MATTHEW 2: 13-23 GALATIANS 4: 23-29
And so after six days of celebrating the birth of Jesus, we land today with an almighty bump. Our lectionary writers have clearly decided that by now we have had all the nice thoughts that we can take and so they provide is with Matthew’s snuff movie. Cynics might even scoff and say that it is time we got back to the real world.
For now, it is not angels, shepherds or even mysterious magi who take centre stage but it is King Herod the Great who arrives to take to the stage as the villain of villains. One can but imagine the hisses that Matthew’s early readers would hold for this megalomaniac.
But first of all let’s set our reading against Matthew’s background. There can be little doubt that Matthew is telling the story of the coming of Jesus in a way that will link it with Israel’s tradition as well as surpassing that tradition. His account is full of illusions to ancient stories such as that of the Exodus. Indeed his story of the magi is intended to fit in with the prophetic traditions of ancient Israel. And for this reason, there is a regular debate as to what belongs to history and what belongs to proclaiming the significance of the Christ child. This morning whilst accepting Keener’s conclusion in his commentary on Matthew’s Gospel that;
“The event is thus neither historically documented nor historically implausible”
I shall approach the story assuming historic truth although such an assumption quite frankly makes little difference to this particular homily.
Now, Matthew’s background is the journey of the magi from a place to the east of the Roman Empire on a quest for a “King of the Jews.” Foolishly, they have allowed their quest to come to the attention of the hierarchy in Jerusalem including King Herod. Indeed they have even met with Herod promising to return to him after finding the infant King. Matthew tells us that they have not returned as a result of a dream and now in yet another twist Joseph in a dream has been warned of the King’s malevolent intentions and been advised to take the child to the relative safety of Egypt.
Don’t you just love it? After a year in which the newspapers who have recently been writing of a war on Christmas have continually bashed asylum seekers, we find the ultimate irony. Jesus himself along with his family begins his life as a refugee in need of asylum. Oh, here we see revealed something of the challenge that Christmas presents. For Jesus is as one of those who has most need of voices to speak for him whilst such voices are all too often inconspicuously silent. During my training, I spent time at an asylum reception centre and found myself less that proud to be British.
And if it seems irrelevant let me take you for a moment to Uzbekistan where according to a report last month by the American human rights organisation Human Rights Watch, prisoners are routinely beaten and subject to electric shock, asphyxiation and sexual humiliation to extract confessions, a conclusion backed about the same time by the UN Committee against Torture and indeed in 2002 by our British embassy in Uzbekistan which provided evidence that two prisoners had been boiled to death. And then consider that following an attempt to send a dissident back to those same tyrants four weeks ago, an MP who raised the matter was informed in writing by the Home Office;
“I confirm that it is Home Office policy to remove political dissidents to Uzbekistan, if the independent judiciary has deemed an asylum claim to have no basis.”
And whilst there is regularly a babble of noise against asylum seekers, this was greeted with silence. Am I being political? Of course but so is this story!
Anyhow back to Matthew’s story, we find that Herod’s response to the failure of the magi to return to him is to give the draconian order that all boys in the Bethlehem area aged two years or under should be killed. There is paranoia about such an order. And yet alarmingly it is by no means inconsistent with what we know of Herod. He was, after all, a King who ordered the execution of three of his own sons and one of his wives. He was after all the King who left instructions for one member of every family to be killed so that at the time of his burial a nation that had never taken this man who coming from an Idumaean background was suspect in his claims to be Jewish in the opinion of many observant Jews, to its hearts, might mourn.
And so we have that devastating story of what has become known as the “massacre of the innocents.” It is a painful echo of an ancient Pharaoh who had ordered the drowning of the Hebrew boys. And whilst the number killed is generally thought unlikely to have exceeded 20 given that Bethlehem probably had a population of about 1,000 ( the probable reason for no historical records existing), the power of stories such as this is that nothing appals the sensitive more than the indiscriminate slaughter of children. We feel that particularly in regards to the three Holocausts of the 20th century in Armenia, Nazi Germany and Rwanda where prejudice, paranoia and hatred were so strong that children were subjected to wholesale slaughter simply for being. And the horror of this story surely speaks against sanitised language that dares to see children as the legitimate collateral damage of conflict. Indeed Matthew brings home the perversity of Herod’s deeds and their consequences by recalling Jeremiah’s account of the mourning of Ramah, a town 10 miles north of Jerusalem where over 500 years previously in a national and for many a personal calamity, captives from Jerusalem passed on the way to exile in Babylon. And the awfulness of the situation is intensified by reference to Rachel who had died in childbirth and who is seen by Jeremiah as a mother of all, refusing to be comforted. A heart breaking picture indeed! A picture of now as well as then!
Still for the Holy Family the time of exile comes to an end. Joseph has another dream in which he learns that Herod has died and the time has come for him to return. But there is still a problem. The division of Herod’s kingdom was such that his son Archelaus ruled in Judea. This man turned out to be almost as cruel as his father. Within 10 years he managed the near impossible in uniting those ancient enemies, Jews and Samaritans, in successfully appealing to Rome to depose him. So dodging oppression as is the want of refugees, the Holy family move north to the obscure small town of Nazareth where an exiled clan originating from Judah had returned form Babylon at about 100BC, a place where the Holy family could live under the relatively benign rule of another of Herod’s sons, Herod Antipas who will appear in the story of Christ’s Passion.
For Matthew, Jesus living in Nazareth was the fulfilment of a prophecy stating;
“He will be called a Nazorean.”
Now such a prophecy is not to be found in our Old Testament and we cannot know where Matthew got it from. And yet these words are not without significance. Of course they can as Matthew surely intended point to the town of Nazareth, a town so insignificant as to be unmentioned in the Old Testament, a town believed by archaeologists to have been unpopulated from the upheavals caused by the Assyrian army in the eight century BC until the second century BC and at the time of Jesus being the home to no more than about 150 people. And yet there may be more than this that is conveyed. For we may have a play on the term Nazirite, one who is one wholly dedicated to God like Samuel and Samson who were both consecrated by vows made whilst they were in their mother’s wombs - even if Jesus did not follow their example as for example in their drinking no wine. But perhaps, the important message is that the Holy family are now returning to the toils of normal life. Away from angels, Joseph has to make a living. And about this time, there were opportunities for a builder such as Joseph in nearby Sepphoris destroyed as a result of civil war during the reign of Herod the Great and ultimately from the suppression of riots upon his death. Now under Herod Antipas it was to be rebuilt as his showcase that it might become the “ornament of all Galilee.”
So today, our Gospel reading has pulled us up with a jolt. The angels have gone and Jesus is now far from a Christmas card situation. Now he is a vulnerable child in a world where there is much cruelty. Whilst the powerful plot now against him and will do so as his story unfolds, the lowly, the outsiders and those who like the magi who are mobile come and will as his story unfolds come to follow him. For they are the ones who have not invested all in the world as it is but they are those who can share in the dream of a new world as is embodied in Jesus. As his mother has cried out in Magnificat, the babe of Bethlehem will turn the world upside down, bringing down the powerful and lifting up the lowly. For gentiles, slaves and women will have equal value to Jew, Greek, free person and men. For Christ has come for all that all might know the love of God and find dignity.
John’s prologue has spoken of light shining in the darkness. This morning we have been reminded of darkness in the person of Herod. And rightly so! For we dare not let our Christmas get stuck in sentimentality. We need to be real and to see in Christmas the source of hope for both daily living and the times when the storm clouds envelope us. We need to see the call to identify with Christ in confronting all that oppresses and destroys.
So be gone cheap sentimental Christmas that never gets beyond jollities and warm thoughts! Welcome Christmas that brings challenge and change, that dares to see God at work in the hum drum and the darkness of this world! Be gone Christmas that accepts as inevitable the injustices of this world! Welcome Christmas that dares to look to a future when Jesus will destroy the powers of evil and reign in peace and love!
So let Herod take the stage that we might see the greater power of love and mercy that is embodied in Jesus Christ!
Torrington Methodist Church Sunday December 30th 2007
Saturday, 29 December 2007
Monday, 24 December 2007
Christmas Day - The Word became flesh
JOHN 1: 1-5, 14
And so the big day has arrived. Today is Christmas Day when we celebrate the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem. Two of our Gospels, those written by Matthew and Luke, tell of this birth in colourful language. They tells us of travels, Mary and Joseph, shepherds, wise men and even angels. They provide the material which we weave into our Nativity plays.
But all of that is missing from our Bible reading this morning. Instead we have a meditation about the “Word.” This "Word" is and always has been Divine. It cannot be separated from the godhead. But John wants to say more than that and so in one of the most incredible sentences ever written, he writes;
“And the word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory.”
Wow! God has become flesh like you and me! So if we want to know what God is like, we only have to look at the Word made flesh.
Well that is a big issue. But this morning I want to share a view as to how the birth of Jesus is of help to us.
Some of you may know that during the period when I was waiting to move to the Isle of Man, one of the jobs I did was as a relief worker for the Devon and Cornwall Autistic Trust. I found it to be a difficult job. I think the reason is that I never really understood what made our clients anxious. I guessed but I didn’t always get it right.
Three years ago in his Christmas letter, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams told of watching a video presentation by a therapist working with children who have autism. The Archbishop told of a disturbed lad beating his head against a wall and then walking quickly up and down the room, twisting and flicking a piece of string. To the Archbishop’s amazement, the therapist began to do the same things as this lad. Incredibly after two days the boy began to smile at the therapist and even to respond to her touch. As the Archbishop put it;
“when the therapist gently echoes the actions and rhythms, the anxious and wounded mind of the autistic person sees that there is, after all, a link with the outside world that isn’t threatening. Here is someone doing what I do; the world isn’t just an unfamiliar place of terror and uncertainty…. And so relationship begins.”
