Presentation of Christ in the Temple 2023

 

Lectionary texts: Malachi 3:1-5, Hebrews 2:14-18, and Luke 2:22-40

Our Gospel today, our good news, concerns the start and the end of life. And all our readings pay attention to the process of refining, as silver and gold are refined in a crucible.

Let us begin at the beginning, with Mary and her son Jesus, who is forty days old. Jewish Law mandated that when a woman gave birth, she had what we would today call maternity leave, forty protected days—which is forty days more than women are entitled to in the USA in 2023. This was part of the Purity Code. Purity, here, is not a moral condition, but a sign, of being set apart, or, holy. So, the Jews did not eat pork or shellfish, not because eating pork or shellfish is immoral, but as a sign that they were set apart from other groups, as having a special relationship with the god Yahweh. Likewise, new mothers and their babies were set apart, and after forty days made a public appearance at the Temple, not because childbirth was a necessary evil to atone for but as the culmination of a hidden process and a giving thanks to God. Those forty days gave space for a bonding to take place.

One of the images the Scriptures use for purity, or being set apart, for God and for one another, is the crucible. In a crucible, silver or gold are heated until they turn into a liquid form. In this form, metals can be combined, forming an alloy, and then poured into a mould, to set hard in whatever form is needed. In a crucible, what previously had one shape or use can be remade into something new, still precious, still holy, but for a different purpose.

Imagine the Lord God as gold, Mary as silver, Jesus as copper. Imagine, in this process, Mary’s life being bonded to the life of God to form white gold: a daughter of Israel who loved the Lord her God with all her heart, and all her mind, and all her soul, and all her strength. Imagine Jesus, her son, bonded with God to form rose gold: fully human, fully divine; inseparably so. Imagine Mary and Jesus bonded to form Sterling silver, coin silver, jewelry silver: something that can be shaped in a wide variety of ways.

 

Imagine your life, in the crucible, tested by heat, bonded with the life of God. Imagine our communal life, bonded with God in the same process, and poured out to be shaped for a particular purpose. How might that recast how we think about the pressures we are under?

 

Now, I’d like to move from beginnings to ending well, and to Simeon, an older man who knows that he has drawn near to his dying. As it happens, I read a lot about death and dying, and how we might handle this final great work of our lifetimes well. Those who are trained in palliative care deem that two things are necessary: the first is good management of the symptoms of whatever condition—cancer, or heart failure, for example—is causing our death; and the second is peace of mind.

We’re told that responsibility for managing any symptoms Simeon is experiencing has been taken on by the Holy Spirit: that’s an incredibly tender image, a beautiful revelation of God’s care for us, to the very end, the fruition of a lifelong bond. And, it is clear, that peace is guarding Simeon’s heart and mind, is shepherding every emotion. He is just about ready to go, but first he needs to attend to some last things: he needs to speak well of God; he needs to speak well of the younger generation, those whose own lives stretch out ahead of them, but will one day arrive where Simeon is now. He needs to hold this child in his arms, a stranger to him and yet reassuringly familiar; the one he has waited so long for. And Mary and Joseph are wise-beyond-their-years enough to allow Simeon to say what he needs to say, to receive his blessing—even the strange blessing that this child will be a sign for the ruin and resurrection of many in Israel, and that a sword will pierce Mary’s heart, too.

Jesus will be a sign for the ruin and resurrection of many. How? By his own ruin—a torturous undoing unto death—and resurrection. This is the way: the immense heat of the crucible, in which we dissolve and from which we are recast. Not only shall we all die, and discover that death is not the end; we get to rehearse this pattern, in many letting-go’s and goodbyes and new beginnings through the seasons of life, and in the dying of our loved ones. We get to practice, so that when we come at last to our own dying, we might have a perfect end. How might that recast how we think about aging and dying?

 

We are approaching the turning-point, from Christmas to Easter, from God-with-us in our beginning to God-with-us in our completion, Jesus, the Alpha and Omega. Three-and-a-half weeks from now, we will come again to Ash Wednesday, the contemplation of our mortality, and to the Season of Lent. And Lent will be a crucible, time set apart to be with God.

