Fourth Sunday of Advent 2024

Lectionary readings: Hebrews 10.5-10 and Luke 1.39-55

Christmas is the Season of the Incarnation. The season of learning how to inhabit a body. The season of coming home to your body.

Perhaps you are uncomfortable at the prospect. Perhaps you feel that your body is too tall, too fat, too frail, too plain, too awkwardly clumsy to be loved. At puberty, our bodies can run ahead of us, demanding that we expand, to lofty elevation or ample bosom, before our peers, leaving us exposed to cruel name-calling. Whoever said ‘sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me’ was deluded or misguided at best. And in old age, our bodies demure to do the things we have been so long used to doing together, call on us to downsize our lives – but how can you downsize, when your body has accumulated so much baggage over the years?

This Sunday, Advent 4, the Church reflects on the visit of Mary, in her first trimester, to Elizabeth, in her third trimester. When their bodies were experiencing changes and where two new bodies are first formed.

In their world, children were seen as the fruit of the womb, a woman’s fruitfulness in life determined by her ability to bear sons and daughters. Elizabeth is barren, ground from which no tree has sprung. And this is a source of great shame, the belief that you are not worthy of love, not worthy of connection. That awareness (distorted, but no less real for that) that you are not enough, not good enough. ‘Poor Elizabeth,’ her fruitful neighbours say, ‘She has always followed God’s laws so diligently and yet he does not reward her’ (have they forgotten how many childless women have played such key parts in their people’s past?) and their condescending pity adds to the slick of shame.

When Elizabeth realises that she is pregnant, she keeps it a secret for five long months. The only people in her community who possibly understand her existence are other barren women, and she cannot risk losing them also, to envy. Not to mention the very real risk of miscarriage. And so, for five months, Elizabeth is hyper-vigilant, not to let slip her condition. Do nothing out of the ordinary.

For five months, she is utterly alone in the world. Unable to converse with anyone (even her husband has lost his voice). This is enforced solitude, even in the midst of everyday life. Perhaps the solitude is not much different from how she felt before, alone among the other women drawing water from the village well. But the need for hyper-vigilance is new.

First trimester: hiding morning sickness, back ache, stomach cramps. Second trimester: don’t respond to the joy of feeling that first flutter of your unborn child moving within; don’t respond to the discomfort when, bigger, stronger, they kick against the womb. No one can know.

As Elizabeth reaches the third trimester, as it becomes too hard to keep her changing body hidden, news of her pregnancy breaks. Now, at last, she can breathe. Now, at last, the community holds space for her, to focus on her coming child, and once she has delivered her son, to bond with him. Now someone else will go to the well. Now her relative Mary comes, quickly and purposefully, to be with Elizabeth. Now she has company, for solitude – so essential to the driven life – is dangerous for the soul that is in recovery from shame.

And even now, Elizabeth wrestles with the shame that God has moved to remove. ‘Who am I,’ she asks, ‘that the mother of my Lord should come to me?’ I am not worthy.

Even so, Mary comes; and with her, joy. With her, deep connection, woman to woman, womb-to-womb, unborn-son-to-son. This is the antidote to shame.

And Mary sings a song of revolution. A song of God raising up and honouring those who are nobody in their own eyes, honouring them and establishing them in community, with others like them. Connection, with shared experience. You are not alone. You are worthy of love and connection, you and those like you who have known shame, who have felt yourself unworthy. And those who have looked down on you, they will be humbled. Brought low, sent away empty.

Elizabeth is the first person who Mary sings her song over.

But her song has echoed down the centuries. And Mary sings her song today, over all who live with shame – as all live with shame. Sings over you, and over me. Over the emptiness inside, the belief that we are not and cannot be worthy of being filled, with love.

Sing, Mother of God. Sing over your relatives. Sing, and may your song be poison to our shame, burning it away.

 

Third Sunday of Advent 2024

 

Third Sunday of Advent: Philippians 4.4-7 and Luke 3.7-18

I wonder if there is a smell that evokes this time of year for you? Perhaps it is a bowl of clementine oranges. Or the smell of wet wool, transporting you back to childhood mittens and rolling snowballs in your hands. Perhaps it is the clinical smell of the room in which a loved one died, at this time of year. More than any of our other senses, smell takes hold of memory and can transport us through time to some distant moment.

One of the big themes in our Gospel passage today is wrath. Wrath is the settled and ultimately victorious opposition to rebellion. And the root of the idea is connected to smell, to the drawing-in of air through the nostrils, before acting decisively.

