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Advent, Christmas, Epiphany & after...
The new church year brought sermons from our two Readers-in-training. We'll add to them as we find ourselves with more sermons that have been written down - including the Vicar's Christmas sermon...
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Fear, comfort and challenge
Advent 2 - 8 December 2002
Rosie Junemann
2 Peter 3. 8-15a
Mark 1 1-8
I wonder what you were looking for when you came to church this morning, and what you expect to take away with you at the end of the service?
Many years ago, when I was a little girl, I used to go to church every Sunday with my family. My mother was a very hard-working lady – mother of three children and a full-time primary school teacher. One Sunday, coming out of church, she said to me: “Do you know what, for me, are the best words in the service?”
And this is what she said:
“Hear what comfortable words our Saviour Christ saith unto all that truly turn to him:
‘Come unto me, all that travail and are heavy laden, and I will refresh you’.”
Of course, those words are from the Book of Common Prayer service, but I’m sure that they will be familiar to most of you. And I’m sure, too, that there are a number of us here this morning who can relate to that sentiment! Many of us come to church in search of comfort, reassurance and restoration – and find it, week by week!
If you have taken a look at the Old Testament reading set for today (even though we haven’t heard it in church!) you will have seen that Isaiah’s opening words are perfect for us!
“Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem.”
Isaiah’s message is one of good news and reassurance. There is a day coming when God will come and everyone will see his glory. And although he comes in might, “Do not fear”, says the prophet:
“He will feed his flock like a shepherd;
he will gather the lambs into his arms,
and carry them in his bosom,
and gently lead the mother sheep.”
But in the readings we have heard this morning, there is plenty of challenge, too.
Our New Testament reading, from 2 Peter, also reminds us that this is a time of waiting. What we are waiting for is the ‘day of God’ and this will be the time of God’s judgement.
“The day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a loud noise, and the elements will be dissolved with fire, and the earth and everything that is done on it will be disclosed.”
I heard a story recently about a convent school where the rules were very strict. During the morning break refreshments were served. As the girls approached the serving hatch, they saw first of all a big basket of apples. There was a notice next to it, which read, ‘Take only one. God is watching you.’ Moving further along the counter, they then saw a plate of biscuits, with another notice, which stated, ‘Take as many as you like – God is watching the apples!’
But God’s judgement is not like that! When the day comes, everything will be disclosed. God will find us out. And here is Peter’s challenge:
‘Bearing in mind that we are waiting for a day of judgement, what sort of people ought you to be?’
In our Gospel reading we encounter that larger-than-life character, John the Baptist. John is clearly a very striking figure. He dresses and acts like an Old Testament prophet; and he lives in the wilderness, eating locusts and wild honey. We know from the historian, Josephus, that John the Baptist drew large crowds when he preached. His message to the crowds was not a whisper but a proclamation. And his proclamation was also a challenge. His call for repentance was not merely a call to say sorry after we sin, but a call for a complete change of heart. A call to return to God. Baptism with water was to be the outward symbol of this return.
John was a forceful character, but he sought to turn attention away from himself and towards Jesus:
“The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”
The one who is to come is also someone to reckon with. The gospels of Matthew and Luke both record that Jesus will baptize ‘with the Holy Spirit and fire’.
‘Looking for the day when Christ will come with wind and fire’, proclaims John the Baptist, ‘be prepared to make a complete change in your life.’
Advent is traditionally a time of waiting in joyful expectation of the celebration of Christ’s birth. But it also presents us with a challenge. How can we prepare ourselves for that encounter? How can we make ourselves fit to come face to face with God?
Perhaps being a Christian is really much more about challenge than about comfort.
We should certainly feel challenged by the stories and issues presented in the Christian Aid materials, which we are using through Advent. Last week they encouraged us to think about the needs of people with AIDS, in Africa and throughout the world. And this week they command our concern for the people of Orissa in India, and for refugees and asylum seekers everywhere.
There’s a great temptation to view the problems of refugees from a safe distance. It’s something that is happening somewhere else to someone else, and probably the UN and the aid agencies will take care of it. But sometimes the problem creeps a little closer to home. This past week we’ve seen the stories - of refugees from the Sangatte camp arriving in London. I was horrified to see for the first time the conditions inside the camp – the total lack of any privacy and the inadequate sanitation. But it is even more disturbing to read some of their stories:
“Saddam Hussein killed my two brothers in 1991, so my father said to go,” said Aram, a 26 year-old Kurd from Iraq.
And also in the news this week, the plight of two boys from Ghana aged 12 and 14, who died in the undercarriage of a plane, having tried to smuggle their way into Britain.
It’s hard to imagination the poverty, oppression and fear which drive people to such desperate measures, and which force people to leave their homes, and all that is familiar to them, to travel half way across the world in search of safety and justice.
So far as I know, no refugees or asylum seekers have yet been placed in Derwentside. But a number of churches in the Durham Diocese are already working with families and groups who have been placed in their parishes. Much of the support given is practical support and friendship, but there’s often also a need to protect people, against the ignorance and prejudice of other local people, and against the injustices of our legal system.