 

Notes, for how we might live this Gospel at Sunderland Minster:

Beginnings and endings: people coming to an end (or at least a break from) serving in certain roles: PCC, Church Wardens, Treasurer, Secretary, Gift Aid officer; there may be others. In what ways are you nearing death—and do you feel at peace with it? In what role might God be calling you to take the baton and run the next leg of the race for us?

The crucible: through Lent we will stop meeting as the 9.45 a.m. congregation and the Feast congregation, and meet together at 10.30 a.m. on Sundays for one simple service where we shall focus on listening to God together in prayer. What has been, now being dissolved, to be poured into what will be.

 

Third Sunday of Epiphany 2023

 

Third Sunday of Epiphany 2023: Isaiah 9:1-4, 1 Corinthians 1:10-18, Matthew 4:12-23

There are a lot of names in our readings today, names of fathers and sons, brothers and coworkers, names that are to do with the establishing of the often quarrelsome People of Israel and the often quarrelsome Church of Jesus.

In our Old Testament reading, quoted in our reading from the Gospel, we find the half-brothers Zebulun and Naphtali, two of the twelve sons of Jacob. Jacob’s sons and daughters were born to him by four women, two sisters and their two handmaids. Jacob loved Rachel, and asked to marry her, but was tricked into marrying Rachel’s sister Leah. Rachel was loved, but unable to conceive. Leah was unloved, but had many children, six of Jacob’s twelve sons. Each had what the other wanted.

Zebulun was Leah’s sixth son, and she gave him the name Zebulun. Jewish names often sound like another word, an idea that would be evoked every time the name was spoken, and Leah gave her son a name that would evoke the idea of exaltation, in the hope that her husband would at last exalt and love her.

Jealous of her sister, Rachel sought to give her husband sons by her handmaid. In the end Jacob would have two sons by each of his wives’ handmaids and Rachel would have two sons of her own, dying in childbirth at the end of her second pregnancy. It is undoubtedly a messy story of wealthy women exploiting women in their service, and those women in turn seeing additional security in turning exploitation to their advantage.

Naphtali was the second son of Rachel’s handmaid, technically her possession, and the name she gave him sounds like ‘to grapple,’ framing her relationship with her sister Leah as a wrestling match, and claiming that now, as Leah seemed to have stopped falling pregnant, Rachel had prevailed against her rival. In an emotional hook to catch her husband, Naphtali’s name resonated with Jacob’s birth, wrestling in the womb with his twin brother Esau, and with Jacob’s own name, ‘heel-gripper.’

Many years later, on his deathbed, Jacob blesses his sons, which is to say, he calls them to flourish as fully as is possible, given the circumstances of their lives, the decisions made by others that impact on them, and their own choices for good or ill.

Jacob blesses Zebulun, the exalted child, saying that his descendants will be a haven, like a safe harbour where ships that have crossed stormy seas carrying the wealth of nations can find shelter. The promise of strategic importance, of commerce and of peace.

Jacob blesses Naphtali, the grappler, saying that his descendants will know release from the grip that holds them fast; that they will be like twin fawns, lovely, not at loggerheads, redeeming the history of sibling rivalry. Though it should be said that the Hebrew is obscure, and some have argued that rather than bearing lovely fawns the blessing might be understood as giving lovely words; again, a redemption of rivalry. It is a short blessing, but powerful nonetheless, not overpromising, but leaving a lot of room for its outworking.

In our Gospel reading, Jesus appearing on the scene is understood as a fulfilment of the promises made to Zebulun and Naphtali. He comes, not only bringing light where there was darkness, but as a haven for fishermen and as one giving rebirth to rival sons, to Simon Peter and his brother Andrew, and James and his brother John.