Now the Archbishop goes on to suggest that humans are wrapped up in themselves but God acts to bring us out of our isolation just like the therapist in the video. He lives a life like ours with all the mundane things that help to make up our lives. Speaking our language and responding to our deeds and words, he enables communication and relationship between God and humanity. And he shows us through this life that is so full of love, that we can have a healthy relationship with God which is life affirming.
Years ago, the then Bishop of Durham, David Jenkins spoke of a simple creed that went like this;
“God is.
He is as he is in Jesus.
Therefore there is hope.”
So let’s go for it. Let us celebrate this Christmas Day, buoyed by the conviction that God becoming a human being is great news. Let us rejoice in the message of this day that God is truly for us!
Bideford Methodist Church Christmas Day December 25th 2007
This sermon owes much to lectionary notes by Chris Lockley concerning the Archbishop of Canterbury's letter for Christmas 2004
And so the big day has arrived. Today is Christmas Day when we celebrate the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem. Two of our Gospels, those written by Matthew and Luke, tell of this birth in colourful language. They tells us of travels, Mary and Joseph, shepherds, wise men and even angels. They provide the material which we weave into our Nativity plays.
But all of that is missing from our Bible reading this morning. Instead we have a meditation about the “Word.” This "Word" is and always has been Divine. It cannot be separated from the godhead. But John wants to say more than that and so in one of the most incredible sentences ever written, he writes;
“And the word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory.”
Wow! God has become flesh like you and me! So if we want to know what God is like, we only have to look at the Word made flesh.
Well that is a big issue. But this morning I want to share a view as to how the birth of Jesus is of help to us.
Some of you may know that during the period when I was waiting to move to the Isle of Man, one of the jobs I did was as a relief worker for the Devon and Cornwall Autistic Trust. I found it to be a difficult job. I think the reason is that I never really understood what made our clients anxious. I guessed but I didn’t always get it right.
Three years ago in his Christmas letter, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams told of watching a video presentation by a therapist working with children who have autism. The Archbishop told of a disturbed lad beating his head against a wall and then walking quickly up and down the room, twisting and flicking a piece of string. To the Archbishop’s amazement, the therapist began to do the same things as this lad. Incredibly after two days the boy began to smile at the therapist and even to respond to her touch. As the Archbishop put it;
“when the therapist gently echoes the actions and rhythms, the anxious and wounded mind of the autistic person sees that there is, after all, a link with the outside world that isn’t threatening. Here is someone doing what I do; the world isn’t just an unfamiliar place of terror and uncertainty…. And so relationship begins.”
Now the Archbishop goes on to suggest that humans are wrapped up in themselves but God acts to bring us out of our isolation just like the therapist in the video. He lives a life like ours with all the mundane things that help to make up our lives. Speaking our language and responding to our deeds and words, he enables communication and relationship between God and humanity. And he shows us through this life that is so full of love, that we can have a healthy relationship with God which is life affirming.
Years ago, the then Bishop of Durham, David Jenkins spoke of a simple creed that went like this;
“God is.
He is as he is in Jesus.
Therefore there is hope.”
So let’s go for it. Let us celebrate this Christmas Day, buoyed by the conviction that God becoming a human being is great news. Let us rejoice in the message of this day that God is truly for us!
Bideford Methodist Church Christmas Day December 25th 2007
This sermon owes much to lectionary notes by Chris Lockley concerning the Archbishop of Canterbury's letter for Christmas 2004
Christmas Eve - Holy night
LUKE 2: 8-20
It begins like any night. Out in the fields shepherds go about their monotonous work. Theirs is a humdrum world that offers few possibilities. Theirs is a world in which they have little status - the bottom of the pile is where they belong. It’s a world of darkness.
Nearby in Jerusalem Rome is all powerful. Caesar Augustus is at the peak of his powers. Hailed as son of God and the bringer of good news to the world, the painful reality is that his power is built on oppression, brute force and exploitation. His puppet King, Herod, is a man who undertakes great building projects including even the rebuilding of Jerusalem’s temple. Yet he is a man of capricious cruelty from which even his own family is not safe. It is a world of darkness.
And yet into such a world of darkness, a change is coming. But its beginnings are not with the followers of Caesar or Herod. They are not even with the bloated religious establishment. Instead the change is first felt on those hills where many labour for but a subsistence. To these men comes a revelation, a revelation of good news. A mighty liberator? No! But wait for it a baby lying in a manger where even animals would feed.
It sounds improbable. How can a baby in downtown Bethlehem be the bringer of hope? And yet the possibility can not be discounted for even the very heavens are full of the excitement of this night. And what a message!
“Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favours.”
Oh yes, this is a night in which the world is being changed in such a way that it can never be as it was before. This is a night that will divide the human story into a “Before” and an “After.”
What of those shepherds? Well they take a risk. They leave the fields and their work to go to Bethlehem to see for themselves what has happened. And there they see the Holy family - Mary Joseph and Jesus. But these are transformed men. They eagerly share the angelic message with all who will listen. And as they return to the fields, they go back in Luke’s words;
“glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.”
To borrow a phrase from C.S. Lewis, they were “surprised by joy.” Much they may have been unable to understand but before them lay a world pregnant with teeming possibilities. And yet but five miles away, Herod along with his Roman masters, the Temple establishment were untouched by the wonder of this night!
It is a foretaste of what is to come. The centres of power would never be reconciled to the gift of this night. Soon Herod would try to kill the child. Thirty or so years down the line a Roman governor would succeed where Herod had failed and the powerful men of the top religious body the Sanhedrin would be cheerleaders at that killing. For the babe of Bethlehem would as in his Nativity identify himself with the humble, the powerless and the outcasts. The babe of Bethlehem would grow to be the upside down King who would stand the unjust and oppressive structures of the world upon their head. His would be a Kingdom in which none would be written off for his coming is a non violent invasion of our world by Divine love and unlimited grace.
Our world today knows the reality of darkness. Across its continents leaders plot their violence and muffle out the cries of the poor, the outcasts and the voiceless. And yet the world can never be as it was before that night. God has engaged with our world and in Christ has brought light to the places of darkness, light never to be erased.
On this holy night, let us celebrate the embrace of God that reaches us through the babe of Bethlehem. May we like those shepherds journey towards the Christ child and then let him be born in our hearts. After all as that great mystic, Meister Eckhart put it;
“What good is it to me if Mary gave birth to the son of God and I do not also give birth to the son of God in my time and culture.”
Aye, a holy night that changed the world. A holy night in which is revealed the light to draw thee and me into the wonder of God’s gracious purposes.
Bideford Methodist Church Midnight Communion 24th December 2007
It begins like any night. Out in the fields shepherds go about their monotonous work. Theirs is a humdrum world that offers few possibilities. Theirs is a world in which they have little status - the bottom of the pile is where they belong. It’s a world of darkness.
Nearby in Jerusalem Rome is all powerful. Caesar Augustus is at the peak of his powers. Hailed as son of God and the bringer of good news to the world, the painful reality is that his power is built on oppression, brute force and exploitation. His puppet King, Herod, is a man who undertakes great building projects including even the rebuilding of Jerusalem’s temple. Yet he is a man of capricious cruelty from which even his own family is not safe. It is a world of darkness.
And yet into such a world of darkness, a change is coming. But its beginnings are not with the followers of Caesar or Herod. They are not even with the bloated religious establishment. Instead the change is first felt on those hills where many labour for but a subsistence. To these men comes a revelation, a revelation of good news. A mighty liberator? No! But wait for it a baby lying in a manger where even animals would feed.
It sounds improbable. How can a baby in downtown Bethlehem be the bringer of hope? And yet the possibility can not be discounted for even the very heavens are full of the excitement of this night. And what a message!
“Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favours.”
Oh yes, this is a night in which the world is being changed in such a way that it can never be as it was before. This is a night that will divide the human story into a “Before” and an “After.”
What of those shepherds? Well they take a risk. They leave the fields and their work to go to Bethlehem to see for themselves what has happened. And there they see the Holy family - Mary Joseph and Jesus. But these are transformed men. They eagerly share the angelic message with all who will listen. And as they return to the fields, they go back in Luke’s words;
“glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.”
To borrow a phrase from C.S. Lewis, they were “surprised by joy.” Much they may have been unable to understand but before them lay a world pregnant with teeming possibilities. And yet but five miles away, Herod along with his Roman masters, the Temple establishment were untouched by the wonder of this night!
It is a foretaste of what is to come. The centres of power would never be reconciled to the gift of this night. Soon Herod would try to kill the child. Thirty or so years down the line a Roman governor would succeed where Herod had failed and the powerful men of the top religious body the Sanhedrin would be cheerleaders at that killing. For the babe of Bethlehem would as in his Nativity identify himself with the humble, the powerless and the outcasts. The babe of Bethlehem would grow to be the upside down King who would stand the unjust and oppressive structures of the world upon their head. His would be a Kingdom in which none would be written off for his coming is a non violent invasion of our world by Divine love and unlimited grace.
Our world today knows the reality of darkness. Across its continents leaders plot their violence and muffle out the cries of the poor, the outcasts and the voiceless. And yet the world can never be as it was before that night. God has engaged with our world and in Christ has brought light to the places of darkness, light never to be erased.
On this holy night, let us celebrate the embrace of God that reaches us through the babe of Bethlehem. May we like those shepherds journey towards the Christ child and then let him be born in our hearts. After all as that great mystic, Meister Eckhart put it;
“What good is it to me if Mary gave birth to the son of God and I do not also give birth to the son of God in my time and culture.”
Aye, a holy night that changed the world. A holy night in which is revealed the light to draw thee and me into the wonder of God’s gracious purposes.
