Choose Life

The Children's talk is an integral part of this sermon, albeit separated by the music group and the Gospel reading!

Children's Talk

Once upon a time, long, long ago, in a kingdom far away, there was trouble in the land. The King, whose name was Manasseh, had decided to forsake worshipping the God of his ancestors, and to worship other, more exciting gods instead. Not only that, but he put up altars to them in the holy Temple at Jerusalem, and despite all the priests could do, and despite dire warnings from the prophets, he carried on like this, even sacrificing one of his children and practising black magic.

The priests in the Temple were scared. They didn't know how much longer they would be allowed to stay, or even whether the King would have them killed. What if no new priests could come? How would future generations know how to worship God? Their country had enemies, and it was quite possible that it would be over-run, and God's name might disappear altogether.

So the priests did the only thing they could think of. They wrote a book to tell future generations all about God, and how to worship, and, especially, how to live as God's people. And then they hid it away in the depths of the Temple, and carried on as best they could.

Roughly fifty years later, there was a new king on the throne, the grandson of King Manasseh, and his name was King Josiah. King Josiah did worship God, and one day he decided that it was high time the Temple in Jerusalem was refurbished, painted, cleaned, the stonework repointed, all that sort of thing. And while that was happening, the priests found this book that had been hidden away for so long – either that, or they decided that now was a good moment to produce it – and they brought it to the King.

And that book was at least part of, and perhaps all of, the book of Deuteronomy which our reading came from. I'll tell you more about what it said in a bit, but when Josiah read it, he was horrified and realised that he and his people had been doing things all wrong, and he made them all listen to it and do what it said. And God was pleased. The doom that had been prophesied did come on the land, but not in Josiah's lifetime. You can read all the story in 2 Kings chapters 21 to 23, if you've got a good modern English translation. Not now, though. Now the music group is going to sing for us.

Choose Life

The book of Deuteronomy turned out to be like nothing Josiah had ever heard before. The central theme of the book, how God wants his people to be, is of course that famous passage that begins "Hear, O Israel, The Lord is God, the Lord is One". We are to love God with all of our being, and to keep all the commandments, decrees and ordinances, says the book of Deuteronomy. And, as the passage we heard read says, we are to choose Life. To choose to follow God is to choose Life.

The rest of the book is an expansion of that theme. You look after your neighbour, especially if your neighbour is an Israelite. Refugees or "sojourners" who have settled among you are also to be treated with kindness and compassion, since you were once sojourners in Egypt. If you have slaves or servants, you must give them the opportunity to go free at the end of six years, and give them some capital to help them make a new start. You mustn't give it grudgingly, either, since you've had work from the slave for six years, and no way could you have got a hired servant so cheap. If your slave runs away, people are to assume that you were a cruel owner, and the slave won't be returned to you. If your paid servants need it, you must pay them daily, and don't you dare cheat them!

You don't fancy military service? Well, you don't have to go if you are about to get married, or have just got married, or if you've just built yourself a house or planted a vineyard, or even if you are afraid. Fighting is the Lord's work, and we don't want anyone who isn't whole-hearted about it. If you do go to war, the camp must be kept clean and hygienic at all times - please go right outside the perimeter when you need to "go", and use your trowel afterwards. And when you fight, give your enemy every chance to surrender first.

Above all else, the book of Deuteronomy is concerned with rooting out idolatry, forcefully if necessary. Because of this the whole system of worship is being changed. From now on, you can't sacrifice to God where you please, but only in the Temple in Jerusalem. No more popping into the local shrine; it's too difficult to police it and to make sure it is only God that sacrifices have been made to. Now, obviously, this is going to cause some upheavals, and the authors have made provision for this.

Firstly, you ask, what about your dinner? If you've been in the habit of eating your share of the sacrifice, what do you do if you can't sacrifice any more? Have you really got to go hunting every time you fancy some meat?
No. From now on you may butcher your own meat, or have it butchered for you, so long as it is done in a certain way. It doesn't have to have been sacrificed first. Secular meat is quite OK.

Bur what about me? I'm a Levite, a descendent of Levi. I've been used to working in the shrines and keeping myself on part of the meat brought as sacrifice. What am I going to do now? Well, you get given charitable status, along with widows, orphans and sojourners. Henceforth it is the duty of all religious Jews to support you.

