Echoes - Matthew chapter 2

This is an edited version of a sermon first preached some years ago. It doesn't feel right to just preach on the Epiphany without mentioning its aftermath.

The story of the coming of the Magi and the flight into Egypt, from Matthew’s Gospel, is really rather strange.

It’s certainly not found elsewhere;

in fact, Luke’s version of events is so different you sometimes wonder whether they are talking about the same thing.

Here we are, in Matthew,

finding the Holy Family living in Bethlehem,

fleeing to Egypt,

and then settling in Nazareth,

well out of reach of Herod’s descendants.

But Luke tells us that the family lived in Nazareth in the first place,

went to Bethlehem for the census,

and, far from avoiding Jerusalem,

called in there on their way back to Nazareth!

And, indeed, went there each year for the festivals –

I wonder, don’t you, whether they stayed with Mary’s cousin Elisabeth

and whether Jesus and John played together as children?

Not that it matters.

We all rationalise the two stories into one,

and add our own extraneous bits –

the ox and the ass, for instance,

are figments of people’s imaginations, not part of the Luke’s account.

Even the stable – the manger may well have been separating the dwelling-house from the animal-house, rather than in a separate stable as we envisage it.

But from Matthew’s telling of it, the Holy Family lived in Bethlehem anyway and didn’t need to use a stable!

And they were probably astrologers, not kings,

and Matthew doesn’t actually say how many there were!

He doesn't even specify that they were male, although they probably were. The word “Magi” just means “wise ones”.

And do you really think people kept bursting into song,

like they do in Luke’s gospel?

I rather think that Luke, like Shakespeare, was writing what he thought they ought to have said, rather than what they actually did say!

But both Gospels –

for both Mark and John choose not to start with Jesus’ birth,

but at the start of his ministry –

both Gospels agree that Jesus was born to a virgin,

was conceived in her by the Holy Spirit in some way we simply don’t understand.

And they both agree that he was born in Bethlehem,

to a mother named Mary and a father named Joseph.

Both gospels also provide a genealogy for him,

tracing him right back to Adam in St Luke’s case,

and only as far back as Abraham in St Matthew’s case!

And occasionally tracing by different routes.

And both agree that the baby Jesus was visited by outsiders, by people who were not from the religious establishment of the day.

The shepherds were apparently outsiders, not accepted in Jewish society.

And the Magi, of course, were foreigners, outsiders, not even Jewish.

Similarities, differences – it doesn't really matter, as I said.

The Bible people were not writing to modern standards of historical accuracy, but they are still telling us true stories, however they might vary in detail.

It’s what they are telling us that matters, not the historical details!

Have you ever noticed, too, that Luke’s version of events is from Mary’s point of view, but Matthew is telling us it from Joseph’s?

Luke shows us Gabriel going to Mary and saying “Hail, thou that art highly favoured;

blessed art thou among women!”

But Matthew shows us Joseph’s reaction to the news that Mary was expecting a baby and it wasn’t his –

he could have discarded her publicly and left her with no other resource than to go on the streets.

But he didn’t.

He decided he’d end the betrothal quietly, with no public scandal.

And then he listened to the angel who said that he should marry her anyway.

I think I rather like Joseph, don’t you?

He comes across as someone who’s willing to listen,

and to change his mind.

He comes across as someone who listens to God,

and is prepared to accept that God speaks to him in dreams.

In our reading today, again, Joseph listens.

He acts on what he hears –

he takes his family and flees to Egypt,

and when he is told it is safe, he brings them home again,

only to Nazareth, not Bethlehem.

But this whole story that we heard read to day has echoes in the Old Testament, doesn’t it?

And it echoes down the years.....

There is Israel going down into Egypt

and being called up out of Egypt in the Exodus as God's son (hence the quotation from Hosea in verse 15),

but we also have echoes of when Pharaoh tried to kill Hebrew infants

which led to Moses being hidden the bulrushes.

Jewish legends about this event also have dream warnings

just as we have here

and I expect Matthew knew about them when he was writing the story.

At that, wasn’t there another Joseph who knew all about hearing God’s voice in dreams?

What these echoes do is to root the story in history.

The provide a setting for Jesus, if you like.

Sending Jesus wasn’t just something God decided to do totally randomly –

he was firmly rooted in the history of the Jews, who were expecting a Messiah.

Matthew, who is thought to have been Jewish, is trying to show how the Scriptures led down to this moment.

Rather like, if you will, when Jesus explained the Scriptures to Cleopas and his wife on the road to Emmaus, so they were able to see that they pointed to Jesus, and to the Resurrection.

For Matthew, all the Scripture quotations act as proof that Jesus is who He claimed to be.

It’s not the sort of thing scholars nowadays consider proof,

but that doesn’t matter.

For Matthew, as for all Jewish scholars of the time,

that was how you proved things:

was there a relevant quotation in the Scriptures?

He wants to set the Messiah in context.

And showing that history is repeating itself:

a new Pharaoh killing the babies, a new Joseph listening to dreams, a new journey into Egypt, and a new Exodus out of it.

And it echoes down to our own day, doesn’t it –

refugees, people fleeing in terror of their lives, genocide....

it never ends.

The magi –

wise men, astrologers, it’s thought –

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 just about watching a child grow and develop, and applauding when he does something really clever, like I do with young James.

Actually, he has learnt to applaud himself when he's done something he considers clever, but never mind that now.

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.

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.....

From the story of the flight into Egypt, we see him as a refugee, an asylum-seeker, although he was just a baby, or perhaps a small boy at the time.

From the story that Joseph chose deliberately to settle his family in the sticks, far away from civilisation, we see Jesus as living an ordinary, obscure life.

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.

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.

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.