As John calls the people to repent and return to God, he is amazed at who responds. Many in the crowd have sided with Rome against their own people, grasping opportunity as tax farmers or soldiers serving a local client king backed by Rome. John calls them vipers, a reference to the Garden of Eden, where the serpent deceived our first parents. God had created the human in God's own likeness, and declared us to be, like God, very good. Yet now sin had come to afflict us.

This did not, and does not, change our nature. Sin afflicts us, as does cancer. If you had tests and went to the doctor for the results, they might say, “The bad news is that you have cancer. The good news is, we have caught it in time and are confident in our therapy.” A doctor would not say, “You are a cancerous person!” Likewise, God comes in compassion to deal with sin. God promises Eve that her seed will crush the serpent’s head, even as its seed bites her seed’s heel.

John observes that God has taught even the vipers, those who sided with Rome, to flee to God from the coming wrath. That wrath is the wrath of Rome, and it is a bitter smell in the nostrils, evoking other bitter memories of national disaster. For wrath is always historical, not abstract.

Jesus also calls certain groups vipers, and asks how they will escape hell? The hell he refers to is the coming wrath of Rome, whose legions will burn Jerusalem to the ground.

There is a tradition in scripture of seeing something of the wrath of God being exercised through the wrath of empires. And Jesus asks the Father, if there is anything of your judgement falling on your rebellious people in the coming wrath of Rome, let that wrath fall on me instead, and let that be enough. In this Jesus is standing in the tradition of the martyrs of the time of Greek invasion and occupation of the Temple.

The Father accepts Jesus’ prayer. And so, when the Jewish people rebel against Rome in 66 CE, and, midway through an eight-year war, the Romans burn Jerusalem, this is not the wrath of God falling on a nation that rejected his Son. It is solely the overreaching wrath of Rome. And for this, Rome will experience the wrath of God.

But the wrath of God is quite unlike the wrath of Rome. It is not military. It is not violent. Instead, it looks, and smells, like this:

gentiles are embraced within the people of the God previously of the Jews;

women, slaves, and children are given equal status to free men;

Christians serve their neighbours in times of plague and disaster;

Christians refuse to recant their declaration that Jesus is Lord, even in the face of the lions.

What kind of lives are these? It takes a couple of hundred years, but Christ will topple Caesar, not by might but by the aroma of joy, of peace, of non-anxious people in the midst of an anxious world.

This is what the wrath of God looks like. And with Rome judged, in love, the age of wrath with which the New Testament is concerned comes to an end.

John takes up a different image for Jesus, that of removing the protective outer husks from the kernel of wheat. Jesus comes, not to transform some unacceptable husk into acceptable grain, nor to separate out inedible husks from edible wheat, but to remove the husk from every grain. He comes to remove that which keeps us from our neighbour, the hard shell. He comes to deal with our sin, and we are still called to repent and believe the good news.

Of course, we still live in a world where we see the bitter wrath of nation states and would-be emperors falling on men, women and children. In such a world, we are not to be vipers, siding with power, but instead, like the early church, might also be joyful, gentle, non-anxious, prayerful, thankful, peaceful.

May that be, increasingly, your experience. And if it is not your experience today, may you be transported to a time when it was. May this Season evoke the memory of the One who came to us, who comes to us still, and who will come to us again. Amen.

 

Fourth Sunday of Advent 2023

Luke 1:26-38

‘In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.’

Genesis 1.1-5, Authorised (King James) Version

When God sends the angel Gabriel to Mariam, to Mary, we read, ‘she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be.’

The Greek word translated ‘much perplexed’ is diatarassó which means ‘agitated’ or ‘acutely distressed’ and conveys an intense to-and-fro between thoughts and emotions.

The Greek word translated ‘pondered’ is dialogizomai which means ‘going back and forth, in order to evaluate something,’ in a way that, typically, leads to a confused conclusion.

Mary is churned up, like the waters that cover the formless earth.

Which is interesting, because while the root of her name is generally thought to be the Hebrew for ‘rebelliousness’—which fits well in light of her defiant Song, the Magnificat; and may go some way to explain why so many Jewish women born under Roman occupation were given the name—St Jerome records another origin story, that Mariam means ‘drop of the sea.’ A microcosm of the great deep.

Mary is agitated, distressed, not by what Gabriel has been sent to tell her, nor even (unlike Zechariah, or the shepherds) by the angel himself, but by his greeting.

God comes to create anew, the first Day. Like the earth of old, Mary’s womb is empty; indeed, like the earth of old, it has become futile, for she has dedicated her life to God, giving up the possibility of bearing children. As with the waters of old, Mary is deep, and her face is covered with darkness, with confusion. And, as with the earth of old, the Spirit of God is moving over her, as an eagle hovers over her chicks, to bring forth the Day. God is brooding, sheltering, bringing forth.

