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A New Church Year
The Church begins its new calendar each year with the season of Advent. This time of preparation before Christmas is an opportunity for reflection.
On this page you'll find scripted sermons which have been delivered at St. Cuthbert's Church during the period before and after Christmas. But they're best experienced "live" - and that's the only way to discover the more spontaneous variety...
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A cry for today's wilderness
Second Sunday of Advent
Sunday 7 December 2003
Rosie Junemann, Reader of St. Cuthbert's
Baruch 5. 1-9
Luke 3. 1-6
“On Jordan’s bank the Baptist’s cry
announces that the Lord is nigh.
Come then and hearken for he brings
glad tidings from the King of Kings.”
Each year, in Advent, we hear the story of John the Baptist. This year, the third year in our 3-year cycle of Sunday readings, we hear the story as it was written in Luke’s Gospel. Luke takes a slightly different approach from those of Mark and Matthew, whose accounts we heard last year and the year before.
We know, from the introduction to his Gospel, that Luke intended ‘to set down an orderly account’ of the events surrounding the life and teaching of Jesus. Luke’s approach was to investigate ‘everything very carefully from the first’ so that the reader can ‘know the truth’. Luke was a Syrian from the city of Antioch. His Gospel was written around 80AD – some fifty years after Jesus died. So it’s a bit like a present-day writer putting together a biography of someone who lived in the middle of the 20th century. Except, of course, that the means of communication and record-keeping were much more basic in the 1st century AD!
Today’s Gospel reading is a relatively short text. But it contains a great deal of information. First of all it deals with the question of when the events occurred. In Luke’s Gospel, John the Baptist’s ministry is set in a precise historical context. He gives us no fewer than seven reference points. The Roman Emperor, Tiberius Caesar, was in the 15th year of his reign. Pontius Pilate was the Roman governor of Judaea. Herod and his brother Philip, and Lysanias, were the local Jewish rulers. Annas and Caiaphas were high priests. These help us to establish John’s ministry as around 28 or 29AD. But Luke is not only establishing the historical facts. He is also telling us that John lived and worked in a bleak political landscape. His country was subject to Roman rule. His local secular and religious leaders were hostile and cruel. And it is from this context of misery and oppression – this wilderness - that John emerges to proclaim that the time has come for God’s promises to be fulfilled and for Israel to be saved.
Next Luke tells us more about ‘who’ John the Baptist is. Firstly, John is the son of Zechariah. According to Chapter 1 of Luke’s Gospel, Zechariah was a priest, and the husband of Elizabeth, who was related to Mary the mother of Jesus. Before John’s birth the angel Gabriel had appeared to Zechariah to announce that John’s task would be ‘to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.’ Now we learn that the word of God came to John himself, in the wilderness, in just the same way as the prophet Jeremiah was called in earlier times. And, as the prophet Isaiah foretold, John is to be ‘the voice crying out in the wilderness’, to point towards the coming of Jesus and to call on people to prepare the way for him. How are people to prepare for the coming of Jesus? John proclaims ‘a baptism of repentance for the remission of sins'. John’s baptism was not quite like our Christian baptism. It marked a time of significant change in a person’s life, a turning away from sin and evil, a turning to God. It was a cleansing ritual. The washing of the body in the river Jordan represented the purification of the soul, which had already taken place.
It seems to me that we hear the words of the gospel writer today still very much in a wilderness context. As the carol says:
“ Yet with the woes of sin and strife
the world has suffered long;
beneath the angel-strain have rolled
two thousand years of wrong:
and man, at war with man, hears not
the love-song which they bring”…
Many people hearing the gospel message this Advent are suffering oppression, or the misery of war. The world’s natural resources are misused and inequitably shared. In Africa 28 million people are suffering from HIV and AIDS. In this country – in this community – our ‘wilderness’ is largely one of materialism and greed, in which the rich and the strong exploit the poor and the vulnerable. In which many people live in luxury and plenty, while others are homeless and hungry. Where many children still grow up in poverty and are the victims of negligence and abuse. Can the voice of John the Baptist reach us in our wilderness and bring us hope?
Advent is a time of waiting and preparation. We wait and hope for the time when God’s Kingdom will come, when God’s presence will fill the earth - in the words of our first reading today, from Baruch, the time when we will ‘take off the garment of sorrow and affliction and put on for ever the beauty of the glory from God’. But we also wait and prepare for Christmas. At Christmas we will celebrate again the birth-day of Jesus. At Christmas, too, we can welcome Jesus into our hearts and lives. We can hope for a transformation in our own lives when, filled with the light of Christ, we might truly ‘shine as a light in the world’. John’s voice calls us to make ourselves ready for this momentous time.