Well, OK, that's fine, you say. But how am I going to worship God? It's three days' journey to Jerusalem; I can't go gallivanting up and down each week. What am I to do?

The answer to that one has repercussions to this day! What they did was, they set up a system of praying with psalms and readings that gradually developed into the synagogue worship that persists even today. What's more, we Christians adapted it, and in various forms it became the Benedictine Daily Office, the Anglican Matins and Evensong, and even has echoes in a Methodist preaching service such as this one! All because those who wrote Deuteronomy felt it would be better, or that God was saying, if you prefer it said that way to have sacrifices made only in the Temple in Jerusalem so that an eye could be kept on what happened. There was too much worshipping of other gods going on.

The other thing that shows God's hand in all this, of course, is that the Temple was destroyed in 70 AD. Suppose the Jews hadn't had an alternative form of worship to fall back on? And what would we have done without it? Jesus rendered Temple worship obsolete, because he was, as the old Prayer Book has it, "a full, perfect and sufficient sacrifice, oblation and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world." God is clever sometimes!

But that is all detail – I find it fascinating, and suggest you sit down and have a good read of the book of Deuteronomy in a modern paraphrase sometime. All sorts of fascinating rules and regulations....

But that's the point. They could so easily become just dry rules and regulations. The priests were aware of this, I think, which is why they were so emphatic about the need to choose, to choose life: “Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the LORD your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the LORD is your life, and he will give you many years in the land he swore to give to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.”

But it got too easy to follow God just by keeping the rules, and by the time Jesus came along, that, all too often, is what was happening. And all the rules were getting hedged around with “Well, what if....” and “In this case, you should...” until they had become a real burden.

Jesus cuts through this, as we heard in our second reading. Just keeping the rules isn't enough. It's not enough to not murder someone – you haven't to be angry with them in a way that would destroy their self-esteem, and when things go wrong, it's down to you to be the first to go and put them right. It's not enough to not have sex with someone if the only reason you fancied them in the first place was because they had a great body. You don't get divorced for trivial reasons, no matter how scrupulous you are about doing it legally. You don't need to swear by anybody or anything, as you should be so trustworthy that just a “Yes” or “No” is enough.

Jesus is giving this picture of what his followers would be like, and it's really hard to live up to. I'm pretty sure I don't, and I'm pretty sure you don't, either.

But then, of course, we don't have to. I mean, not like that. It's not about our trying and struggling and failing to make ourselves into better people. It never has been. In our own strength, we are always going to fail. It's about a reciprocal relationship with God. It's about allowing ourselves to be transformed. About saying to the Holy Spirit, okay, here I am, You do it. He will! Probably not in ways you'd expect, and quite possibly not in ways you'd like, given a choice, but you will be transformed, more and more, into the kind of person God created you to be.

Josiah could have just listened to the book of the Law, and nodded, and said "Oh yes, how very interesting", and let it flow over him. But he didn't. Josiah really wanted to worship God properly – his cousin Zephaniah was a prophet, and quite possibly influenced him to follow God – so he rooted out all the shrines to God that were sometimes used to worship other gods, and he required his subjects to worship God alone, and to celebrate the Passover. The Bible tells us that that first Passover, in the eighteenth year of Josiah's reign, so in about 621 BC by our reckoning, was unique: "No such Passover," it says, "had been kept since the days of the judges who judged Israel, or during all the days of the kings of Israel or of the kings of Judah."

The point is that Josiah really meant it about worshipping God, and when he was confronted with the Scriptures, the book of the Law, he chose life.
And we are asked to make that choice, too. Is our religion something formal, a matter of coming to Church on Sundays, of obeying certain rules, going through the motions?

It would be much easier if it was just a matter of obeying rules, wouldn't it? We would just have to do this, do that, not do this, not do that, and God would accept us. But it doesn't work like that. Nor does the more subtle temptation: “I believe that Jesus died for me, so I am saved.” And that's true, of course – but it's the wrong way round. Once again, it's making our relationship with God dependent on something we do – but, my friends, nothing we can do can save us! If we think it is our faith that saves us, we need to think again. It is Jesus who saves us! We can and should believe in Him, but that belief shouldn't be a matter of static facts, a matter of just the Creeds and no more. It should be a belief that leads to a living, two-way relationship with him. He has saved us; we can do nothing to help or hinder him. What we can and should do is be willing to enter into that relationship with him, so that we can know He has saved us, so that we can be saved to the uttermost, as our doctrines have it.

