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.