Mary is amazing, not because she has it all together, but because she responds to God’s word. And the mystery of that ‘Yes!’ is that God has a human mother. That God becomes human, shares in our nature, that we might share in the divine nature. The mystery of that ‘Yes!’ is that it births not only the Christ, but also the Church, the new humanity. The mystery of that ‘Yes!’ is that it births not only the new humanity, but the new earth. Because, in Christ, through Mary, God is making all things new.

If the depths and the riches of that mystery doesn’t leave you churned up, you must be dead!

But here is something. As God moved upon the face of the waters, and as God came upon Mary, so God comes, moving over the chaos of your life and mine, the waste places, our emptiness. We don’t need to strive harder, to be a better person, to be acceptable to God, or worthy to be called by him. We don’t need to tame our tides, that ebb and flow, or drown our questions, ignore our fears, mask our distress, or dial ourselves down. But we can choose to say, “Here I am, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”

That is enough. And who can say what light and life will break out from within us, that has long sat chained in darkness? Who can say what will unfold, in you and through you, for the good of the world, and to the glory of God?

 

Fourth Sunday of Advent 2022

 

Lectionary readings: Isaiah 7:10-16 and Romans 1:1-7 and Matthew 1:18-25

As soon as Halloween is out of the way, Channel 5 starts showing wall-to-wall Christmas Rom-Coms. There is, it tuns out, an endless supply of forgettable feel-good fare — have we seen this one before? — all variations on perhaps three storylines. Plot 1: attractive young woman realizes that she is about to make the mistake of her life marrying her corporate Big City fiancé, returns home to the small town she grew up in for Christmas, bumps into her childhood sweetheart, and falls in love again with all she had thought she wanted to get away from. Plot 2: widowed father with teenage daughter in need of a new mother and a dog. Plot 3: the protagonist, who may be an attractive young woman or a ruggedly handsome widower, help a small town to rediscover what made it special in the first place. Throw in the helping hand of a matchmaking grandmother, best friend, bookstore owner, or Santa, and maybe a hardball antagonist awaiting redemption, and you get the drift. The course of true love never runs smooth, ploughs into the snow a couple of times, but always gets there in the end, just in time to set up the possibility of a sequel set next Christmas.

I want to suggest that the story of Mary and Joseph is a love story. Culturally, it would have been an arranged marriage, but let’s not make the culturally arrogant mistake of assuming that arranged marriages are forced marriages or loveless unions. Here is a young couple introduced to one another by family members, perhaps with wider input, as a likely good match. It is clear to me that theirs is a love story, which, like all good love stories, does not run smoothly but has obstacles to overcome, misunderstandings to get over, the need for help, an angelic advisor for Joseph, wise old cousin Elizabeth for Mary. All the elements of a Christmas love story are there, though this one is not so easily forgettable. This one culminates with God-is-with-us, and sets up the sequel, in which this God-with-us Saves his people from their sins.

I want to suggest that the story of Mary and Joseph is a love story. And I want to suggest that the story of Jesus and Paul is a love story too, not a Rom-Com but perhaps a Bromance. Listen to the way Paul writes about Jesus to the house churches of Rome, words tumbling over each other, on and on. This is how we talk about one whom we love. And when Paul does stop to draw breath, he calls those he is writing to ‘all God’s beloved in Rome,’ God’s beloved. And then he says, ‘Grace to you,’ that is, God reaching out to you, giving himself to you. A love story, between Jesus and the Church, the Prince and his bride.

And the question I want to ask this morning is, what first attracted you to Jesus?

What first attracted you to Jesus?

For me, it was that we grew up together. I don’t mean that I was born two-thousand years ago, or that Jesus was born in the early 1970s. But all of time and space bends back to Jesus. That is why when Paul paints his picture of Jesus, the Old Testament prophets are there, king David is there, people who lived and died many centuries before Jesus was born. That is why all the Gentiles are there, people who live across the whole known world. Time and space, folding back to wherever Jesus, the Son of God, is. And Jesus and I grew up together. In the home I grew up in, there was Mum and Dad and Jesus, and me, and, later, my brother and my sister. And Jesus was as real, as solid, as my parents, even if invisible to the eye or silent to the ear. That didn’t prevent me from seeing or hearing him, because, well, children have yet to be limited to such a narrow world. My world was his world, my timeline, my place, when and where I was folding back to him, my friend. We had adventures, got into (and out of) scrapes together. From before I have conscious memories, I have stories from my parents. One time, they were hosting a student house party, a house full of students due to be sleeping on the floors, and there was a flood in the neighbourhood. The water level was rising, up the steps, about to spill over, into the house, onto the floors. We were an inch from disaster. And, I am told, I stood in the doorway, in my nappy, and told the water to go down, in the name of Jesus. And it did. At that very moment, some streets away, some men managed to unblock a storm drain, and the waters ran away. That was the mechanics of the miracle. But it was a miracle, just one of the scrapes Jesus and I got into and out of again. Best friend ever.