Let me tell you a story – a true one this time – about Baby Barbara, whose parents are refugees from the Congo. The family were placed in a flat in Gateshead. Barbara’s father was deported to Germany some time ago, but because Barbara was born in the UK, she and her mother, and two older brothers, were allowed to stay here, for a time at least. Barbara has UK citizenship but her mother and brothers had refugee status and could be deported. While they were still waiting for a court judgement, the police arrived on their doorstep very early one morning, without warning, and forced them to leave their home. They were not allowed to pack or take any of their possessions with them. And they were taken to Heathrow Airport and told they were to be immediately deported to Germany. Fortunately, Barbara’s mother was able to contact her solicitor, and they were taken to a refugee hostel instead, pending the legal judgement. Their friends in the church packed and delivered their clothes and other personal possessions to them. Baby Barbara is now in Germany with her parents. The family of five share one room in a hostel. They are reapplying for entry to the UK, largely because of the kindness they experienced in Gateshead, a kindness which continues through telephone contact.
Like the refugees in Orissa, refugees and asylum seekers here have very few rights. Part of our role as Christians, and as the Church, must be to offer a welcome, give practical support, and challenge injustice, on behalf of those who are vulnerable strangers in our midst.
I hope you will take away with you at the end of this service some thoughts about the challenges of being a Christian. But comfort is important, too! Comfort is about relief and ease and support, but it’s also about gaining strength. God can and will give us the strength we need to face the challenge of our daily lives. So let our prayer be, in the words of the well-known hymn:
“Father, hear the prayer we offer,
Not for ease that prayer shall be.
But for strength that we may ever
Live our lives courageously.”
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Being Prepared
Advent 3 - 15 December 2002
Paul Heatherington
Isaiah 61.1-4, 8-11
1 Thessalonians 5.16-24
John 1.6-8, 19-28
Picture this scene. It’s mid-December – a dark day before Christmas. It’s wet. It’s cold. Out of the darkness a man walks into the bright lights of an off- licence. He blinks a little as his eyes adjust to the bright, almost blinding, electric lighting. He says to the shop assistant “Now I want 24 cans of McEwan’s Export, 24 cans of lager, a bottle of gin, a bottle of vodka and two bottles of whisky. Oh and I’d better have some of those alcopops – a dozen Bacardi breezers.” The assistant rings up the various purchases and removes the cash from the man’s hand. When she gives him his change, she says, “Have a nice day”. He says, “Eh – what?” She replies, “I said ‘HAVE A NICE DAY!’” The man ignores her. He’s not really listening. He pushes the change in his pocket, and to no one in particular he growls, “Christmas! You know I wouldn’t bother, if it weren’t for the kids. But, there’s nothing like being prepared!”
Being prepared! That story illustrates how some prepare for Christmas in the 21st century.
The readings of Advent are full of prophetic hope of the coming of Christ, not just at Christmas, but also at the end of time. Advent 3 brings us ever closer to the coming of Christ. The Advent candles remind us of the approach of the light of the world, Jesus our Saviour.
The early church didn’t bother with Christmas. It’s a relatively late church festival. The focus of the early church was different; it was an Easter Church. Christmas was probably first celebrated more than three hundred years after the first Easter. The date for Christmas was more than likely chosen as a reaction by Christians to the winter solstice pagan festival. The season of Advent seems to have originated in Gaul in the fifth century as a period of preparation, first for Epiphany and only later for Christmas.
In the Gospel reading, St John says of John the Baptist, “He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light.” Echoing his Gospel, John wrote in his First Letter, “God is light and in Him there is no darkness at all.”
In a way, those who invented electric lighting played God, by changing forever the natural order of things. Having been ruled by the seasons, people now work and plays throughout the night. We live in a 24-hour culture. And a secular mid-winter celebration in some ways has been restored, supplanting the Christian celebration of Christ’s birth, which was itself intended to replace the pagan mid-winter festival!
Advent has a double theme of anticipation and judgement, but it’s not a little Lent in December. Advent is a season of joy –looking back to Christ’s first coming into our world as a baby and a looking forward to his second coming.
So how should we prepare for Christmas? In the New Testament reading, Paul tells the Thessalonians to pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.
Prayer is an embarrassing subject. It’s uncomfortable isn’t it when people say they are experts in prayer? Those who speak confidently about what God reveals to them often make us feel awkward. That’s really not the sort of thing that Anglicans do!
Prayer is not something we much talk about at home or in church. It’s largely a private topic. Prayer scares many people, who are not frightened in any other area of their lives. The barriers to prayer include being unsure about what prayer actually is. Is it a personal internal monologue; or is it a dialogue with God… and if it is a dialogue, what does it mean to have God answer prayer?
Another difficulty is we know we ought to pray, but it’s a bit like Christmas card procrastination. I really ought to do them, but….
A further problem is the image of God as frightening or judgmental. Maybe some ideas of God come from childhood associations, seeing God as an authority figure. Some perhaps picture God as like us. Voltaire said that God made man in his own image and ever since man has been seeking to return the compliment.
At its deepest, prayer isn't just saying words. Prayer is entering into a relationship with God. Prayer is being with God and allowing communication to flow.