“I set before you life and death;” says the Lord. “Choose life.”

Come and see

You know, I don't know about you, but usually when I think about the calling of the disciples, I think about the scene by the See of Galilee, with James, John, Simon Peter and Andrew all mending their nets after a hard days' fishing – or, perhaps, them out in the lake still and Jesus pointing out to them a shoal of fish that he could see and they couldn't. And Simon Peter falling on his knees before Jesus, and Jesus telling them that if they followed him, he would teach them to fish for people. That's what I think of, anyway.

So this story in St John's gospel comes a little strange. In this passage, Andrew is already one of John the Baptist's disciples, and, at John's suggestion, goes after Jesus, and then comes and gets his brother, Simon Peter, and introduces him. Not a fish or fish-net in sight! You wonder, sometimes, when the stories were being collected, who told what to whom, and who was trying to make who look good!

Not that it matters, of course; truth and historical accuracy weren't the same thing in Bible days, and don't need to be today. So for now we'll stick with John's story, since it was our reading for today.

And today's story introduces us to a very important person – Andrew. At least, Andrew is very important in John's gospel. We don't often think of Andrew, do we? He's Peter's younger brother, but it's Peter, James and John who go with Jesus when he is transfigured; it's Peter, James and John who accompany Jesus to the Garden of Gethsemane. Andrew gets left out. Andrew stays back with the other disciples.

But here, according to John's version of events, Andrew was with John the Baptist, and when they encountered Jesus, he and his friend went off after him. “What do you want?” asked Jesus.

“Where do you live?” asks Andrew, in return. And Jesus says, “Come and see!”

We're all so used to the idea that “Foxes have dens and birds have their nests but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head” that it might strike us a bit odd – but, of course, when Jesus hadn't yet started his ministry, he was not yet itinerant, and presumably still lived with his mother and brothers in Nazareth. Although, in fact, the story says that they were in Bethany, on the other side of the Jordan, where John was baptising, and later on they leave to go home to Galilee, so presumably he was staying with friends somewhere. This wasn't the same Bethany where Martha, Mary and Lazarus lived, though, so he wouldn't have been staying with them. This Bethany is sometimes called Betharaba, to distinguish it.

I did read that the questions have a deeper meaning – I don't know enough Greek to be sure, but apparently they can be interpreted as Jesus asking Andrew what he is really looking for, Andrew asking Jesus who he is at the deepest level, and Jesus inviting Andrew to come and find out. But whatever happens, Andrew and his companion spend some time with Jesus, and the first thing that Andrew does afterwards is go and find his brother Simon Peter, and introduce him to Jesus.

Andrew does this a lot in John's Gospel. He introduces people to Jesus. First of all he introduces Simon Peter – to become Peter, that great Rock on whom Jesus was to build his church. And Simon Peter becomes one of Jesus' closest friends and supporters, far closer than Andrew himself did.

Then a bit later on, Andrew introduces some Greek travellers to Jesus; the travellers speak to Philip, and he goes to Andrew, and then both of them take the travellers to see Jesus. We aren't told what happened next; John goes off into one of Jesus' discourses. But it was Andrew who introduced them.

And in John's version of the story of the feeding of the Five Thousand, it is Andrew who brings the boy to Jesus, that nameless youth who had five barley loaves and two fishes, and who was prepared to share them with Jesus. Andrew brought the boy to Jesus.

Yes, well. I've heard, and I'm sure you have too, lots of sermons on St Andrew where they tell you that you ought to be like him and introduce people to Jesus. Which is all very well, and all very true, but it's not quite as simple as that, is it?

First off, when preachers say things like that, the congregation – well, if I'm any representative of it – go all hot and wriggly and feel they must be terrible Christians because it's so long since they last introduced anybody to Jesus. And the ones who are apt to feel the hottest and wriggliest are those who really do more than anybody else to introduce people to Jesus.