Bideford Methodist Church Midnight Communion 24th December 2007
Sunday, 23 December 2007
Carol service - The real war on Christmas
I have clear expectations when it comes to Christmas Day. Most years I return from Midnight Communion and fall into bed by 1am. Come about 8am, I force myself out of bed and grump around while James and Kaye open their Christmas gifts. I then go back to the church in Bideford to take the Christmas Day service after which I return to fill myself with turkey aided by generous portions of stuffing whilst Christmas Pudding is added to my clotted cream. By 3pm I am asleep in the arm chair - I am never conscious for the Queen’s speech not that that worries anyone at the Palace too much!. Tea causes me to rally a little but by about 10pm I am well and truly ready to lay my carcass down to sleep.
It never changes and it is thoroughly predictable. And judging by my reading in the past days there are newspapers and indeed readers who have unchanging expectations for Christmas. Despite the fact that most of our Christmas traditions are from the last 150 years or so, we get a barrage of stories every years telling us that Christmas is under attack. Of course, many of these stories turn out on examination to be myths but they get recycled year after year. And if you read the great British tabloid media you end up thinking that Christmas is all about Santas, little children in Nativity plays and of course the great British way of life. And whilst I quite like most of this personally, I find myself increasingly pushed into Grumpy Old Man mode, tempted to let out a loud cry of “Humbug!”
Now why should I be such a misery guts. Well the reason, is that too often this annual crusade by the Mail, Express and Sun is often a front to attack diversity through the use of ridicule. But my objection actually runs deeper. You see, there’s nothing wrong with the trappings of Christmas. BUT when the trappings block out the reality, then it is the time to utter a loud protest.
Too often, we use Christmas to suggest that our society is at heart wonderful and our way of life is unimpeachable. It is as if it were God’s approval on that which we hold dear. But wait a moment! For if we look to that which happened in Bethlehem 2,000 years ago, there is something subversive going on. It is as if God is roughing up our world!
Look first of all to Mary. A girl of what would be called nowadays Middle Eastern appearance, probably no more than in her very early teens for marriage happened early in that culture. And now she finds herself pregnant with an explanation that few would believe. And more than that, she must have felt great fear for she would have known all too well that to be pregnant ahead of marriage other than my the man to whom she was betrothed, would have meant that he would be expected to terminate the marriage arrangement leaving her and her child on the margins of society desperately fending for themselves for the rest of their lives. And the reality was even blacker for this was a society dominated by religion. And the followers of Scripture would know only too well that the ancient Book of Deuteronomy prescribed the punishment of stoning for young women who got pregnant by other than the man to whom they were betrothed. That it didn’t happen was down to the Romans but many would say it was what her type deserved.
And yet, Mary accepts the work of God in this. And in Magnificat sees this as a sign that God is going to turn the power and wealth structures of the world upside down. No wonder a hymn based on Magnificat begins with the immortal line;
“Sing we a song of high revolt!”
Anyhow, Joseph contrary to the norms of his times, sticks with Mary and so they come to Bethlehem for a registration. But five miles from Jerusalem with its Roman garrison and even closer to Herod’s palace, this is the place where Jesus is born. So close to the great men of power of this time, Jesus enters the world virtually unnoticed. Virtually unnoticed but not totally for there will be visitors. Some of these will be shepherds, notorious ruffians whose work meant that they were seen as people cut off from proper religious observance. And then there will be men from beyond the east of the Roman Empire - men of different race and religion whose interest in astrology would have brought many a frown from the religious elite. A bunch of total outsiders if ever there was one. And yet it is the outsiders who see that which religious and political insiders miss. For surely a new age is a dawning.
But there are others who welcome Jesus. We know that Jesus had relatives down in Judaea - after all Mary had visited her relative Elizabeth down there. And hospitality to relatives was an important duty in Palestinian society. Now often we have talked of there being no room at the inn. But pause for a moment. The word that Luke uses here is kataluma which elsewhere he uses of a guest room and is not the word he uses for a commercial inn in the Parable of the Good Samaritan. Luke is here suggesting that there was no room at the guest room but surely this would mean that Jesus was born in the family quarters which would have been raised above where the animals rested at night with a manger at that point of the room that the animals could reach when hungry. Now we see Jesus being born into the home of a peasant family who lovingly and indeed sacrificially make space for the Holy family. What a contrast to the machinations of Herod in his palace and the indifference of the religious elite.
So what’s the story of Christmas about? Well God is seen to be working amongst the lowly and in this we see a prediction of a new age in which the norms that we often accept come under challenge. Jesus himself belongs amongst the humble and he welcomes the outsiders. His way will always represent a challenge to the powerful for his way is a way that says an emphatic No to domination. In him, God is well and truly roughing up those structures that bring oppression and injustice.
Is there a war on Christmas? In a way there is. When people are shamed, when people are treated as unimportant or when those of other races and faiths are rejected, when the peace song of the angels is ignored, there most certainly is a war on Christmas. To truly celebrate Christmas is to embrace the all inclusive love of Jesus and to, like the people of Bethlehem, make space for him in our lives whatever the cost.
Alwington Methodist Church Carol Service Sunday December 23rd 2007
It never changes and it is thoroughly predictable. And judging by my reading in the past days there are newspapers and indeed readers who have unchanging expectations for Christmas. Despite the fact that most of our Christmas traditions are from the last 150 years or so, we get a barrage of stories every years telling us that Christmas is under attack. Of course, many of these stories turn out on examination to be myths but they get recycled year after year. And if you read the great British tabloid media you end up thinking that Christmas is all about Santas, little children in Nativity plays and of course the great British way of life. And whilst I quite like most of this personally, I find myself increasingly pushed into Grumpy Old Man mode, tempted to let out a loud cry of “Humbug!”
Now why should I be such a misery guts. Well the reason, is that too often this annual crusade by the Mail, Express and Sun is often a front to attack diversity through the use of ridicule. But my objection actually runs deeper. You see, there’s nothing wrong with the trappings of Christmas. BUT when the trappings block out the reality, then it is the time to utter a loud protest.
Too often, we use Christmas to suggest that our society is at heart wonderful and our way of life is unimpeachable. It is as if it were God’s approval on that which we hold dear. But wait a moment! For if we look to that which happened in Bethlehem 2,000 years ago, there is something subversive going on. It is as if God is roughing up our world!
Look first of all to Mary. A girl of what would be called nowadays Middle Eastern appearance, probably no more than in her very early teens for marriage happened early in that culture. And now she finds herself pregnant with an explanation that few would believe. And more than that, she must have felt great fear for she would have known all too well that to be pregnant ahead of marriage other than my the man to whom she was betrothed, would have meant that he would be expected to terminate the marriage arrangement leaving her and her child on the margins of society desperately fending for themselves for the rest of their lives. And the reality was even blacker for this was a society dominated by religion. And the followers of Scripture would know only too well that the ancient Book of Deuteronomy prescribed the punishment of stoning for young women who got pregnant by other than the man to whom they were betrothed. That it didn’t happen was down to the Romans but many would say it was what her type deserved.
And yet, Mary accepts the work of God in this. And in Magnificat sees this as a sign that God is going to turn the power and wealth structures of the world upside down. No wonder a hymn based on Magnificat begins with the immortal line;
“Sing we a song of high revolt!”
Anyhow, Joseph contrary to the norms of his times, sticks with Mary and so they come to Bethlehem for a registration. But five miles from Jerusalem with its Roman garrison and even closer to Herod’s palace, this is the place where Jesus is born. So close to the great men of power of this time, Jesus enters the world virtually unnoticed. Virtually unnoticed but not totally for there will be visitors. Some of these will be shepherds, notorious ruffians whose work meant that they were seen as people cut off from proper religious observance. And then there will be men from beyond the east of the Roman Empire - men of different race and religion whose interest in astrology would have brought many a frown from the religious elite. A bunch of total outsiders if ever there was one. And yet it is the outsiders who see that which religious and political insiders miss. For surely a new age is a dawning.
But there are others who welcome Jesus. We know that Jesus had relatives down in Judaea - after all Mary had visited her relative Elizabeth down there. And hospitality to relatives was an important duty in Palestinian society. Now often we have talked of there being no room at the inn. But pause for a moment. The word that Luke uses here is kataluma which elsewhere he uses of a guest room and is not the word he uses for a commercial inn in the Parable of the Good Samaritan. Luke is here suggesting that there was no room at the guest room but surely this would mean that Jesus was born in the family quarters which would have been raised above where the animals rested at night with a manger at that point of the room that the animals could reach when hungry. Now we see Jesus being born into the home of a peasant family who lovingly and indeed sacrificially make space for the Holy family. What a contrast to the machinations of Herod in his palace and the indifference of the religious elite.
So what’s the story of Christmas about? Well God is seen to be working amongst the lowly and in this we see a prediction of a new age in which the norms that we often accept come under challenge. Jesus himself belongs amongst the humble and he welcomes the outsiders. His way will always represent a challenge to the powerful for his way is a way that says an emphatic No to domination. In him, God is well and truly roughing up those structures that bring oppression and injustice.
Is there a war on Christmas? In a way there is. When people are shamed, when people are treated as unimportant or when those of other races and faiths are rejected, when the peace song of the angels is ignored, there most certainly is a war on Christmas. To truly celebrate Christmas is to embrace the all inclusive love of Jesus and to, like the people of Bethlehem, make space for him in our lives whatever the cost.
Alwington Methodist Church Carol Service Sunday December 23rd 2007
Saturday, 22 December 2007
Advent 4 Confronting the shame
ISAIAH 7: 10-17 MATTHEW 1: 18-24
And so we are all getting ready with hope for the coming Christmas celebration. It is as we so often sing “the season to be merry.” But wait! Our Gospel reading is hardly the stuff of sweet dreams. For within what is revealed there is a nightmare situation to be faced by Joseph.
Now we know very little of Joseph. He doesn’t even get a speaking part in the Gospels. In fact he does not attract very many mentions at all and the last mention of him is some 12 years on. After that he fades into obscurity and possibly an early death - at least by our standards.