Cleaning and tidying our homes often forms part of the practical preparations we make for Christmas. I was interested to read recently an account of Christmas past, in the islands of Orkney and Shetland, by the writer George Mackay Brown. In the old tradition of those islands, the farmers believed that evil took shape and substance in the form of ‘trows’, hideous shapes which inhabited the night. The trows were particularly threatening at the darkest time of the year (from the 20th to 24th December). A variety of rituals were practised to hold evil in check, and to prepare for the coming of the Christ-child, whose light would defeat it. On Christmas Eve, in the words of George Mackay Brown:
“Man, ..moving between the trow-infected earth and the angel-fretted sky, proclaimed his allegiance to the kingdom of light…in the form of a strictly-observed ritual……… One by one, each member of the family washed himself all over in fire-kissed water and put on clean clothes. The rooms had been swept already; everything dirty had been bundled away; the dishes on the dresser glinted in the lamplight. The children were put to bed. Midnight was approaching…….. They made then an act of great faith. Though the night outside was thick with trows, they unfastened the door and left the lamp burning and went to bed. It was possible that Our Lady and Saint Joseph with their as-yet-hidden treasure would come to their croft that night seeking shelter.”
I am not, of course, suggesting that we should return to ancient beliefs and practices such as these. And yet there is something in these rituals, as in John’s baptism, that symbolises an unseen, internal, spiritual change in people. The voice of John the Baptist calls us to a preparation by spiritual cleansing. It’s a bit like cleaning out the attic. There’s a lot of junk to get rid of. Our everyday lives are cluttered with irrelevant and obstructive concerns. Our spirits can be weighed down by self-indulgence, or material ambition, or anger. Hearts which are so burdened leave little space for Christ. Can we, this Advent, make time amidst all the frenzied activity – the shopping and baking and writing of Christmas cards - to make that personal act of faith? As it were, to clean the house, to bundle everything that is dirty away, to unfasten the door, to light the lantern – to prepare for Christ to come to us and fill our hearts and lives with love and joy and light and peace?
“Then cleansed be every Christian breast
and furnished for so great a guest!
Yea, let us each our heart prepare,
for Christ to come and enter there.”
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Swing low, sweet chariot
Advent 3 – 14 December 2003
Paul Heatherington, Reader-in-Training
Luke 3.7-18
Swing low, sweet chariot, Comin' for to carry me home!
Swing low, sweet chariot, Comin' for to carry me home:
I looked over Jordan and what did I see,
Comin' for to carry me home!
A band of angels comin' after me,
Comin' for to carry me home!
This week a London bus received a new name “Sweet Chariot” and more than one hundred thousand people crushed into Trafalgar Square to see it. Two weeks ago a jumbo jet was similarly renamed “Sweet Chariot”. On that memorable Tuesday, hundreds of fans carrying St George’s flags saw the jet touch down at Heathrow at 4.35 in the morning.
At the World Cup Final and on all of these occasions, the song that all of the people sang was,“ Swing Low Sweet Chariot”. Why?
At sporting events, Scots now sing O Flower of Scotland, which they have adopted as a national song. But England has no National song. Billy Connolly’s amusing suggestion of the Archers’ tune has never attracted support and the National Anthem belongs to the Union, that is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, not just to English people.
Do you wonder why English Rugby supporters sing a Negro Spiritual – or to be more precise why they sing the chorus, and an occasional verse?
Few are aware that in this parish Blackhill Rovers played rugby football before “soccer” was thought of. The club broke up because of the First World War. I can tell you that the relatively recent innovation of “Sweet Chariot” on the English national rugby scene is directly down to rugby players like Lew Parker and me, because people like us have promoted this song Saturday after Saturday, after playing rugby. (Its popularity also partially flows from exuberant actions that accompany the song.)
Do you know what the words, “Swing low, sweet chariot” mean? A clue is that many Negro spirituals contain thoughts and hopes hidden in the words. For example, another song, “Good News, The Chariot's Coming” is a veiled way of saying that the underground railway is to come through and secretly take slaves from America’s south to the north and to freedom, away from slavery. But what is the “Sweet Chariot”? The answer is that it is another name for the seven bright stars we call “The Plough”. The Plough points to the North Star and for Black slaves in the southern states of the United States in the 19th century, it pointed to Canada, where slavery was outlawed. More than that, in the spring at sunset, the Plough – or Sweet Chariot – is low on the horizon. It might be then described as “swinging low” in the sky. It then swings up anti-clockwise during the first part of the night. Before street lighting polluted the night sky, the Plough or the Sweet Chariot, as it became brighter, pointed the way north, to give slaves on the run a good start on the Slave Master, who might not discover the escape until morning. “Swing Low Sweet Chariot” is telling of black slaves filled with expectation looking to be carried home to God in Heaven, or to freedom from slavery.
In today’s Gospel reading, Luke tells us that people were filled with expectation and were questioning in their hearts what they were seeing and feeling.