It’s meant to be a love story. It’s meant to find us where we are, perhaps a life that hasn’t turned out as we had expected and sweeps us up in good news. There are plenty such stories around us, just ask those who have risked their lives to belong to Jesus. What about you? What first attracted you to Jesus? And, this Christmas, might you rediscover him all over again?

 

Third Sunday of Advent 2021

 

Lectionary readings: Zephaniah 3:14-20 and Philippians 4:4-7 and Luke 3:7-18

‘Sing aloud, O daughter Zion; shout, O Israel! Rejoice and exult with all your heart, O daughter Jerusalem! The Lord has taken away the judgements against you, he has turned away your enemies. The king of Israel, the Lord, is in your midst; you shall fear disaster no more.’

Zephaniah 3:14, 15

‘Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.’

Philippians 4:4-7

‘As the people were filled with expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah, John answered all of them by saying, ‘I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing-fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing-floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.’

‘So, with many other exhortations, he proclaimed the good news to the people.’

Luke 3:15-18

On the Third Sunday of Advent, the Church remembers John the Baptist, who prepared the way for Jesus, and in keeping with this, the readings set for this day are full of joy. Luke quotes John as saying, of Jesus, that, “His winnowing-fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing-floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.” Good news, right? Well, yes, it is. Really good news. Here’s why.

This is an image taken from the harvest, when a local community gathered in the grain that would feed them until the harvest next year. Grain is composed of a nutritious inner heart, the kernel, and a protective outer casing, the husk. Some of the grain would be set aside for planting, to produce next year’s harvest; and the husks would prevent the grain from rotting in the barn. But the husk is inedible, and before you can turn the grain into flour for making bread, must be removed. This was done on a threshing-floor, a flat area of exposed rock. Grain would be poured onto the floor, and a threshing-sledge dragged back and forth over it: a heavy wooden bar with iron teeth on the underside, pulled by animal-power. This process broke the husks open. Then someone would take a threshing-fork and throw the grain into the air. The heavier kernels would fall back to the ground; and the light husks, now known as chaff, would be blown away by the breeze. Not far, but far enough to sweep off to the side, and pile up for fuel for the fire. Waste not want not. So, this is an image of Jesus separating the husks from the kernels. But what has this to do with joy? As it happens, everything.

The American professor of social work, Brené Brown, states, “When we lose our tolerance to be vulnerable, joy becomes foreboding.” When we lose our tolerance to be vulnerable, joy becomes foreboding. Brown continues, “In moments of joy, we try to beat vulnerability to the punch, by dress-rehearsing tragedy.” What does she mean? Joy is an intense, overwhelming emotion. Those of us who are parents may have experienced joy as we look at our sleeping child. Or perhaps you have experienced joy looking up at the night sky, or when you come upon a particularly pleasing tree, or on seeing old friends for the first time in a long time. But we need to be vulnerable to experience joy: it cannot coexist with anything defensive such as cynicism. Yet we all know what it is to lose our tolerance to be vulnerable. We’ve all been hurt, and perhaps you reach the point where you promise yourself that you won’t allow yourself to be hurt again. We all have our defence-mechanisms against vulnerability, and the cost of that, Brown notes, is that we reach a point where joy becomes foreboding. That is, the moment we experience that intense joy emotion, our response is to contain it. To say, it won’t last. To imagine losing the thing that has given rise to that joy.

There is a neuroscience to foreboding, or the fear of disaster. The more we go down that path, the more well-worn that path becomes in our brain. There is nothing that gives me greater joy than being with my wife, Jo. We are such a good fit, we often have the same thoughts at the same moment, join in to finish one another’s sentences in unison, and laugh at the simple wonder of it. And when Jo is out longer than I expect, I find myself literally pacing up and down the room and wondering how long it is reasonable to wait before calling round all the hospitals to ask whether there has been a serious accident on the A19 and if she is lying on a resuscitation table with a crash team fighting to save her life. It bears no connection to reality, causes me anxiety, and tempts me to withdraw when I am with Jo so that it won’t hurt so much if it happens—though the real tragedy is that nothing can protect you from the loss of a loved one, and pre-emptive withdrawal only robs you of the present. And you can laugh at me, or feel sorry for Jo, but such scenarios are played out in countless minds.