But of course being in the background does not take from the significance of a person. I know that from experience. I have only ever seen one picture of my maternal grandfather who died back in the 1930s. I have seen nothing that he wrote and the only story that I know of him is of his fear as a young man that the boat on which he was travelling to begin his life in Chile might sink as a result of cards being played on board for money. Well it didn’t sink thank goodness. After all if it had I wouldn’t be here. For many years later after his wife had died, he returned to Cornwall and married my grandmother beginning a new family that would amount to five children to add to the six children he had had in Chile. In all the years that I knew my grandmother, I never once heard her refer to my grandfather by name. He was always “your mother’s father.” A figure shrouded in a mist I often thought. Yet he and the Chile connection are highly important to our identities.
And so it is with Joseph. We know little of him but we can not but feel for him in the nightmare that he faces. And the heart of that nightmare is that Mary to whom he was engaged was pregnant!
Now I wonder if today we fully appreciate the shock that this would have entailed. In the first place given that we are told that Joseph had not had sexual intercourse with Mary, there is the big question;
“Who’s responsible?”
After all, Joseph can be forgiven for a less than charitable feeling towards his fiance. If you watched the Liverpool Nativity on BBC 3 last Sunday, you will have seen a reminder of the pain of a man whose woman is pregnant and he sure knows that he isn’t responsible. It is the sort of pain that makes you want to hit something or someone, the sort of pain that makes you want to let out a scream. After all this is the stiff of betrayal. And stories of virgin conceptions - well they are too far fetched and after all to hear such a story is like having a knife twisted deeper and deeper into the wound!
But it’s not just about love crashing down. It’s also about the fabric of society. Remember this was an age in which a woman’s virginity was worth a high price monetarily. No family wanted the inheritance to be endangered by children born of women from outside the extended family. And more than that, Joseph would like any man of that day, have seen in what had happened, another man cheating him of what was rightfully his.
Do you get it? The situation confronting Joseph was total and absolute disaster! So what is he to do? If he goes through with marrying Mary and bringing up a child that is not his, he faces a life of humiliation. If people assume that he is the father, well they will both face a degree of moral censure. If people assume that the father is another man, then Joseph will look a bit of a fool who is easily walked over. In short there is no happy solution for them together - at least for Joseph. A taint of scandal and his own suspicions are about as far away from love’s young dream as it is possible to get.
But there is no ease in splitting. Matthew suggests that Joseph is tempted to quietly cease the betrothal. After all he is convinced that Mary has committed adultery and adultery required divorce as a matter of requirement rather than as an option. This could be done with a legal minimum of two witnesses to bring the contract to an end. And quietly may seem to be the kind option. It would on the face of it avoid a fuss although in a culture rooted in the practice of shame, a culture in which single parents did not fare well, it would leave Mary and her child facing an uncertain future on the margins of society with ostracisation being their constant companion.
And yet it could have been worse than this. That this option bad as it was, was considered by Joseph is a sign of his decency and love for Mary. For certainly he had it within his power to publicly disgrace and humiliate her. And believe you me, the fundamentalists of his day would have argued that this is precisely what he ought to do. After all it was the Biblical option. Why? Well listen to these words from the Book of Deuteronomy;
“If a man happens to meet in a town a virgin pledged to be married and he sleeps with her, you shall take both of them to the gate of that town and stone them both to death - the girl because she was in a town and did not scream for help, and the man because he violated another man’s wife. You must purge the evil from you.”
And at this we can thank God for the pagan Romans for they had control over capital punishment and did not implement this law. But look at that law and know that many in Nazareth would have said a loud Amen to it and know that Joseph had the power to make Mary’s life quite literally unbearable.
Anyhow whilst he was in turmoil about all of this, Joseph has a dream. And in it, an angel vindicates what Mary has told him and tells him that the baby is of the Holy Spirit. Joseph is to stick with Mary and to make her his wife. And guess what? He’s not even going to be allowed to choose the baby’s name. Even that is taken away from him. For he is to call the baby Jesus which means “The Lord saves.”
Now all we know is that Joseph is obedient to this message. I cannot help but wonder if he has those dark nights of the soul when he would have questioned the authenticity of the dream. Certainly along with Mary he was troubled when Jesus stayed behind at Jerusalem at the age of twelve and we know that Mary had her concerns in later years. But despite the anxieties, the fact is that Joseph at great cost to his reputation among his contemporaries, obeyed the message of the dream. And in so doing, he is an example to all of us who would seek to follow a God of love and who will not let ancient Scriptures be used as a block on the ways of God that are all loving and all merciful. In the context of his times, Joseph takes the path of not allowing religion to get in the way of the love and mercy that is of God.
And of course Joseph’s nightmare creates the opening for God’s hope and love to be revealed. Of crucial importance is the link with Isaiah’s seventh chapter. Whilst Isaiah’s young woman was precisely that in Hebrew, the Greek translation followed by Matthew, uses a word that means a virgin, the more important (in my view) connection is that the child will be “Immanuel” meaning “ God with us.”
But is God being with us to be welcomed? Is this presence to be dreaded? After all we know that religious people have at times given us a pretty dark view of God. So we cannot but ask if God is for us? Or is God full of rage at us due to our failures.? It’s a question that we all ask from our varying vantage points.
Recently I have been revisiting William Shakespeare’s King Lear which I studied during A Levels. The stigma over circumstances of birth which hangs around the Christmas story and which was exploited by early opponents of Christianity was still very much alive. And in the play, Edmund the illegitimate son of the Duke of Gloucester, bears the scars fearing that his half brother Edgar is preferred. At one point the cries out;
“Now gods stand up for bastards.”
At Christmas we do indeed meet the God made flesh who will stand up for all those who are marginalized be they lepers, sinners or even tax collectors. But it is more than that. At Christmas, by the very circumstances of his scandal tainted birth, Jesus becomes as one with those who are marginalized. He who arrives the subject of gossip and of the tut tutting of the religious and their leaders. And it is with the marginalized that he is ever to be found be it his scandal hit parents, the outsider shepherds and the foreign religiously unsound magi of the birth stories. Later we will see him with women, foreigners and those who are often termed sinners, talking and even partying. For his presence is not to bring good news to institutions that oppress but instead it is to be good news to those who know only too well what rejection is. Rejection will ultimately be his lot and yet in his rejection he brings a hope to the world that despair can never overcome, a light to the world that darkness can never put out. In him, we are able to discover the reality of being the beloved of God. Oh sure, there are the times when he will challenge and confront us but he will absolutely never stop loving us.
Joseph knew his share about the nightmares that life can throw up. Those nightmares are all to real. But we celebrate on Tuesday because he responded to his nightmare in a way that enabled the birth of the one in whom we invest a million dreams. For the One who has come, offers to all the worth that destroys the shame culture that we see casting a dark shadow above his birth. He is the Divine gift of love and even today he is being born into a multitude of lives. And even today he shares in the joys and sorrows of our lives. But most of all he is with those whose needs and pains are greatest for after all it was they who were his companions in his Nativity. And still, he tells us not just to speak for those who are the poor, the marginalized and the victimised but to see his presence in them for there is where he choses to belong.
Buckland Brewer Methodist Church Sunday December 23rd 2007
And so we are all getting ready with hope for the coming Christmas celebration. It is as we so often sing “the season to be merry.” But wait! Our Gospel reading is hardly the stuff of sweet dreams. For within what is revealed there is a nightmare situation to be faced by Joseph.
Now we know very little of Joseph. He doesn’t even get a speaking part in the Gospels. In fact he does not attract very many mentions at all and the last mention of him is some 12 years on. After that he fades into obscurity and possibly an early death - at least by our standards.
But of course being in the background does not take from the significance of a person. I know that from experience. I have only ever seen one picture of my maternal grandfather who died back in the 1930s. I have seen nothing that he wrote and the only story that I know of him is of his fear as a young man that the boat on which he was travelling to begin his life in Chile might sink as a result of cards being played on board for money. Well it didn’t sink thank goodness. After all if it had I wouldn’t be here. For many years later after his wife had died, he returned to Cornwall and married my grandmother beginning a new family that would amount to five children to add to the six children he had had in Chile. In all the years that I knew my grandmother, I never once heard her refer to my grandfather by name. He was always “your mother’s father.” A figure shrouded in a mist I often thought. Yet he and the Chile connection are highly important to our identities.
And so it is with Joseph. We know little of him but we can not but feel for him in the nightmare that he faces. And the heart of that nightmare is that Mary to whom he was engaged was pregnant!
Now I wonder if today we fully appreciate the shock that this would have entailed. In the first place given that we are told that Joseph had not had sexual intercourse with Mary, there is the big question;
“Who’s responsible?”
After all, Joseph can be forgiven for a less than charitable feeling towards his fiance. If you watched the Liverpool Nativity on BBC 3 last Sunday, you will have seen a reminder of the pain of a man whose woman is pregnant and he sure knows that he isn’t responsible. It is the sort of pain that makes you want to hit something or someone, the sort of pain that makes you want to let out a scream. After all this is the stiff of betrayal. And stories of virgin conceptions - well they are too far fetched and after all to hear such a story is like having a knife twisted deeper and deeper into the wound!
But it’s not just about love crashing down. It’s also about the fabric of society. Remember this was an age in which a woman’s virginity was worth a high price monetarily. No family wanted the inheritance to be endangered by children born of women from outside the extended family. And more than that, Joseph would like any man of that day, have seen in what had happened, another man cheating him of what was rightfully his.
Do you get it? The situation confronting Joseph was total and absolute disaster! So what is he to do? If he goes through with marrying Mary and bringing up a child that is not his, he faces a life of humiliation. If people assume that he is the father, well they will both face a degree of moral censure. If people assume that the father is another man, then Joseph will look a bit of a fool who is easily walked over. In short there is no happy solution for them together - at least for Joseph. A taint of scandal and his own suspicions are about as far away from love’s young dream as it is possible to get.