John had three main things to say:
First, he addressed religious leaders, that is those who lived strictly according to the Ten Commandments and the other 603 rules set out in the Old Testament and looked down on anyone who broke any rule. John also spoke to those who believed that the Jews were a favoured nation. Some Jews were convinced that simply because they were God’s chosen people, they would receive extra-special treatment, that they would be safe from God’s judgement, and that God would judge other nations differently. John spoke to the people who came to see him in very direct terms. He was blunt (perhaps so blunt that it was inevitable he would run into trouble) calling these leaders “snakes” – strong stuff! He told them straight, “Before God, you have no privileges. Your family tree, your descent from Abraham counts for nothing. What is important is how you live your lives.”
Secondly, as well as baptising, John answered questions from the crowds. Typically, in those times, tax collectors and soldiers were dishonest and made profits from swindling people. When these types of people on society’s fringes asked John what they should do, he told them not to leave their jobs. If they were a tax collector, they should do their job well. If they were a soldier, they should aim to be a first-rate soldier.
Thirdly, he told people to share with each other.
What are the messages for us? John is emphasising that it is important to have a close personal relationship with God and his people and that this is much more important than obeying rules.
To everyone he is saying,
· Serve God where you are. Do your job well and do not steal or cheat.
· God disapproves of people who keep too much, while others have too little. This is a social gospel emphasising the importance of sharing.
John is proclaiming good news. He is not saying that God is out to punish us. He is saying that God has plans for us where we are and that we ought to prepare; that we need to get ready for Jesus, where we are, here on earth.
Slaves in America looked to the night sky to carry them home. Jesus is the Bright Morning Star, the star that heralds the dawn. In this time of preparation for Christmas, as we look for the dawn, may we, just like the people who heard John, be filled with expectation in the same good news that John proclaimed to the people: that Jesus is coming. And let us open the door for God so that we are able to feel in our hearts and say, in the words of the last verse of “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot”:
I'm sometimes up and sometimes down,
Comin' for to carry me home,
But still my soul feels heavenly bound
Comin' for to carry me home!
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More than a fairy tale...
 | Christmas Day 2003
Rosie Junemann
Isaiah 9.2-7
Luke 2.1-20
“Once upon a time there lived a King and Queen who said every day. “Oh, that we only had a child!” But they never had one.
And it happened that as the Queen was bathing one day, a frog crept out of the water on to the bank and addressed her, saying, “Your wish shall come true. Ere a year passes, a daughter shall be born to you.”
What the frog had said came to pass and the Queen gave birth to a little girl. She was so beautiful that the King was beside himself with joy and gave a grand feast. He invited not only his relations, friends and neighbours, but also the fairies, that they might pour out their blessings on the child.
Now there were thirteen fairies in his kingdom, but the King had only twelve golden plates for them to eat from, and so one had to stay away.
The feast was celebrated in all splendour and, when it was over, the fairies bestowed on the Princess their wondrous gifts. One gave her virtue, another beauty, a third riches, and so on, in fact everything that her heart could desire.”
That’s the beginning of the story of Briar Rose from Grimm’s Fairy Tales – a story popularised on stage and screen as ‘The Sleeping Beauty’. A fitting beginning – a fitting birth story – for a Princess.
You might expect a similar setting for the birth of the Prince of Peace! But the birth story of Jesus is quite different. As a familiar hymn says:
“Tell of his birth at Bethlehem, not in a royal house or hall,
But in a stable dark and dim………”
I sometimes wonder if we have heard the Christmas story so often that we hear it as a kind of fairy tale – a familiar and comfortable story. After all, it is a story with a feel-good factor, complete with angels for added glitz! But is it also a story with some real purpose and meaning? Does it have some relevance today - not just for those of us who will be enjoying Christmas in comfort, with families and friends -but also for the very many people for whom this Christmas will be a less than perfect time? The Salvation Army have estimated that more than half of the population of this country who are aged over 75 live alone. How many of them are alone today? Many people are spending Christmas in prison. Many refugees and asylum seekers are spending Christmas for the first time far away from their homes and families. Many people are simply too poor to enjoy the kind of Christmas that most of us have come to expect. And that’s just in this country. If we look further afield there are very many Christians throughout the world who are hungry, sick, homeless, or oppressed this Christmas. Has the Christmas story got something to offer to ordinary people, whatever their circumstances?
If we are going to make any kind of sense of the story perhaps we first need to distinguish between fact and fiction. Are there ‘fairy tale’ elements in our understanding of it? The original story of the birth of Jesus, which we have heard today from Luke’s Gospel, has been so embroidered over the centuries that it is sometimes hard to be clear in our minds about what actually happened. For example, poetic licence often transposes the story into a typical English winter setting:
“In the bleak midwinter, frosty winds made moan;
Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;
Snow had fallen – snow on snow – snow on snow;
In the bleak midwinter long ago.”