Many of us feel we ought to pray more than we do, but we often find praying difficult. When he was Archbishop of Canterbury, Michael Ramsey was once asked how long each day he spent in prayer. He said something like, 'Oh, about five minutes'. Everyone was stunned. 'But,' he explained, 'often it takes me an hour before I can reach the point when I can begin to pray.’ Writing recently in New Daylight (the daily Bible reading notes) Peter Graves said that prayer was too often seen as a way of getting us out of trouble. You know the sort of thing – praying for help the night before an exam – or even the day before exam results are due! Instead, he suggested that prayer involves tuning in to the will of God and surrendering to him. Only last week I heard the Bishop of Sherwood talk about prayer. He said that pure prayer involved words and action. That’s obvious really when you think about it. Praying for good results in exams is no good by itself; you really have to put in some work as preparation.
We are now human “doings”; we are not human “beings”. Today, people seem to accept as true that being busy busy, having a high caffeine lifestyle, power, and having possessions bring other people’s respect and personal satisfaction. Instead the opposite is true. Obtaining possessions does not quench the thirst. The more the ego gets the more it wants
How can you listen to anyone if you are speaking? The way to God is going beyond words, listening to God in silence.
The late Roman Catholic Archbishop Dom Helder Camara said that “the noise that prevents us hearing God is not – is truly not – the clamour of man, the racket of cities, still less the stirring of the wind or the whispering of water. The noise that completely smothers the voice of God is the inner uproar of outraged self-esteem of awakening suspicion of unsleeping ambition.”
In other words, the ego.
John Betjeman’s poem “Christmas” begins, “The bells of waiting Advent ring…” When church bells are drowned by ringing cash tills; when the Christmas season is simply an excuse for excess, the meaning of Christmas, the mystery and the glory of God entering our world in human form is lost.
So I put forward the suggestion that, to prepare for Christmas, working out how to give thanks for what we have, and reducing our personal wants, is the road to inner calm.
The entrance door to peace opens inwards. The Psalmist writes: "Be still and know that I Am God.”
Each of us is on a journey as we wait for Jesus to come. Adapting that Sting lyric, “Every move you make, every step you take, he'll be watching you.”
Dom Helder Camara asks in another prayer; “What can I give to the Lord for all He has given to me?” Perhaps the secret lies in the words of this carol
How silently, how silently,
the wondrous gift is given,
So God imparts to human hearts
The blessings of his heaven
No ear may hear his coming
But in this world of sin
Where meek hearts will receive him,
Still the dear Christ enters in.
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The coming of Christ
Christmas Night / Day – Eucharist – 24/25.xii.2002
Martin Jackson
Isaiah 9.2-7;
Titus 2.11-14;
Luke 2.1-14
Tonight/today we celebrate the birth of the Christ-child, the coming of the Prince of Peace. But I wonder if God knew just how much trouble it would cause us to celebrate this birth? All that present-buying! I’m told that yet again the MetroCentre has been the busiest shopping centre in the country. And we worry and worry about our preparations. Will I get the cards written in time? Can I safely drop so’n’so from my list, or will I do so only to find that they not only send me a card but get me a huge present too? Have I got enough food in? And for those of us with children, have I bought them enough? It’s at times like these that I’m grateful for the relief offered by secular culture, so here’s some Father Christmas jokes:
What do you call Santa's helpers?
Subordinate Clauses
Who sings "Love Me Tender" and makes Christmas toys?
Santa's little Elvis
If athletes get athlete's foot, what do astronauts get?
Missile toe
How does Santa Claus take pictures?
With his North Pole-aroid
What do you call the fear of getting stuck while sliding down a chimney?
Santa Claus-trophobia
The 3 stages of man:
He believes in Santa Claus
He doesn't believe in Santa Claus
He is Santa Claus
Well – they’re maybe better than you’ll find in your Christmas crackers… I thought of Santa Claus because the weekend newspapers seemed to be full of how to capture the enchantment of Christmas – and it seems to involve parting with a large sum of money to take the family to Santa-land, some great commercial enterprise off the North Circular Road where your kids can touch real snow (apparently it doesn’t snow any more in London)… or even better re-mortgage the house and take the children to Lapland. That’s what you need for Christmas: men in red robes, sleigh bells, and at least the pretence of plenty of white stuff.
So I got something of a corrective in an e-mail I received the other day… from someone who used to live in Shotley Bridge, who is now an Anglican priest in New Zealand. For those who know his family, it’s John Jay, and he sends us “the best wishes of the parishes of the Oroua in NZ for a blessed and peaceful Christmas. It is,” he writes, “warm and sunny today as we prepare ourselves for Christmas.” Christmas in the southern hemisphere is the time when it gets warm; snow just doesn’t enter into the equation. John sent me a poem as well concerning what it might mean to be a shepherd. Snow’s not an essential for Christmas, but we all think of those shepherds who watched their flocks by night. This is part of the poem, called "24 December":
The machines shudder into silence.
The last sheep slides down the chute
And staggers out of the shed,
giddy with sudden weight loss.
The shearers glossed with sweat,
straighten their backs and nudge open
the lid of the chilly bin. They sit
hands wrapped around cans,
sweet coldness against cracked fingers,
while outside a tui gargles the heat
and spits it out in two long clear notes.