But there is no ease in splitting. Matthew suggests that Joseph is tempted to quietly cease the betrothal. After all he is convinced that Mary has committed adultery and adultery required divorce as a matter of requirement rather than as an option. This could be done with a legal minimum of two witnesses to bring the contract to an end. And quietly may seem to be the kind option. It would on the face of it avoid a fuss although in a culture rooted in the practice of shame, a culture in which single parents did not fare well, it would leave Mary and her child facing an uncertain future on the margins of society with ostracisation being their constant companion.
And yet it could have been worse than this. That this option bad as it was, was considered by Joseph is a sign of his decency and love for Mary. For certainly he had it within his power to publicly disgrace and humiliate her. And believe you me, the fundamentalists of his day would have argued that this is precisely what he ought to do. After all it was the Biblical option. Why? Well listen to these words from the Book of Deuteronomy;
“If a man happens to meet in a town a virgin pledged to be married and he sleeps with her, you shall take both of them to the gate of that town and stone them both to death - the girl because she was in a town and did not scream for help, and the man because he violated another man’s wife. You must purge the evil from you.”
And at this we can thank God for the pagan Romans for they had control over capital punishment and did not implement this law. But look at that law and know that many in Nazareth would have said a loud Amen to it and know that Joseph had the power to make Mary’s life quite literally unbearable.
Anyhow whilst he was in turmoil about all of this, Joseph has a dream. And in it, an angel vindicates what Mary has told him and tells him that the baby is of the Holy Spirit. Joseph is to stick with Mary and to make her his wife. And guess what? He’s not even going to be allowed to choose the baby’s name. Even that is taken away from him. For he is to call the baby Jesus which means “The Lord saves.”
Now all we know is that Joseph is obedient to this message. I cannot help but wonder if he has those dark nights of the soul when he would have questioned the authenticity of the dream. Certainly along with Mary he was troubled when Jesus stayed behind at Jerusalem at the age of twelve and we know that Mary had her concerns in later years. But despite the anxieties, the fact is that Joseph at great cost to his reputation among his contemporaries, obeyed the message of the dream. And in so doing, he is an example to all of us who would seek to follow a God of love and who will not let ancient Scriptures be used as a block on the ways of God that are all loving and all merciful. In the context of his times, Joseph takes the path of not allowing religion to get in the way of the love and mercy that is of God.
And of course Joseph’s nightmare creates the opening for God’s hope and love to be revealed. Of crucial importance is the link with Isaiah’s seventh chapter. Whilst Isaiah’s young woman was precisely that in Hebrew, the Greek translation followed by Matthew, uses a word that means a virgin, the more important (in my view) connection is that the child will be “Immanuel” meaning “ God with us.”
But is God being with us to be welcomed? Is this presence to be dreaded? After all we know that religious people have at times given us a pretty dark view of God. So we cannot but ask if God is for us? Or is God full of rage at us due to our failures.? It’s a question that we all ask from our varying vantage points.
Recently I have been revisiting William Shakespeare’s King Lear which I studied during A Levels. The stigma over circumstances of birth which hangs around the Christmas story and which was exploited by early opponents of Christianity was still very much alive. And in the play, Edmund the illegitimate son of the Duke of Gloucester, bears the scars fearing that his half brother Edgar is preferred. At one point the cries out;
“Now gods stand up for bastards.”
At Christmas we do indeed meet the God made flesh who will stand up for all those who are marginalized be they lepers, sinners or even tax collectors. But it is more than that. At Christmas, by the very circumstances of his scandal tainted birth, Jesus becomes as one with those who are marginalized. He who arrives the subject of gossip and of the tut tutting of the religious and their leaders. And it is with the marginalized that he is ever to be found be it his scandal hit parents, the outsider shepherds and the foreign religiously unsound magi of the birth stories. Later we will see him with women, foreigners and those who are often termed sinners, talking and even partying. For his presence is not to bring good news to institutions that oppress but instead it is to be good news to those who know only too well what rejection is. Rejection will ultimately be his lot and yet in his rejection he brings a hope to the world that despair can never overcome, a light to the world that darkness can never put out. In him, we are able to discover the reality of being the beloved of God. Oh sure, there are the times when he will challenge and confront us but he will absolutely never stop loving us.
Joseph knew his share about the nightmares that life can throw up. Those nightmares are all to real. But we celebrate on Tuesday because he responded to his nightmare in a way that enabled the birth of the one in whom we invest a million dreams. For the One who has come, offers to all the worth that destroys the shame culture that we see casting a dark shadow above his birth. He is the Divine gift of love and even today he is being born into a multitude of lives. And even today he shares in the joys and sorrows of our lives. But most of all he is with those whose needs and pains are greatest for after all it was they who were his companions in his Nativity. And still, he tells us not just to speak for those who are the poor, the marginalized and the victimised but to see his presence in them for there is where he choses to belong.
Buckland Brewer Methodist Church Sunday December 23rd 2007
Sunday, 9 December 2007
Carol Service - Light in the darkness
It’s that time of year again. The lights are on in town and cards are beginning to be sent and received. This weekend we received our first Christmas cards of this year and believe you me, most of them have quite idyllic pictures. They warm the cockles of our hearts and believe you me, there are times when that is just what we need.
And yet, we know that neither the first Christmas or that of 2007 are quite as idyllic as we would like to think. The first Christmas takes place against the background of an army of occupation that was being resisted by methods that might be described as terrorist - sounds familiar!. Mary and Joseph were hardly regarded as love’s young dream for the circumstances of Mary’s pregnancy were the stuff of scandal in an age when shame was an even greater form of suffering than the Sun would like it to be today. No wonder the first recorded visitors to Jesus were those absolute outsiders the shepherds. And down the road thanks to a bunch of gullible men whom we somehow think of as being wise, there would be Herod the Great a meglomaniac of a ruler who is prepared to slaughter the young in an effort to get the newly born king of the Jews.
And in 2007 we know all to well that Christmas for many will hardly be “the season to be jolly.” And the reasons for this will be many. For some it will be a time of fear due to conflict. For others it will be a time dominated by financial insecurity whilst for others sickness and sorrow will be all to constant a companions. No wonder that in the USA many churches have “Blue Christmas services” for those who feel to battered to make merry yet still desire to celebrate the good news of Christmas as best they can.
And yet Christmas is a time of good news. As John recognises in his prologue in talking of Christ coming into the world;
“The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world.”
Do you get it? Christmas is not God’s gift to an idyllic world. It is God’s gift to a world with much that is dark. And of course the greatest of wonders is that darkness cannot put out light.
So how does Christmas bring a light into our darkness?
Well firstly, it reveals the true nature of God. You see, it is all too easy from a casual reading of the Old Testament to come to a dangerous understanding of God seeing God as remote and vengeful. But that is not the true picture for Jesus is the image of God and reveals God to be as he is - that is all loving, generous and inclusive.
Secondly, Christmas is a time in which a greater love than the world has ever known enters it. As Christina Rossetti puts it;
“Love came down at Christmas,
Love so lovely, love divine
Love was born at Christmas
Star and angel gave the sign.”
Here, the world is invaded by a love that will be ultimately revealed as self giving and courageous as the Babe of Bethlehem shows the fullness of Love Divine by enduring the worst of peoples’ darker side up to death on a cross. And in that and in his living, we see him being “God for us” whatever the state of our lives might be.
And finally, the Christmas story is a story that has within it the power to inspire people to work for a new world. At the moment there is the stirring of a rumpus over BBC 3’s production of a “Liverpool Nativity” which will be a contemporary retelling of the Christmas story live on the streets of Liverpool. It touches the sense of scandal around the birth of Jesus and goes on to encounter issues of asylum given that the Holy family became refugees as a result of paranoia in high places. To me this is the sign of Christmas being a living tradition which challenges the accepted norms of our day. For as we explore the story, is there not good reason to conclude that we are all too often insufficiently political - and if the refugee experience of Jesus doesn’t have something to say about the British Home Office announcing its intentions to deport Uzbeki dissidents back to a state that routinely tortures dissidents and has even employed boiling alive, I don’t know what can speak to such situations.
So there we are - just three ways in which Christmas represents light coming into the darkness;
- revealing the nature of God
- being the ultimate sign of a love that is for all
- challenging how we see injustices.
So you see, whatever the newspapers may tell us, it’s not just about Santas or even school nativities great as those things are. For ultimately Christmas speaks to something much much bigger - how we see ourselves and yet bigger again how God sees us!
Gammaton Methodist Church Carol Service - December 9th 2007
And yet, we know that neither the first Christmas or that of 2007 are quite as idyllic as we would like to think. The first Christmas takes place against the background of an army of occupation that was being resisted by methods that might be described as terrorist - sounds familiar!. Mary and Joseph were hardly regarded as love’s young dream for the circumstances of Mary’s pregnancy were the stuff of scandal in an age when shame was an even greater form of suffering than the Sun would like it to be today. No wonder the first recorded visitors to Jesus were those absolute outsiders the shepherds. And down the road thanks to a bunch of gullible men whom we somehow think of as being wise, there would be Herod the Great a meglomaniac of a ruler who is prepared to slaughter the young in an effort to get the newly born king of the Jews.
And in 2007 we know all to well that Christmas for many will hardly be “the season to be jolly.” And the reasons for this will be many. For some it will be a time of fear due to conflict. For others it will be a time dominated by financial insecurity whilst for others sickness and sorrow will be all to constant a companions. No wonder that in the USA many churches have “Blue Christmas services” for those who feel to battered to make merry yet still desire to celebrate the good news of Christmas as best they can.
And yet Christmas is a time of good news. As John recognises in his prologue in talking of Christ coming into the world;
“The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world.”
Do you get it? Christmas is not God’s gift to an idyllic world. It is God’s gift to a world with much that is dark. And of course the greatest of wonders is that darkness cannot put out light.
So how does Christmas bring a light into our darkness?
Well firstly, it reveals the true nature of God. You see, it is all too easy from a casual reading of the Old Testament to come to a dangerous understanding of God seeing God as remote and vengeful. But that is not the true picture for Jesus is the image of God and reveals God to be as he is - that is all loving, generous and inclusive.