Be Joyful Always

From St Paul's instructions to the Thessalonians, which formed part of our first reading:
“Be joyful always;
pray continually;
give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus.”

“Be joyful always;
pray continually;
give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus.”

Hmmm. It rather jumped out and hit me in the face when I was reading the passages set for this Sunday, and I can't help but wonder what on earth St Paul was talking about. How on earth are we supposed to be joyful always? Does he mean we always have to be happy, and it's wrong if we are miserable? Surely not! How can we pray continually? We do have lives, after all – we need to concentrate on other things like cooking the dinner or the work we're being paid to do! And how about giving thanks in all circumstances? Even in the middle of a disaster?

The Bible tells us, over and over again, that we should rejoice and be glad – I believe there are over 800 verses telling us to. So it must be something we are meant to do. But how?

We aren't always happy and rejoicing – and indeed, it would be quite wrong if we were. If someone is hurting very badly, it doesn't help to go and be happy all over them! There are times when we are all very unhappy – personal tragedies, dreadful things that happen to loved ones, national tragedies.... how can we “be joyful always” when people have lost their homes in a hurricane or an earthquake?

Indeed, in the letter to the Romans St Paul tells us to “Weep with those who weep” as well as “Rejoice with those who rejoice”. And even our dear Lord wept when he arrived at Bethany and found his friend Lazarus dead and buried.

So it's obviously not wrong to be unhappy, to be sad. And yet we are told to be joyful.

Well, for one thing, St Paul also reminds us, in the letter to the Galatians, that joy is a fruit of the Holy Spirit.

Joy is a fruit of the Holy Spirit. And this means that it isn't something we have to find within ourselves. It is something that grows within us as we go on with God and as we allow God the Holy Spirit to fill us more and more. Joy grows, just as love, peace, patience, gentleness, goodness, kindness and self-control do. We become more and more the people we were created to be, more and more the people God knows we can be.

That doesn't mean we'll never be unhappy, far from it. But we know, as St Paul also tells us, that God works all things together for good for those that love him. Even the bad things, even the dreadful things that break God's heart even more than they break ours. Even those.

We may be unhappy, we may be grieving, we may be depressed. But we can still be joyful, we can still rejoice, because God is still God, and God still loves us. Okay, sometimes it doesn't feel like that, but that's only what it feels like, not what has really happened. God will never abandon us, God will always love us. God will weep with us when we weep. And underneath there always is that joy, the joy of our salvation.

Okay, maybe that is understandable. We can be joyful always if joy is a fruit of the Holy Spirit. But what about praying continually? We have lives, don't we? We have to do such basic things as eating and sleeping and going to the loo, never mind earning our living. How can we pray continually?

I suppose it depends on what prayer is. If it's all about a conversation with God, or even worse, a monologue from us telling God about our world and our lives, then it probably isn't possible.

But what if, what if it were more about an attitude of mind? A way of living where we are continually conscious of God's presence with us, of God's love for us? There is a plaque some people like to have in their homes that says “Christ is the head of this house; the unseen guest at every table, the silent listener to every conversation.” That can sound as though he's some kind of creepy stalker, but it's also a reality, if you are God's person. And one can practice being aware of this, of God's constant presence with us.

It does take practice, of course; you can't just go from only thinking of God when you're in Church on Sunday or when you're praying or reading your Bible at home, and forgetting about Him when you're watching East Enders or getting the supper. Some people find it helpful to build reminders into their lives, so that every time they put the kettle on, say, or get up from their chair, or whatever, they remember to – I was going to say grin at God, but you know what I mean. After all, you can be sitting very happily in the same room as someone else, both of you utterly absorbed in whatever it is you're doing – even, it has to be said, watching different television programmes over the Internet – but you're still aware that the other person is there. I think it must be a bit like that with God. You can be getting on with your life but aware, in the background, that God is there with you. I wonder if it's that that St Paul meant by “Pray continually.” I think it must be something like.

By the way, don't think I'm some sort of super-spiritual genius – I can't do this, a lot of the time. Sometimes I can, but more often than not it doesn't happen!
I'd like to be able to – but then again, like all of us, there are times when I'd really rather forget.....

And, you know, I bet that, like the underlying joy that the Holy Spirit gives, being able to be aware of God's presence, so that you can take up and put down conversations with Him, must also be a gift of the Holy Spirit.

So, be joyful always, pray continually, and the third one was “Give thanks in all circumstances.”

Give thanks in all circumstances.

Now, I know there are some writers who have interpreted this to mean that we have to give thanks for everything. I don't see how we can do that – I mean, we know that God's heart breaks when a child is killed on the roads, or when an earthquake devastates a country. How are we supposed to give thanks for things that make God Himself weep?

I don't think it means that. I think it's more about having a thankful heart. About acknowledging God's good gifts to us. About – okay, if you like, about counting our blessings. We can't, and I don't think we should, thank God for the dreadful things – but we can be aware that God is there, in the midst of the dreadful things, and we can certainly thank him for that. We can be aware that in all things God does work for good for those who love him.
“Be joyful always;
pray continually;
give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus.”

“For this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus.” That's important, too. I don't think we can just do all this in a vacuum. It is because God wants this for us, it is His best for us.

Yes, it will take some work on our part – we know that God the Holy Spirit will most certainly do his part by enabling us to develop a sense of joy in Christ that can and will be there even through the most heartbreaking of outward circumstance, but of course we have to do our part by allowing Him to, by practising, with His help, being aware of his presence at all times and developing, again with His help, a thankful heart that sees and acknowledges what God is doing in our world. And no, it won't be easy, and no, we can't do it by ourselves but only with Christ's help.