But the Bible doesn’t mention either the weather or the time of year! Artistic licence depicts Mary wearing blue and white robes, not because the Bible tells us so, but because of ancient artistic traditions. Her dark blue mantle originates from Byzantine art of around 500AD. Blue in that culture symbolised an empress. We’re sure that ‘the ox and ass and camel which adore’ or ‘the oxen standing by’ are a part of the Christmas story. And yet neither Matthew nor Luke mention any animals in their versions of the nativity!
Perhaps its time to look a little more closely into the stable?
Crib scenes often make the stable look quite cosy, but there can be no doubt that Jesus was born in very adverse conditions. Mary, herself just a young girl, gave birth after travelling a distance of about 70 miles from Nazareth to Bethlehem (probably on foot, although a donkey often makes his way into our telling of the story!). She gave birth in an unfamiliar place, amongst strangers, possibly supported only by Joseph. She gave birth in the unhygienic and uncomfortable setting of a stable. No doctor, no midwife, no epidural, no antiseptic. Almost certainly pain and fear.
For the newborn baby there was no soft, warm clothing and no cradle. Jesus was tightly bound with strips of cloth and laid in an animals’ feeding trough.
And then there were the shepherds, those early visitors to the stable. At that time, shepherds, who spent much of their lives outdoors, living rough and tending their flocks, were outcasts, men who could never achieve the ritual purification required under Jewish religious law. “Mangy, stinking, bathless shepherds”, one writer calls them. And yet these were the guests invited to see the newborn child!
It’s all a bit different from the ‘silent night, holy night’, sanitised version of the nativity, isn’t it!
The truth about the gospel is that it is rarely comfortable and almost always challenging. Jesus may have been long-expected but he is unexpected, too. He is a Prince of Peace born in a stable, a Mighty God growing up in a humble family, a Wonderful Counsellor who aligns himself with the poor and the outcast, an Everlasting Father who takes the human form of a baby.
The story of the birth of Jesus is not merely a recounting of history or a birthday celebration – and its certainly not a fairy tale. It’s a true story of immense significance to us today. It’s the beginning of the story of the man who is God – of the man in whom we can see God. And yet the baby lying in the manger is vulnerable, his birth risky. His family are humble and displaced people. His guests are simple, hard-working people. In his incarnation, God places himself alongside – God becomes – part of suffering humanity. What hope is here, what comfort, for ordinary people and for people in distress everywhere!
The birth of Jesus heralds the coming of the Kingdom of God. In contrast to the powerful and corrupt Roman empire, which was ruled over at that time by the Emperor Augustus, the Kingdom of God is a spiritual kingdom, a kingdom of love and peace. As Isaiah had foretold, the birth of Jesus brings the possibility of light to those who walk in darkness – the darkness of ignorance and fear and hopelessness. The birth of Jesus brings the probability of joy to those who are oppressed – oppressed by poverty, or war, or pain. And it holds out the same hope, offers the same gifts, to those who hear the Christmas story today.
At its simplest level the story of the birth of Jesus is a human story of hardship and gritty reality. But its also perhaps the greatest story the world has ever heard. “Hugely humbling and massively uplifting”. Words used by Jonny Wilkinson to describe his experiences in Australia of the Rugby World Cup. “Hugely humbling and massively uplifting”. I think the same could be said of the Christmas story, too!
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Putting away the Christ-child - or finding him in a new light
 | Feast of the Epiphany
4.i.2004 - Eucharist
The Revd. Martin Jackson
Isaiah 60.1-6;
Matthew 2.1-12.
Here’s a poem I came across the other day:
Christmas is being put away:
The Kings in a cardboard box,
Mary stashed in tissue paper,
Joseph wrapped in a woolly hat,
And the infant Christ in a nylon sock;
All tucked away under the stairs,
We’ll climb another year
Up to bed and down to breakfast.
And somewhere in the pantry of my thoughts,
A wistful coil of questions
Goes unanswered.
[Patrick Purnell: Imagine. Way Books, 2004]
As we get near to Twelfth Night, it’s time to take down the Christmas decorations. Our tree at home is looking distinctly sorry for itself – but then it’s been standing in our often over-heated living room for the best part of a month; Christmas came early in the form of that tree – and it shows. And there are the other decorations to take down, the cards which now we might read - and we might think, “I really should get in touch properly with the people who wrote them…” And if we have a crib, we must dismantle it. The kings will head for their cardboard box…
Except that bit’s not right! The kings arrive only with the Feast of the Epiphany – properly on the 6th January, though we celebrate it in church today… a couple of days early. The arrival of those three kings of tradition, more properly the wise men or magi, is the reminder that Christmas is not all over. These are the late arrivals as they come to pay homage to the child of Bethlehem. In their lateness and foreignness they stand for us… people who have heard a rumour at a distance, people who haven’t really got the message straight, people who take time to get things done because – we tell ourselves – we want to get them done properly (even if that is something of an excuse for putting them off). The magi are quite unlike the shepherds who’d heard the message of the angels and promptly abandoned their flocks to go into Bethlehem to find out just what was going on. Forget the idea that they took some pretty little lambs to set before the crib as an offering to the Christ-child. There’s no time for that – and the shepherds are quite reckless, leaving the flocks to fend for themselves. The shepherds bring nothing but themselves. And that is everything that God could want… If only we would hear the good news of Christmas, and bring ourselves in thoughtless, reckless joy!