Secondly, Christmas is a time in which a greater love than the world has ever known enters it. As Christina Rossetti puts it;
“Love came down at Christmas,
Love so lovely, love divine
Love was born at Christmas
Star and angel gave the sign.”
Here, the world is invaded by a love that will be ultimately revealed as self giving and courageous as the Babe of Bethlehem shows the fullness of Love Divine by enduring the worst of peoples’ darker side up to death on a cross. And in that and in his living, we see him being “God for us” whatever the state of our lives might be.
And finally, the Christmas story is a story that has within it the power to inspire people to work for a new world. At the moment there is the stirring of a rumpus over BBC 3’s production of a “Liverpool Nativity” which will be a contemporary retelling of the Christmas story live on the streets of Liverpool. It touches the sense of scandal around the birth of Jesus and goes on to encounter issues of asylum given that the Holy family became refugees as a result of paranoia in high places. To me this is the sign of Christmas being a living tradition which challenges the accepted norms of our day. For as we explore the story, is there not good reason to conclude that we are all too often insufficiently political - and if the refugee experience of Jesus doesn’t have something to say about the British Home Office announcing its intentions to deport Uzbeki dissidents back to a state that routinely tortures dissidents and has even employed boiling alive, I don’t know what can speak to such situations.
So there we are - just three ways in which Christmas represents light coming into the darkness;
- revealing the nature of God
- being the ultimate sign of a love that is for all
- challenging how we see injustices.
So you see, whatever the newspapers may tell us, it’s not just about Santas or even school nativities great as those things are. For ultimately Christmas speaks to something much much bigger - how we see ourselves and yet bigger again how God sees us!
Gammaton Methodist Church Carol Service - December 9th 2007
Saturday, 8 December 2007
Advent 2 -- Voices of Hope
Isaiah 11: 1-10 Matthew 3: 1-12
Back in the 1980s when there was considerable controversy over the economic policies of the Thatcher Government, we began to hear mentions of TINA or to put it in every day language, “There is no alternative.”
Whether you consider that view to have been correct is not a matter that belongs to this sermon. But our readings point us in the direction of questioning the status quo and looking for a world that can be very different indeed. We are encouraged to believe that we do have choices and to believe that there is so much more to life than marching to the drumbeat of conformity.
Let’s for a moment look at our reading from Isaiah. Now Isaiah of Jerusalem is sharing a vision of hope not in good times but in times of monumental insecurity. He is writing at a time when the Northern Kingdom of Israel is about to fall to the armies of Assyria and those same armies would soon endanger the Southern Kingdom of Judah where Isaiah lived. The world as his contemporaries knew it was falling in. Around them darkness seemed to be triumphant. And yet Isaiah proclaims a message of hope, a message of a better future. Rooted in the hope of a King in the line of David who will restore the good old days, he speaks in expectancy of a future King who would have the Spirit of God within him, a King who would do what is right, bringing a preferential option for the poor and a new age of righteousness.
But then the vision gets even grander for Isaiah goes on to talk of a future in which all the hitherto known enmities would be at an end. Here the language begins to sound positively utopian;
“The wolf will live with the lamb,
The leopard will lie down with the goat,
The calf and the lion and the yearling together.”
And I guess we listen to those words and think that these are nice thoughts but surely the prophet could do with a reality check! After all these things go against nature and should all creatures go vegetarian, there would be serious implications for the food chain.
But of course this language is not so much about the present age. Rather it is a vision of the reign of God that is to come and which is the future we are preparing ourselves for in this season of Advent.
But wait! Whilst at advent we look forward to God’s future in which there will be the peace and well being implied by the Hebrew word, “Shalom,” surely there are implications for us today. After all, seriously waiting on God means taking God’s future seriously and seeking the foster the signs of that future amongst us.
Back in the 19th Century, Edward Hicks who was a Quaker artist painted a picture entitled, “The Peacable Kingdom.” Were you to see the picture, you would at first notice a remarkable resemblance to Isaiah’s vision. All of Isaiah’s animals are to be found here. But there is something else as well. For on the left of the picture in the background are to be seen white settlers and native Indians. And what are they doing? They are making peace. For this is a portrayal of William Penn, a Quaker after whom Pennsylvania is named, making a treaty with
the local Indians at Shackamaxon under an elm tree. You see, this painting looks both to the vision of the peacable kingdom and to the contemporary signs of that Kingdom. Yes, here is both a depiction of Isaiah’s hope for the future and a depiction of that hope being taken seriously in the present tense.
But, if Isaiah offers a voice of hope, how you may ask does John the Baptist fit into such a pattern. After all, our first impression on meeting him is of one of those noisy Hellfire preachers whom many of us hoped we had heard the last of. He is not even nice to his hearers, addressing them as vipers , the sort of language which is a disciplinary offence if used by Methodist preachers against their congregations.
And yet, there is hope to be found in John the Baptist. For as he confronts the Sadducees who had misused religion to further the status of an idle wealthy elite, and Pharisees who have got hung up on the letter rather than the spirit of the Jewish law, he points his followers to a new future. And this future can be discovered in his call to “Repent” a word which taken literally is a call for a change of mind. This uncomfortable man is proclaiming a message to people who know the pain of injustice only too well, that there is an alternative, the Kingdom of heaven which is drawing near. And in this Kingdom, we are offered very different realities than those which are so suffocating in the present.
Once more as with Isaiah, we are challenged to envisage a new reality that is at odds with so many of the dark realities of the present. We are called to dare to think outside the box and to follow a path of nonconformity before those things which deny the possibilities of abundance of living. There always are alternatives
I wonder if we ever really appreciate the importance of hope. I don’t mean the optimism which can see where things are going to get better but the hope which seeing the difficulties dares to make leaps of faith to create new possibilities. It is that which we need as much as the very air that we breath. An example of this is the Jewish psychiatrist Victor Frankl who spent the last three years of the Second World War in Nazi concentration camps. Despite seeing many of his fellow prisoners give up, he was later to bear testimony that it was hope that kept hom going - the hope to rewrite the book that his gaolers had destroyed and the sadly to be unfulfilled hope that he would be reunited with his wife.
Isaiah and John the Baptist were both men of hope. Isaiah hopes in a future Davidic King despite the royal line having been morally contaminated. His vision of the peacable Kingdom speaks of the fiery beats being led by a child, possibly the young King Hezekiah. But most of all he places his hope in the Spirit of God resting upon a future King. For John, hope is placed in the one for whom he is preparing the way, one whom he probably doesn’t know but one who is more powerful than John himself, one whose sandals John is unfit to carry.
Desmond Tutu tells a parable about a light bulb that shone so brightly that it became convinced that its achievement was die to its own merits. One day, the bulb was taken out of its socket and placed upon a table. There despite its efforts it could do nothing, disconnected as it was from the source of its power. How much we need to remain connected to God who is the source of our hope!
Advent calls us to hope. It does not fail to take darkness seriously but it refuses to accept that darkness has the final say. Advent calls us to look to God’s future with hope that is rooted in the power and the nature of God. It encourages us to see that with God there are possibilities to be explored for alternatives in the here and now.
Oscar Wilde once said;
“We are all in the gutter but some of us are looking at the stars.”
May we as we look to that time when God’s Kingdom will come with great power, look up at the stars and may we rejoice and take hold of the possibilities that God gives us to be pointers to that great hope to which Advent points us.
Bideford Methodist Church - Sunday December 9th 2007
Back in the 1980s when there was considerable controversy over the economic policies of the Thatcher Government, we began to hear mentions of TINA or to put it in every day language, “There is no alternative.”
Whether you consider that view to have been correct is not a matter that belongs to this sermon. But our readings point us in the direction of questioning the status quo and looking for a world that can be very different indeed. We are encouraged to believe that we do have choices and to believe that there is so much more to life than marching to the drumbeat of conformity.
Let’s for a moment look at our reading from Isaiah. Now Isaiah of Jerusalem is sharing a vision of hope not in good times but in times of monumental insecurity. He is writing at a time when the Northern Kingdom of Israel is about to fall to the armies of Assyria and those same armies would soon endanger the Southern Kingdom of Judah where Isaiah lived. The world as his contemporaries knew it was falling in. Around them darkness seemed to be triumphant. And yet Isaiah proclaims a message of hope, a message of a better future. Rooted in the hope of a King in the line of David who will restore the good old days, he speaks in expectancy of a future King who would have the Spirit of God within him, a King who would do what is right, bringing a preferential option for the poor and a new age of righteousness.
But then the vision gets even grander for Isaiah goes on to talk of a future in which all the hitherto known enmities would be at an end. Here the language begins to sound positively utopian;
“The wolf will live with the lamb,
The leopard will lie down with the goat,
The calf and the lion and the yearling together.”
And I guess we listen to those words and think that these are nice thoughts but surely the prophet could do with a reality check! After all these things go against nature and should all creatures go vegetarian, there would be serious implications for the food chain.
But of course this language is not so much about the present age. Rather it is a vision of the reign of God that is to come and which is the future we are preparing ourselves for in this season of Advent.
But wait! Whilst at advent we look forward to God’s future in which there will be the peace and well being implied by the Hebrew word, “Shalom,” surely there are implications for us today. After all, seriously waiting on God means taking God’s future seriously and seeking the foster the signs of that future amongst us.
Back in the 19th Century, Edward Hicks who was a Quaker artist painted a picture entitled, “The Peacable Kingdom.” Were you to see the picture, you would at first notice a remarkable resemblance to Isaiah’s vision. All of Isaiah’s animals are to be found here. But there is something else as well. For on the left of the picture in the background are to be seen white settlers and native Indians. And what are they doing? They are making peace. For this is a portrayal of William Penn, a Quaker after whom Pennsylvania is named, making a treaty with
the local Indians at Shackamaxon under an elm tree. You see, this painting looks both to the vision of the peacable kingdom and to the contemporary signs of that Kingdom. Yes, here is both a depiction of Isaiah’s hope for the future and a depiction of that hope being taken seriously in the present tense.
