Ash Wednesday 2011

So here we are at the beginning of another Lent. We are having a rather traditional penitential liturgy, closing with the Imposition of Ashes, for those who want. A sign of penitence, of repentance.

So what is it all about? Is it all solemn and penitential? Should Lent be a joyless, miserable few weeks? It certainly has form for being just that. I can't find my copy to quote exactly, but back at the turn of the last century, children in a vicarage family dreaded Lent: it was assumed that nobody would want to eat cakes, sweets or jam, so these were not served, and for small children it seemed a dreadfully long time! And on the one, memorable, occasion they were allowed to accept an invitation to a party in Lent, they were reminded that they should only eat bread and butter – and were somewhat at a loss as to what to do when they found it was sprinkled with hundreds-and-thousands, as was often the custom at parties in those days! The sausage rolls and mini-pizzas that would have saved them at a party today were unknown then!

More recently, I had a cousin whose birthday normally falls in Lent, and I gather her father didn't really like her to have a party until Easter was safely over. And when Robert and I were married, also in Lent, my mother was not at all sure whether we should have flowers or not!

You'll see no flowers here today, nor will you until Easter Day. That's a legacy of our Anglican roots – no Anglican church will have flowers now, or at least not on Sundays, until Easter. It is, apparently, fine for weddings and funerals, but you don't keep them the way you normally would.

And in those churches where they change colours according to the seasons, the cloths and the clergy's stoles will be changed from the green of Ordinary Time to the purple of Lent and Advent.

Even today people still give things up for Lent; a friend of mine, who is not a Christian, nevertheless doesn't eat chocolate during Lent as a minor act of self-discipline. Actually, given that we are competing in France in a couple of weeks and both of us find chocolate one of the best ways to avoid a serious adrenaline crash, it will be a rather more serious deprivation this year, I suspect! Other people give up other things – booze, for instance, and some friends are giving up their social networking for Lent – Twitter, for instance, or Facebook.

But just giving things up is often not enough. When we were children, we were never allowed to give up anything for Lent unless we saved the money we would otherwise have spent and gave it to charity. And if you give up going on a social network, what do you do with the time? Do you really spend it practising the presence of God, or does it get frittered away playing Solitaire or something similar? I know which it would be if I tried doing that!

But should Lent be a dreary, solemn time, with an emphasis on the negative? I think not. Sometimes people take on something extra during Lent. The classic, of course, is the Lent Study Group, but there are other things. Some people make a point of reading a book about God, or about people's experiences and history with God, during Lent. Others might make a point of doing something for other people – going round and visiting people from church that perhaps they haven't visited for ages. If you are on bad terms with someone, Lent is a terrific time to put things right. Or you might make a point, as I do some years, of finding something to be thankful for each day.

But what, then, about all this solemn penitential stuff we're going to do in a minute? It's easy enough to think of it as miserable; as meaning we ought to be unhappy about being such dreadful people, and so on. But I don't think it's meant to mean that.

It is, I think, about making a fresh start, about preparing for Lent. Back in the day, people used to go to confession on Shrove Tuesday, to be shriven of their sins, so that they could start Lent right with God. What, after all, could be nicer, after all, than being right with God, than knowing you are right with God, that you are forgiven, that you are loved?

Confession isn't really about telling God the nasty things you've done, said or thought. It can involve that, of course, but I think it's deeper than that – it's about facing up to the fact that you are the sort of person who can say, do our think such things: I have to face up to the fact that I am the sort of person who will snap at her family, given the slightest excuse to do so, or that I tend to be very greedy and lazy, as you can doubtless tell just by looking! But without God's help I shall always be these things. God knows what I'm like – it's no surprise to Him. But I need to face up to the fact that I'm like that, and ask God to help me change.

And, of course, we need to let go of anything someone else has done that has hurt us, to forgive them. And that can be horrendously difficult, too, especially if you're still angry at them. Again, it's not really something you can do by yourself – you need God's help to do it. God can take the anger and the hurt and even the hatred, and transform it – but you have to be willing to give it to him, and sometimes you have to start by asking for help to make you willing to let go of it! That's all part of confession.

And sometimes, it's God himself who we need to forgive. Which sounds awful, but what about those times when something awful happens and we don't know why? Think of the people of Christchurch, New Zealand this Lent – I wonder how many are angry with God because of the earthquake that has destroyed their Cathedral and may well have destroyed their homes, or their loved ones. I know there have been times in my life when bad things have happened, and I've been very angry with God. Who, thankfully, doesn't mind – admitting our anger is, as always, part of confession.

And sometimes, of course, it's ourselves we need to forgive. We find it very hard to accept we are the kind of person who can snap at others, or who can waste a lot of money in the shops, or on on-line gambling sites, and when we catch ourselves doing something like that, we feel we've let ourselves down, and we find it very hard to put it behind us and allow God to help us carry on. Again, admitting that is part of confession.

The second part, the repentance, isn't just about saying “Sorry” to God, although that's where it starts. It's about turning right round, and going God's way rather than our own way. This may well involve changes in our behaviour, but mostly it involves changes in our deepest being, in who we are, in what's important to us. And that doesn't happen overnight, of course, and won't happen at all without God's help.

We're not just telling God how ghastly we are and promising to change in our own strength. We're asking God to help us grow and change. If we try to change in our own strength, we shall surely fail. Sometimes we get it twisted, and think we have to make ourselves perfect before we can come to God – er no. We must come to God exactly as we are, and allow Him to come into our deepest levels and help us to grow perfect. It won't happen overnight, but as long as we are open to God, it will happen.

And so we come to our penitential rite.

This isn't something we do publicly very often. In our Gospel reading, Jesus reminds his followers that mostly, you keep your religious practices to yourself. You don't make a parade of being holy, because that's not what being holy is about. You don't let everybody know when you're fasting – and I assume that, in this day and age, it means you don't moan on Facebook about missing chocolate or booze if you happen to have decided to give them up for Lent! You certainly don't make a parade about what you are giving, or giving up! What you give to the church or to charity is between you and the Treasurer of that organisation – oh, and the Inland Revenue if you are a tax-payer and gift aid it. Nobody else needs to know. If you are helping out someone who is in financial difficulty, nobody needs to know except you and that person.

You don't have to let people know how much – or how little – you pray, although it's only polite to say you've prayed for someone if they've asked you to. But if you found you lay awake in the night praying for them – and it can happen, if God really needs you to pray for that person – then you don't go saying so, and certainly not to anybody else!

Instead, says Jesus, you do all that privately, keeping it between you and God and anybody else who really needs to know, and you carry on as though nothing has happened.

And that's what we're going to do now. We're going to use the words on the sheet to help us get ourselves right with God, and if we wish, we're going to have the sign of the cross marked on our foreheads with ash as a sign of that happening. But we will wipe it off before we leave here – there are plenty of tissues if you haven't one – and we will go on our way rejoicing.

And I hope we will continue to rejoice throughout Lent; rejoice that we are loved; rejoice that we are saved; rejoice that we are, however slowly, becoming the people we were created to be. It's not our idea, it's not our doing. It's God's idea.

And then, come Easter Sunday, we will be able to realise all this for ourselves, to make the Resurrection real, to know the Risen Lord in our own hearts and lives, and for the joy and love to spill over on to those around us. Amen!

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!