The shedhand rolls a can across his brow,
And says, “It’s beginning to feel like Christmas”.
On the back lawn, near the potato patch,
the woman creaks the revolving line
as she unpegs clothes stiff with sunlight.
The smell of summer is mixed with noise,
Pungent cicadas, loud brass marigolds
and the grass beneath her bare feet
is as warm as cats fur. She looks
over her shoulder and reminds herself
to dig some new potatoes for tomorrow,
and she thinks with sudden pleasure,
“It’s beginning to feel like Christmas”.
What does Christmas mean to you? It’s important that we start where we are. The Santa jokes, the expectation and joy of children, the snow… or the shepherd’s can of beer as he rests from shearing in the summer heat of a New Zealand December. “Christ the Saviour is born…” and born for me, born for you, born into so many different circumstances, but born for the whole world. Christmas is for people the world over, and Christ is born for the world.
Christ is born for the world, and as we celebrate this birth, we imagine him born into the darkness. “Yet in thy dark streets shineth, the everlasting light.” If it’s not the literal darkness of night, nevertheless this world is a dark place so much needing the light of Christ. We see that darkness still amid the conflict of different ethnic and religious groups, in the fears of terrorism which so dominate the news, in the uncertainties over Iraq and the possibilities of the western response to perceived threats, in Bethlehem itself, still an occupied town with soldiers in tanks parked on Manger Square even as Midnight Mass is celebrated on the church which looks over it. It’s a darkness which is still forceful wherever justice is denied, where poverty and hunger prevail, where refugees still follow the trail taken by the Holy Family as they fled from the violence perpetrated by King Herod those two thousand years ago. It’s a darkness felt by so many children – in our Christingle Carol Service earlier this (yesterday) evening we heard of the plight of street children in Brazil, and of the Children’s Society’s work in this country with those who suffer the everyday misery of bullying, while the newspapers in the last couple of days have been indignant at the two children abandoned by holidaying parents.
There are so many instances of darkness in today’s world, but the message of Christmas is that God has not abandoned us. “The dark night waits, the glory breaks, and Christmas comes once more.” The reality of love is shown in the care and concern of Mary and Joseph. And love itself is revealed in the Christ-child, himself love, the Word of God, even though he is himself unable to speak a word. The greatness of God is seen in that he can come as one so small.
How can this be? In his special message for this Christmas, the new Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, writes of the mediaeval carol which speaks of the Virgin Mary as a Rose in whom ‘contained was Heaven and earth in little space'. This is the wonder of God’s way of sending his Son to us, that he should do so in the ‘little space’ of Mary’s womb. What is the meaning of God’s entering that ‘little space’? What does it mean to us? The best I can do is to quote the Archbishop and end with his words:
...here, in the 'little space' of Mary's body, divine fullness is alive; when Jesus is born, 'the fullness of him who fills all in all', to quote St. Paul, is wrapped in cloths and tucked into a feeding trough. After the crucifixion, the fullness of God's life is locked away in the tomb. God's way with us is not to overwhelm us with majesty but to live his life 'in little space' and to speak there the quiet words that summon us to faith.
Only when we are very quiet can we hear. Only when we stand still can we give him room. Faced with the fullness of God in the embryo, the baby, the tired wanderer in Galilee, the body on the cross, we have to look at ourselves hard, and ask what it is that makes us too massive and clumsy to go into the 'little space' where we meet God in Jesus Christ.
It may be our wealth and security; it may be our ambition; it may be our images of ourselves as powerful or virtuous or godly. The world - and the Church - are still fairly full of people (like you and me) who walk around surrounded by inflated ideas and pictures of ourselves that crowd out others and push away God. We need at Christmas above all to remember what Christ says again and again - that there is no way in to his little space without shedding our great load of arrogant self-reliance, bluster, noisy fear and fantasy.
And when we have set this aside, we find that it is only in the little space that there is room enough for all of us - forgiven, welcomed, made inheritors of the divine fullness of life and joy that God longs to share with us. Behind the low door of the stable is infinity - and more, an infinity of mercy and love. No straining our eyes to see a distant God; but a God whose fullness dwells in that space we are not small and simple enough to enter.
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Encounter and Surprise
Feast of the Baptism of Christ – 12.i.2003
Eucharist
Acts 19.1-7
Mark 1.4-11
The Revd.Martin Jackson
I find the opening verse of this morning’s reading from the Acts of the Apostles quite intriguing. “While Apollos was in Corinth, Paul… came to Ephesus, where he found some disciples.” I’m intrigued because I wonder simply how the Apostle Paul happened to come upon these disciples. Read on and you find they’re not members of the Christian Church as Paul would have recognized it. They’ve been baptized, but without any reference to Jesus Christ and with no mention of the Son of God. When Paul asks if they received the Holy Spirit when they were baptized, they seem to be quite taken aback: “No,” they say; “we have not even heard there is a Holy Spirit.” And what transpires is that these are not disciples who look to Jesus as the one who is central to their faith. They’re disciples instead of John the Baptist. They have received “John’s Baptism,” they say. It’s not clear whether they were amongst the crowds who went out into the Judaean wilderness to be baptized by John himself. Perhaps John the Baptist had had a rather wider impact than we generally assume…. That not only did Jesus have followers who went about telling other people about him, but perhaps there were disciples of John who were engaged in a comparable missionary effort – people who had spread John’s teaching at least as far as Ephesus on the Mediterranean coast of Asia Minor, and who had initiated their converts as disciples of John by administering Baptism just the way John had so many years before in the River Jordan.