But the wise men are not like that. They have to get things right. Practically, of course, there are all the arrangements to make for a long journey – we think of them travelling vast distances over cold deserts from a mysterious eastern land. But there are also all their calculations. The charts which tell them where the star will lead them. Getting the right presents to set before the infant king whom they expect to greet. And presumably they need the right clothes to appear in a royal court – and all the other baggage. Isn’t that rather like us? We worry that we won’t get the right gifts for people at Christmas – because the right present is not the one we would buy, but the one we think we ought to buy because of who they are or because of what they will expect. It makes it all so difficult. But presumably that is why the wise men finally turn up with those such distinctly unsuitable gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. Couldn’t they just get a couple of baby-gros, preferably not new-born but a size or two larger since it’s taken them so long to arrive?
Actually I spotted a cartoon the other day, which suggested that wise men today would probably bring different yet nevertheless suitably lavish gifts: a lap-top computer; a mobile phone (no doubt 3G with full video facility); and an Ipod. After all isn’t that what we would want? Isn’t that what the Christ-child would need to communicate his message in today’s world? But then again, do we all know what they even are or do? I’ve only just myself discovered that an Ipod is the machine to have for music on the move, capable of holding in its memory 10,000 tracks of music for you to listen to wherever you are. Who on earth would ever want so much music – or have the time to listen to it (especially through earphones)? But it’s the latest must-have consumer technology apparently. If you’re listening to this in a state of incomprehension, then how must Mary and Joseph have felt when these richly robed mysterious men of the east dismounted from their camels to produce their gifts for Jesus of gold, frankincense and myrrh? If you ask, who really needs such extravagant gifts, then perhaps we need to start by looking at the clutter in our own lives: all those things we could live quite happily – perhaps more happily – without.
But the story of the wise men and their gifts is one to make us think. They stand at the juncture of two worlds and two eras, they stand for what we think we know but don’t, and for the quest for knowledge in which we so frequently (like them) fall short. We think we know the story and sing, “We three kings…”, but of course the story doesn’t tell us the number of these eastern visitors, but the number of their gifts… and it doesn’t tell us that they are kings either. We need to re-visit this story, if for nothing else to remind ourselves how so often we don’t remember the stories of the Bible properly – faith needs to be based on something more than what we half-recall from Sunday School or from an annual Carol Service.
The magi themselves understood the importance of knowledge. They knew the night sky, and spotted the difference when they observed something they took to be a new star. And they act upon their knowledge. They follow the star. But even so they can’t help going wrong. They assume it indicates the birth of a king, someone whom the world will value according to the world’s scale of values. So when they can no longer follow that star, when they can see only by the cold light of day, they fall into assumptions. “We must find this child in the nearest palace.” They want their calculations and assumptions confirmed. They haven’t the patience to wait for the re-appearance of the star by night when it will finally lead them to the child of Bethlehem. And that is so like us too. We look for answers, but we know what we want. Listening to the horoscope slot the other day on local radio, I was struck by the people who rang in – the sincerity of their quest – and by what seemed to be the real desire to help on the part of the person doing the horoscopes (I think to call her an astrologer would be over-egging things). “How can I help?” she would ask the caller – and if she didn’t quite use the words, it was to say, “What do you want to hear?” People read their horoscopes and do the stars to find the answers they want. Those magi are no different, ancient astrologers as they are. And they miss the answer – they find Herod in his palace, intent on keeping his throne whatever the cost, when the one to whom they should be drawn is the child of an unknown couple beyond Jerusalem’s suburbs in Bethlehem. We need to remember this. People want answers to their questions and problems. That’s why they turn out in huge numbers when supposed mediums appear at the Consett Empire, and that’s why the people who produce the horoscopes get richest from the premium phone lines they advertise in their newspaper columns. And that’s a warning to us. When people say that Christian faith doesn’t offer them the answers they want, is that what it’s truly there for? Faith is not about believing in supposed answers. It’s about believing in God, and that first requires that we seek him.