And I am really glad that Jesus comes to break open the protective husks of the grain of my heart and mind, that he gathers up the kernels of joy, and that he has an unquenchable fire so that the chaff is consumed and need not blow grit into my eyes and the eyes of those around me. That really is good news.

There is also a neuroscience to joy, and it is possible to disciple the brain by habitual practices, to enter more often and more fully into the joy Jesus hopes for us (on the night he was arrested, he prayed that the joy his disciples knew might be made complete). Again, Brené Brown notes that those people whose lives are joyful have one thing in common: they regularly practice gratitude. Not some vague ‘attitude of gratitude,’ but actual, concrete disciplines, practices, such as writing down three things each day for which you are grateful; or going round the family at the dinner table and everyone sharing one thing they are grateful for today; or asking friends on Facebook to share something they are grateful for this week. The apostle Paul had a gratitude practice of praying for the churches he knew, calling to mind—with his travel companions—specific people and specific things about them that he was grateful for. And then he wrote letters to let them know he was thinking of them, with deep gratitude, and, therefore, great joy.

Gratitude is the threshing-sledge that breaks us open to vulnerability and transforms foreboding into joy. As we choose to be grateful, Jesus is then able to step in with his winnowing-fork, dealing with the chaff, the defensive mechanisms, the trust issues that prevent us from knowing joy made complete. So, if you want to know the joy of the Lord, take up a practice of gratitude. Try one you like the sound of, or which you think might work well for you in your life right now and give it a go, between now and Christmas, and see how you get on. And then, perhaps in addition to writing down three things every day that you are grateful for, or whatever it may be, you might choose to pause, any time you experience joy, and, instead of catastrophising, respond with gratitude: thank you, God, for this moment, for this sunrise, for this person in my life; I’m grateful for this gift.

I say this not as an expert witness who has got it all worked out, but as one who needs to hear the good news, yet again, on this Third Sunday of Advent as we prepare ourselves for Jesus to come in glory. As one who has habitual patterns of thought that need re-wiring, but who knows that this is possible, by the grace of God and the wonder of the mind and the decision to follow Jesus and be a disciple, to live a disciplined life, a joyous life. Come, Lord Jesus! Amen.

 

Fourth Sunday of Advent 2020

The Lord is with you

Lectionary readings: 2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16 and Luke 1:26-38

We have heard read to us two episodes, one from the Hebrew Bible, our Old Testament, and the other from the Gospels. And in each, one person says to another, ‘the Lord is with you.’ And I wonder what it means, to say to someone that the Lord is with them? Mary is quite right: these are perplexing words, and we should ponder what sort of greeting this might be. It is a highly unusual one, but not without precedent, occurring, as far as I can tell, four times in our Scriptures. The first time is when ‘the angel of the Lord’ addresses a young man named Gideon (Judges 6:12). Gideon is not quite, but as good as, a nobody from nowhere; the very last sort of person he (and we) might expect to be sent an angelic messenger. Moreover, Gideon is doing something highly unusual: he is threshing grain in a wine press. I say highly unusual, and in any other year it would have been, but, in a year when his people were sore pressed by a recurring threat that curtailed every aspect of their lives, it was probably just one of any number of adaptive practices constituting a ‘new normal’. In any other year, we, too, would find threshing grain in a wine press highly unusual; and yet, here we are, receiving the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, usually found in bread and wine, ‘in one kind,’ in bread alone.

The next time we come across this phrase in quite the same way is, as we heard in our first reading, when the prophet Nathan says it to king David [though in the form ‘the Lord be with you!’ it is used by David’s ancestor Boaz as a greeting to his harvesters (Ruth 2:4) and by king Saul as a blessing-cum-dismissal to David as he goes to face the Philistine, Goliath (1 Samuel 17:37)]. Whereas the Lord wishes to call out the ‘mighty warrior’ from within Gideon, with David, the Lord has already called him out, from following the sheep to be prince over his people. Surrounding enemies have been subdued—though the Lord has more to do, to establish rest from all [David’s] enemies.

The third time we meet this phrase, it is addressed by the prophet Azariah, to Asa and all Judah and Benjamin: ‘the Lord is with you, while you are with him. If you seek him, he will be found by you, but if you abandon him, he will abandon you.’ (2 Chronicles 15:2). Like David, Asa is king. Like Gideon, the territory of his people is broken, over-whelmed and ravaged by am enemy. And whereas David does not get to build, Asa must tear down, must overthrow practices that have come between God’s people and their God. In Asa’s day, they must rediscover their identity, must renew their covenant commitment, and, flowing from that renewal, must experience a new normal in worship.