In our New Testament reading we hear of divisions in the early Church, factions forming among those who claimed to follow Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas (that is, Peter), or Christ. More names, more quarrels. Paul appeals for unity. This Sunday falls in the middle of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, and, this year, coincides with proposals from the Bishops to General Synod for the blessing of same-sex civil partnerships and marriages, something that goes too far for some and not far enough for others. And yet we are where we are, and our bishops are wisely seeking to bless, to speak words that open up the possibility of lives flourishing as fully as may be possible, given the messiness of our lives together, the constraints we place on one another and ourselves, the at-times heated sibling rivalries we all contribute to in our sinning against God and our neighbour, and God’s settled commitment to bring life and light to us and through us to others.

Your name may say more about the person who named you than yourself, but it embeds you within a story: we do not create ourselves out of nothing. May you know blessing, perhaps first and foremost the blessing of standing in a long tradition of blessing. May you, who know what it is to walk through deep darkness, know increasing joy; you who carry a great weight, be delivered from evil; and may we all find grace and courage to repent: to lay aside every other identity that defines us in part, and follow Jesus into the unknown, where we may become more fully whom we are called to be.

 

Feast of the Epiphany 2023

 

Feast of the Epiphany 2023: Matthew 2:1-12

I preached off-the-cuff today, without a written sermon. But here are some notes written up after the event…

‘When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy. On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure-chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road.’ (Matthew 2:10-12)

The Magi

The magi were the academic elite of their day, government advisors at a national and international level. They are represented in our midst by our international postgrads. These are the kind of people who could rock up at a royal palace and be given an audience. [By the way, it was no blunder that brought them before Herod, no failure God had to intervene to fix; just as the shepherds went door-to-door in Bethlehem proclaiming the birth of the Messiah, so God sent the Magi to Herod (shepherds have no access here) to declare to him that his day on the throne was drawing to a close, and a new dawn had come.] The kind of people who travel with a large entourage, along the major trade routes, the fastest and safest way to travel. Don’t think of the ancient world as backward: these were arteries of the exchange of precious metals and spices, of ideas and wisdom, between the kingdoms of what today we would call the Middle East, the Indian Subcontinent, the Far East, of Africa, and Europe. But when their news alerts Herod to a threat, it puts their lives in danger. They cannot travel onward on the familiar routes, for Herod, who sent soldiers to kill the children of Bethlehem, would send soldiers to catch them up and slit their throats. So, they must take unknown roads, less travelled. And we are invited to go with them, into 2023 on unfamiliar roads through terrain that is new to us. We must go where we have not been before.

But before they journey home on unfamiliar roads, the Magi are overwhelmed with joy at encountering Jesus. Grown men, powerful, important, overwhelmed by a child. This is why Herod sends soldiers to kill him: he dare not come in person; he would be overwhelmed, too. And the Magi open their treasure-chests and worship, giving gold, frankincense, and myrrh. And we are invited to join with them.

Gold

Gold is financial viability. This will bankroll the holy family when, soon now, they must become refugees in Egypt. And on this Epiphany, we are asked, what financial gift will we bring? In December, we welcome many people here, to experience the joy of encountering Jesus. And our heating bill for December was over £5000. We can’t sustain that. I don’t know what individuals give; it would be entirely inappropriate for me to know. But I do know that my wife and I give 20% of the committed (i.e. planned, regular) giving; and that isn’t sustainable. You know that clergy move on. This isn’t me standing before you and announcing my departure; but it is saying out loud what ought to be obvious. Any family could, and does, move on. It may be that there are some members of our community who need to reassess and give more generously of their finances. What are we being called to give? It is also true that many in our congregation have very little to give [we have, for example, a significant ministry to and with asylum-seekers] and we should delight in that. But for this to be sustainable, we also need to see people of greater financial means caught up in the joy of encountering Jesus in and through this place. Which brings me to the second gift.

Frankincense

Incense is a sacrament of prayer, a visible sign and symbol of our prayers rising to heaven. What are we being called to pray? Who are we being called to pray for? How might we pray, for our university and our city council, for the redevelopment of the city centre and our place within that? How might we pray, that people, including people of financial means, might fill the empty seats around us? How might we set aside time to listen to God, to God-with-us in the person of Jesus, and to respond?