Seeking God requires of us that we don’t expect all the answers at once. It’s a lifetime’s quest. Perhaps that’s where religion is failing for so many people these days. They just don’t have the patience. But religious faith is about living – so it’s about the whole of life, not just an annual observance like Christmas, or an answer given when I feel a question coming on. The word “Epiphany,” the name of the Feast we celebrate today, literally means “manifestation” or “setting forth.” It’s the showing of the child of Bethlehem to be God’s Son – if only we will see. It’s the opening of a door, but stepping through it does not give us all the answers… just a new sense of direction. “Arise, shine for your light has come…” says the prophet Isaiah in words we use in our Old Testament reading. These are words of hope for God’s people, of promise to the Jews. But today we read them understanding that light to come in Christ. Yet who can recognize it in a child still resting in his Mother’s arms, still dependent on her care?
In his poem “The Journey of the Magi,” T. S. Eliot has the wise men reflect upon what they had seen. Such a long journey it had been, and what had they found? Had they seen a birth? – yes, but also they had sensed a death foretold. This is not a single event standing alone without purpose. It’s the beginning of a life which desires to embrace our lives in their wholeness.
The invitation to us is to recognize the light which is set forth in Christ, to walk through the door which he opens for us, and to continue on the journey. To be thankful for the answers we find, but to be ready also to live with the mystery – indeed to recognize the purpose of God within that mystery, and in it to know our calling.
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Wine for the Feast
 | Epiphany 2 - 18.i.04 - Eucharist
The Revd. Martin Jackson
Isaiah 62.1-5;
1 Corinthians 12.1-11;
John 2.1-11.
Today – for the first time since Christmas – we’re given a reading from St. John for our Gospel reading. It’s a strange thing that we’re supposed to read from the first chapter of St. John’s Gospel every Christmas, because John tells us nothing about the birth of Jesus; he might try to say something of what the coming of God’s Son into the world means in terms of theological understanding and cosmic significance, but - like the language he writes in - I suspect his approach is all Greek to most people! Because he misses out the story of Jesus’ birth, John doesn’t bother either with the visit of the wise men at Epiphany, and though he mentions a visit of Jesus to the River Jordan while John the Baptist is preaching, he doesn’t actually tell us anything about Jesus himself being baptised. Only with today’s reading does Jesus actually do something that gives the clue that there is more to him than meets the eye!
Today we find Jesus at a wedding in Cana, a village in Galilee. I suspect he’d rather not be there – or at least that he feels a bit uncomfortable. It’s quite likely one of those family affairs that you have to go to, but where you’ve rather lost touch, and everything and everyone is not quite what you’re used to. Perhaps we all have this sort of experience. I’ve told before the story of a cousin’s wedding, back in one of the colliery villages where my parents grew up. It was bad enough that it started at 9.30a.m., a time when I’m barely in the land of the living on a Saturday morning. I think that was the case for the Methodist minister who officiated – he’d not been able to find his collar, and the piece of white paper he’d stuffed into his shirt fell out during the service. The bride’s father wore Doc Marten boots over his white socks and had at least one earring in each ear – and the most memorable part of what was said in the service was the announcement that the reception had been moved at short notice from the local pub to the Miner’s Welfare. There the fun really started. The best man had a half bottle of whisky in his pocket throughout the proceedings, the level of which fell rapidly along with the level of his coherence – and the shiny, wet ham on the menu made the paper plates go soggy so that the weight of the food made them collapse in your hand.
But having said that (and there’s more I could say!) it was a great affair –with good humour, and a true meeting of family and friends. I simply wasn’t that geared up for what I might find.
I suspect the same was true of Jesus. Cana is some distance from Nazareth, so quite possibly this isn’t immediate family for him. Who would he know? He had these strange new friends, the disciples, in tow, but he also had to keep his mother happy. And these wedding feasts could go on and on. This one had gone on long enough for the drink to run out, so everyone was probably in quite a state. And then to make matters worse his mother, who’d probably spent most of the day dragging him round embarrassing him in front of relatives he didn’t really know, looks to him to see what he can do: ‘They have no wine,’ she says…. ‘Woman, what concern is that to you and to me?’ Jesus replies. ‘My hour has not yet come’ You can tell something of Jesus’ exasperation – when his hour does come, he might fervently hope that it’s not going to be here of all places. But Mary won’t be put off. She simply tells one of the waiters to do whatever Jesus says – and so there comes about what the wedding service calls ‘the first miracle that he wrought, in Cana of Galilee.’
What can we learn from the story? It’s read in church at this time because it’s from the start of Jesus’ public ministry – one of the first things that he’s recorded as doing. And it has its place with the stories of the last two weeks – about the visit of the wise men to the Infant Jesus in Bethlehem and about his Baptism in the Jordan. Because these are all stories which tell us something about who Jesus is… They paint a picture and we realise that the man depicted is just as human as any of us, but also by his nature one with God. Wise men find a baby, but see God’s Son. Jesus – with all the crowds – is baptised in the Jordan, but comes out of the water as a voice is heard declaring, ‘This is my beloved Son.’ Today we see something of how Jesus will work.