Read the Gospels – especially those of St. Matthew and St. John – and you might easily suppose that the main point of John the Baptist’s ministry was simply to prepare the way for the coming of Jesus. Once Jesus appears, John can – it seems – take a back seat. “He must increase, while I must decrease,” John is quoted as saying. And, “I am not worthy to undo his sandal strap.” Of course, John does disappear from the scene. But it’s hardly voluntary – rather more it’s a measure of John’s success as his criticisms of King Herod hit a nerve, and he makes himself a sufficient threat to be removed from the scene to a prison cell and then to be beheaded. The Gospels tell how John sent a message from his prison to Jesus to ask whether he was truly the Messiah or if it is to be some one else – and Jesus’ reported reply is to point to the signs of healing which have accompanied his ministry. But we don’t know that John was convinced, we don’t know if John ever got the reply, we don’t know if the story itself might be a bit of spin on the part of the Gospel writer to show how the way of Jesus is superior to the way of John. And I can live with the not-knowing.
What I find in the stories of encounter between John the Baptist and Jesus – or between their disciples – is the reminder of just how much we do not know of the origins of our faith. …How much had to be worked out at the beginning… It’s there in the puzzlement evident in the meeting of the Apostle Paul and these disciples of John so many years after the ministries of the men they each follow. Paul would have heard of John the Baptist, but seems in some way astonished that followers of this man should be found so far afield and so long after Herod had got rid of him. As for the disciples of John themselves, it’s not clear that they’d even heard of Jesus, whatever the Gospels may tell us of how Jesus was baptized by John who had hailed him as the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.
Which brings me back to that question of how they all met. Perhaps these followers of John had heard of Paul’s fame as a preacher and teacher, and had gone along to hear him speak. Perhaps they knew Apollos, another follower of John, who had been converted shortly before, as a result of meeting the Christian disciples Prisca and Aquila. Or perhaps it was simply a chance encounter… but one which leaves all the parties to the encounter changed, and makes the meeting worth recording. For the author of the Acts of the Apostles, perhaps it’s another sign that the way of Jesus must be accepted by all who encounter it – something to be acknowledged even by John the Baptist’s disciples. But there seems also an undercurrent – that God’s way is bigger than often we suppose: that just when we think we’ve got everything sewn up – that we know all the answers – up pops someone or something to give us cause for humility; and finding there are so many other people who can surprise us with their capacity for faith – their ability to love, care and support – should move us to gratitude that God is not limited by our perceptions which so often make religion into a stumbling block for those on the fringe of the Church or outside it.
This is the season of Epiphany, and I had something of an epiphany the other day. An “epiphany” is literally a “setting-forth”, something that reveals a truth. So the Feast of the Epiphany shows Christ’s divinity recognised by the wise and powerful who come upon a vulnerable human child in Bethlehem. Today’s Feast of the Baptism of Christ shows God’s own recognition of Jesus as he comes up out of the water and the Holy Spirit descends upon him. But I had my own epiphany the other day in one of our residential homes. I was taking Communion to the residents, running late as usual, and arrived to find that not only had there been no preparations made for my arrival, but there was no room available for the service. Nor did we really know who wanted to take Communion – though one regular was still in bed and another was having her hair done out in the corridor. So we decided to use half of the main lounge, to risk turning the telly off for those watching it there, and to move those who wanted Communion into that area without displacing the residents and a visitor who were already there. It might have been thought a recipe for disaster. But as we began, as my bed-ridden communicant was wheeled in, as I tried to keep the two or three people who were able actually to read the words of the service card in the right place… it struck me that we were doing exactly the right thing. Here was a visitor who had already said he was a non-believer, helping his wife with the prayers she could barely hold in her arthritic hands. Here was the oldest resident, blind and almost totally deaf, asleep in her armchair for most of the service. Here were the half dozen or so who wanted and were able to receive the Communion host – but I have practically no knowledge of the church affiliation of most of them. And from the other end of the room where we expected the hubbub of caring and conversation to continue, there came a lull which wasn’t silence but something that struck me as a sort of holy stillness amid so much that seems often confused and confusing. I realized some members of the staff had actually been able to take a break – I’m sure they could have gone somewhere else to have a chat and a cup of tea or a cigarette, but instead they sat there quietly, adding to the prevailing sense of peace. Residents who hadn’t indicated a desire to take part in the service were joining in the Lord’s Prayer from their armchairs. I can’t adequately describe what I felt, except to say it was good, and God was with us, and he wasn’t there only in the Sacrament we shared.
I think what I’m saying is that I have a sense that so often when we try to say where God is to be found, we run the risk of excluding him from all those parts of life where we don’t expect him to be. Church membership, creeds and ordered worship are all very necessary – but concentrate on them too intensely and we exclude God from the lives of so many. We need an openness to God wherever he may be found. And this needs a readiness to put aside our preconceptions and to be surprised by God.