Myrrh

Myrrh is a fragrant anointing oil. I carry some myself, the Oil of Chrism, blessed at the Cathedral on Maundy Thursday, my favourite of the holy oils. It was used for two purposes: for anointing the recently deceased, in preparation for their burial; and anointing kings and queens at their coronation. It is interesting that we have recently buried a queen and will shortly crown a king. And along with ‘what might we give, financially?’ and ‘what might we pray?’ this third gift asks of us, What might we leave behind in 2022, and, What might we step into in 2023? What thing that we have done, that has perhaps become part of our identity, how we feel about ourselves, that was perhaps beautiful in its time, is God asking us to lay down, to allow to die? What aspect of who we are made to be is God asking us to take up, to take upon ourselves, for others? What might we need to let go of, personally or as a community? What might we need to embrace? If you have a sense that there is something God has been asking you to leave behind, or take a first step into [this can be hard to express, but I am thinking of the times people have felt a vocational call, or a change in role or location or stage of life, such as when children leave home] then I would be glad to anoint you with myrrh before you leave today.

What will we give?

What will we pray?

What will we leave behind in 2022?

In what new way will we say ‘Yes’ to God in 2023?

And, with the Magi, will we take the road less travelled?

 

Second Sunday of Christmas 2023

 

Lectionary readings: Isaiah 63:7-9 and Hebrews 2:10-18 and Matthew 2:13-23

How did you sleep? Did you sleep well; or were you disturbed by fireworks ushering in the New Year? Perhaps, like me, your bladder bids you rise in the small hours. Perhaps sleep eludes you, from time to time, and you take up a book to help you drift off again.

Sleep is a fascinating part of being human, an act of faith, surrendering ourselves to unconsciousness, that we might be born again, made new. Sleep returns us to Eden, and to the Lord God causing the creature fashioned from the soil to fall into a deep sleep, before taking it and breaking it in two, creating male and female from one common human being. But whereas in that first sleep we were broken, for the benefit of many, in our subsequent sleep the broken fragments of our days are taken up and made whole again, our dreams being a process of sifting and sorting, in search of patterns, from which we piece together sense, meaning, understanding, that, on waking, propels us into action.

Until the advent of the electric light bulb, people took two sleeps at night. This pattern appears to be a stable one, across cultures and through the ages. Families slept together on a shared mattress, retiring to bed by 9.00 p.m., rising again between 11.00 p.m. and 1.00 a.m. before sleeping again until around 6.00 a.m. This first sleep took the edge off the tiredness of the day, while the nighttime waking hours provided for slower activities. This was time for moving around the house doing simple, largely automatic tasks. Time for meditation on Scriptures, ‘of recounting the gracious deeds of the Lord, the praiseworthy acts of the Lord’ to your children or neighbours. Time to send existing children off on household chores and procreate sisters and brothers for them.

It is fascinating to note those things that take place at night in the Gospels. Nicodemus visits Jesus at night. Yes, this is advantageous, in that it minimizes the chances of being seen, of report reaching unsympathetic ears; but it is not an odd action. Nicodemus would quite reasonably expect that Jesus would be awake and that engaging in theological reflection was an acceptable, even normal, activity to undertake between the first and second sleep.

Jesus himself sets parables at night. The story of a man whose guest, having been delayed, turns up at midnight, causing him to knock on his neighbour’s door in hope of bread. The shocking element here is not that one should visit your neighbour at midnight, but that the neighbour has returned to bed for their second sleep so soon, right in the middle of a time of activity. As the neighbour is a cipher for God, Jesus speaks of a God who sleeps, unafraid, with his children, and who rises to break bread with friends and strangers.

Another parable, of a woman lighting a lamp and sweeping her home by night. The search for a lost coin adds drama to an everyday—or every night—scene.

Three times in our Gospel reading this morning we observe the holy family asleep, Joseph, Mary, and Jesus, lying together. This is the first sleep of the night, the surrender of the conscious self at the end of the day. And as Joseph sleeps, he is visited in his dreams by an angel. Not once, but on three different nights. The first of these isn’t even the first time this Joseph, this dreamer, has experienced such an encounter, a messenger sent from God, to help him put together the broken pieces of his waking hours.

