and feel yourself well organised. I sort of am, except for working out who is cooking what on Christmas Day itself.
But in the Church, it isn’t Christmas yet.
Not for another two weeks!
Even though King's Acre is having their carol service today.
Technically, we are still in the Season of Advent, and the lectionary tells us that this week we look at John the Baptist.
You may have looked at him last week, too;
traditionally on the second Sunday in Advent we look at his role as a prophet. Today, however, we look at his role as the Forerunner, the one who came to prepare the way for Jesus.

Now, you know who he was, of course.
Just to recap on his life and times,
he was Jesus’ cousin, born to Zechariah and Elisabeth in their old age.
He was the unborn baby who “leapt in the womb” when Mary, carrying Jesus, came to visit Elisabeth.
We know absolutely nothing about his childhood, how well he knew Jesus, whether they played together as kids, or whether they only saw each other once a year when the holy family went up to Jerusalem.
What we do know is that, when he grew up, John disappeared off into the desert for awhile, to study and pray –
whether alone, or with a community such as the Essenes,
we also don’t know.
When he came back from the desert, he was a prophet,
just as Luke alleges that his father foretold:
“And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High;
for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways,
to give knowledge of salvation to his people
by the forgiveness of their sins.“

For the people of Israel, that was rather exciting.
They hadn’t had a prophet for many centuries, not a proper one.
And John looked the part.
He dressed like a prophet, in camel-hide clothing.
He ate locusts and wild honey, just as they expected a prophet would do.
He gathered a small flock of disciples around him.
And he preached God's message:
"Repent and be baptized and get ready for the coming of the Kingdom!"
Well, you can imagine, the crowds absolutely flocked to hear him!
Better than the cinema, this was –
such an excitement.
But what they wanted was to see the prophet.
They didn’t really want to hear what he had to say.
Few of them were really willing to repent,
to turn right round and go God's way.
Not even the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law.
Not that they interfered with him, mind you –
could have been nasty, if they had.
But they didn't want to know!
Very frustrating.

But there were the other kind of people, too.
People who really did want to listen to John,
to hear what he had to say and to act on it.
People who came to him, asking to be baptized in the river Jordan.
And one day, his cousin Jesus comes to him and asks for baptism.

And at that moment, John knows that this is the One he has been waiting for, the One for whom he has been preparing the way.
And yet he wants to be baptized - surely not!
Surely it should be he, Jesus, who baptizes John?
John's always known that when the Messiah came,
he wouldn't be fit even to undo his shoes and wash his feet,
slaves' work, that.
John mutters something to this effect,
but Jesus says, "No, let's do this thing by the book!"
And as he enters the water, the Holy Spirit comes down on him in the shape of a dove, and a voice speaks from heaven,
"Behold my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased!"
And John says, so we are told, “He must increase, and I must decrease”, and he spends his time pointing people to Jesus,
as well as preaching the message of repentance,
of turning round,
of going God’s way.

And then John preaches against scandal and sleaze in high places once too often,
and the powers-that-be have had enough,
so they put him in prison to try to shut him up.

And then the doubts start.
Is Jesus really the one God was going to send?
Could John be mistaken?
This is his cousin, after all –
Aunty Mary’s son.
John had thought so, but everything’s gone so totally pear-shaped he can’t be sure of anything any more.
So he sends one of his disciples to ask Jesus,
“Are you the one who was to come,
or should we expect someone else?”

Jesus sends John a message of reassurance:
“Go back and report to John what you hear and see:
The blind receive sight,
the lame walk,
those who have leprosy are cured,
the deaf hear,
the dead are raised,
and the good news is preached to the poor.
Blessed is the man who does not fall away on account of me.”

In other words, “Hang in there, mate, you’re doing great!”

And then Jesus tells the crowd that John is just about the greatest of God’s servants that there ever has been, or ever will be –
yet while he’s on earth,
even the least of those in the Kingdom of Heaven is greater than he is.

Sadly, as we know, it all ends tragically –
the king’s wife seizes the opportunity to have John killed,
and he is beheaded.
Jesus is devastated by the loss of his cousin,
and goes off by himself to pray,
but the crowd follow him and he has to feed them all,
and then he sends the disciples off ahead, because he really, really, really wants to be alone with his Father to try to come to terms with John’s death –
and ends up walking across the lake to join them, later on!

I love this story –
the affection between the cousins,
the respect that John had for Jesus,
but the fact that John was also human enough to doubt,
and secure enough to express his doubts.

Because we all have our doubts, from time to time, if we’re honest.
And that’s as it should be.
There are times, and I wish they came more often,
when God is as real to us as bread and butter,
when we couldn’t doubt his existence and his love for us
if we were paid to do so.
But at other times, all trace of God seems to vanish from the universe.

Perhaps dreadful things happen, either personally or on the world stage –
I remember hearing someone on “Thought for the Day” saying,
on the 14th September 2001,
that the smoke rising from the collapse of the World Trade Centre seemed to come between her and the face of God.
I knew exactly what she meant!
And for John the Baptist, it was personal circumstances –
being thrown into prison, deprived of his whole reason for being,
which at that time was to preach repentance and to baptise people.