…Like Paul and these disciples of John who are surprised to find each other. Perhaps like John himself and Jesus at their encounter. Do they know what is going on? John proclaims a coming Messiah, and then finds himself baptizing Jesus. In the account given by St. Matthew, the Gospel writer has John argue with Jesus that it’s inappropriate for it to be this way round – that John himself is unworthy. But read St. Mark, the oldest account, and it seems that John doesn’t realize who Jesus is. One moment he is telling of one who will come to baptize with the Holy Spirit. The next he is baptizing that very person, but without any apparent awareness of what he is doing. It’s Jesus, it seems, who sees the Holy Spirit come upon him, not John. And we have to ask – did Jesus himself know what was going on? The 30 years up to this point spent in near total obscurity give no indication of his true calling. Only now – with his Baptism – is there a change. Only now will he go off into the wilderness to seek the will of God for his future life and work.
John the Baptist and Jesus go their separate ways. No indication that they recognize the other. No discussion as to what God is saying to each of them. But God’s work is being done. And in their meeting we know his presence.
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Touching the Untouchable
3rd Sunday before Lent – 16.ii.2003
The Revd. Martin Jackson
2 Kings 5.1-14;
1 Corinthians 9.24-27;
Mark 1.40-45
Naaman the leper is a General in the army of Aram, modern-day Syria. But for Syria, we might read Iraq... or the United States or Britain. And his modern equivalent might still be a Genral - or a President or Prime Minister.
There are many reasons why people put off going to the Doctor’s. “I’ll probably be better by the time I get an appointment,” you might say hopefully. Or there are the questions the doctor is going to ask about how you’ve been looking after yourself: just how much exercise do you take? – have you given up smoking yet? – what’s your diet like? – how many units of alcohol are you consuming every week?... and many more potentially embarrassing questions - and you wonder just what you’re going to have to have to admit to.
And then there’s the fear of what the doctor is actually going to do to you. Which bits is he/she going to prod and feel? What am I going to have to reveal of an anatomy of which I’m less than proud? And after all that, what might the treatment involve? – alright if it’s a course of antibiotics, but what about hospital referrals, long courses of drug therapy, operations, the bits which might be unlovely but which we don’t want to live without?
I’m not trying to put you off going to the Doctor’s! This is just the way I feel when I’m at my most hypochondriac – in my mind, I’m near dead or dying even before I manage to ring the Surgery for an appointment!
But I’ve been trying to think what was in the mind of Naaman, the commander of the armies of Aram (modern day Syria) as he looks for a cure for his leprosy. It wasn’t newly diagnosed, but something he seems to have lived with for a long time. He’s a General despite his illness. He’s learned to live with the disease – and perhaps we need to be reminded that what the Bible calls leprosy is not necessarily what we call leprosy (Hanson’s Disease), but was a catch-all term for a number of skin disorders. How many doctors had he seen in his own country, how much indignity had he been put through? – all to no avail, as he continued to suffer a disfiguring condition which didn’t sit at all well with his public prominence.
Naaman seems to have given up hope of a cure. Why should he want to put himself through any more prodding or lay himself open to any more useless courses of treatment? The suggestion that he turns to the prophet who lives in Israel is a last chance for him, an alternative therapy of which he seems highly sceptical.
Naaman goes seeking his cure in the way a General would. He takes his dignity along with him in a big way: piles of silver, loads of gold, fine clothes and a letter from his king – this is the reward for the man who can heal him. But a man who can arrive in this fashion is also a threat. The King of Israel sees the horses and chariots which accompany Naaman: “Now we’re in trouble,” he says. “There’s no hope of a cure. The doctors have never been able to do anything for him. He’s obviously just picking a fight!”
But what Naaman needs is not what kings and generals expect. He goes on to the house of Elisha the prophet, and finds someone quite different from the physician to the royal court he might have expected. He parks his chariots outside Elisha’s house, but the prophet doesn’t even come out. No fussing over this man so concerned for his dignity! And while Elisha saves him from the prodding and probing of a doctor, his remedy is not at all what he wants to hear. “Go and bathe in the River Jordan – and do it seven times!” Has Naaman really come all this way to hear this? If Elisha is so great a prophet, he ought to come out and wave his arms around and cure him! He ought to give heed to Naaman’s important position! If bathing is involved, it shouldn’t be in that excuse for a river, the Jordan, but in one of the mightier rivers of Syria – perhaps it’s as though Naaman had come from Gstaad and been told to take the waters at the Spa in Shotley Bridge! Anyway, no doubt Naaman has tried all that sort of thing before!
Naaman storms off in a rage. Only his servants calm him down. “OK,” they say, “he’s asked something pretty pathetic. But you’d have done it if he’d asked you to do something really difficult. Why not give it a go?” And they persuade him. He swallows his pride, goes to the river Jordan, washes in it seven times, and he is healed.