We are in the season called Advent, and Christmas is rapidly approaching. We've already started singing carols – King's Acre's carol service is this afternoon, if you fancy coming along – four o'clock, I think. And over the Christmas season, we will be singing words like, “Yet what I can, I give him, give my heart” and “Cast out our sin and enter in, be born in us today!” The thing is, do we really mean it? Are we just singing lyrics we've known for years and never really taken much notice of? Even the ghastly “Away in a Manger” – “No crying he makes?” I don't think so! Not if he was a real baby, not a wax doll! Anyway, sorry, even when we sing “Away in a Manger” we are asking God to “fit us for heaven, to live with thee there!”

And that's what it's all about, isn't it? St Paul's instructions are things we simply can't do on our own, no matter how hard we try. But if we do ask God to help us fulfil them, if we do learn to “Be joyful always, pray continually and give thanks in all circumstances”, then when we do get to heaven, we'll fit right in! Amen.

Micah, Matthew and Me

I must admit I rather despaired when I looked at this week’s readings. What on earth am I going to say about them? But then I had a second look, and decided that the Micah and Matthew readings were saying much the same thing, but to different people in different ways. I wonder, though, what they have to say to us today. And then I listened to the news.....

Micah was a prophet in 8th-century Judah, more or less a contemporary with Isaiah, Amos and Hosea. He prophesied the destruction of Jerusalem, particularly, as in our reading, because they were simply dishonest and then expected God to cover for them: “Her leaders judge for a bribe, her priests teach for a price, and her prophets tell fortunes for money. Yet they lean upon the LORD and say, Is not the LORD among us? No disaster will come upon us.” But Micah said, “Ain’t gonna happen!” As one modern paraphrase puts it: “The fact is, that because of you lot, Jerusalem will be reduced to rubble and cleared like a field; and the Temple hill will be nothing but a tangled mass of weeds"

An archaeologist called Roland de Vaux has excavated village sites only a few miles from where Micah is thought to have lived, and he has something very interesting to say: “The houses of the tenth century B.C. are all of the same size and arrangement. Each represents the dwelling of a family which lived in the same way as its neighbors. The contrast is striking when we pass to the eighth century houses on the same site: the rich houses are bigger and better built and in a different quarter from that where the poor houses are huddled together.”

During those 200 years, Israel and Judah had moved from a largely agricultural society to one governed by a monarchy and with a Temple in Jerusalem. The distinction between the “Haves” and the “Have nots” had grown, as it does still today. But Micah tells the powerful ones – the judges, the priests, the rulers – that God will have no interest in propping up any so-called progress that is built on the backs of other people. For God, justice and equality matter far more than progress or growth.

Thus Micah. So what of Matthew?

Here we have Jesus lambasting the religious leaders of the day. Or not. He says to listen to their teachings and follow them, but not to imitate them. They put on a huge display of being holy, when they really aren’t. They lay huge burdens on people. As I’ve said many times before, the trouble with the Pharisees was that they really did want to follow God, but they had misunderstood what was wanted, and thought that in order to be God's person, you simply had to follow the law absolutely exactly. To help them do that, they had added some incredibly detailed “what ifs” and “in this case yous” to the Law. The Law, as interpreted by the Pharisees, provided for every single detail of life, and if you failed to keep it absolutely perfectly, then, they thought, God wouldn’t want to know you.

Well, that was all very well. The Pharisees meant well, of course, but they were imposing impossible burdens on people. It was quite impossible to keep the Law in their way. And the Pharisees themselves made one very big mistake: they rated keeping the Law more highly than human relationships. They were more concerned about the way people obeyed, or did not obey, the Law than they were about who people were, and how they were hurting, and why. And, of course, somewhat inevitably, they tended to be rather proud if they managed to live as they thought right, and then they looked down on those who didn't live as they did, believing God would exclude them. Jesus takes this further, and says that not only do they place impossible burdens on people, but they also then don’t follow the law themselves – they are too proud of being holy, too proud of their position. They compete to wear the biggest phylacteries – a phylactery, incidentally, was a small leather box which you put a verse or two of Scripture in – often, I believe, the verse that goes “Hear, O Israel, the Lord is God, the Lord is One” – and then wore bound round your forehead and on your arm during prayers. Only the Pharisees tended to wear theirs all the time, which wasn’t the idea at all. Remember how Jesus, elsewhere, told his followers not to show off when they prayed, or to make a big fuss when giving to charity?

Jesus also rebukes the Pharisees for enjoying their status, revelling in being looked up to, getting the best seats and so on. It’s not about that, he says. It’s not about status or standing – it’s about following God.

I am not sure quite why vast swathes of the Church have disregarded the instruction not to call any man “Father”, and address their ministers or priests as such, but there you go. But the point is, Jesus says, that the greatest among you must be your servant, just as he was to wash his disciples’ feet before the Last Supper. “All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted.” Jesus has said that elsewhere, too. A great deal of Matthew’s gospel is devoted to this concept – those three great chapters 5, 6 and 7 which contain the distillation of Jesus’ teachings we call the Sermon on the Mount, for instance, and then these later chapters. For Matthew and his congregation, the emphasis was very much on serving others, on putting yourself last, on being there for other people.

So, then, for Micah it’s all about being honest, not taking bribes, not giving dishonest weight, not expecting God to be on your side no matter how you behave. God is more interested in justice than in growth. For Matthew it’s about not putting on side, not being puffed up because of your position. And what, then, is it for me? For us, really, but that doesn’t start with “M”!

Well, one very important thing happened this week – Canon Chancellor Giles Fraser resigned his post at St Paul's Cathedral because he could not countenance the Cathedral's decision to have the protesters forcibly removed from outside it. He believes that the Church should have no part in violence, and has paid for his principles with his job. The Revd Fraser Dyer, a vicar who was a part-time chaplain there, also resigned for similar reasons.