John is actually quite a good model of what to do when doubts strike.
He does absolutely the right thing –
he goes to Jesus and asks, outright.
And Jesus reassures him.
But the interesting thing is that Jesus actually reassures him by saying “Look around, and see what’s happening!
Look for the signs of the kingdom!”
He doesn’t just say “Yes, of course I’m the Messiah, you silly little man!”
Or even, “Don’t worry, mate, I’m the Messiah!”
What he does is say, “Look, see what is happening, see how the blind receive sight”, and so on.
And maybe that is his answer to us, too, when the doubts happen,
when we wonder whether it’s really a load of nonsense,
whether it’s just wishful thinking.
Look around and see the signs of the kingdom.

And sometimes, when we doubt,
it’s good to come back to those lovely words from Isaiah 35.
For me, this is one of the most lyrical and beautiful passages of the Bible.
So often, if I’ve been praying for my church, or in a time of darkness, I’m drawn back again and again to these words:

“The desert and the parched land will be glad;
the wilderness will rejoice and blossom.
Like the crocus, it will burst into bloom;
it will rejoice greatly and shout for joy.
The glory of Lebanon will be given to it,
the splendour of Carmel and Sharon;
they will see the glory of the LORD,
the splendour of our God.”

And so on –
I’m tempted to quote the whole thing,
but we’ve already heard it once this morning!
It is such a wonderful promise that,
no matter how black the present may seem, things will get better.
One day.
Maybe not in this life, but one day.

Of course, sometimes it happens that external circumstances get worse and worse.
John was in prison, and would soon be executed.
We see all sorts of crime and injustice, terrorism and hostage-taking, mistrust and suspicion.
We reckon bad things always happen in threes, which is superstition, but it does seem that way sometimes!
And yet, and yet, and yet –
there are signs of the Kingdom of God.
Sometimes very tiny signs –
parents bringing their children to baptism,
a young couple choosing to be married in church,
even what I’ve heard described as “random acts of senseless kindness!”
I personally think beauty is a sign of the kingdom –
whether beauty in nature,
or in music,
or in words, like these words from Isaiah.
I don’t believe that there’s beauty where the Kingdom isn’t!

And, of course, at this very dark time of year,
we rejoice that in a very few days we will be at the solstice
and the days will start to lengthen.
It’s no accident that the early Church fathers put the festival in which, above all, we celebrate the coming of the Light of the World
at the very darkest time of the year.

Jesus sent a message to John urging him to hang in there, not to despair, for there were signs that the Kingdom of God was coming.
And we, too, can hold on to those signs in the middle of our busyness in the run-up to Christmas,
perhaps in the midst of sorrow or despair, perhaps even in the midst of happiness and excitement.
The Kingdom of God is coming, the Light of the World will come, and there are signs of hope.
Hang in there!

Christ the King

 

The livestream appears not to have worked today, but here is the recording of the sermon, as per usual:

Today is the very last Sunday of the Christian year, and it is the day on which we celebrate the feast of Christ the King.

I wonder what sort of images go through your head when you hear the word “King”.
Often, one things of pomp and circumstance,
the gold State Coach, jewels, servants, money, royal weddings….
Or perhaps you think of our present King, looking rather elderly and ravaged by his ongoing cancer treatment, poor man.

His role, of course, is largely ceremonial, and there are many who think a monarchy is an outdated form of government,
but I tell you one thing,
I’d rather be represented by a hereditary monarch who is a-political than by a political head of state for whom I did not vote, and whose views were anathema to me!
But it hasn’t always been like that.

We think of good, brave kings, like Edward the Third or Henry the Fifth:
“Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more”.
We think of Elizabeth at Tilbury:
“Although I have the body of a weak and feeble woman,
I have the heart and stomach of a King, and a King of England, too,
and think foul scorn that Parma, or Spain, or any prince of Europe should dare to invade the borders of my realm.”
Or Richard the Lionheart –
I’m dodging about rather here –
who forsook England to fight against Muslims,
which he believed was God’s will for him.
Hmm, not much change there, then.

But there have been weak kings,
poor kings,
mad kings, like poor Henry the Third,
kings that have been deposed, like Henry the Third or Edward the Second,
kings that have seized the crown from others, like Henry Tudor grabbing it at the Battle of Bosworth.

The monarchy may be embroiled in scandal just now, with the whole Epstein affair rubbing off badly, particularly on to the former Duke of York, but it is very far from the first to do so.
Think of the various Hanoverian kings, the Georges,
most of whom were endlessly in the equivalent of the tabloid press,
and cartoonists back then were far, far ruder than they dare to be today.
You may have seen some of them in museums or in history books.
The ones in the history books, incidentally, are the more polite ones.

And that’s just the British monarchy! I am mostly quoting examples from it as it’s the one I know best. Nevertheless, many of the modern European monarchies have had their fair share of scandals in recent years, and of course there have been glorious and inglorious monarchies all over the world, from the Tsars of Russia to the rules of the various African tribes. Chaka, for instance, or Lobengula, and others too numerous to mention.

