The Baptism of Christ.

The text - substantially the same - of today's sermon can be found here.

Baruch and the Baptist

You might have found it strange that this morning’s first reading came from a book of the Bible you’ve never heard of! Well, the thing is, while the book of Baruch is actually part of our Bibles, it’s in the part known as the Apocrypha, and not all Bibles contain these books. If they do, they are found between the Old and the New Testaments. For us Protestants, the books of the Apocrypha – and if you don’t own one, there are plenty on-line, or you can download a Bible containing one – the books of the Apocrypha aren’t considered quite part of Scripture proper.

In the very first printed Bible, known as the Geneva Bible, the preface to the Apocrypha explained that while these books "were not received by a common consent to be read and expounded publicly in the Church," and did not serve "to prove any point of Christian religion save in so much as they had the consent of the other scriptures called canonical to confirm the same," nonetheless, "as books proceeding from godly men they were received to be read for the advancement and furtherance of the knowledge of history and for the instruction of godly manners.”

So, the “advancement and furtherance of the knowledge of history” is what we’re after this morning. Who was Baruch, who wrote the passage we heard read, and why does it matter?

We don’t actually know that Baruch ben Neriah, as he was called, was the author of this book, and it may have been written much later than it appears, but that doesn’t really matter at this distance. We do know that he was an associate of the prophet Jeremiah, perhaps his secretary, at the time when the people of Israel were having problems. A few centuries earlier, the kingdom of Israel had been divided into two, with the northern kingdom being larger,

and the southern kingdom, Judah, being smaller.

But the Middle East is, was, and probably always will be a very unsettled area, and back in the day, the strongest nation in the region was called Assyria.

And eventually the Assyrians conquered the northern kingdom,

known as Israel,

and carted its leaders off into exile.

The southern kingdom, Judah, struggled along for another couple of centuries, being more or less allied with Assyria.

Eventually Assyria fell in its turn, and Babylonia became a power in the region.

King Nebuchadnezzar was able to conquer the kingdom of Judah,

and he carried its people off into captivity. But before he could do that, he had to besiege Jerusalem, and during the siege, Jeremiah was in prison as the then king, Zedekiah, didn’t like the fact that he was prophesying that the city, and the nation, would fall and would be carried off into captivity. However, while he was in prison, the word of God came to him to buy a field from his cousin Hanamel. Now, it might seem very foolhardy to you or me to buy a field in the middle of a country that was about to fall to invaders, but Jeremiah did as he was told, believing that it was a sign from God that one day, one day, the people would return. And he gave a copy of the deed of sale to Baruch, and told him to seal it in a clay jar so that, when the time came, he would have proof of ownership. We know how documents sealed in clay jars do last for many centuries, look at the Dead Sea scrolls. And it’s that Baruch who is purported to have written this book.

So, as prophesied, Jerusalem duly falls into the hands of the Babylonians, and the important people are carried into captivity. Not everybody went, of course,

but certainly they would have taken the leaders and influential people,

and their families and extended families,

and the ones who were left behind were the ordinary people.

We do know that some of the people who went to Babylon had great influence there –

Daniel, for instance, or Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego.

You can read their stories in the Book of Daniel.

Anyway, the point was Jeremiah and Baruch were two of those who stayed behind. They both sought the protection of the man appointed as a local governor, whose name was Gedaliah.

There seems to have been a certain amount of coming and going between Babylon and Jerusalem, though, because Jeremiah was able to write to the exiles to say what he believed God was telling them:

“Settle down in your new cities, raise your families, and, above all, pray for your new homes and your new rulers.”

The people were obviously going to be away for some years, and it made sense to make proper homes for themselves rather than hope –

as some of the crowd-pleasers kept telling them –

that they would be able to go back home next week.

It would not be next week. It would be about seventy years before they were finally able to go home, once Babylon itself had been conquered and King Darius was on the throne of one of the greatest empires the world had ever known,

the Achaemenid Empire, also known as the First Persian Empire.