And last but by no means least, the angel Gabriel addresses these words to Mary, who, like Gideon, is as near to nobody from nowhere as you could care to imagine; who like Gideon and Asa lives among a people whose daily lives are constrained by invasive, occupying, inhumane forces; who is connected, by marriage, into the house of David. ‘Greetings, favoured one! The Lord is with you.’

The thing that runs through each one of these occurrences, carried by these words, is a recurring promise of peace, of living no longer disturbed by enemies. A peace that is enduring, albeit conditional: a seemingly impossible peace that can be embraced, or abandoned, with costly consequence.

Gideon’s response is timid, hoping for reassurances. David’s response is repentant, willing to significantly adapt his plans, for a better vision. Asa’s response is full of zeal, if somewhat misguided, simultaneously taking things too far and not quite far enough. And Mary’s response is, ‘Here I am, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.’ What word? The Lord is with you.

And here we are, in the days before Christmas, at the tail end of a year in which our lives, communally and personally, have been deeply disrupted by a global pandemic; in which our political leaders are playing the kind of brinkmanship, with our neighbours in Europe, that turns friends and allies into enemies; and, to the West, a polarised United States totters on the brink of civil war. May it not be so. Gideon, David, Asa, and Mary are given to us, to learn how (and how not) to orientate and reorientate our lives, as a people set free by the Prince of Peace, not at war with one another but reconciled to God, our neighbour, and one another. Even in the most unlikely circumstances.

This Christmas, despite everything, may you know peace. The Lord is with you.

 

Third Sunday of Advent 2020

 

Joy

Lectionary readings: 1 Thessalonians 5:16-24 and John 1:6-8, 19-28

Cousin John came as a witness to testify to the light. Note that when another John, the gospel-writer, tells us this he repeats it, underlines it for emphasis: he came to testify to the light.

Writing to the church in Thessalonica, Paul exhorts them: rejoice always…give thanks in all circumstances…hold fast to what it good…

Testify to the light. To our Lord Jesus Christ, in whom we rejoice, whether the circumstances we are living through are desirable or undesirable; for in him we see goodness and beauty, and in him we share in that goodness and beauty even as we are being made like him by the God of peace.

Our theme for Advent this year is Comfort and Joy. Last Sunday, we thought about the comfort that comes from God, and today we reflect on the joy that comes from God. And the question is, what is giving you joy, in these days? Where have you seen the light?

I have been walking the streets of the parish, dropping Comfort and Joy baubles through every letterbox. Several of you have helped in this, along with several friends of mine from the running club. And it has been joyful to hear back the responses of so many people who have been profoundly moved at receiving their bauble, a small gift with a disproportionally large impact. It has been a joyful thing to go from letterbox to letterbox, and a joy to see the willingness of those who have given of their time to get this giveaway complete. In a dark year, I testify to the light, to the light of Christ illuminating hearts and reflecting back from feet and hands and faces.

 

Second Sunday of Advent 2020

 

Comfort

Lectionary readings: Isaiah 40:1-11 and Mark 1:1-8

What a year it has been. Relentless. We’ve reached the environmental tipping-point into another mass extinction; the perfect unbalanced conditions to unleash a new viral strain that has impacted all our lives, taken loved ones from us and left others with life-long health issues, and hit our economy harder than anything for four hundred years; and we’re about to find ourselves an island nation with no trade deals with our neighbours. And our theme for today is God’s Comfort. Are you having a laugh?

The first people to hear these words from Isaiah knew what it was to live through multiple crises. Within the space of a generation, they’d lived through the siege and fall of Jerusalem (not the first siege they’d lived through, by the way), the destruction of the temple, the removal of the royal court—of the monarchy and government and civil service—into exile. Those left behind found themselves in a ruined land, vulnerable to raids on whatever remained by surrounding peoples. The institutions that formed and sustained identity—the temple, the nation, the land—not just places, but beliefs about those places and themselves as a people—were stripped away or fallen apart. This was a people who had experienced, and were still experiencing, trauma. And into this moment, God speaks: Comfort, comfort my people.