But, if Isaiah offers a voice of hope, how you may ask does John the Baptist fit into such a pattern. After all, our first impression on meeting him is of one of those noisy Hellfire preachers whom many of us hoped we had heard the last of. He is not even nice to his hearers, addressing them as vipers , the sort of language which is a disciplinary offence if used by Methodist preachers against their congregations.
And yet, there is hope to be found in John the Baptist. For as he confronts the Sadducees who had misused religion to further the status of an idle wealthy elite, and Pharisees who have got hung up on the letter rather than the spirit of the Jewish law, he points his followers to a new future. And this future can be discovered in his call to “Repent” a word which taken literally is a call for a change of mind. This uncomfortable man is proclaiming a message to people who know the pain of injustice only too well, that there is an alternative, the Kingdom of heaven which is drawing near. And in this Kingdom, we are offered very different realities than those which are so suffocating in the present.
Once more as with Isaiah, we are challenged to envisage a new reality that is at odds with so many of the dark realities of the present. We are called to dare to think outside the box and to follow a path of nonconformity before those things which deny the possibilities of abundance of living. There always are alternatives
I wonder if we ever really appreciate the importance of hope. I don’t mean the optimism which can see where things are going to get better but the hope which seeing the difficulties dares to make leaps of faith to create new possibilities. It is that which we need as much as the very air that we breath. An example of this is the Jewish psychiatrist Victor Frankl who spent the last three years of the Second World War in Nazi concentration camps. Despite seeing many of his fellow prisoners give up, he was later to bear testimony that it was hope that kept hom going - the hope to rewrite the book that his gaolers had destroyed and the sadly to be unfulfilled hope that he would be reunited with his wife.
Isaiah and John the Baptist were both men of hope. Isaiah hopes in a future Davidic King despite the royal line having been morally contaminated. His vision of the peacable Kingdom speaks of the fiery beats being led by a child, possibly the young King Hezekiah. But most of all he places his hope in the Spirit of God resting upon a future King. For John, hope is placed in the one for whom he is preparing the way, one whom he probably doesn’t know but one who is more powerful than John himself, one whose sandals John is unfit to carry.
Desmond Tutu tells a parable about a light bulb that shone so brightly that it became convinced that its achievement was die to its own merits. One day, the bulb was taken out of its socket and placed upon a table. There despite its efforts it could do nothing, disconnected as it was from the source of its power. How much we need to remain connected to God who is the source of our hope!
Advent calls us to hope. It does not fail to take darkness seriously but it refuses to accept that darkness has the final say. Advent calls us to look to God’s future with hope that is rooted in the power and the nature of God. It encourages us to see that with God there are possibilities to be explored for alternatives in the here and now.
Oscar Wilde once said;
“We are all in the gutter but some of us are looking at the stars.”
May we as we look to that time when God’s Kingdom will come with great power, look up at the stars and may we rejoice and take hold of the possibilities that God gives us to be pointers to that great hope to which Advent points us.
Bideford Methodist Church - Sunday December 9th 2007
Saturday, 1 December 2007
Advent 1 - A dangerous Advent to you all!
ISAIAH 2: 1-5 MATTHEW 1: 1-17
And so Christmas draws near. The lights in town are on and shops proudly display a range of gifts for the season. All around, there is the excitement that comes from knowing that Christmas will soon be upon us.
But what is it that we look for in Christmas? Well often I hear people saying that they want a traditional Christmas, a Christmas that is familiar in our singing the same carols we always sang, eating the same meals we have always eaten in precisely the same way and all the other things that they have done since time immemorial.
And of course, the result is that whilst Christmas may be a time when our hearts are gentler towards others, ultimately we have domesticated Christmas, made it safe! It has become a lovely break amidst the darkness of Winter but ultimately we have denied the power of Christ entering into human experience, to change our lives and the world.
So it is that we need to emphasise the importance of Advent, that time when we do not just prepare for Christmas but for the coming of the Kingdom of God in all its fullness. And this preparation surely presents us with a real challenge as we begin to see that what happened 2 millennia ago in Bethlehem is not just a sweet little story but the sign of God demonstrating real involvement and commitment in our world through the coming of the baby who cannot be left gurgling in a cot. For to leave him there would be to deny his calling to travel with him that we might be his followers as his Kingdom which is earth’s ultimate destiny is revealed in great power. And here lies a warning. For that Kingdom is a harbinger of change in our lives and in the world. As Pope Benedict has put it;
“We could say that Advent is the time when Christians should awaken in their hearts the hope that they can change the world, with the help of God.”
Not so safe now is it? No longer is it the season merely to warm the cockles of our hearts. Instead it is the season to witness and to identify with God’s imperatives to challenge the wrongs and the shortcomings of the world in which we live. Advent has become a time for dangerous nonconformity. Be gone sterile, safe Advent! Instead I wish a dangerous Advent to you all!
And as we travel to a dangerous Advent, our Bible readings are found to be full of radical and subversive inspiration.
Let’s look first to our reading from Isaiah. It comes from a time of great peril. After all this was the time when the armies of mighty Assyria were on the prowl. Within a few years, the Northern Kingdom of Israel would fall to this super power and the Southern Kingdom of Judah in which Isaiah was based would be threatened with the same outcome. And yet amidst the terror of the age, there were those who dared to think that God desired a much better reality than that through which they lived. And amongst these people was Isaiah. For his dream was of a world in which God would put an end to war. Listen for a moment to those great words of hope;
“He will judge the nations
And will settle disputes for many peoples.
They will beat their swords into ploughshares
And their spears into pruning hooks.
Nation will not take up sword against nation,
Nor will they train for war anymore.”
Utopian words? Words divorced from the painful realities of Isaiah’s time and ours? Maybe and yet this vision of what can be in a future when God’s Kingdom is brought to completion, should surely inspire us in the here and now. After all, how can we sing the words of Edmund Hamilton Sears without willing the reality when we sing those visionary word that reflect upon the song of the angels at that first Christmas?
“And man at war with man hears not
The love-songs which they bring.
O hush the noise, ye men of strife,
And hear the angels sing.”
For in Christ we see the path of non violence lived out. In him we see the breaking of the walls that divide and separate one from another. And so whilst at Advent as we hear this great prophetic vision, there should be rejoicing whenever arms manufacturers find their life denying companies going out of business ( not always a popular view in a world in which the arms industry exerts great influence and provides a destructive employment for far too many!) and replaced by life enhancing business as suggested in a conversion to agricultural implements by Isaiah, it goes further. For our calling is to be peacemakers, Shalomites, who bridge the chasms of our day and perhaps this Christmas we see that particularly in regards to our relationship with the Islamic world. For here is a situation that certainly does not need the incendiary flame throwing that is becoming all too popular but which needs instead the rebuilding of relationships between what are in essence along with the Jewish people, but blood brothers with a common ancestry from Abraham. Surely, this Christmas as the Holy Land groans with ever increasing pains, the time is right to heal ancient rifts just as Jesus built bridges with those who might have been expected to be his foes those two millennia ago.
This advent, may we hold firm to the Jesus who shows us that we follow not a tribal God but a God of all peoples who urges us to cease the continued shedding of blood and instead follow the path that leads to peace, reconciliation and a unity amidst our diversities.
But let’s not stop there. Look on to our Gospel reading, a strange choice you might think, a genealogy. But wait. Are we not living in an age in which family history is becoming increasingly cherished. Many of us have watched “Who do you think you are?” and been at times entertained and at times deeply moved. Within my only family, there has been much research done especially by one of my cousin. We have found ourselves to be related to Henry Martyn the Anglican missionary and a Bible Christian known as Foolish Dick Hampton who had quite an influence in Porthtowan despite being like many of us preachers, incapable of proper employment. We have also had dark discoveries such as finding that one of our ancestors has a Member of Parliament as a brother - I can’t help thinking a highwayman would have been better! Still every family has its black sheep!
But what of the genealogy of Jesus? Well the first thing to notice is that it is composed in a most unexpected way. You see the practice of Jewish genealogies was for them to only include men. Women quite simply do not belong in Jewish genealogies. But Matthew breaks with convention and includes four women. And what a choice of four women. For a start they are not exactly a line up of good Jewish stock. Most of them are gentiles by background even if they come to accept Israel’s God - in Ruth’s case even coming from the despised land of Moab. But the offence does not stop here. For these are women whose conduct in the main is tainted with the suggestion of scandal. Look for a moment at their stories.
We have Tamar. Twice widowed by the sons of Judah, she finds herself denied by Judah of the marriage to a third brother which would have then been the custom. So when Judah’s wife dies, to gain an heir, Tamar disguises herself as a prostitute and sells her body to the father in law who does not know her identity.
And then there is Rahab. We learn of her in the story of Joshua’s conquest of Jericho. Courageous in her help of Joshua’s spies, there is a strong suggestion that she was a prostitute.
And what of Bathsheba. Possibly a victim of an element of coercion from David, she is remembered primarily for being a party in the adultery that was to lead to the death of her husband Uriah.
And as for dear sweet Ruth, let’s just say that her approach to Boaz on the threshing floor is just a little bit forward. The film just night have to be broadcast after the watershed!
So what are we being told? Well on the one hand, Matthew is showing us through the genealogy that Jesus has impeccable credentials to be the one through whom God will bless Israel. After all, he is a descendant of Abraham and David. But more than that, the genealogy especially as it relates to the four women, demonstrates that this Jesus is not simply to be for the insiders. Gender, race and reputation are hardly to stand in the way of the blessing of Jesus. His family tree is a pointer to the unbelievably good news that he will bring hope to those who are the most marginalized. And in this we find the response to the sort of religion that is the most destructive of all - that which is sufficient to be virtuous but inadequate to be inclusive.