It had been founded by his grandfather, Cyrus the Great –

you might remember Cyrus from when you’ve been reading Isaiah –

and now spanned a huge swathe of territory, which, at its greatest extent included all of the territory of modern-day

Turkey,

Iran,

Iraq,

Kuwait,

Syria,

Jordan,

Israel,

Palestine,

Lebanon,

Afghanistan,

parts of Egypt and as far west as eastern Libya,

Macedonia,

the Black Sea coastal regions of Bulgaria, Romania, Ukraine, and Russia,

all of Armenia,

Georgia,

and Azerbaijan,

parts of the North Caucasus,

and much of Central Asia.

It truly was one of the largest empires ever!

Anyway, the point is that the people of Judah always knew that one day they would go home – although when push came to shove, many of them decided not to bother, as they were the second or third generation to have settled in their new country, and their roots had gone deep.

But those who had stayed behind, including Baruch, always hoped that one day, one day the people would come home again. And Baruch writes to them, reminding them of this. And reminding them that wherever they went, God would make it easy:

“For God has ordered that every high mountain and the everlasting hills be made low
    and the valleys filled up, to make level ground,
    so that Israel may walk safely in the glory of God.
The woods and every fragrant tree
    have shaded Israel at God’s command.
For God will lead Israel with joy,
    in the light of his glory,
    with the mercy and righteousness that come from him.”

I expect, don’t you, that Baruch knew what the prophet Isaiah had written, which was very similar:

“In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord,
    make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
Every valley shall be lifted up,
    and every mountain and hill be made low;
the uneven ground shall become level,
    and the rough places a plain.
Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed,
    and all people shall see it together,
    for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”

The people of Judah would have known these words, and so Baruch was rubbing them in, reinforcing them. One day. One day…..

And then, a few hundred years later, here is another prophet proclaiming these same words. John the Baptist, as we heard in our Gospel reading, quotes Isaiah:
“Prepare the way of the Lord,
    make his paths straight.
Every valley shall be filled,
    and every mountain and hill shall be made low,
and the crooked shall be made straight,
    and the rough ways made smooth;
and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.”

It’s all about preparing, isn’t it?

You see, despite all evidence to the contrary, it’s not Christmas yet! It’s very much the season of Advent, a season of preparing, of getting ready. We are only on the second Sunday in Advent, after all.

Well, what are we preparing for? Christmas – duh! Yes, but not just Christmas, although that can take a fair bit of preparation. What we think about in Advent is not just the immediate future, but the distant future, the day when Christ will, so we believe, return in glory to judge, as the Creed tells us, the living and the dead.

We don’t think of the second coming very often, do we? And that’s as it should be – if we focussed on it, we’d be so heavenly-minded we’d be no earthly use. But Advent is a good moment to think of it. You’ll notice that Luke fixes John the Baptist’s ministry very firmly in time – when Tiberias was

Emperor of Rome, Pontius Pilate was governor of Judah and Herod of Galilee, and so on. So we can place it fairly accurately at around 28 AD or thereabouts. He is rooted in time, but his message is eternal. “Prepare ye the way of the Lord”.

You notice that both Isaiah, as quoted by John, and Baruch refer to the valleys being filled, the rough ways made straight, making level ground so that the people of Israel – all God’s people, in this context, not just Israelis – will walk in safety. I don’t know whether any of you are familiar with the novels of Laura Ingalls Wilder, a fictionalised account of her girlhood and young womanhood in a pioneer family? In one of the novels, Laura is taken by her father to watch the railway being built. I am not quoting exactly, but she notices that the workmen fill in the hollows and dig out the humps so that the line can run as smoothly as possible across the prairie. It’s that sort of image that I have when I read these passages.

But, do you know, until I read the Baruch passage, I had somehow assumed that the Isaiah/John passage was all about our making ourselves fit for purpose, as it were, confessing our sins and allowing God to forgive us and heal us and make us whole. And it is, partly, about that. Advent is very much a penitential season, like Lent, and it’s a time to look at ourselves, both as individuals and as a church, and address our shortcomings in God’s presence.