But traditionally, the role of a king was to defend and protect his people, to lead them into battle, if necessary;
to give justice, and generally to look after their people.
They may have done this well,
or they may have done it badly,
but that was what they did.
If you’ve read C S Lewis’ The Horse and His Boy,
you might remember that King Lune tells Shasta,
who is going to be king after him:
“For this is what it means to be a king:
to be first in every desperate attack
and last in every desperate retreat,
and when there's hunger in the land
(as must be now and then in bad years)
to wear finer clothes and laugh louder over a scantier meal than any man in your land.”

And when we think of Christ as King,
we come up against that great paradox, for Christ was, and is, above all, the Servant King.
No birth with state-of-the-art medical facilities for him,
but a stable in an inn-yard.
No golden carriage, but a donkey.
No crown, save that made of thorns, and no throne, except the Cross.

And yet, St Paul says of him, as we heard in our reading from Colossians: “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.”

And yet, this glorious, wonderful King faced a shameful death on the cross. In Luke’s account, which we’ve just heard read, the inscription “The King of the Jews” seems to have been put up as a sneer – “He saved others, himself he cannot save!” No mention here that it was put up at Pilate’s orders – maybe it wasn’t.

But the thing is, of course, that although he was subjected to the most shameful death a person could have – Roman citizens were never crucified, much too humiliating; crucifixion was reserved for the “natives”; although he was subjected to this humiliating death, he didn’t stay dead! He was raised from the dead, and we believe, as we say in the Creed, that he will come again in glorious majesty, and his kingdom will have no end.

And it is this Kingdom that he preached while he was here on earth.
That was the Good News –
that the Kingdom of God is at hand.
He told us lots of stories to illustrate what the kingdom was going to be like,
many of which would have upset their hearers as they turned their preconceived ideas on their heads, but nevertheless
it is worth giving up everything for.
Jesus showed us how “the blind receive their sight,
the lame walk,
the lepers are cleansed,
the deaf hear,
the dead are raised,
and the poor have good news brought to them.”

Jesus does lead us into battle, yes, but it is a battle
“against the rulers,
against the authorities,
against the cosmic powers of this present darkness,
against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.”
And through his Holy Spirit, Jesus gives us the armour to enable us to fight, the helmet of salvation,
the breastplate of righteousness,
et cetera, et cetera.

Jesus requires that His followers forgive others, everything, all the time.
Even the unforgivable things.
the abusers, the tyrants, the warlords….
Even those who vote Reform,
or who spread vicious lies about asylum seekers.
We may not hold on to anger and hatred,
for that is not the way of the Kingdom.
We must, of course, do what we can to prevent such atrocities;
we must strive for justice and peace,
but we must do so without anger, without hatred, without wishing evil on those who perpetrate such things.
Which, of course, is only actually possible through the Holy Spirit working in us!

Jesus’ Kingdom is not of this world.
He is the king who rides on a donkey,
the king who requires his followers to use the weapon of forgiveness,
the king who surrendered to the accusers,
the scourge,
and the cross.

But he is also, and let us not forget this,
he is also the King who was raised on high,
who triumphed over the grave,
who sits at the right hand of God from whence, we say we believe, he will come to judge the living and the dead.

So are we going to follow this King?

Are we going to turn away from this world, and its values, and instead embrace the values of the Kingdom?
I tell you this, my friends, most of us live firmly clinging to the values of this world.
I include myself –
don’t think I’m any better than you, because I can assure you, I’m not, and if I didn’t, Robert would soon tell you!
We all cling to the values of this world,
and few of us truly embrace the values of the Kingdom.

But if Christ is King, since Christ is King,
then we must be aware that he is our King.
If we are Jesus’ people –
and if you have never said “Yes” to Jesus, now would be a terrific time to do so –
if we are truly following Jesus with our whole hearts and minds,
then let us remember our King calls out to us from the cross and invites us to follow him and to pray fervently for the coming of his kingdom –
• a kingdom which welcomes those whom the rest of the world might find most unlikely followers,
• a kingdom in which we can ask for forgiveness from those whom we have hurt, and come to forgive those who have hurt us.

As we reach the end of one church year
and look to the beginning of a new one,
may the one whom we know to be King of the universe and ruler of our lives guide us in our journeys of welcome and forgiveness
that our churches may include all whom God loves,
and our hearts may find healing and wholeness. Amen!

Facing the Future

 

The  text of this sermon is pretty much the same as this one, only with the contemporary references updated.  

We Feebly Struggle

 

Yesterday, as I’ve already mentioned, was All Saints’ Day.
Perhaps you went to the Circuit Service at Clapham to commemorate loved ones, or members of the congregation, or both, who died during the past year.
In many parts of the Church, that actually happens today, which is known as All Souls’ Day; All Saints is specifically for rejoicing with those who are in heaven with God.