All the comments I've seen on Facebook and elsewhere make it clear how much Canon Fraser and Mr Dyer is being admired for their stands. They are people who know what they believe is right, and not only say so, but Caonon Fraser, at least, has put his money, quite literally, where his mouth is. He is the antithesis of the religious leaders that Micah and Matthew condemn.

And those people who have been protesting outside the Cathedral are also standing up for what they believe in. Canon Fraser apparently commented, back in August at the time of the riots, that people in the City were no better, really, only out for what they could get. And the protesters would like to see that changed. We may or may not agree with their methods, but can we disagree with their viewpoint?

Our passages today condemn greed, they condemn self-seeking and they condemn vanity. We will, I'm sure, say if we're asked that we know all that, that we wouldn't dream of behaving in the way Matthew and Micah describe. No, I don't suppose we would – but would we go as far as Canon Fraser did? I wonder! Still, we aren't, right now, called to do so – although you never know what lies around the bend in the road.

But it really isn't easy not to be complacent! We so often fall into the trap of considering ourselves – not exactly better, but perhaps wiser or something – than our neighbour.  Do you remember the story Jesus told about the Pharisee and the tax collector, where the Pharisee thanked God that he was so much better than the tax collector, and his whole prayer was thanking God, not for what God had done, but for what he had?  I heard a story of a Sunday-school teacher –  not, I hasten to add, one of ours – who told her class this story and then said, “Now children, let us thank God we are not like that Pharisee!”  

Well yes, we might laugh – but I didn’t laugh when, meditating upon that story, I found myself thanking God that I was not like that Sunday-school teacher!  Oops!

See what I mean?

It isn’t easy, but it’s not meant to be an impossible burden, either.  It is, after all, for freedom Christ has set us free, so the Apostle Paul tells us.  We shouldn’t be burdened by guilt, or by anything else that our leaders choose to put on us.  Sometimes we preachers – oh yes, I’m quite sure I do it, too – sometimes we accidentally make it very difficult for people to follow Jesus.  

We assume, often quite without realising it, that our way of following Jesus, of being Christ’s person, is the only valid way, and then when other people have a different experience, we try to tell them there’s something wrong with them!  

One of the things that really impressed me in the interview the BBC had with Canon Fraser was his insistence that the Chapter of St Paul's wasn't split over the issue – they disagreed, yes, and he felt that his principles meant he had to resign, but he respected that other people had different views to his. How refreshing to hear someone say, almost in so many words, that different doesn't necessarily mean wrong!

This, I think, is why Jesus tells us in Matthew not to put our teachers and preachers and ministers on a pedestal.  That only ends up showing up their feet of clay!  Only God is the perfect Teacher, and what filters through us is, at best, flawed and at worst can be pernicious – look at some of the things that Christians do and say in the name of Christ.  Things like “God hates Gays”, or that “Unborn children are so precious that the mother’s life and health don’t matter.”  Or, the hardy perennial: “Give lots of money to God – or rather, to the preacher – and you will be rich and healthy!” Getting back, yet again, to Me First!

Listen, we're not supposed to be discouraged by all this! Jesus makes it quite clear that religious leaders can lay impossible burdens on their followers, and that's not just the Pharisees! We look at people who do great things for God and despair because we're not like them. We would be reluctant to resign our job on a principle. We don't want to let go of our complacency. We would like lots of money and frankly, our own wants do tend to come first with us! And we find preachers who tell us Not To Be Like That very difficult to cope with.

The thing is, as so often, it's about allowing God to work in our hearts, to change us into the people we were designed to be. And then when the time comes that we might be called on to give up something precious for the sake of the Gospel, like Canon Fraser, when we might be called to live with less money for awhile, or to yield to someone else's agenda, and we never do know what's just round the bend in the road – if and when that time ever comes, if we are really serious about God, and about allowing Him to work within us, then we will be able to cope. Without him, no. But with him – well, it might not be easy, it might well be very difficult indeed, but we will cope. Amen.

What belongs to God

Has anybody got penny on them? Or even a pound coin? Okay, whose picture is on the front of it?

We’re used to our coins, aren’t we – we barely even notice that they have a picture of the Queen on one side, and a few odd remarks in Latin printed round the picture. They basically say Elizabeth, and then DG, which means by God’s grace; Reg, short for Regina, means Queen, and FD means Defender of the Faith – a title, ironically, given to Henry the Eighth when he wrote a book supporting the Pope against the Protestant Reformation, long before he wanted to divorce Katherine of Aragon and had to leave the Catholic church.

When I was a little girl, though, before decimalisation, coins were even more interesting, as they didn’t all have pictures of the Queen on – the old shillings, sixpences, florins and half-crowns had often been issued during the reign of George the Sixth and pennies were often even older – it was not unusual to find penny that had been issued during the reign of Queen Victoria, even! My father used to make us guess the date on the coin, based on which reign it was, and if we were right we got to keep it. Not that we ever were right, so it was a fairly safe game for him, but it made sure we knew the dates of 20th-century monarchs!

Different countries have different things on their coins, of course; if you look at Euro coins, they have a different design on one side depending on which country issued them: the German ones have a picture of the Brandenburg gate, or a stylised eagle; the Irish ones have a harp. Those Euro countries which are monarchies have a picture of their monarch on them, as we would if we joined the Euro, and the Vatican City ones have a picture of the Pope! That might be a fun game to play with my grandson in a few years’ time - guess which country this euro-coin comes from, and you may have it. Assuming, that is, that the Euro survives its present crisis, but that’s another story.

This convention, of showing the monarch on your coins, dates back thousands of years, and was well-known in Jesus’ day. But unfortunately, this raised a problem for Jesus and his contemporaries, as the Roman coins in current use all showed a picture of the Emperor, and the wording round the side said something like “Son of a god”, meaning that the Emperor was thought to be divine.