To whom is God speaking? Not to Isaiah, the prophet, who is simply reporting what he has been permitted to see and hear. No, Yahweh, the God of the Israelites, the god of a people in exile in the territory of other gods, is addressing the assembly of the gods, the angelic and demonic beings. It is Yahweh who has permitted his people to be humbled, in judgement for their dogged commitment to injustice. It is on account of Yahweh’s justice, not powerlessness, that these things have come to pass; and it is on account of Yahweh’s mercy that now he decrees, ‘Enough!’ Enough, now. It is time to rebuild.

It begins in the wilderness, in the place of encounter with God, in the place where corrupted institutions are stripped away. In the place of exodus from slavery in Egypt. In the place of exile from captivity to self-deception and false security in Jerusalem. It begins, as it always begins when God is doing a new thing, in the wilderness. And it proceeds with a levelling of uneven ground, in order to achieve a uniting of all peoples on equal standing which goes hand-in-hand with the glory of the Lord being made visible.

This is not yet achieved, in Isaiah’s vision, or in ours. There is a tension, a paradox: that it shall be achieved is inevitable, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken; and yet, its fulfilment also requires the active participation of the gods and mortals. Our God does not work alone, nor by coercion.

What, then, is the comforting message? All people are grass. Excuse me? That’s it? That’s what you’ve got? All people are grass? How is that good news? Well, when you are already withered and faded, and you see others in all their glory, here is a reminder that this is not blind chance, nor the inevitable outcome of human initiative or lack of initiative, but God’s agency, God’s generative and ongoing sustaining activity within the world; and, therefore, we ought to view ourselves and others with humility and appreciation, perhaps even delight. All people are grass…and grass is actually incredibly resilient; it grows back; it also binds the earth (soil) together to prevent erosion, to prevent further loss. Individual blades of grass may be small, but grass is nonetheless significant; it feeds, well, directly or indirectly, everything.

The angelic beings are called to comfort God’s people. And, in response, God’s people are called to be the herald of good tidings. God’s people in exile; God’s people who have come through crisis and are yet to experience the return, the building back. God’s people, in the midst of all the peoples, in God’s world. Tidings of Comfort and Joy. To proclaim the good news that God comes to right injustice and embody mercy.

What, then, is the word for today, the word to us and the word for others through us, on this Second Sunday of Advent at the tail end of 2020? It is, surely, that in Jesus, God is with us, to feed, to gather up, to carry, to gently lead. To fill empty stomachs and hunger for justice; to hold anxious children in the emotional security of reliable love; to carry the exhausted and hurting ones who just can’t carry on; to walk with parents and teachers and employers and the self-employed and those in positions of responsibility who feel lost and alone right now. This is what the Church should look and feel like.

And what is the word for tomorrow? That crises reveal judgement on injustice and inequality, on disregard for the most vulnerable; and, once the crisis is over, what emerges must be more just, more merciful. The vision begins from the margins, the grassroots. We have a world to rebuild, and a role to play, not alone, nor by coercion, but alongside comforting angels. John the baptiser—not an angelic messenger, but a human one—took God’s imperative to the divine assembly upon himself. Will we?

 

Advent Sunday 2019

Lectionary readings: [Isaiah 2:1-5 and] Romans 13:11-14 and Matthew 24:36-44

Christmas jumpers

I don’t know about you, but I find it harder to get up in the mornings at this time of year. It is still dark outside when my alarm goes off at 6.30 a.m. and I know that it is cosy and warm beneath the duvet and noticeably colder out of bed. But the time has come to wake from sleep. And it is more than a counting of time, my watch having counted the seconds, minutes and hours since it was last 6.30 a.m. so as to set off the alarm once more. No, this is a time of opportunity: God has seen fit to give me this new day, filled with the promise that, whatever will come my way, we will meet it together. An invitation to experience more, and to embrace change. But my bed is so warm — even if lying in it for too long gives me back ache, even if my bladder and perhaps my rumbling tummy and maybe even my sense of adventure protest.

In our reading from Paul’s letter to the house churches of Rome, he urges them to shake-off sleepwalking through life. To do so now, not put it off until later. And he speaks of putting on the armour of light, and of putting on the Lord Jesus Christ. The word he uses suggests dressing someone else, or, that we do this to one another. I wonder whether anyone here has ever been given a Christmas jumper? Or Christmas socks? Or Christmas pyjamas? Or, perhaps someone gave you something tasteful to wear as a Christmas gift? That experience captures something of what Paul is wanting to convey, I think. It isn’t about doing it for ourselves, so much as clothing one another with dignity.

Paul contrasts this with feasting and drunkenness; with sexual promiscuity and deliberate indulgence in bad behaviour, to hell with the consequences; with a contentious spirit and boiling anger directed at others. In other words, he lists ‘any behaviour that a person finds temporary pleasure or relief in but suffers negative consequences as a result of’ which, if one ‘does not give up or cannot give up despite those negative consequences’ defines addiction, according to leading addiction expert Gabor Maté.

