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.