In some countries, All Saints’ Day is a public holiday, and people buy flowers, especially chrysanthemums to put on a loved one’s grave.
In some countries, it’s those electronic candles that get put, and cemeteries at this time of year, after dark, are full of twinkling lights; rather lovely.
Some years ago now, Robert and I went on a guided tour of Nunhead Cemetery at about this time of year, and many of the graves had lights or flowers on them.
But by and large, All Saints isn’t celebrated much outside of the Church; in the world, it’s all about Halloween – All Hallows Eve, or All Saints Eve!

What, I wonder, springs to mind when you think of the word “Saint”?
We Protestants don't tend to think of them all that much, really.
I suppose we think of New Testament people, like St Paul,
and people who like the Reform party tend to stick a St George flag on lampposts, as though nobody else cared about this country,
but by and large, saints don't really impinge on our consciousness.
We don't have a formal category of “Saint” in which to put people,

as we believe that all who trusted in Jesus during their lifetime have eternal life.
We don't have the concept of Purgatory, of a time of working off our sins,

as we believe that we have already passed from death into life.
We are all saints!

Then why celebrate All Saints?
What's the point?
Well, in a way that is just the point –
all Christians are saints!

But today is about those who are living, those who are part of the great Church Triumphant, as we call it.
We, here on earth, are the Church Militant, still fighting the world, the flesh and the devil, as the old prayer-book has it.
“We feebly struggle, they in glory shine” says the hymn we'll be singing in a bit.

We don't tend to think too much about what happens after we die.
But if our faith is real, if what we believe is true,
then what happens next is something even greater than we can imagine.
It is our great Christian hope, as St Paul reminded us in our first reading, from his Letter to the Ephesians:

“I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know
the hope to which he has called you,
the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints,
and his incomparably great power for us who believe.
That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms,
far above all rule and authority,
power and dominion,
and every title that can be given,
not only in the present age but also in the one to come.”

We have that glorious inheritance.

But it doesn't always seem like it!
As C S Lewis once put it:
“The Cross comes before the Crown, and tomorrow is a Monday morning!”
We feebly struggle, they in glory shine!

But Jesus reminds us that it's okay, a lot of the time, to feebly struggle.
Our second reading was taken from Luke's version of the collection of Jesus' teachings known as the Sermon on the Mount –
actually, I think Luke's version is commonly called the “Sermon on the Plain”, but never mind that now.
The point is that both Matthew and Luke start off their collections with a proclamation of people who are blessed.
Luke says it is the poor, the hungry, and people who are hated,
which he contrasts explicitly with those who are rich, well-fed and of who people speak well of!

Last week’s Gospel reading was the story of the tax-collector and the Pharisee, and I once heard a sermon on this story which reminded us that our values and opinions are not necessarily God's.
And that is certainly the case here –
in the Jewish world, prosperity was seen as a sign of God's blessing,
and poverty was thought rather disgraceful.
Jesus is turning the accepted wisdom upside-down.
No, he says, you are blessed if you're poor, if you're hungry, if you're hurting…
Never believe preachers who tell you that if you’re not rich or successful, you must be a sinner….

Matthew, who was Jewish, couldn't quite bring himself to write that down, and has people being blessed if they hunger and thirst after righteousness,
or if they are poor in spirit, but in many ways the principle is the same, I think.

Of course, we in the First World aren't really poor, only by comparison;
we have food, shelter and clothing,
we have health care and education,
and a general standard of living that our ancestors could only dream of.
So is it woe unto us?

I think it's the same issue that the Pharisee had, who, you may remember,
was so pleased that he fulfilled the criteria for an upright, religious member of the community that he forgot his need of God,
and it was the tax-collector, the hated quisling, who remembered that he was a sinner, and that he had need of God's mercy.
Again, Jesus is turning this world's values upside-down;
it is the despised outcast who went home justified,
and the professionally religious man who, that day at least, did not.

Jesus' teachings, as collected by Matthew and Luke, give a terrific picture of what God's people, the saints, are going to be like.
They'll be people who don't judge others, who don't get angry with others in a destructive way, who don't use other people simply as bodies.
Basically, they treat other people with the greatest possible respect for who they are.
And they trust God.
They don't get stressed out making a living –
they do their absolute best at whatever their job is, of course,
but they don't scrabble round getting involved in office politics in order to get a promotion.
They trust God to provide the basic necessities of life,
but they don't make a parade of being ever so holy, they just get on with it quietly.

Jesus' values turned the world upside-down.
We are almost –
dare I say used to them.
They don't shock us, or strike us as strange –
until, that is, we try to live them!
Then we discover just how far off they are from the values that most people live by.
And what we say we believe comes smack up against what we really believe –
and what we really believe usually wins!
Truly, we feebly struggle!

But the saints in glory shine!
They found the secret of living the way Jesus suggested.
And it wasn't striving and struggling and trying to do it all by themselves.
Remember what St Paul wrote, again.
He prays that we might be given the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that we may know God better.
And he prays “that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you,
the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints,
and his incomparably great power for us who believe.”

We don’t have to strive to know this in our own strength;
we can allow God to put this knowledge in us and make it part of us.
The saints in glory have done this.
We feebly struggle, but we don't have to,
we can relax and allow God to do it for us.