And anyway, Andrew only introduces people to Jesus when they want to be introduced. Simon Peter, his brother, was probably already following John the Baptist, and was anxious to meet the Messiah. He may, of course, have thought that the Messiah, the Anointed One, would rebel against the occupying power, an earthly leader, but, of course, he soon learnt differently. The Greeks in chapter 12 of John's Gospel had asked for an introduction. The boy with five loaves and two fish was anxious to share his lunch with Jesus, but couldn't get past the security cordon of the disciples.

And when our friends want to be introduced to Jesus, that's when we need to imitate Andrew. If they don't want to know him yet, and we keep trying, we'll just end up being utterly boring and probably lose their friendship! It's probably better to just pray for our friends, and hold them up to Jesus that way – if and when they are ready for more, they will let you know. There is, as the Preacher tells us, a time for everything!

King's Acre, as a church, does a great deal to make Jesus known in the community, what with the youth club, Girls' Brigade, Pop-In and the Tuesday toddler group. We are giving people the opportunity – they know what a church stands for, and if they don't, they can always ask. We may never know how much we've done for people, how much our example has led them to want to find Jesus for themselves, to question the easy, unthinking atheism popularised by Richard Dawkins and his ilk. That's as it should be – our job is to be ourselves, to be Jesus' people, as we have committed ourselves to being.

So what sort of people are we going to be being? I think Jesus gives a very good picture of what his people are like in that collection of his teachings we call the Sermon on the Mount: poor in spirit – not thinking more of themselves than they ought; mourning, perhaps for the ungodly world in which we live; meek, which means slow to anger and gentle with others; hungry and thirsty for righteousness; merciful; pure in heart; peacemakers and so on.  They love everyone, even those who hate them; they refrain from condemning anyone, or even from being angry with them in a destructive way; they don’t hold grudges or take revenge, value or use people just for their bodies, or end their marriages lightly. Their very words are trustworthy. In short, they treat everyone with the greatest respect no matter what that person’s race, creed, sex or social class. They also treat themselves with similar respect, looking after themselves properly and not abusing themselves any more than they abuse others.

We don't, of course, have to force ourselves to become like that in our own strength – we'd make a pretty rotten job of it! We do have to give God permission to change us, though, to “let go and let God”. We have to be willing to allow God to work in us, gradually transforming us into the people we were created to be.

And as we do so, we will be able to have a response when our friends ask what Church is all about, or who Jesus is.

And people are asking, aren't they? Like Andrew, they want to know where Jesus is. Where is Jesus in these dreadful floods in Queensland? Where is Jesus in that shooting in Arizona? Where is Jesus in the riots in Tunisia and the Ivory Coast? Where is Jesus in Haiti, where a year after the earthquake people are still living in tents – and they are the lucky ones? Where is Jesus in Pakistan?

Jesus answers us, as he answered Andrew: Come, and see. And the answer, of course, is that he is there in the middle of it all, as he always is. “Behold the Lamb of God,” said John, “Who takes away the sins of the world.”

There are always dreadful things happening in our world. There always have been – even back in Jesus' day, you remember, the disciples asked what had gone wrong when a tower collapsed, killing rather a lot of people. Look at the book of Job, or at some of the Psalms, trying to come to terms with why bad things happen, and so often to people who really didn't deserve it. And there are no easy answers; all we can do is to trust and to believe that God is there in the middle of it. “Come and see,” said Jesus, and they went and saw. And we are invited to stay with him exactly where he is: in the middle of it all. Amen.

With thanks to Joelle Hanson for the 2nd half!

His own received him not

From John chapter 1, and verse 11: “He came to his own country, but his own people did not receive him.”

“He came to his own country, but his own people did not receive him.”

The “He” we are talking about is, obviously, Jesus, and we are looking at part of the great Prologue to John's Gospel that we sometimes call the “Christmas Gospel”. It is, of course, still Christmastime in the Church, and it is very nearly Epiphany, when we celebrate the visit of the Wise Men to Jesus, so it all seems to fit together rather well.

I believe, incidentally, that this first chapter of John is thought to have been written last, a sort of summary, almost, of the whole thing, or it may have been a paraphrase of a then-current hymn, rather like Paul quotes one in Philippians 2. Not that it matters, of course, not at this distance; it is the Prologue to John's Gospel, and it tells us of the Word of God, the Light of the World, who was rejected by his own people but who adopted any and all who did choose to believe in Him. Which is basically the whole of the Good News in one sentence, no?