Here is the message that every person is of value to God. And everyone counts in the site of God. And if only those newspapers that are currently starting up the annual bilge about a so called war on Christmas, ever got around to taking Jesus seriously, perhaps we would be spared the increasing assault on asylum seekers, those of other faiths and those who are forever frozen by what are essentially dark forces into forever being branded in their worst moments.
In Advent, we dare to look ahead to what is yet to be. We look to that time when hearts are turned to the ways of Christ. But as we travel through Advent, we are not called to be passively looking above. No, instead we are called to be those who are available to be the signs of the Kingdom of God.
But don’t expect great ovations for it. Remember that Jesus himself ended up being abused whipped and publicly executed. For that which he embodied in his living and teaching, was a threat to the norms and the powers of his day. Dare we expect it to be any other today. So this Advent let us take Jesus seriously. Let us seek to explore what is the nature of his Kingdom and then let us, even us, resolve to be with his help the signs of that Kingdom. And if the road is lonely and counter cultural, hearken to the words of James Russell Lowell;
“THEY are slaves who fear to speak For the fallen and the weak;
They are slaves who will not choose Hatred, scoffing, and abuse,
Rather than in silence shrink From the truth they needs must think;
They are slaves who dare not be In the right with two or three.”
So as we enter into Advent, let us exercise our freedom to engage once more with the Christ who cam to us at Bethlehem and whose Kingdom will ultimately prevail. And as we do so may we turn away from the temptation to be mushy, instead holding on to the good news that leads us to a path of peace in which all people are seen as desirables to be cherished.
So let us embrace a dangerous Gospel based Advent.
A truly dangerous Advent to you all!
Gammaton Methodist Church - December 2nd 2007.
And so Christmas draws near. The lights in town are on and shops proudly display a range of gifts for the season. All around, there is the excitement that comes from knowing that Christmas will soon be upon us.
But what is it that we look for in Christmas? Well often I hear people saying that they want a traditional Christmas, a Christmas that is familiar in our singing the same carols we always sang, eating the same meals we have always eaten in precisely the same way and all the other things that they have done since time immemorial.
And of course, the result is that whilst Christmas may be a time when our hearts are gentler towards others, ultimately we have domesticated Christmas, made it safe! It has become a lovely break amidst the darkness of Winter but ultimately we have denied the power of Christ entering into human experience, to change our lives and the world.
So it is that we need to emphasise the importance of Advent, that time when we do not just prepare for Christmas but for the coming of the Kingdom of God in all its fullness. And this preparation surely presents us with a real challenge as we begin to see that what happened 2 millennia ago in Bethlehem is not just a sweet little story but the sign of God demonstrating real involvement and commitment in our world through the coming of the baby who cannot be left gurgling in a cot. For to leave him there would be to deny his calling to travel with him that we might be his followers as his Kingdom which is earth’s ultimate destiny is revealed in great power. And here lies a warning. For that Kingdom is a harbinger of change in our lives and in the world. As Pope Benedict has put it;
“We could say that Advent is the time when Christians should awaken in their hearts the hope that they can change the world, with the help of God.”
Not so safe now is it? No longer is it the season merely to warm the cockles of our hearts. Instead it is the season to witness and to identify with God’s imperatives to challenge the wrongs and the shortcomings of the world in which we live. Advent has become a time for dangerous nonconformity. Be gone sterile, safe Advent! Instead I wish a dangerous Advent to you all!
And as we travel to a dangerous Advent, our Bible readings are found to be full of radical and subversive inspiration.
Let’s look first to our reading from Isaiah. It comes from a time of great peril. After all this was the time when the armies of mighty Assyria were on the prowl. Within a few years, the Northern Kingdom of Israel would fall to this super power and the Southern Kingdom of Judah in which Isaiah was based would be threatened with the same outcome. And yet amidst the terror of the age, there were those who dared to think that God desired a much better reality than that through which they lived. And amongst these people was Isaiah. For his dream was of a world in which God would put an end to war. Listen for a moment to those great words of hope;
“He will judge the nations
And will settle disputes for many peoples.
They will beat their swords into ploughshares
And their spears into pruning hooks.
Nation will not take up sword against nation,
Nor will they train for war anymore.”
Utopian words? Words divorced from the painful realities of Isaiah’s time and ours? Maybe and yet this vision of what can be in a future when God’s Kingdom is brought to completion, should surely inspire us in the here and now. After all, how can we sing the words of Edmund Hamilton Sears without willing the reality when we sing those visionary word that reflect upon the song of the angels at that first Christmas?
“And man at war with man hears not
The love-songs which they bring.
O hush the noise, ye men of strife,
And hear the angels sing.”
For in Christ we see the path of non violence lived out. In him we see the breaking of the walls that divide and separate one from another. And so whilst at Advent as we hear this great prophetic vision, there should be rejoicing whenever arms manufacturers find their life denying companies going out of business ( not always a popular view in a world in which the arms industry exerts great influence and provides a destructive employment for far too many!) and replaced by life enhancing business as suggested in a conversion to agricultural implements by Isaiah, it goes further. For our calling is to be peacemakers, Shalomites, who bridge the chasms of our day and perhaps this Christmas we see that particularly in regards to our relationship with the Islamic world. For here is a situation that certainly does not need the incendiary flame throwing that is becoming all too popular but which needs instead the rebuilding of relationships between what are in essence along with the Jewish people, but blood brothers with a common ancestry from Abraham. Surely, this Christmas as the Holy Land groans with ever increasing pains, the time is right to heal ancient rifts just as Jesus built bridges with those who might have been expected to be his foes those two millennia ago.
This advent, may we hold firm to the Jesus who shows us that we follow not a tribal God but a God of all peoples who urges us to cease the continued shedding of blood and instead follow the path that leads to peace, reconciliation and a unity amidst our diversities.
But let’s not stop there. Look on to our Gospel reading, a strange choice you might think, a genealogy. But wait. Are we not living in an age in which family history is becoming increasingly cherished. Many of us have watched “Who do you think you are?” and been at times entertained and at times deeply moved. Within my only family, there has been much research done especially by one of my cousin. We have found ourselves to be related to Henry Martyn the Anglican missionary and a Bible Christian known as Foolish Dick Hampton who had quite an influence in Porthtowan despite being like many of us preachers, incapable of proper employment. We have also had dark discoveries such as finding that one of our ancestors has a Member of Parliament as a brother - I can’t help thinking a highwayman would have been better! Still every family has its black sheep!
But what of the genealogy of Jesus? Well the first thing to notice is that it is composed in a most unexpected way. You see the practice of Jewish genealogies was for them to only include men. Women quite simply do not belong in Jewish genealogies. But Matthew breaks with convention and includes four women. And what a choice of four women. For a start they are not exactly a line up of good Jewish stock. Most of them are gentiles by background even if they come to accept Israel’s God - in Ruth’s case even coming from the despised land of Moab. But the offence does not stop here. For these are women whose conduct in the main is tainted with the suggestion of scandal. Look for a moment at their stories.
We have Tamar. Twice widowed by the sons of Judah, she finds herself denied by Judah of the marriage to a third brother which would have then been the custom. So when Judah’s wife dies, to gain an heir, Tamar disguises herself as a prostitute and sells her body to the father in law who does not know her identity.
And then there is Rahab. We learn of her in the story of Joshua’s conquest of Jericho. Courageous in her help of Joshua’s spies, there is a strong suggestion that she was a prostitute.
And what of Bathsheba. Possibly a victim of an element of coercion from David, she is remembered primarily for being a party in the adultery that was to lead to the death of her husband Uriah.
And as for dear sweet Ruth, let’s just say that her approach to Boaz on the threshing floor is just a little bit forward. The film just night have to be broadcast after the watershed!
So what are we being told? Well on the one hand, Matthew is showing us through the genealogy that Jesus has impeccable credentials to be the one through whom God will bless Israel. After all, he is a descendant of Abraham and David. But more than that, the genealogy especially as it relates to the four women, demonstrates that this Jesus is not simply to be for the insiders. Gender, race and reputation are hardly to stand in the way of the blessing of Jesus. His family tree is a pointer to the unbelievably good news that he will bring hope to those who are the most marginalized. And in this we find the response to the sort of religion that is the most destructive of all - that which is sufficient to be virtuous but inadequate to be inclusive.
Here is the message that every person is of value to God. And everyone counts in the site of God. And if only those newspapers that are currently starting up the annual bilge about a so called war on Christmas, ever got around to taking Jesus seriously, perhaps we would be spared the increasing assault on asylum seekers, those of other faiths and those who are forever frozen by what are essentially dark forces into forever being branded in their worst moments.
In Advent, we dare to look ahead to what is yet to be. We look to that time when hearts are turned to the ways of Christ. But as we travel through Advent, we are not called to be passively looking above. No, instead we are called to be those who are available to be the signs of the Kingdom of God.
But don’t expect great ovations for it. Remember that Jesus himself ended up being abused whipped and publicly executed. For that which he embodied in his living and teaching, was a threat to the norms and the powers of his day. Dare we expect it to be any other today. So this Advent let us take Jesus seriously. Let us seek to explore what is the nature of his Kingdom and then let us, even us, resolve to be with his help the signs of that Kingdom. And if the road is lonely and counter cultural, hearken to the words of James Russell Lowell;
“THEY are slaves who fear to speak For the fallen and the weak;
They are slaves who will not choose Hatred, scoffing, and abuse,
Rather than in silence shrink From the truth they needs must think;
They are slaves who dare not be In the right with two or three.”
So as we enter into Advent, let us exercise our freedom to engage once more with the Christ who cam to us at Bethlehem and whose Kingdom will ultimately prevail. And as we do so may we turn away from the temptation to be mushy, instead holding on to the good news that leads us to a path of peace in which all people are seen as desirables to be cherished.
So let us embrace a dangerous Gospel based Advent.
A truly dangerous Advent to you all!
Gammaton Methodist Church - December 2nd 2007.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