Jesus is amongst his people as any one of us might be. One of a crowd, not necessarily comfortable where he finds himself, even capable of being embarrassed by his mother. His relatives and friends could say of him, ‘basically he’s one of us, even if he’s a bit odd.’ But Mary understands more. We’re wrong if we think that Jesus’ divine purpose is just a matter of divine tricks employed to useful ends – and there is a danger if we say that God’s will is about being able to work wonders at the right time. But Mary has confidence in Jesus – and he gives us this first sign of his glory as God’s Son: not just enough wine to keep the party going… Jesus goes way over the top: six jars, each containing 20 or 30 gallons are filled with water, and from them is poured the best of wine, between 120 and 180 gallons.
So Jesus, by ‘the first of his signs’, ‘revealed his glory,’ St. John tells us – ‘and his disciples believed in him.’ But perhaps we need to notice that Jesus doesn’t broadcast what he’s doing. The disciples presumably have seen what’s gone on, and the servants know who’d ordered the water to be put in the wine jars. But everyone else… they can only marvel that this vast quantity of the best wine has arrived just when they might expect all the supplies to be exhausted. They’ve no idea where it has come from. And that says something about God’s love for us. That it’s not something he rubs our noses in, but it’s there in plenty and it won’t run out – if only we can see.
Today is the first day of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity – and we need confidence in God’s love if we are to find the unity which is God’s will. I admit that I often go to ecumenical services with some degree of apprehension. Will I know the hymns? Will it be a matter of something for everyone, but little that anyone can get excited about? We need to overcome these personal feelings to see something that’s real in our common calling. To be prepared to find ourselves sometimes worshipping in strange circumstances, not always comfortable with what we might find, but ready to rejoice with others around us, because these too are God’s people, and together we have a calling to witness to God’s loving purpose for the whole world. We need to see that God’s love is poured out generously for us all, not in mean measured quantities, but lavishly like that vast lake of wine in Cana. The weather for the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity is rarely at its best, and sometimes it’s seemed rather less than a celebration – this year there is a united service in our own church. I hope people will come in good numbers. Be there to welcome others. And whatever we do, we need to do it confidently.
I can’t help but remember another Unity Week where a service I attended ran completely contrary to the spirit of today’s Gospel. It was an ecumenical service “with a difference” and the officiant wanted a symbol of unity which went beyond words, music and silence. He really wanted a Eucharist – but all too painfully we realised that our divisions meant that not everyone could join in receiving the consecrated bread and wine of Communion. So instead he invited us to share unblessed bread… and water. For the officiant this was as close as we could get to sharing the Eucharist. For me it was as far as we could get from it. Perhaps the pain wasn’t a bad thing to experience as solemnly we passed bread and a cup of water around – but for me this was a diet of self-denial, bread and water that we might associate with the harshest of prison regimes. Perhaps the fact that we were reduced to using them was an indication of how little we have truly achieved when we say we are one Body in Christ, but then cling to our own ways and divisions. But this was as far away as could be from the Feast of God’s kingdom to which we are called, to which our celebration of the Eucharist should point.
In this Eucharist we take water with the wine, but it is the wine which is poured into the chalice in plenty. It is the water turned to wine at Cana which first points to God at work in Christ. And still he is at work today, lavishing his love on us, calling on us to share it with others.
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Changed life, changed direction
Feast of the Conversion of St Paul
Sunday 25 January 2004
Rosie Junemann, Reader
Acts 9. 1-22
Galatians 1. 11-16
Matthew 19. 27-30
In my work with Mencap, there’s been quite a lot of travelling in the past week - to Harrogate and back on Tuesday, and to Darlington and back on Wednesday. I’ve been working in Darlington for the past twelve years, so I know the route up and down the A68 like the back of my hand. And I thought of that familiar and repeated journey when I recently read the following passage from the writer Tolstoy:
“It happened to me as it happens to a man who goes out on some business and on the way suddenly decides that the business is unnecessary and returns home. All that was on his right is now on his left and all that was on his left is now on his right; his former wish to get as far as possible from home has changed into a wish to be as near as possible to it.”
But Tolstoy isn’t writing about a routine journey to and from work. This passage is about something much more important – his conversion to the Christian faith. Here’s the full passage:
“Five years ago I came to believe in Christ’s teaching and my life suddenly changed….. It happened to me as it happens to a man who goes out on some business and on the way suddenly decides that the business is unnecessary and returns home. All that was on his right is now on his left and all that was on his left is now on his right; his former wish to get as far as possible from home has changed into a wish to be as near as possible to it. The direction of my life and my desires became different, and good and evil changed places.”