Anyway, the thing about this second half of the Prologue – oh dear, I shall start sounding like Frankie Howerd in Up Pompeii if I'm not careful – is that it spells out quite clearly that anybody who does believe in Jesus becomes a child of God, not through physical birth, but through spiritual birth.

This is a good reading for Epiphany, of course. John doesn't tell us about the Wise Men coming to see Jesus – only Matthew does that. But the Wise Men are a vital part of the Christmas story, however strange a part. To the point that I'm now going to ask Felicia to read Matthew 2:1-12 to us.

Matthew tells us the story largely from Joseph's point of view, of course, and there are some very serious differences, not to say contradictions, between his version of events and Luke's. Matthew seems to think that the Holy Family lived in Bethlehem, rather than Nazareth, which was where they moved to for safety after they came back from Egypt. No mention of mangers or inns here – and not even Luke says the manger was actually in a stable! Could be they'd just run out of cots....

But none of that matters, of course, not against the real truth, that God became a human being: the Word became Flesh and lived among us, as our passage says: “The Word became a human being and, full of grace and truth, lived among us. We saw his glory, the glory which he received as the Father's only Son.” That is what matters. The details are just details, and are not important.

So the wise men – we don't know how many there were, Matthew doesn't say. Actually, he just says “Magi” or wise ones, so it's not impossible, although it's rather improbable, that they would have been a mixed group, men and women both. Tradition, of course, has made of them kings, and given them names: Caspar, Melchior and Balthazar. And it is only tradition that identifies gold with kingship, frankincense with divinity, or godhead, and myrrh with death. This can, of course, be quite helpful, reminding us Who Jesus is, but it is nevertheless tradition, not Scripture.

But what is important about the Magi is that they came. They were not Jewish, yet somehow they knew that the new-born King of the Jews was important, and they wished to worship him. Important enough that they travelled “from the East”, arguably modern-day Iran, but who knows, all the way to Jerusalem to find the child. “They went into the house, and when they saw the child with his mother Mary, they knelt down and worshipped him. They brought out their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh, and presented them to him.”

And their offerings were accepted. There was no question that these foreigners, these non-Jews, should not worship Jesus. The Jews, Jesus' own people, did not receive him, but these foreigners did. They sort of symbolise all of us, down the generations since then, who were not born Jewish but who nevertheless believed in Jesus.

The thing was, the Jews' rejection of Jesus didn't surprise God! You can't actually surprise God – He always knows what's round the next corner, which is something we can never know. But God knows. And St Paul, or whoever it was wrote the letter to the Ephesians, knew that: “Even before the world was made, God had already chosen us to be his through our union with Christ, so that we would be holy and without fault before him.”

Holy and without fault before him! And he has given us, according to Paul, every spiritual blessing in the heavenly world, echoing the Gospel promise that “Out of the fullness of his grace he has blessed us all, giving us one blessing after another.”

How true that is! And isn't God great?! The magi came to Bethlehem to worship the new-born infant, and we are invited to do the same. But we don’t just worship him as a baby – it’s not about going smiling down at a baby kicking on a rug, and saying “Oh how clever” when he picks up a toy, as I do with my own baby grandson.

No, worshipping the Baby at Bethlehem involves a whole lot more than that. It’s about worshipping Jesus for Who He became, and what he did. We kneel at the cradle in Bethlehem, yes – but we worship the Risen Lord. We celebrate Christmas, not just because it’s Jesus’ birthday, although that, too, but because we are remembering that if Jesus had not come, he could not come again. And he could not be “born in our hearts”, as we sing in the old carol. Christmas isn't just a remembering thing, I think, although that too – it's also about allowing the Lord Jesus to be born in our hearts, about renewing our relationship with him.

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.

Jesus, as a human being, can identify with us. He knows from the inside what it is like to be vulnerable, ill, in pain, tempted.....

His father, Joseph, was, we are told, a carpenter, although in fact that’s not such a great translation – the word is “Technion”, which is basically the word we get our word “technician” from. A “technion” would not only work in wood, but he’d build houses – and design them, too. He was a really skilled worker, not your average builder with his trousers falling off. Jesus would have been educated, as every Jewish boy was, and probably taught to follow his father’s trade. After all, we think he was about 30 when he started his ministry, and he must have done something in the eighteen years since we last saw him, as a boy in the Temple. I wonder, sometimes, what he said when he hit his thumb with a hammer, as he undoubtedly did more than once. A friend and I were discussing this once, and could come up with nothing more specific than “Something in Aramaic!”