As we are, we would never inherit the Kingdom of God,
whether on this earth or in the world to come.
But transformed by God’s Spirit, then, in the words of St John,
“We shall be like him”.
And yet, paradoxically, we shall still be ourselves.

St Paul addresses some of his letters to “The saints in such-and-such a town”.
He knew, and they knew, that it was possible to be a saint in this life.
The letter to the Corinthians, for example, begins:
“To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, together with all those who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

The word “sanctified” means “Being made saint-like”, and it’s one of the things that happens to Christians who are truly intent on being God’s person.
You can’t help it;
the Holy Spirit who dwells in you does sanctify you,
makes you more the person that God created you to be.
We feebly struggle, but the Holy Spirit always wins!

Jesus taught that the values and opinions of God's kingdom are radically different to those of this world.
The saints, those who trust in Christ, all have one thing in common,
and I hope and pray that it's a feature that I share, that you share:
They all knew, and know, that of themselves they are doomed to feebly struggle.
It is only through recognising our own weakness,
our own utter inability to live anything like the sort of life Jesus expects of his followers, that we can be enabled to live that life.
We can do nothing of ourselves to help ourselves, as the collect says.
Jesus has done it all for us; he has bought our entry tickets into glory through his death on the Cross.
And the Holy Spirit will transform us so that one day, one day, we will be among the number of those who “in glory shine”.
Amen.

Nevertheless, she persisted

I totally and utterly forgot to record either the children's talk or the main service. Apologies. 

Children's Talk

I wonder if you’ve ever noticed how many names end in “el” – I’m thinking of names like Daniel or Joel or Michael or Gabriel. These names usually have meanings, and the meaning is often something about God. Michael, for instance, means “Who is like God?”, and Daniel means “God is my judge”.

The thing is, the word “El” in ancient Hebrew, was used for God. El was actually one of the gods in Canaan, but the Israelites used it to mean just God. So names ending in “El” all have something to do with God. In our reading, we have Jacob fighting the angel, and the angel gives him the name “Israel”, which means “One who struggles with God,” And when Jacob realises that it is God with whom he has been fighting, he calls the place where it took place “Peniel”. This, apparently, means “The Face of God”.

One thing to notice about the story, apart from the names, is that Jacob refuses to let the angel go until he blesses him. Jacob is wounded and in pain from his hip, but he will not give in. He persisted. And we’re going to hear a story that Jesus told, in a minute, about someone who persisted. And we’re told that we, too, should persist in prayer.

Prayer is a funny thing, isn’t it? We know that God knows what we need even before we ask. And often, we aren’t even really asking anything specific, especially when it’s intercessory prayer – prayer for other people. We’ll say “God here’s this person with this need, could you do something?” And sometimes God says, yes, here’s this person with this need, what are you going to do about it?

We can’t, of course, make someone feel better if they’re not well, but we can text them and say we’re thinking of them;
if new children come to your school who don’t yet speak much English, you can befriend them, show them what they need to know –
where the toilets are, for instance, or where to go when it’s lunchtime.
If someone’s being bullied, you can help them report it, or just stay with them so the bullies can’t get at them.
That sort of thing.
And the grown-ups will have their equivalents, too.

It’s important to be open to what God might be asking you to do. You don’t have to be BFF with the new kid in your class – but you do have to be helpful and friendly! And you might get a new friend out of it, who knows? But even if you don’t, what you will get is help from God to be nice! So don’t stop asking!

---oo0oo---

Nevertheless, she persisted

 You know, I think Jesus must have a terrific sense of humour. It’s not always easy to find his parables funny, as we are so used to hearing them read in a solemn “I’m-reading-the-Bible” voice that we don’t hear the light and shade in them. But I wouldn’t be in the least surprised if he meant his story of the unjust judge to be funny.

I mean, there is this judge, who seems to like nobody but himself – he doesn’t serve God, and rather despises his fellow-humans. And the widow, who has a cast-iron claim against someone else, who is demanding justice. And not getting it. And the judge keeps on telling her to push off, probably putting it rather more strongly, and yet she keeps on coming back, and keeps on coming back, and finally he gives in and does what she asks.

I am reminded, reading the story again, of the phrase “Nevertheless, she persisted”, which became fashionable a few years ago when they tried to shut up a woman senator in the USA who was saying things thought to be inappropriate – unparliamentary, we would call them in this country. The then Senate majority leader explained, “Senator Warren was giving a lengthy speech. She had appeared to violate the rule. She was warned. She was given an explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted.”

And “Nevertheless, she persisted” became a rallying cry among women of all ages, nationalities and classes. Particularly, I think, in the USA, where women’s freedom is under threat in many ways, although not, of course, as badly as in Afghanistan. And this woman, this widow, is the absolute archetype of someone who persisted, even though she was told to go away and stop being a nuisance. And in the end, she got her way, purely because of her persistence.