Today we commemorate another conversion – that of St Paul. It’s certainly an occasion to celebrate! Paul’s conversion is a pivotal moment, not just in his own life, but in the whole history of the church, since Paul is probably the most influential figure after Jesus in the history of Christian thought, doctrine and mission.
Despite a great deal of research, we cannot be absolutely certain of all the facts about Paul’s life. It is thought that he was born in about 5 AD into a devout Jewish family who lived in the city of Tarsus, in the Roman province of Cilicia – part of what we now call Turkey. He was named Saul and was probably given the second Roman name of Paul at birth, in keeping with the fashion of the time. As a young man he studied in Jerusalem under the famous rabbi Gamaliel and became a Pharisee, practising strict observance of the Jewish law.
Today’s story of Paul’s conversion is from Acts Chapter 9. But the evangelist, Luke, starts his story in Chapter 7, where he relates the death of the first Christian martyr, Stephen. When Stephen is stoned to death, “the witnesses laid their coats at the feet of a young man named Saul”. The young Saul, who believed that the new Christian sect was flouting Jewish law, persecuted them relentlessly. After the death of Stephen the enraged Jews attacked the members of the church in Jerusalem. Saul, we are told, ravaged the church by entering house after house and dragged off both men and women to commit them to prison. Such was their fear of him that, even three years after his conversion, when he went back to Jerusalem, the disciples were still afraid of him.
It’s against this background that we hear the story of Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus – the conversion of that fearsome enemy of the Church who was to become its greatest missionary. Paul’s whole life and being were transformed by his experience on the road to Damascus.
And of course, this is only the beginning of the story of Paul’s Christian life. It is thought that Paul was about thirty years old at the time of his conversion and for the next thirty years or so, until his death in Rome in around 67AD, Paul travelled extensively around the Mediterranean, maybe even as far as Spain, preaching the gospel, founding churches, and giving them support and encouragement. But his mission was not accomplished without difficulties. The suffering predicted in the Lord’s words to Ananias is evident in Paul’s story. He was beaten, stoned, imprisoned, and endured shipwreck, hunger and humiliation. The fierce persecutor became the one who was fiercely persecuted.
On the road to Damascus, Paul’s life – like that of the writer Tolstoy – was suddenly changed. Everything that had been on his right was now on his left and everything that had been on his left was now on his right. Paul came face to face with the risen Christ and instantly his whole world was turned back to front. As a committed Jew he had been unable to accept that Jesus was the Messiah. Indeed, to the Jews the idea of a crucified Messiah was blasphemous. But the cross which had been the ‘stumbling block’ to the Jews now became to Paul ‘the power and wisdom of God’. He now recognised in Jesus the Son of God, the Messiah. And if Jesus of Nazareth is the Son of God, the longed-for Messiah, then in his death and resurrection a new age has dawned. New possibilities of life open up for all who believe in him. As Paul wrote to the Corinthians:
“If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!”
But Paul’s experience on the road to Damascus was not just a new way of looking at the world – it was also a call to action, a call to his work as a missionary. But God’s new creation also demands a new way of living – a new society and a new kind of behaviour. Paul’s letters to the young churches are full of teaching about the ethics of that new lifestyle. To the Colossians, for example, he wrote:
“Seeing that you have stripped off the old self with its practices and have clothed yourself with the new self…………..clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness and patience ….. above all clothe yourselves with love.”
Something else happened, too, in that encounter on the road to Damascus. In that flash of light from heaven Paul glimpsed something of the glory and power of God, so that his whole life and being were illumined and transformed. Scripture doesn’t tell us much about what Paul looked like. But there’s an apocryphal book, written in Paul’s lifetime, which offers us the following description: “…a man little of stature, thin haired upon the head, crooked in the legs, of good state of body, with eyebrows joining, and nose somewhat hooked, full of grace: for sometimes he appeared like a man, and sometimes he had the face of an angel.” It’s as if Paul is glowing with that inward light so that others can see it and share in it. As Paul later wrote to the Corinthians: “All of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.”
I guess that few of us have had a momentous experience like the blazing light of the Damascus Road, but I’m sure that each one of us here today has in some way been touched by God. And when we encounter God in those small ways – in reading scripture, in prayer, in receiving communion, in the natural world, in our daily lives – his touch has the power to transform us. Each encounter with God should prompt us to look up and review our progress on our life’s journey. Are we still travelling in the right direction? Paul knew that God had sought him out. He said:
“God .. set me apart before I was born and called me through his grace”
And God is waiting for us to turn to him too, to call us to share in his new age, to activate our new lifestyle, and to be transformed in his likeness - to “shine like stars in the world”. Before us we have the example of Paul as an inspiration. He surely speaks from his own experience when he says:
“It is the God who said. ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ who has shone in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory on the face of Christ.”
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