You might remember how the earliest Christians were persecuted for refusing to say that the Emperor was Lord, as to them, only Jesus was Lord? Well, similarly, the Jews couldn’t say that Caesar was God, and, rather like Muslims, they were forbidden to have images of people, either. So the Roman coins carried a double whammy for them.

They got round it by having their own coins to be used in the Temple – hence the moneychangers that Jesus threw out, because they were giving such a rotten rate of exchange. But for everyday use, of course, they were stuck with the Roman coins. And taxes, like the poll tax, had to be paid in Roman coins. You might remember the episode where Jesus tells Peter to catch a fish, and it has swallowed a coin that will do for both of their taxes. But that was then, and this is now.

Now, Jesus is in the Temple when they come to him – in the holy place, where you must use the Jewish coins or not spend money. “They”, in this case, are not only the Pharisees, who were out to trap Jesus by any means possible, but also the Herodians, who actually supported the puppet-king, Herod.

The question is a total trick question, of course. They come up to Jesus, smarming him and pointing out that they know he doesn’t take sides – so should they pay their poll tax, or not? If he says, yes you must, then he’ll be accused of saying it’s okay for people to have coins with forbidden images; it’s okay to be Romanised; it’s okay to collaborate with the occupying power. And if he says, no don’t, then he’ll be accused of trying to incite rebellion or terrorism.

So Jesus asks for a coin. I expect it was the Herodians who produced one – the Pharisees would probably not have admitted to having one in their pockets, even if they did. And he asks whose image – eikon, the word is – whose image is on the coin? And they said, puzzled, Caesar’s of course, whose else would it be?

And we all know what he said next: Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar; give to God what belongs to God.

It’s kind of difficult, at this distance, to know what he meant. Was he saying we need to keep our Christian life separate from the rest of life? God forbid, and I mean that! If our commitment to God means anything at all, it should be informing all we do, whether we are at worship on Sunday or at work on Monday or out at the pub on a Friday! There is a crying need for Christians in all walks of life; whether we are called to be plumbers or politicians, bankers or builders, retired or redundant! Wherever we find ourselves, we are God’s people, and our lives and values and morals and behaviour need to reflect that.

So what is Jesus saying? It’s about more than paying taxes or not paying them. It’s not about whether we support our government or whether we don’t. We know from Paul’s letters that in the best of all worlds, Christians should pay their taxes and live quietly under the radar, exercising their democratic right to vote and not taking part in violent overthrow of a legitimate government. Doesn’t always work like that, of course, but by and large.

Maybe the clue is in that word image - eikon. For are we not told that we are made in the image of God? If our picture were on a coin, it would say round the side “A child of God” - not, as for the Caesars, meaning that we are gods ourselves, but meaning, quite literally, that we are God’s beloved children.

Sure, sometimes God’s image gets marred and spoilt, when we go astray. I’ve seen coins that have been buried in the earth for years, and they go all tarnished, and sometimes, if they’ve been there for centuries, they build up an accretion of gunk round them to the point that you can’t possibly tell what they are. But even that gunk can be cleaned off, with care – and you’ve all seen those Cillit Bang ads where he dips a penny into the fluid and it comes up bright and shiny again!

Maybe Jesus is saying that this is not an issue to divide people – Caesar gets what belongs to him, which is the coin, and God gets what belongs to him, which is us! No need to choose – you don’t have to be either a quisling or a resistance worker. We don’t separate what belongs to Caesar from what belongs to God – we give ourselves to God, and the rest follows!

Is it, then, about possibly owing a small amount of money in tax, but owing God a far greater amount – our very being? Yes, that is definitely part of it. It was, I think, forty years ago this week that I first consciously said “Yes” to God; and yes, that does make me horrendously old! But the more I go on with God, the more it seems not only possible, but also sensible. You see, God created us in His image and likeness, and not only that, but God redeemed us through Jesus, and empowers us, by the Holy Spirit. So yes, we do owe God our very being – we are created by him, and without him we wouldn't exist. It's not so much that we owe him the duty of giving ourselves back to him – we do, of course, but we know that! It's more about not being able to fulfil our potential on our own. We are made in God's image, but unless we allow God to indwell that image, to empower it, we will never really fulfil our potential as human beings. So we owe it to ourselves, almost as much as we owe it to God, to say “Yes” to him, to open ourselves to Him.

So we are made in God's image, and as such we owe it to both God and to ourselves to give ourselves back to God. But we also owe it to God and to ourselves to make sure that our image reflects God.

We owe it to God and to ourselves to make sure our image reflects God. There's a wonderful book by an author called Georgette Heyer, I don't know if people read her much these days, but this book is called “These Old Shades”, and in it, one of the characters – a child – is taken to Versailles and sees the king, and her rather sleepy reaction at the end of the evening is, “He is just like on the coins!” I wonder whether anybody would recognise God after having seen us. Would they say, “He's just like on the coins”?

The thing is, we do mar God's image in us – I mentioned earlier how coins can be so covered in the gunk of ages as to be unrecognisable. But coins can be cleaned – again, remember the Cillit Bang ad. Our prayer of confession today was one of the alternate Anglican ones, which I have always loved for the words “We have wounded your love and marred your image in us.”
This, for me, reflects the fact that we are made in God's image, and that sometimes that image gets distorted.

I am well aware that this sort of thing is apt to make us all feel guilty, apt to make us feel we must be terrible Christians, and so on. But that's so not what I want to do here. After all, there are plenty of other ways of distorting God's image – look at the Pharisees, for instance, who tried to turn God into a set of rules and regulations. Or in our own day, look at some of the more extreme Christian sects in the USA who want to preserve unborn children at all costs, including the mother's right to her own body. Or that church that proclaims that God hates gays.