God with us: a God who chose to live an ordinary life, who knows what it is to be homeless, a refugee; who knows what it is to work for his living. Who knows what it is to be rejected, to be spat upon, to be despised. Who knows what it’s like to live in a land that was occupied by a foreign power. Who came to his own people, but his own did not receive him.

This, then, is the God we adore. We sing “Joy to the World” at this time of year, and rightly so, for the Gospel message is a joyful one. But it is so much more than just a happy-clappy story of the birth of a baby. It is the story of the God who is there. God with us. Emmanuel. Amen.

Children's Talk for Christmas 2 Year A

Well, now. Have you had a lovely Christmas? Did you get some amazing presents? What did you get?

I was given, among other lovely things, some home-grown lamb and pork from my brother, which I’m really pleased with. I like Christmas!

But I’m sure you’ve noticed that there seem to be two sorts of Christmas! There’s the bit we do in Church, about Jesus being born, and the shepherds, and the star, and the kings, and so on. And then there’s the other bit, about Father Christmas, or Santa Claus, and Rudolph and the sleigh. And somewhere in all there there is lots of extra food and drink and turkeys and mince pies and stuff like that. It all seems rather a muddle, don’t you think?

Well, that’s partly because it is a muddle. You see, nobody knows when Jesus’ birthday really was, but scholars seem to think that the one day it absolutely wasn’t was the 25th of December. It is more probable that he was born in September – after all, sheep wouldn’t still have been out in the fields in December at that time and place.

But December is the darkest time of the year. We’ve just had the absolutely shortest day there can be – only 7 hours, 49 minutes and 43 seconds of daylight here in London – and now the days are getting longer again. Barely perceptibly at first – today, for instance, there is only going to be 7 hours, 56 minutes and 49 seconds of daylight, so today is only just over seven minutes longer than the shortest day. But it is longer, and that’s the point. People used to celebrate the turn of the year, the fact that the Light was going to come again.
And what better time to celebrate the coming of the Light of the World, people thought. So the old pagan celebration of Yule got a Christian bit tacked on to it, but the joins show rather!

And the Santa Claus thing is even more of a muddle – you see, in some countries he doesn’t even come on Christmas Eve! He comes on 6 December, which is St Nicholas’ Day, because, you see, his name really is “St Nicholas”, and “Santa Claus” is what it was corrupted to over the years. And so children in lots of European countries expect that Santa will bring them presents on St Nicholas’ Day. But our civilisation has muddled up Santa with Father Christmas, and we only get one lot of presents! Shame, really!

So what I’m trying to say is this – don’t worry about the fact that Christmas seems to have two faces. Enjoy it! But don’t ever forget that there’s more to it than just Santa and Rudolph and parties.... remember what Christians celebrate at Christmas! And are still celebrating – all the Santa stuff is over now, but the Christian Christmas goes on for another several days yet! Amen.

Hanging in there

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!
End of next week, even!
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.
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!

===oo0oo===


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, hat 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.

===oo0oo===

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!

Children's Talk, Advent 3 Year A

I don't know if you've ever been in Central London when a visiting head of State is being taken to Buckingham Palace, too – they close off the roads, and there are motorcycle outriders and lots of police to ensure the visiting personage has a clear ride. They go and prepare the way.

And I expect you heard on the news this week what happens if they fall down on the job – the Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall were driven straight into the middle of student rioters and their car was bounced and scratched. Their security people had failed to prepare the way.

Well, you can see where this is leading, can't you? John the Baptist came to prepare the way for Jesus, the Messiah. The prophet had said “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight”, and whether that originally referred to Jesus, or to a local ruler of the day doesn't matter, as it came to mean Jesus and John.

And, of course, we need to prepare for Jesus, too. Getting ready for Christmas isn't just about presents and cards and thinking about a festive meal, although of course it can and does involve all that. It's also about preparing for Jesus. Christmas isn't just a remembering thing, it's also about inviting Jesus into our lives and homes and hearts now, today, at the end of 2010. We make that formal in the New Year, when we have our Covenant Service, of course – but we need to prepare for the coming of our Lord, and make him welcome!