But it’s also about what God is doing to prepare for Jesus’ return. The highway is being built – in our lives, in our churches, through us, although not totally by us – so that one day, we believe, Christ will return. We’re told we won’t know when or where this will happen, and not to believe it when people say “Look, he’s here,” or “Look, he’s there!” or even “He’ll be arriving on Monday next at 6:00 pm.” Jesus himself didn’t know, when he was on earth; he did know there’d be all sorts of false alarms about it, though.

The people of Judah didn’t know how long they’d be in exile. They did know they should settle down and get on with their lives, as it wasn’t going to be soon. But they did know that one day they would be able to go back – and indeed, that happened. We don’t know when Jesus will come back, but we know we need to get on with our lives, and also allow God to work in us, to prepare the way of the Lord. Amen.

Christ the King

The text of this sermon is substantially the same - with some additions - as that preached here, so I won't reproduce it. 

The Servant of the Rest

“If one of you wants to be great,” said Jesus, “you must be the servant of the rest; and if one of you wants to be first, you must be the slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served; he came to serve and to give his life to redeem many people.”

“If one of you wants to be great, you must be the servant of the rest.”

We’ve heard those words so often that they tend to just skim over us, don’t they? We know that Christians are supposed to be the servants of all; we know that Jesus told us to wash one another’s feet; we know that he is identified with the suffering servant that we have just read about in Isaiah.

Yet we never believe them. We don’t obey them. We never have, right back to the earliest days of Christianity. Right back in the book of Acts, within days of the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, they were squabbling about who got precedence at the dinner table. The Greeks complained they were being neglected in favour of the Jews. This was back in the days when the church was small enough they could all live together, and I expect you remember what happened. The elders of the church said, “It is not right for us to neglect the preaching of God's word in order to handle finances. So then, friends, choose seven men among you who are known to be full of the Holy Spirit and wisdom, and we will put them in charge of this matter. We ourselves, then, will give our full time to prayer and the work of preaching.”

One thing to specially notice is that the men who were chosen to serve dinner had to be men known to be full of the Holy Spirit and of wisdom. The elders knew, if the people didn’t, that to be great, the helpers, often known as the first deacons, needed to be servants of all.

St Paul, a few years later, is horrified by the way the Christians in Corinth are behaving. “None of you” he says, “should be looking out for your own interests, but for the interests of others.” This is in the context of whether one could, or should, eat meat that had previously been offered to idols – and it was difficult to buy meat that hadn’t been – or whether if you did, it was participating in the ritual. Paul leaves it up to you, but he points out that if you say: “Why should my freedom to act be limited by another person's conscience? If I thank God for my food, why should anyone criticize me about food for which I give thanks?” then you aren’t really giving glory to God because you aren’t looking out for other people’s faith.

And when it comes to the way they behaved when they went to Holy Communion, he was appalled: “Your meetings for worship actually do more harm than good. In the first place, I have been told that there are opposing groups in your meetings; and this I believe is partly true. (No doubt there must be divisions among you so that the ones who are in the right may be clearly seen.) When you meet together as a group, it is not the Lord's Supper that you eat. For as you eat, you each go ahead with your own meal, so that some are hungry while others get drunk. Don't you have your own homes in which to eat and drink? Or would you rather despise the church of God and put to shame the people who are in need? What do you expect me to say to you about this? Shall I praise you? Of course I don't!”

But it wasn’t just the people of Corinth who kept on putting themselves first. St James, our Lord’s brother, has to point out that it’s seriously no good saying you have faith if your faith doesn’t lead to action. If you know someone at Church doesn’t have enough to eat, or doesn’t have enough money to pay for heating, you won’t do much good by just saying “God bless you, stay warm and well fed!”

And on and on down the centuries. Right down to us, today – we’ve all heard the egregious stories coming out of the United States, where some so-called Christian men seem to covet power to the extent of wanting to have it over women’s bodies, even. And where Christianity seems to be linked to right-wing politics in a way that we on this side of the Atlantic cannot understand.