Yet all of those are following God to the best of their ability. Yes, they have got things tragically wrong. Yes, they are distorting, marring, God's image in them. But they are not, I think, any more evil than you or I are. And God will, I pray, help them find their way back.

Because that, in the end, is what God is all about. God minds far more about our relationship with him than we do! We wander off, we get lost, marring God's image in us, distorting Christianity into something very much less than it is – oh yes, I've been there and done that – and yet, every time, the Good Shepherd pulls on his Barbour and his Wellies and goes looking for us to bring us back into the fold. We don't have to do it ourselves. Indeed, it's when we try that the distortions are apt to happen. We just need to be open to allowing God to keep us clean and polished and ready for action!

The coins that bear Caesar's image on them need to be given to Caesar. But the coins that bear God's image – we ourselves, each and every one of us who names the name of Christ as Saviour and as Lord – those coins need to be given to God, reflecting His glory, and allowing Him to work in our lives to make us more and more like Him, and more and more the people He designed us to be. Amen.

Doing it God's way

You know, I feel very sorry for Moses. There he is, doing his best to lead his people to the Promised Land, and what happens? They do nothing but grumble! They keep telling him they'd rather be back in slavery in Egypt, thank you very much, quite ignoring the fact that when they were in slavery, they hated it! But first of all they didn't have anything to eat, and then, when God provided manna for them – and nobody knows what manna was, exactly, only that it was edible and tasted good – they got bored of it, and wanted meat, so God sent quails for them. And now here they are grumbling because tonight's camping place doesn't have any fresh water for them. Moses is very fed up, and also slightly afraid of a riot and stoning, so God intervenes and tells Moses to hit a certain rock with his staff and water gushes out. And the people of Israel stopped grumbling, until the next time!

They were never contented. And nor, in many ways, were the Pharisees from our Gospel reading. They were not bad people, of course; they really did want to follow God, but they had misunderstood what was wanted, and thought that in order to be God's person, you simply had to follow the law absolutely exactly. To help them do that, they had added some incredibly detailed “what ifs” and “in this case yous” to the Law. The Law, as interpreted by the Pharisees, provided for every single detail of life, and if you failed to keep it absolutely perfectly, then, they thought, God wouldn’t want to know you.

Well, that was all very well. The Pharisees meant well, of course, but they were, quite without realising it, imposing impossible burdens on people. It was quite impossible to keep the Law in their way. And the Pharisees themselves made one very big mistake: they rated keeping the Law more highly than human relationships. They were more concerned about the way people obeyed, or did not obey, the Law than they were about who people were, and how they were hurting, and why. And, of course, somewhat inevitably, they tended to be rather proud if they managed to live as they thought right, and then they looked down on those who didn't live as they did, believing God would exclude them.

And they find Jesus' teachings very unsettling, especially when he starts telling them they're being totally hypocritical, fussing about how many mint leaves to tithe but ignoring people who are in need. Unsettling and disturbing. So they ask Jesus by whose authority he is speaking.

Now this was a trick question, of course. If he claimed a human source for his authority, they could discredit it. If he said it was just his own thoughts, or, worse, if he claimed it came from God, they could stone him for a heretic. It could be that some of them genuinely wanted to know, but many would have hoped he'd blunder. But he didn't. He turned it back on them – okay who gave John the authority to baptise? And that, too, was a trick question. If they said John's authority was from God, Jesus could legitimately ask why they hadn't believed him, and if they said it was merely human, well, what would the people think – they believed John was a prophet sent from God, and weren't going to stand for the Pharisees telling them different!

And then Jesus tells them the lovely little story to show how it's not always the obvious people who are first in line for the kingdom of God. The two sons, one seemingly more than willing to help his father in the vineyard, the other with some excuse or other not to. And then the role reversal, the first son failing to go, despite having said he would; the second son finding he was free after all and going to help. And he was the one who found favour with his father that day. “For John came to you to show you the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes did. And even after you saw this, you did not repent and believe him.”

And if you didn't believe John, Jesus implied, you aren’t going to believe me, either!

So what do these readings have to say to us this morning?

I think it's very much about our expectations. What do we expect from God? The people of Israel expected God, through Moses, to provide for their every want. Not just their every need – which he manifestly did – but their every whim. They wanted leeks and onions and all the delicious food they'd left behind in Egypt. They wanted to be free, but they didn't want to pay the price of that freedom! They wanted to be in the Promised Land already, without having to travel there, if that makes sense. And whenever things got slightly uncomfortable for them, they grumbled and moaned and whined – on one occasion, you may remember, they even went so far as to worship another god in the shape of a golden calf. They wanted God to do things their way.

And the Pharisees also wanted God to do it their way. They wanted God to say they were doing it right, their tithes and their keeping the law in infinite detail would make things all right. God would, they hoped, accept them because they kept the Law. Which was all very well, but not when it turned into that they hoped God would reject those who didn't keep the Law! They definitely wanted God to do it their way!

I have a horrid nasty feeling that we are all too apt to do this, too. I know I do. It would be nice to be able to manipulate God, to make God do things our way. In many ways, it would be nice to be able to take responsibility for our own salvation. We can't, of course, any more than the Pharisees could. They tried to be saved by keeping God's law exactly perfectly, just as we try to assume we are saved because we have committed ourselves to be Jesus' person. But they weren't, and we aren't. We are saved by God's grace alone, and we can do nothing to change that.

That sounds as though I'm preaching about predestination and stuff like that. I'm not. As Methodists, we believe that everybody needs to be saved, and that everybody can be saved, can know they are saved, and can be saved to the uttermost. But the point is, while I know that God has saved me, whatever I might mean by that – and I don't always know, so don't go asking me – I know that God has saved me, but I have no way of knowing about you. You know, yes. You know, and you will doubtless tell me, that God has indeed saved you, but I have no way of knowing unless you tell me. And you have no way of knowing about anybody else, and nor do I.