Remembrance Sunday 2010

“'When you hear of wars and revolutions, do not be frightened. These things must happen first, but the end will not come right away.' Then Jesus said to them: 'Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom.'”

Depressing, isn't it? We long for peace, we are encouraged to make peace, and yet here is our dear Lord telling us that there will not be peace. Wars and revolutions, he says, must happen. Nations will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom.

And today, on Remembrance Sunday, it is still true. How many British soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan since we first deployed troops there? Up to 15 October this year, it's three hundred and forty-three. That's three hundred and forty-three families who have lost a child, a sibling or a parent. Three hundred and forty-three deaths – and that's just British troops. The Americans have lost nearly eight thousand, over the years, just in Afghanistan.

And what of those who have been injured, so badly, some of them, that their bodies or minds will never work quite right again. According to Ministry of Defence figures, between 1 January 2006 and 15 October 2010:

* 1,511 UK military and civilian personnel were admitted to UK Field Hospitals and categorised as Wounded in Action.
* 2,876 UK military and civilian personnel were admitted to UK Field Hospitals for disease or non-battle injuries.
* 218 UK personnel were categorised as Very Seriously Injured from all causes excluding disease.
* 222 UK personnel were categorised as Seriously Injured from all causes excluding disease.
* 3,919 aeromedical evacuations have taken place for UK military and civilian personnel injured or ill in Afghanistan.

And there have been over seven thousand Afghani civilian casualties since 2006! Civilian casualties – people who were not fighting, just trying to get on with their lives. Seven thousand! The totals are beginning to add up rather disastrously....

Yes, there will be wars and revolutions. But there hasn't been a battle on British soil since Culloden in 1745. And none of the wars our troops have fought since 1945 have impinged on our daily lives unless we happened to have a relation serving with the armed forces. In the two wars we call world wars, last century, it was very different. Everybody’s lives were affected in one way or another.

The horror of it all came home to me very vividly one holiday some years ago now, when we toured Northern France. We wandered around Alsace and Lorraine, parts of France which were part of Germany within living memory, and which changed hands twice in not-quite-living memory. People who were born before 1870 and died after 1945 would have forcibly changed nationality no fewer than five times!

Battles were fought in this area. We visited a fort on the Maginot line, which the French had hoped would be impregnable in the 2nd World War. And we visited Verdun, a town which has been destroyed and rebuilt so many times within the past hundred and fifty years that it is a wonder anything is left of it today! Just this week there was a programme on the BBC, you may have seen it, showing film and still photographs of the trenches, and of towns and villages that had been totally flattened by the fighting, not a house remaining. At least they had managed to evacuate those who lived there before the fighting started. There was one very poignant sequence filmed after the fighting had ended, which showed people coming back to rebuild their homes and their lives, and although there were no houses standing yet, the market had restarted. And then, twenty years later, it was all to do again.

How lucky we are that we have not had fighting like that on British soil. Yes, we were bombed in both wars, and you can still see the scars today: a block of newer flats among older ones in one of the streets in my part of Brixton, for instance, showing where the original houses were destroyed. I wasn’t around in those days, but those of you who were will, I know, tell me how terrible it was.

But since then, although there have been wars of all kinds, they’ve all taken place in someone else’s back garden. The tanks have rolled through other people’s streets. Yes, we have been attacked – those dreadful bombs in July 2005 are just the most recent, and the nastiest, in a long stream of terrorist attacks here.
But we didn’t have foreign soldiers walking in our streets, swaggering around imposing their will on us, perhaps even raping every woman. And maybe that’s one of the reasons we continue to remember those who fought and died for their country so long ago. My grandfather was badly wounded in the First War, and my father in the Second. Actually, the First World War must have been really terrible – I’ve read my great-grandfather’s diaries. His elder son was wounded so badly nobody thought he would live – although he did, obviously, or I wouldn’t be here to tell the tale – and 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.

My other grandfather was a career officer in the Royal Engineers, involved in both wars – my mother and grandmother didn’t see him for years during the second world war. One of his brothers was killed in action, too – he was a flyer, and the life expectancy of fliers over the Western Front was measurable in minutes. And my family's story is far from unique – most families, from every country that was involved, suffered similar losses and agony.