However, having said all that, there are, of course, masses of exceptions. Just last Sunday, Archbishop Romero was made a saint – he, of course, was renowned for his work among the poorest and most marginalised people in El Salvador. He didn’t espouse the liberation theology that was so popular at the time, but he did believe that the then government needed to respect human rights. In a famous speech, he denounced the persecution of those members of the Church who had worked on behalf of the poor, commenting at the end: “But it is important to note why [the Church] has been persecuted. Not any and every priest has been persecuted, not any and every institution has been attacked. That part of the church has been attacked and persecuted that put itself on the side of the people and went to the people's defence. Here again we find the same key to understanding the persecution of the church: the poor.”

Archbishop Romero wanted the church to remain united. He denied that there was one church for the rich and another for the poor, despite a great deal of evidence to the contrary. He was, if you like, the servant of all the rest. And he was martyred for it, shot while celebrating the Eucharist in a hospital chapel.

But Archbishop Romero was only one of many Christians down the years who has spent his life in the service of others. Think of all the many, many missionaries who felt called of God to leave their homes and their home countries and to travel to distant lands to share God’s love, either through direct preaching and teaching, or perhaps through showing God’s love through ministering to the sick. But even they, sometimes, forgot that they needed to be servants of the rest. They assumed, often wrongly, that their own culture was the best, and tried to impose it on everybody else, often with disastrous results. Sometimes they assumed that they were the only ones who knew anything, and nobody from the local culture was fit to lead a church. The ideal missionaries, of course, were the ones that worked themselves out of a job, but so few of them were ideal. Many of them, probably quite unconsciously, enjoyed the power they had and wanted to cling on to it.

As it seems that James and John did, in our Gospel reading. They asked Jesus whether they could have the places of honour in his kingdom, to which Jesus replied that even if they could suffer as he was about to, those places weren’t his to give. And, “if one of you wants to be great, you must be the servant of the rest.”

It must have turned their world upside-down. The servants – the poor, marginalised ones who had to work for other people instead of being their own masters. They were to be the great ones? I’ve said before that the stories Jesus told about the Kingdom of Heaven, about God’s country, were apt to make people wonder, and here was another aspect of it! And, as we have seen, it wasn’t one that came easily. Although there were many, many people who did believe it and obey it. There were the women, many of them not even named in our Bibles, who followed Jesus, and who, I am sure, made sure that everybody had something to eat, and a blanket to sleep under, even if that night’s bed must be under a hedge. We see them in our churches today, the ones who get on with things – making coffee, washing up the cups, sweeping the floor, often the first to arrive and the last to leave. And doing it without drawing attention to themselves, too. And those who work quietly in the community, doing what they can to help the poor and marginalised, even if that’s only an occasional donation to the food bank, and perhaps a smile at a harassed supermarket cashier.

So many of us – probably most of us – find it hard to be the servant to the rest. We pay lip service to the necessity, but I don’t know about you, but I find it really hard to put into practice. And the trouble with this sort of sermon is that you end up feeling guilty, and thinking that you must be a terrible person for not being as willing as you might to put yourself last – even if you almost always do put yourself last! Or perhaps especially if!

But, as so often when it comes to Christianity, it’s probably not a thing we can learn how to do by ourselves. Some years ago now, I had one of those epiphanies that come all too rarely in our Christian lives, when a couple of verses strung themselves together in my head. The first was from our reading today: “The Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve.” And then I thought, “And the Son of Man does only what He sees His Father doing.” Does that mean, think you, that God, too, wants to serve us, to give us good gifts, not grudgingly and unwillingly, but gladly, pressed down and running over! I think it does. And one of those gifts, as we know, is God’s Holy Spirit within us, filling us to overflowing, making us more like Jesus. And part of that will be making us more able to serve one another without making a great big noisy fuss about it. Part of it will be making us less enamoured of power and status, and more willing to settle for being just another person. And part of it will be, for some of us, God whispering “Well done, my good and trusty servant!”