We can't make God do things our way. We'd like it if people were only saved if they prayed the sinners' prayer, or whatever, and then expressed their faith exactly like we do. Human nature, that is. The Israelites wanted God to do things their way, to provide all sorts of delicious food for them whenever they wanted it, not just camp rations. They wanted to have arrived in the Promised Land without having to go there.

We have to remember that it was the son who worked in the vineyard who did what his father wanted. The father still loved the son who changed his mind and didn't go – that was never the issue. He still loved him, but he wasn't best pleased about it, all the same.

So what is it God wants us to do? Obviously to believe, to have faith. And to stop trying to manipulate him! It really isn't easy. I was upset by something earlier this week, and found myself praying, “Lord, if you do that, I'll never speak to you again!” What I should have been praying, and what God gave me the grace, eventually, to be able to pray, was: “Lord, if you want to do that, you're going to have to change me to enable me to accept it, because I certainly can't right now!” I dare say God could manage very happily if I never spoke to him again – but I'm not sure I could!

Seriously, though, it can get like that, can't it? Another rather silly example – someone on Facebook posted a comment that I considered judgemental, and I was going to post “Judge not, that ye be not judged” on his status, when I realised – or God pointed out to me, whichever – that if I did that, I'd be being just as judgemental as I was planning to accuse him of being! Oops!

It isn't easy to do things God's way, rather than to try to make God do things our way. That is always the temptation – I know it's one of my persistent temptations, and I shouldn't wonder if some of you share it. We want our own way; we think we know how the world should be run, and we think God is very silly not to see it the same way as we do. Okay, when I put it like that, it sounds ridiculous – but isn't that exactly what the Israelites were doing? What did God think he was doing, they wondered, making them camp here where there wasn't any fresh water? Isn't it exactly what the Pharisees were doing? What did God think he was doing, they wondered, sending this laughing young man to tell them they'd got totally the wrong idea about God?

The good news is, of course, that we can catch ourselves doing it, and repent. I don't mean having to grovel and tell God how awful we are – often, it is enough just to laugh at ourselves. “Oops, I did it again!” as the song says... And if we can and do commit ourselves to doing things God's way, then next time we try and do it the other way round, we might catch ourselves just that wee bit earlier.

And yes, sometimes it isn't at all easy. If things look as though they might be going in a direction we would hate – illness, a threatened job loss, whatever it might be – it's not at all easy to say to God, “do it your way. Thy will be done!” Often we know God's going to have to change us before we can accept it.

But we do, in the end, have to say “Thy will be done!” to God. If we keep on and on saying “Do it my way!” eventually God might just take us at our word – and leave us to get on with it. And, as I said, I don't know about you, but I don't think I could cope with a universe without God, could you? Amen.

Not helping!

Poor old Peter – he never seemed to be able to be right for very long, did he? In the passage from Matthew that was set for last week – did you hear it, I wonder – he was the one who proclaimed that Jesus was the true Messiah, the Son of the Living God. But now we see him getting it wrong. He was only trying to help, but somehow it didn't work.

Jesus was telling them that he was probably going to have to die, and Peter says “No, I won't let that happen!” And Jesus is so tempted – supposing Peter did fight? I wonder, what would have happened – not that we are ever told that. Peter did have a sword, we know – he had it in the Garden of Gethsemane. Unusual for a fisherman to have one, but Peter did, and he may well have known how to use it. But probably he would have been overwhelmed and died, and the result would have been the same. All the same, it must have been so heartwarming for Jesus to know he had a friend who was prepared to put his life on the line. But no – Jesus mustn't listen. This was the voice of the tempter, always so near, so insidious, so tempting.... “Get thee behind me Satan!” he says. “Peter, you're not helping!”

Peter was trying so hard to help, but really, he wasn't helping at all.

That happens sometimes. I asked the children earlier to try to remember a time when they had tried to help and it all went wrong. Or perhaps you can remember such a time? You thought you were being helpful, but you weren't.

I think this happens to us as Christians far more than we really care to think about. We think we are being helpful, showing others about how lovely it is to be a Christian, but really, we are putting people off.

Take one example, for instance – street preachers! Now, you know and I know that it takes a very great deal of courage to go out there and proclaim your faith in the middle of the street, to hordes of shoppers who haven't the time or the energy to listen, or to commuters who just want to get home and put their feet up. But why is it that so often you listen to what they have to say and cringe? All too many seem to think that the Good News is that you are a sinner and God is going to condemn you! Is that helping?

I remember once I'd had to go up to Oxford Circus to buy something – I can't now remember what – and there was a street preacher who had decided, for some reason, that all the people going shopping were there just for their own selfish pleasure and started berating them for consumerism. I was very tempted to point out to him that he really didn't have a clue, but didn't. I expect he went home very pleased with himself, but was he helping? I don't think so!

But there's me being judgemental, and that won't do, either. I am as bad as any – I try to preach love, not judgement, as you know, but is what I preach reflected in my own life? I don't think so! Well, not all the time, anyway. It's so not easy to get it right – often, we want to comfort a friend, for instance, but what do you say? So often, whatever we say is wrong!

I'm sure you've found this as often as I have – a well-meaning friend tries to comfort you when you're upset, but actually makes things worse! I know sometimes being told that God will never fail me or forsake me really hasn't helped when it's felt that this is exactly what has just happened! I know, obviously, that God hadn't failed me or forsaken me, but at the time, it felt like it! But sometimes people simply won't acknowledge the reality of our feelings: “Oh no, you don't feel like that”, or “Oh no, you don't believe that!” It doesn’t help. I remember once being told, by someone who really ought to have known better, that if I didn't find God's promises true – I forget which one I was complaining about – there was something wrong with me!