We call the story “the unjust judge”, but really, it’s about the widow, isn’t it? Widows, back in the day, had very little status. They may well have been living in absolute poverty, totally dependent on charity. Mind you, it was part of God’s law that widows, orphans and “aliens” or immigrants be looked after by those who had it to spare. In the book of Deuteronomy, indeed, chapter 27 and verse 19, you are cursed if you do not look after the alien, the widow or the orphan. These people have no male protector to look after them, so it’s your job!

You can’t really equate the judge with God, nor the widow with us, although it does feel like that sometime. One source I read when researching this sermon pointed out that it’s really about a flea biting a dog.

It’s amazing how disturbing a small irritant can be. Think of what it’s like when you get a mosquito in your room, and you can hear it whining and whining, but you can’t see it – nor, indeed, feel it until next day when you have one or several itchy bites on your person! As the song says “A flea can bite the bottom of the Pope in Rome!”

Women persist. Women always have persisted. As American writer Valerie Schultz put it: “We women persist. Isn’t that our job? Throughout history, we have persisted in our quest for respect, for justice, for equal rights, for suffrage, for education, for enfranchisement, for recognition, for making our voices heard. In the face of violence, of opposition, of ridicule, of belittlement, even of jail time, nevertheless, we have persisted.”

And because of our persistence, things have happened. Women, in most countries, can now vote – in the UK, universal suffrage only became a thing in 1928, less than a century ago, and in many countries it didn’t happen until more recently. It’s only since 1975 that women can open a bank account or take out a mortgage or even a credit card without a male guarantor – 1975. That’s only 50 years ago! Well within many of our lifetimes.

But in theory, at any rate, women have equal rights with men in this country, although there are still visible pay gaps in certain industries, and for many, other factors such as race come into play. I’m well aware that I’m speaking from a position of White privilege – and a privileged background, at that! I went to an all-girls’ school, and there was no nonsense about girls not being good at STEM subjects, or anything like that.

Sadly, though, in many countries women do not have equal rights, particularly in Afghanistan, and many of my American women friends are afraid that their rights are being eroded.

But back to our parable. It’s not an allegory, you can’t just equate the judge with God and the woman with us, but it is about prayer. God is not an unjust judge – God’s greatest delight, after all, is to give us more and more; remember when Nathan confronted David after he’d had an affair with Bathsheba and got her husband killed? God said to David, through Nathan, that had what he already had not been enough, God would have delighted in giving him twice as much!

Prayer is an odd sort of activity, isn’t it? Especially what’s called intercessory prayer, which is when we ask God for other people, and for ourselves. You would think God would know people’s needs before they ask – and of course, God does! But we are told to pray; it seems in the Bible that it’s absolutely indispensable. Jesus assumed that people prayed; you might remember that he said “When you pray....” rather than “if”. Yet God already knows people’s needs. Like when you see on social media that a friend is poorly or something, and you stop what you’re doing and say a little prayer for them, even something like, “Dear God, please look after them and help them feel better.” God already knew they didn’t feel great....

I don’t know why we are told to pray, but we are. It seems as if prayer creates a condition, an energy if you like, that enables God to work. I do know that when we pray, things change. We change. The more we pray, I think, the closer we come to God, and the more we are enabled to see things from God’s point of view. We aren’t telling God what to do, although it might start off feeling like that; we are barely even asking, other than to say here’s this person with this need, can you do something about it? And, as I said to the children, sometimes God says, yes, here’s this person with this need, what are you going to do about it?

That’s the thing, isn’t it? We are very often called to be the answer to our own prayers. We can’t make someone feel better if they are ill – but we can make them feel loved and appreciated by visiting them, or sending flowers or a card or a tiny present of some kind. We can, and indeed should, welcome new people into our churches and communities, telling them about local activities and community groups or sports clubs they might like; as I said to the children, at school they can help newcomers, especially those who don’t speak much English.

It’s more difficult when it comes to bigger issues, though. We can often help our family and friends, and I do think that it’s always right to name their names before God and to ask God’s blessing on them. I think, too, we need to do the same for our leaders. I know it feels counter-intuitive to pray for someone whose views are not our own, and which, indeed, we may find abhorrent, but we are told to pray for our leaders – and, indeed, for our enemies.

Having said that, of course, we must never sit down under injustice, and must protest it wherever we find it, whether it’s someone at work or college being bullied or treated unfairly by a superior, or whether the government is about to propose something we find unjust or hateful.

Don’t forget, of course, that we don’t have to do any of this in our own strength. The one who calls us will enable us! God delights, as I said above, in giving us what we need and more than that! One of the best things we can pray for is for more of God’s good gifts, which he gives us for his delight, but which do, incidentally, enable us to serve him better.

We seem to have got away from the persistent widow. But she is our example. God is not an unjust judge, but we still need to persist in prayer, and in doing what we can to bring about the answers to our prayer, if it’s something obvious we can do. Because, you see:

God is not an unjust judge.
God is never going to tell us to go away and stop being a nuisance!
God is always going to listen to us when we pray, although sometimes the answer will not be what we expect.
God loves us and delights in being generous to us!
Amen!