The angel warns him that Herd is seeking to kill the infant Jesus and instructs him to take his family and flee to Egypt, to seek asylum among the Jewish community there. They rise, and spend the waking hours pulling their things together, putting their affairs in order, undoubtedly conferring with, and giving instruction to members of Joseph’s extended family. And when the household returns to bed for the second, longer sleep, Joseph takes his wife and the child and they slip away, on the road heading south of the border.

Sometime later, during another first sleep, the angel returns, instructing Joseph that it is safe to return home, those seeking the child’s life are dead. No need to travel with such urgency this time. Arriving home in due course, Joseph hears that one of Herod’s sons is on the throne. Despite the angel’s words, it doesn’t feel quite safe enough. The angel returns, again by night, and on further advice the holy family journey on, to Nazareth in the north, Mary’s hometown.

Into these dreams, Matthew inserts a fragment of the words of the prophet Jeremiah (Jeremiah 31:15) about the matriarch of Bethlehem lamenting over her lost children. In the original text, the children have been carried off into exile, but God promises to bring them home. Though it is ambiguous in Matthew’s recounting, the lament (and promise) here is as much over Jesus’ sojourn in (and return from) Egypt as for the lost boys of Bethlehem. But what is fascinating is that the context of the words Matthew cites is God speaking peace into the fretful dream of someone in search of rest (‘Thus says the Lord: The people who survived the sword found grace in the wilderness; when Israel sought for rest, the Lord appeared to him from far away.’ … ‘Thereupon I awoke and looked, and my sleep was pleasant to me.’ … ‘Thus says the Lord, who gives the sun for light by day and the fixed order of the moon and the stars for light by night, who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar—the Lord of hosts is his name: If this fixed order were ever to cease from my presence, says the Lord, then also the offspring of Israel would cease to be a nation before me for ever.’ (Jeremiah 31:2, 3a, 26, 35-36) The night is ordained by God, as a meeting place between earth and heaven, between humanity and divinity, forever.

Whether you have fallen asleep yet or not, angels break into all our readings set for today. The Old Testament reading from Isaiah speaks of the Lord becoming the saviour of his people in distress, acting directly and not through the intermediary of an angel. The New Testament reading from Hebrews reminds us that God did not come to save angels, but human flesh and blood, doing so by becoming one of us, becoming like us in every respect. ‘Because he himself was tested by what he suffered, he is able to help those who are being tested.’ Suffered, here, means to be acted upon, whether for good or evil. Tested, here, means character being tried by such means, to determine whether it is trustworthy or not.

In coming into the world that was created through him, one of the things that Jesus suffers is being acted upon by sleep. When the Lord comes in person as saviour, he does so surrendering to sleep. This is remarkable. In this way we see the humanity of God, having delegated authority throughout creation, honouring the ordained purposes of the night for rest, for reflection, for recreation, not needing to be constantly active in agency. Sleeping, without fear; rising, without terror, even in the face of evil. For the writer to the scattered Hebrews this finds its fullest expression in the death and resurrection that every sleep rehearses, freeing us from our enslavement to the fear of death.

The advent of the light bulb changed our experience of sleep. The digital revolution has done so yet again, a more sedentary lifestyle and the ubiquity of digital screens conspiring against us. Under-worked limbs and an over-stimulated brain do not easily surrender to sleep. Hard though it may prove, given where we are as a society, the wisdom of the hours between a first and second sleep may prove a (Christmas) gift worth reclaiming.

In 2023, may we encounter angels, and even Jesus himself, in the night. By candlelight or the soft glow of kindle light. In the pages of a book. In prayer and praise. In gentle rhythmic tasks. In making love. In dreams. May Jesus gather up the fragments of your days and make you whole again; then take you up, bless you, break and give you, your life for the life of the world. And on the day when he comes to take you home to glory, may he come by night, with the moon and the stars. Refreshed by the first sleep, may you awake to life within his house, according to the abundance of his steadfast love. Until then, may the nights you must flee for your life be few, may the nights of weeping be met with consolation, may your guardian angel watch over your bed, and may the Lord grant you the rest you seek. Amen.