Well, quite probably there was – but it really didn't help for the person to say so. God doesn't always work in ways that are as straightforward as we would like to believe, does He? The Holy Spirit is a rushing mighty wind, not an electric fan. Or, if you like, he is not a tame lion! God does exactly what God wants, and because He sees round corners in a way that you and I simply can't, we don't always know what's going on. And being told that if we believe thus and so, or pray in these words rather than that, then our pain will wrap itself up into a nice little ball and go away really isn't helping!

We will see our loved ones again in Heaven, no doubt – but that doesn't help when we want to see them fit and well here on earth, does it? The thought that we will, one day, see them again is a great comfort once the worst of the pain is over, but it's no comfort at all when there is a great big black hole in the middle of your life where they once were!

Of course, we have all mouthed pious platitudes at friends in trouble – I know I have. And I don't suppose it helped, any more than it helped when friends mouthed pious platitudes at me! The Bible may say thus and so, but in the real world, people have feelings and emotions and although God simply adores us, he never promised we wouldn't have trouble and pain. Nor did he promise that we would be aware of him while we were having it – only that he would never fail us or forsake us. And he did promise that he would work all things for good to those who love him, but he didn't promise that would exclude the bad things!

I think a lot of the time it's because we don't know what on earth to say! We want to make ourselves feel better by clinging to the truths – and don't get me wrong, of course they are truths – that we have found in the Bible. But sometimes it's just simply the wrong thing to say. Or perhaps it's the right thing to say at the wrong moment! Someone whose marriage is in dire trouble simply doesn't need to hear that Christians shouldn't divorce – they need to be loved and held and allowed to cry. Someone who finds themselves unexpectedly pregnant doesn't need to hear that Christians shouldn't do sex when they're not married.... bit late for that, I should think! Again, we need to learn how not to be judgemental – and oh, how hard it is to learn that!

And perhaps we need to learn how not to give advice! Often, the best answer to “What should I doooooo?” is “What do you think you ought to do?” or “What choices do you have?” Usually, I think, people make the wisest choices when we help them find out for themselves what to do, rather than tell them!

I seem to have got a long way from Peter, but it's all part of the same thing, really. “Lord, I'll never let this happen to you!” Peter was in denial about what was to happen. How often we deny what our friends are feeling, we tell them they don't feel like that, or worse, that they are wrong to feel like that. Oh, I've been there and done that – obnoxious little prig I was, when I was younger! Probably still am!

Peter wanted to make himself feel better, as much as Jesus: look how supportive I'm being! But that wasn't what was wanted just then. What Jesus needed, arguably, was a shoulder to cry on, or even someone to buy him a pint and let him have an hour or so to relax and forget about what was looming. Denial didn't help. The wrong kind of being supportive didn't help. Tempting Jesus to look for a way out of it didn't help. Peter was trying to be helpful, but in the end, he was not helping!
This is all very depressing, really! I'm sure we've all remembered occasions that we look back on and cringe at what we said to someone that really didn't help, that made matters a great deal worse! But that, of course, is not what I want to leave with you today. Yes, the street preachers I started with need to learn where people are, not where they think they are, so they address themselves to the problems people are actually facing, not what they think they ought to be facing. Yes, we need to learn how not to be judgemental, how not to give unwanted advice, how not to try to make ourselves feel better by regurgitating the “Christian” answer to a problem that really doesn't address how our friend is feeling.

But the point is, we are human, and we're always going to get it wrong some of the time. And the One to whom we go for forgiveness when we do get something wrong is also the One who will help us and enable us to get it wrong less often. God the Holy Spirit can, does and will help us to get it right.

Look at Peter again. This is the same man to whom God gave the knowledge that Jesus was – is – the Messiah, God's anointed one. This is the same man who denied Jesus three times. This is the same man who leapt over the side of his boat to swim to the shore to greet the risen Lord. And this is the same man who was anointed so powerfully at Pentecost that one sermon converted three thousand people!

If God can use Peter, despite Peter's propensity for putting his foot in it, God can use us. And that's why we shouldn't despair when we find we are not helping – we should, instead, ask God how we can help. And listen to the answer! It isn't always the obvious “Christian” thing – in fact, very often it isn't. Perhaps, if people don't tend to come to us for support and reassurance, they have learnt they won't find it from us. But as we make ourselves more and more open to God; as we learn that we don't have to be perfect, we just have to be Christians; as we learn more and more to listen to God and to expect the unexpected, so people will come to us more and more. Amen.

Children's Talk: Not helping

So, you younger ones.
Do you have to help at home?
What sort of jobs do you do?
Perhaps you make your own beds,
or keep your bedrooms tidy,
or do you help Mum in the kitchen?
Some of you older young ones do the cooking sometimes, I know –
I heard all about that delicious roast chicken.....

When my daughter was little, she had to keep her room tidy,
and she had pet mice,
so she had to keep their cage clean
and make sure they had enough food and water and so on.
And later on she used to cook sometimes –
she's a great cook, and I love going to meals round at hers.
When I was a little girl, we had to make our own beds and help with the washing-up after meals –
my parents didn't have a dishwasher back in those days.

But sometimes, when you try to help, things go wrong, don't they?
I remember several dropped plates when I was trying to dry the dishes –
that wasn't very helpful.
And I vividly remember burning a panful of sausages beyond recall, which was also not helpful –
I didn't know how to cook them, and guessed wrong.

Can you think of some times when you tried to help and it all went wrong?
In our reading, Peter was trying to be helpful, and it didn't quite work.
And I'll be looking at some more ways in which we can be unhelpful in a little while, after the music group has led us in worship!