Great Expectations

This is similar, but not identical, to a sermon I have preached several times before.  But there is new material in there!

Once upon a time, there was a young man called Jeremiah.
He was from quite a good family –
his father was a priest, although not a high priest,
and owned a fair bit of land not far from Jerusalem.
So Jeremiah grew up in a fair amount of comfort,
loved and nurtured by his family.
Perhaps he had planned to be a priest himself when he grew up.

But then one day, in about 626 BC, God came to him, and said:
"Jeremiah, I am your Creator, and before you were born, I chose you to speak for me to the nations."

Jeremiah is shattered!
“Lord God, you’re making a big mistake!
I am a lousy public speaker and I’m too young for anybody to take me seriously.”

But God insists:
“Don’t put yourself down because of your age.
Just go to whoever I send you to, and say whatever I tell you to say.
Don’t let yourself feel intimidated by anyone, because I’ll be there as back up for you.
You’ll be okay;
take my word for it.”
And Jeremiah is touched by God, and enabled to speak God’s word.

Some six hundred years later, Jesus is teaching in the synagogue one Sabbath day, as he often did.
There was a woman in the congregation who was twisted and deformed –
perhaps she had scoliosis or perhaps it was an arthritic condition.
Certainly it was long-standing.
We are told she had been like this for eighteen years.
And Jesus suddenly notices her, and heals her.
She is able to stand fully upright again, and starts praising God.

Well, that didn’t please the leader of the synagogue.
Healing people like that on the Sabbath –
wasn’t that dangerously close to work?
“Oi,” he goes, “Stop healing people on the Sabbath!
Now then you lot, if any of you want healed,
you come on any of the other six days of the week;
I don’t want any Sabbath-breaking going on here!”

“Oh come on, mate,” says Jesus.
“I saw you taking your donkey down to the drinking-trough earlier this morning, Sabbath day or no Sabbath day.
If it’s all right for you to take your donkey to have a drink on the Sabbath,
it’s all right for me to heal this good lady,
whom Satan had bound for eighteen whole years!”

The leader of the synagogue had nothing to say to this, but the crowd really cheered.

---oo0oo---

I think it’s about expectations, isn’t it?
God expected Jeremiah to proclaim His word to the nations.
Jesus expected that the woman would be healed,
Sabbath day or no Sabbath day.
The ruler of the synagogue expected Jesus to keep the Sabbath.
And Jeremiah and the woman?
I don’t think they expected anything at all!

What does God expect from us?
What do we expect from God’s people?
And what do we expect from God?

Firstly, then, what does God expect from us?

Jeremiah was expected to go and proclaim God’s word.
He had been specifically called for this purpose,
and although he was horrified when the call came, and tried to get out of it,
he ultimately accepted it, and trusted in God’s promise that
“Attack you they will, overcome you they can’t”;
a promise that was fulfilled many times over in the Biblical narrative.

I wonder what God is expecting of you?
I know I am expected to preach the Gospel.
Like Jeremiah, I was very young when I was called –
about fifteen.
Unlike him, I wasn’t able to answer that call for many years for reasons that I won’t go into now,
but suffice it to say that for about the past thirty-five years I have known that this is what God has wanted me to do.
This is what God expects of me.
I am so grateful, every time I preach,
that all I am expected to do is to provide the words;
God does the rest!

So what does he expect of you?
Some of you will know, definitely, what God expects;
you are a steward,
or a worship leader,
or you work with the projection.
For others, it’s less clear cut.
You have a job, perhaps, or are bringing up a family.
Or perhaps that is all behind you now, and you are retired.

But whatever it is you do, you are expected to be Christ’s ambassador.
You are a witness to him in everything you say and do.
Now, before you start squirming uncomfortably,
and thinking “Oh dear, I’m not a very good one, am I?”,
don’t forget that Jesus said that when the Holy Spirit came,
we would be his witnesses throughout the known world.
Not that we should be,
or ought to be,
but that we would be.
We are.
You are an ambassador for Christ,
and whether you like it or not,
whether you know it or not,
this is what you are, through the power of the Holy Spirit who dwells within you.

When God calls you to do something,
whether it is some well-defined job like cleaning the church,
or running a prayer group,
or speaking forth his word,
or simply praying quietly at home,
or whether you’re called to be God’s person where you work, or where you live, God will enable you to do it, just as he enabled Jeremiah.

---oo0oo---

And so to my second question for this morning:
What do you expect of God’s people?
When someone says he or she is a Christian,
what do you reckon they’re going to be like?

The leader of the synagogue was confounded when Jesus didn’t conform to his expectation of what a good Jewish man did or didn’t do on the Sabbath.

Healing people?
Seriously?
No, no, that counted as work!

And sometimes we are confounded when we come across Christians whose standards of acceptable behaviour might differ from ours.
Could they possibly be Christians at all?
Do real Christians behave like that?
Some churches have felt so strongly about some of these issues that they have even split up,
causing enormous hurt and upset in their various denominations.
Yet who are we to judge another’s behaviour?
In fact, you might remember that St Paul suggests
that if your brother is offended by something you do or don’t do,
you should do it, or not do it, as the case may be,
so as not to upset them, or, worse,
to let them think it’s all right for them to do it,
when it might not be at all all right,
and might lead them away from God.
We need to be sensitive to one another,
and to refrain from judging one another.
We probably have our rules that we live by,
but we don’t have the right to force those rules on to other people,
not even on to other Christians.

