Today's Advent Liturgy
in the New International Version reads, in part:
“He will stand and shepherd his flock in
the strength of the Lord, in the majesty
of the name of the Lord his God. And they will live securely, for
then his greatness will reach to the ends
of the earth.
And he will be our
peace when the Assyrians invade our land”
I don't know about you,
but I find that prophecy strangely comforting in these dark days!
“He will stand and
shepherd his flock in the strength of the Lord, in the majesty of the
name of the Lord his God.” “And he will be our peace when the
Assyrians invade our land.”
However, as we all
know, a text without a context is a pretext, so rather than just
taking the words as a lovely Christmas prophecy – which of course,
on one level, they are – let's look a bit deeper and find out a bit
more about Micah, and what he was talking about.
Micah was a prophet in 8th-century Judah, more or less a contemporary with
Isaiah, Amos and Hosea. As with so many of the prophets, the book
starts off with great doom and gloom.He prophesied
the destruction of Jerusalem,particularly because they were simply
dishonest and then expected God to cover for them: “Her leaders
judge for a bribe, her priests teach for a price, and her prophets
tell fortunes for money. Yet they lean upon the LORD and say, Is not
the LORD among us? No disaster will come upon us.” But Micah
said, “Well, actually....” As one modern paraphrase puts it: “The
fact is, that because of you lot, Jerusalem will be reduced to rubble
and cleared like a field; and the Temple hill will be nothing but a
tangled mass of weeds" An archaeologist called Roland de
Vaux has excavated village sites only a few miles from where Micah is
thought to have lived, and he has something very interesting to say:
“The houses of the tenth century B.C. are all of the same size and
arrangement. Each represents the dwelling of a family which lived in
the same way as its neighbours. The contrast is striking when we
pass to the eighth century houses on the same site: the rich houses
are bigger and better built and in a different quarter from that
where the poor houses are huddled together.”
During those
200 years, Israel and Judah had moved from a largely agricultural
society to one governed by a monarchy and with a Temple in Jerusalem.
The distinction between the “Haves” and the “Have nots” had
grown, as it does still today. But Micah tells the powerful ones –
the judges, the priests, the rulers – that God doesn't prop up any
so-called progress that is built on the backs of other people. For
God, justice and equality matter far more than progress or growth.
But God's people disagree, and they try to stop Micah, and other
prophets, telling them God's truth; they only want to hear
comforting, agreeable prophecies about how their crops will flourish
and there will be plenty of wine!
But when Jerusalem has
been destroyed, when her people have been carried off into exile,
then a day will come when a new leader will be born to them, a leader
who will “stand and shepherd his flock in the days of the Lord”,
and “who will be our peace when the Assyrians invade our land.”
I expect you realise
that these prophecies were often dual-purpose; they did and do refer
to the coming of Christ, of course, but they also often referred to a
local event, a local birth. We don't know who Micah was originally
referring to, who would be born in Bethlehem, but we do know that,
for us, these prophecies refer to Jesus.
“He will be our peace
when the Assyrians invade our land.” These days we worry rather
more about Syrians than about Assyrians – whether we are concerned
about the number of refugees seeking asylum here, or whether we are
more concerned, as we should be, about how relatively few our
government is allowing in. Some people, I know, worry that we
shouldn't allow them in in case they turn out to belong to Daesh and
want to commit acts of terrorism, but those are the tiniest of tiny
minorities among those fleeing Syria.
We call them
“migrants”, lumping them all under one umbrella. The term is
supposed to be neutral, less laden with emotional baggage than
“refugee” or “asylum seeker”. It isn't, of course, because
people then talk about “illegal immigrants” or “economic
migrants”. And it's noticeable that if we Brits go to live abroad
we aren't called migrants – I did the whole economic migrant thing
back in the 1970s, when I went to work in Paris for some years after
leaving school, but nobody called me a “migrant”, economic or
otherwise – I was an expatriate! And people talked about cultural
exchange, and our young people learning about different lifestyles,
and so on, and it was all considered a Good Thing.