On one level, the message is that Naaman must recognise that Elisha speaks with the authority of the one true God. And he does! – when he goes home, he takes a trunk-load of Israelite earth with him, so he can worship on the soil of the land promised by God to the Israelites. But there is another level, I think. Naaman’s first need is to recognise that he doesn’t have all the answers. The solution doesn’t lie in being able to throw your weight around. Horses and chariots might win you battles, but they can’t win you your health. Fine clothes may cover up disfigurement, but they don’t cure it. And heaps of money in the end serve only to show you what can’t be bought.
For Naaman, the need is to find humility: to acknowledge his need; instead of issuing his own commands, to listen to others. And finally to give up standing on his dignity. He goes to the river Jordan – and we can imagine the scene: first he has to unburden himself of the warrior’s armour and weapons; then to take off the fine clothes of status; and finally, as he stands naked by the river, to reveal what needs to be healed – not merely a physical condition, but his defensiveness, aggression, his pride.
Naaman cannot find healing as the rich general of mighty armies, but only as a man. The Gospel story tells us something more. Another leper who comes to Jesus for healing. This man is an outcast. He has no wealth. His words, “If you choose, you can make me clean,” show what has happened to him – he has been rejected by his community because his skin disorder makes him ritually unclean; he is a source of contamination for any who come into contact with him, so he can no longer live amongst his own people. This is a man who has nothing, except the hope that Jesus will do something for him – and whatever it is, he cannot buy it, nor can he expect religion to do anything for him, because his disease has turned him into someone to be avoided by religious people.
But Jesus speaks to him: “I do choose. Be made clean.” And the leper is healed. He is healed without having to do anything – no bathing in rivers; and the requirement that he goes and sees a priest is simply so that the man can be seen to be healed, can be pronounced clean in a ritual sense, and can be brought back into the life of his community.
The difference is made perhaps not by a word, but by what precedes it. The leper comes to Jesus in his need, and Jesus’ first response is to reach out to him, to stretch out his hand and touch him. Words will do nothing on their own. As we might say, no end of good advice can make no difference to the way we live. The leper needs to be met where he is and accepted for the man he is. The touch of Jesus - more than anything else - shows his acceptance of the person in need. Because in touching the leper - the man declared ritually unclean and thrown out of his community - Jesus makes himself unclean. He doesn’t give him words of sympathy. He shows what “sympathy” really is – its literal meaning, to suffer with someone. Because in touching the unclean man, Jesus shares in his condition.
In this short episode, we see what is at the heart of the Christian Gospel – what we mean when we talk of the Incarnation, of God’s Son taking human flesh. Jesus comes to us and shares in all that we are. He brings healing, he transforms lives, and he does it not by throwing his spiritual weight and power around, but by entering into all that needs to be healed. Jesus comes as the “wounded healer.” Not someone with the answer to everything, but one who can bring hope in our suffering because he knows what it is we suffer – sharing in our humanity, even in the uncleanness of the leper, he knows what it is that needs to be healed.
Do we know our need of healing – our need of God? Honesty with ourselves is one of the hardest things to achieve, which is why it is a good idea to be able to open ourselves up to someone else: a spiritual director, a member of our family, a friend.... And we can make a start by acknowledging our vulnerability, as finally Naaman must do. To stop covering up. To see that for all our ability, wealth and achievements we can’t get it all sorted on our own. And this may help us help others in their need. So we don’t see them simply as people who are the authors of their own misfortune, people who deserve what they’ve got, people we can do without - like the folk of Jesus’ time thought they could do without the people they categorised as “unclean.” “People are not loved because they are beautiful; they are beautiful because they are loved.” It’s love in action which Jesus brings to those who have less than nothing to offer. And when we feel unlovely, we do well to learn from this saying – and know that we are loved.
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Wisdom and the Word of God
2nd Sunday before Lent – 23.ii.03
The Revd. Martin Jackson
Proverbs 8.1,22-31;
John 1.1-14
I think it must be quite a lark to be a presenter on a television holiday programme. The personalities who show us the sights insist that it’s hard work with intensive researching, so many places to be in so short a time and multiple “takes” on camera until the director is satisfied. But they keep going back for more – and the places they go always seem to make them happy; holiday horror stories are for a different sort of television programme.
And from all the travel programmes I’ve seen, I’ve decided that pretty much the top holiday destination with the presenters – whether or not ordinary holiday-makers get there – must be Istanbul. Every holiday programme seems to have a presenter getting a full massage, steam bath and cold plunge in a Turkish Bath. They wander through the mediaeval markets, drink wine by the harbour and then get on a ferry so we can admire the view from the boats which make the short journey between the two continents of Europe and Asia (that sounds like it comes from a script, doesn’t it?). And all of them, without exception, will stand and marvel at some point under the great dome of the Church of Saint Sophia.
And that’s the point I’m coming to. Who was “Saint Sophia”? people might ask. And what did she do to justify having such a massively grand church built to bear her name? Look her up in a dictionary of saints, and she’s simply not there. As a person there was no such female saint who bore the name Sophia. You’ve got instead to take the name and translate it back into the language originally used by the builders of the church. Though Istanbul is part of modern-day Turkey, for most of its history it has been a Greek city – known also as Byzantium and Constantinople. And the Greek for Saint Sophia is “Hagia Sophia.” Look in the dictionary and then you see this is more than a name. “Hagia” means not just “saint”, but also “holy”. And “Sophia” is not merely a name – it’s a word which has become a name, and means “Wisdom”. The great church in that city is not named in honour of a mere person called Sophia, but is dedicated in recognition of the Holy Wisdom of God (holy and wisdom each with capital letters).