I suppose the thing is, we shouldn’t really expect other Christians to be like us!
Many, of course, will be –
that’s why you go to this church, here,
because you find people you are comfortable with,
people whose vision of what God’s people are like resonates with yours.
But there will be others whose views you are less comfortable with;
who perhaps strike you as rather puritanical, or rather lax.

Having said that, of course, I find it really hard to accept some of what is going on in the USA, largely initiated by people who call themselves Christian. Do Jesus’ people really think it is right to control women’s fertility, and cut her off from essential medical care?
Do Jesus’ people really think it is right to deny aid to the poorest?
Or medical care to those who cannot afford it?
Do Jesus’ people really think it is okay to discriminate against people because of their ethnicity, sexuality or even gender?
Personally, I don’t think so.
Jesus said, after all, that if you helped – or denied help – to anybody, no matter how insignificant, you were helping, or failing to help him.

Of course, when we know someone, we know what they are like,
whether they are reliable,
whether you can trust them.
And we accept them, normally, for who they are.
Just as God does with us.
But we mustn’t be judgemental.
Maybe they hold views that we find strange, or even unpleasant.
Maybe they feel free to behave in ways we’ve been taught that Christians don’t do,
or ways that we feel would be sinful for us.
But it is not for us to judge.
Our Lord points out, in that collection of His teachings known as the Sermon on the Mount,
that we very often have socking great logs in our own eyes,
so how can we see clearly to remove the speck in someone else’s?
In other words, keep your eyes on what’s wrong with you,
not on what’s wrong with other people!
See to it that you obey your rules, and leave other people to obey theirs.
That said, of course, we do need to protest manifest injustice, and to speak truth to power when we get an opportunity!

That’s something, I think, that the leader of the synagogue would have been wise to keep in mind,
rather than criticising Jesus for healing someone on the Sabbath,
to say nothing of criticising the congregation for coming to be healed that day.
He had rules he needed to keep,
and he needed other people to keep them, too.
But Jesus had other ideas.
For him, healing someone on the Sabbath was as normal and as natural as making sure your livestock were fed, or your cow was milked.

---oo0oo---

So, then, God is free to expect anything from us;
we should not, though, expect other Christians to be just like us.
But what do we expect from God?

Jeremiah didn’t expect anything from God.
When told that he was to proclaim God’s word, his first reaction was to panic:
“I can’t possibly! I’m a lousy public speaker and much too young!”
But God gave him the gifts he needed to fulfil his task,
and sometimes Jeremiah had to actively act out God’s word, not just speak it!

The woman who was all twisted and bent over didn’t expect anything from God, either.
She presumably went to the synagogue each week to worship,
not really expecting anything to happen.
But that particular Sabbath day, Jesus was there –
and that made all the difference.
After eighteen years she was finally free of her illness,
able to stand up straight,
able to walk normally and talk to people face to face once more.

What did you expect from God this morning?
Let’s be honest, we come to church week after week,
and on most Sundays nothing much happens!
We worship God, we spend some time with our friends,
and then we go home again.
And that’s okay.
But some weeks are different, aren’t they?
Not often, but just sometimes we come away from Church
knowing that God was there, and present, and real.
I wonder why these occasions are so rare?
Partly, of course, because mountain-top experiences like that are rare,
that’s why we remember them.

There’s an old story –
I may have told you this before –
of two men coming out of Church one Sunday morning when the preacher had been rather more boring even than usual.
The first man said, “Honestly, what’s the point?
I’ve been going to Church more or less every Sunday for the past 50 years,
and I must have heard hundreds of sermons,
yet I hardly remember any of them!”

To which the second man replied, “Hmm, well;
I’ve been married for over forty years and my wife has cooked me a meal more or less every night,
and I don’t really remember many of them, either.
But where would I be without them?”

Church, mostly, is about providing daily bread for daily needs.
We don’t expect to see miracles each Sunday,
or healings such as took place in the synagogue that day.
But what do we expect when we come to Church?
Do we expect to meet God in some way?

What do we expect from God?
We know that our sins have been forgiven, right?
And that God is gradually making us into the people he designed us to be.
But do we expect more?
Should we expect more?
Neither Jeremiah nor the woman in the synagogue expected anything from God –
yet God gave, bountifully, to both of them in very different ways.

---oo0oo---

Who was it who said “Expect great things from God.
Attempt great things for God”?
I can’t remember right now
but it’s really what I want to leave with you this morning.
What does God expect from you?
Are you trying not to hear something you think God might be trying to say?
What do you expect from other Christians?
Are you requiring a higher standard from them than from yourself?
And what are you expecting God to do for you today?
Amen.

Most of the modern Bible paraphrases quoted  are ©Nathan Nettleton 2002