But this is all history. Kids study it in school. Even the oldest of us here weren’t much more than children when the Second War finished. I wasn’t even born. I don’t remember having a ration book, although I’m told I did. I don’t remember a time when I couldn’t buy anything I wanted in the shops, whenever I wanted it. But I grew up during the Cold War, which the younger ones won't remember. The tension between the then Soviet bloc and the West was always there, a constant background to our lives. We understood from a very young age that one of these days, someone would press a red button and it would all be over, in what was called Mutually Assured Destruction. When the Berlin Wall fell, in 1989, it felt like a reprieve from a shadow we had grown used to living with and barely realised was there until it lifted.

But 1989 brought no real peace. There was an appalling conflict in the Balkan states, and places like Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina became household names. There was a Gulf War in 1990 when Iraq invaded Kuwait and everybody else ran to the rescue. And the second Gulf War after the September 2001 atrocities. And then the war against the Taliban. And wars in Somalia, in Rwanda, in Liberia.... maybe it's easier to list countries who have not been at war!

Those casualty figures from Afghanistan I quoted are happening now, today. Our troops are still fighting. Other troops are still fighting other wars. There will be wars and revolutions, just as Jesus told us.

So what is the point of Remembrance when it is going on happening? War may or may not be justifiable, but it is always horrible and never glorious. But it is fought by people, by men and, these days, by women. Troops who have always been seen, throughout history, as cannon-fodder and expendable. We have the raw numbers – you can find them on the Ministry of Defence website, and unless we know the people, they are just numbers.

But they are not numbers, not really. Each and every one of them is a person, an individual. Someone like you. Someone like me. Someone, above all, for whom Christ died on the Cross. Each and every one of them is known to God, and loved by God. They are not perfect, any more than you or I are perfect, but they are not monsters, either. God loves them, just as God loves you and me.

In many wars, you don't get much of a choice about whether you are a soldier or not. You're conscripted, you are required to join up, whether you want to or not. Even in the last century, people who were brave enough to say “No, I don't want to fight; put me to another job and I'll do it, but not fight and kill people” were often considered cowards and even executed, although they were in many cases very brave indeed, working as stretcher-bearers to pick up those who had been wounded, and coming under fire themselves. They deserve to be remembered just as much, I think, as those who died fighting.

But there will be wars, Jesus said, and revolutions. Nations rising against nation, kingdom against kingdom. There doesn't seem as if we have much choice about it, given human nature.

Jesus also said “Blessed are the peacemakers”. We need to strive for peace, even knowing that there will always be war. “Strive for peace” - it sounds almost an oxymoron, doesn't it, a contradiction in terms. But St Paul reminds us that our fight isn't against flesh and blood, but against “but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” It is they, arguably, who are responsible for much of the earthly conflict we see. And Paul also reminds us of the weapons we need to arm us for this particular conflict: faith, truth, righteousness, peace, salvation and, above all, prayer.

I'm sure that our prayers for peace do make a difference. As do our prayers for our armed forces. We remember what are, I think wrongly, called “The glorious dead”, as if it is glorious to be shot dead at twenty rather than dying in one's bed at ninety, but we are right to remember them; for if we remember, we shall, I hope, also remember to pray for those who are still alive, and still fighting. And to pray for peace. Wherever the conflict is, whichever soldiers are fighting, our job is to pray for them, for both sides. To lift them up to that great Captain, the Prince of Peace.

And one day, one day, perhaps, Isaiah's vision will come to pass: “Never again will there be in it an infant who lives but a few days, or an old man who does not live out his years; he who dies at a hundred will be thought a mere youth; he who fails to reach a hundred will be considered accursed. They will build houses and dwell in them; they will plant vineyards and eat their fruit. No longer will they build houses and others live in them, or plant and others eat. For as the days of a tree, so will be the days of my people; my chosen ones will long enjoy the works of their hands. They will not toil in vain or bear children doomed to misfortune; for they will be a people blessed by the LORD, they and their descendants with them. Before they call I will answer; while they are still speaking I will hear. The wolf and the lamb will feed together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox, but dust will be the serpent's food. They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain, says the LORD.” Amen.