“Does not wisdom call, and does not understanding raise her voice?” That’s the question put at the beginning of our Old Testament reading this morning. And “wisdom” is rather more than being clever, more than knowing the answers. Acquiring wisdom entails a willingness to learn, but more than that it requires the person who wants to be wise to open themselves so completely that what they learn changes the person they are. And for the people of ancient Israel, Wisdom was something so essential that they saw it not only as a gift from God, but as part of the very Being of God. The Book of Proverbs which we read today is part of what we call the “Wisdom Literature” of the Bible, collections of writings which include the books of Ecclesiastes, Ecclesiasticus (don’t get them confused), Job and many of the Psalms. And Wisdom literature wasn’t just confined to the Bible. It was found in the countries which surrounded ancient Israel. Some collections of wisdom sayings from Egypt date back as far as the Third Millennium Before Christ. And many of the writings seem to have been shared around between different cultures – the questions relating to the injustice of suffering found in the Book of Job are debated in much the same way in ancient Babylon. And I think it’s important that we recognize this interchange of ideas from nation to nation and even between religions which worshipped different gods. If only we could see in our own day that we don’t have all the answers, that we do have something to learn from people who think, look, speak and worship differently from ourselves… So often people say that religion is at the root of intolerance and violence both in the wars of the past and in the crises of today. But that is the case only when religion is misused as a flag to rally the troops… when it’s seen as having all the answers to the exclusion of all others. Look at the Wisdom literature of the Bible, and you find a different story. So much that is borrowed from other cultures and religions. And when we take off our own blinkers, we can see how much our faith might have in common with that of other people – beliefs and understanding which should unite rather than be made a pretext for hatred.
The Book of Proverbs is a book which seems to have been written backwards. The older parts seem to start at chapter 10, and they’re sayings to be learned and reflected upon. No doubt they come from different sources, and don’t all carry the same weight: “A wise child makes a glad father, but a foolish child is a mother’s grief.” (10.1) – that’s profound and a good reason to attain wisdom. On the other hand, “Be assured, the wicked will not go unpunished, but those who are righteous will escape.” (11.21) – we may wonder if that can always be true, and so easily it can be used to fuel a self-righteousness which leads to conflict with those identified as evil-doers. And that verse is strangely juxtaposed with the one that follows: “Like a gold ring in a pig’s snout is a beautiful woman without good sense.”(11.22) – is that the painful lesson of experience, or just plain old-fashioned misogyny?
Wisdom does not come by taking everything at its face value, but by reflecting on what we find: “A wise child loves discipline, but a scoffer does not listen to rebuke.” (13.1) – it may be true, though parents may wonder when their offspring will cotton on. And we all have lessons to learn, difficult as it may be – for example to recognize, “One who forgives an affront fosters friendship, but one who dwells on disputes will alienate a friend.” (17.9).
There’s much more where those proverbs come from – twenty-two chapters beginning at chapter 10. But the first nine chapters are something different, written later it seems, and the fruit of reflection rather than direct teaching. “Wisdom cries out in the street.” (1.20) – if only you’ll listen, she says. And Wisdom speaks as a person – and a female one too: “She is more precious than jewels… Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace… She is a tree of life to those who lay hold of her.” (3.15-18). As the book proceeds, Wisdom is seen to have a particular part in the unfolding purpose of God: “The Lord by wisdom founded the earth.” (3.19), till finally in the passage we use today we see it’s impossible to separate Wisdom from God’s work of creation: “… when he marked out the foundations of the earth, then I was beside him like a master worker…” (8.29f). You can almost imagine that it’s Wisdom who holds the surveyor’s measure, and stands by as God pours the concrete. But above all, this is Wisdom who is God’s “daily delight,” who romps around like a little child (and “little child” is a possible translation for the word we read a “worker”),… Wisdom who rejoices in the world God has made, and takes delight in the human race.
This is a text which is still much debated by scholars. Can you talk about “Wisdom” as being part of God himself? Can you equate Wisdom with the pre-existent Son of God or the Holy Spirit? The important thing is to see these passages and understand they have a message for us, about God’s good purpose in creating the earth, about his good intentions for us, and that he wants to bring us in on the act, if only we’ll be ready to learn, discern, pray and understand.
And this is where we can come finally to today’s Gospel reading – the great passage from John 1 which we are used to hearing more often at Christmas. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Is this how we might understand Wisdom with a capital W?… like the Word with a capital W who brings life and light to the world, the Word who is one with God the Father from before the beginning of time? I could go on… much too long. But suffice it to say this is about the God who plans for us, reaches out to us in the Word made flesh in Jesus. He loves our world, he loves us… even when we deny him – and we have our part to play in helping God communicate with our world, like the man whose name was John who comes to testify to the light. We can do our part, if only we will hear the Wisdom of God, and speak his Word.
But for now I have spoken enough. In the words of Proverbs 17.28:
“Even fools who keep silent are considered wise,
when they close their lips they are deemed intelligent.”
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