And, of course, many of
your families, and perhaps some of you are the first generation who
did so, many of you came over here to work and contribute to our
society and learn about our way of life – and have enriched this
country beyond all measure! Maybe you can remember the bewilderment
of arriving here, not too sure of your welcome, not too sure what
life in this cold and rainy land was going to be like.
Even if someone does
make it across the Channel, their problems aren't yet over. They
aren't allowed to work while their claim for asylum is being
processed, and although they do get an allowance, it really isn't
very much. Not really enough to live on, and certainly not enough for
a comfortable lifestyle. And if they are found not to be in imminent
danger of death back home, they are thrown out again, and if that's
on their records they can't really go and try their luck somewhere
else in Europe.
I don't know what the
answer long-term is. The politicians will have to work that one out
between them. But we need to pray for all migrants, and do what we
can to help. That may be only donating a few pounds to the Unicef
appeals that we see daily on our televisions, or we may be called to
do something more “hands-on”. Whatever, though, we mustn't think
of it as someone else's problem!
Because Jesus will be
our peace, so Micah tells us. If we believe Matthew's account, he was
himself a refugee for awhile, when they fled to Egypt to avoid
Herod's troops. As I understand it, God won't necessarily keep the
bad times from us, or protect us from what lies ahead, but Jesus will
be there with us in the midst of it all. And I, personally, find
that reassuring.
Our Gospel reading,
too, told of someone who badly needed reassurance. Mary has just met
the angel and been told that, if she will, she is the one who will
bear God's son, and she has said “Yes”. But it's early days yet
– there aren't any physical signs that she is pregnant, she has
never slept with a man, what is it all about? But one thing the
angel had told her, that she hadn't already known, was that her
cousin Elisabeth, surely far too old to be having babies, was six
months gone. So Mary goes off to see Elisabeth – incidentally
this, for me, is one of the pointers that she was living in the
Jerusalem area at the time, whether at Bethlehem or Jerusalem itself
– tradition has it that she was one of the temple servants –
because she would never have been able to travel all that way between
Nazareth and Jerusalem on her own.
Anyway, she arrives at
Elisabeth's front door, and there is Elisabeth with a large bump, and
Elisabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit, confirms all that the angel
had said. And Mary bubbles over into love and joy and praise, and
even if the words of the Magnificat are what St Luke thought she
ought to have said – rather like Henry the Fifth's speech at
Agincourt being what Shakespeare thought he ought to have said,
rather than what he actually did say – even if they are not
authentic, they are probably very close to reality! We sung a
metrical version of her song just a few minutes ago. And it reminds
us that God is turning accepted values upside-down by having His Son
born to a virgin mother in a small town in an occupied land.
“Tell out, my soul,
the greatness of his might! Powers and dominions lay their glory
by. Proud hearts and stubborn wills are put to flight, the
hungry fed, the humble lifted high.”
In the culture of the
day – as in ours – it was thought that prosperity was a sign of
God's blessing, and poverty rather the reverse. But no, that was not
what Jesus was, or is, all about. Instead, he himself was born to an
ordinary family that, within a couple of years, was fleeing for its
life into exile, and when they did dare go home, they didn't dare go
back so near Jerusalem, but moved up to the provinces.
Mary was so brave,
saying “Yes” to God. I don't know how much she understood, but
of course Joseph could – and seriously considered doing so – have
refused to marry her, and then where would she have been? But the
angel reassured Joseph, and Elisabeth reassured Mary. All was not
totally well, but God was with them.
And that's the message
to take into this Christmas, isn't it, as we stand on the brink of
another war, against an enemy we cannot defeat – for even if we
destroy Daesh, as we destroyed Al Quaeda, there will be another
group, and another.... all may not be totally well, but God is with
us. And God's son, Jesus, will be our peace when the Assyrians
invade our land. Amen.
Welcome! I am a Methodist Local Preacher, and preach roughly once a month, or thereabouts. If you wish to take a RSS feed, or become a follower, so that you know when a new sermon has been uploaded, please feel free to do so.
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