Maté’s thesis is that addiction is rife in our society and serves to numb emotional pain. The key question, he urges us, is not a judgemental ‘what is wrong with you?’ but a compassionate ‘what happened to you?’ That if we are to help people address the emotional pain that we all live with, we must begin by reverently listening to their story.

I don’t pretend to fully understand the parable Jesus tells in our Gospel reading for today, but it does seem to me to paint the picture of two people, indistinguishable in outward appearance or in a variety of common roles and work activity, where one is swept away in a moment and the other is left wondering what happened. It is a moment of crisis, where something that has been building towards this moment breaks. But the coming of the Son of Man, of the remnant community who have put on Christ, is just as unexpected.

The Old Testament reading for today, from Isaiah, looks to a day when God’s people will be ministers of reconciliation, peacemakers, enabling the nations to know true wellbeing.

And these readings come together in this season of Advent, in which our neighbours will come under great stress to spend money they can’t afford on Christmas, and drink to forget.

One of the things that delights me is that Alcoholics Anonymous have recently started meeting in our church hall, twice a week. Though not their usual nights, they’ll be meeting on Christmas Day and New Year’s Eve, because those are particularly dark nights, and they are a fellowship who know that they need each other to help each one to put on the armour of light.

But this is a hard time of year for many people, perhaps for you. It is also the season of longing and aching for the return of the king. As we wait, together — as we help one another to put on the Lord Jesus Christ — I’d like to play you a song, Until You Do. As we listen, and perhaps join in, may hope rise up within you, and give you strength to arise.

Fourth Sunday of Advent 2018

Luke 1:39-56

Today is the fourth Sunday of Advent. As we have journeyed towards Christmas, we have tracked God’s preparations through the patriarchs and matriarchs of the faith; through the prophets; through the fore-runner John known as the Baptiser; and now at last we come to the Virgin Mary, the Mother of our Lord.

Luke begins his account of the Good News with the miraculous birth stories of John and Jesus. We are introduced to Zechariah and Elizabeth, and to Joseph and Mary. Joseph is ‘of the house of David’ and to the child Mary shall bear ‘the Lord God will give…the throne of his ancestor David.’ But Joseph is not the child’s father; and one of the questions I am often asked at this time of year is, how, then, is Jesus to be considered a descendant of David? The first thing to say is that an adopted son is fully a son, and therefore Jesus is indeed a descendant or son of David through Joseph. But I want to argue, I think with Luke, that Jesus is doubly son of David, through his mother also. Let me explain why.

The story recounting Mary’s visit to Elizabeth is more than a factual record. Luke crafts it to resonate with the story of David bringing the ark of the Lord to Jerusalem (2 Samuel 6). Church tradition tells us that Mary was Luke’s direct source, and, judging by her song the Magnificat, I would suggest that Mary herself intentionally crafted the telling of her story to resonate with that old story.

In 2 Samuel 6, we hear that David sets out for the hill country of Judea (2); there is a celebration to honour the ark (5); and the Lord bursts forth against Uzzah (8). This occurs because they had not treated the ark with due respect; with the result that David is afraid to bring the ark of the Lord into his care (9). The ark therefore spends three months in the house of Obed-Edom, during which time the Lord blessed him and all his household (10-12). David then returns to carry out his intention to bring the ark to Jerusalem. This time, as well as rejoicing, he humbles himself (14). David then distributes food among all the people and sends them away full (18-19). However, he argues with his wife Michal, claiming that he will be held in honour, and sending her away empty, or, childless (20-23).

Compare this, then, with our Gospel reading. Mary sets out to a town in the Judean hill country (39), where there is a celebration (41: even the unborn child John joins in). The Lord bursts forth, not in anger this time but filling Elizabeth with the Holy Spirit (41). Elizabeth welcomes Mary into her home and recognises that this is a sharing in blessing; and Mary stays there for three months (39-56). Interestingly, this episode, mirroring David’s reluctance to bring the ark into his care, parallels Matthew’s explicit account of Joseph’s dilemma regarding whether to divorce Mary quietly or take her into his house.

And then there is Mary’s song. Mary humbles herself (41) even as she rejoices (46-47). She predicts that she will be honoured by all generations (48). She declares that God has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts (51) and brought the powerful down from their thrones (52)—compare Michal—and has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich empty away (53)—compare David.

At the start of our Gospel reading, Mary is the new ark of the Lord; the created container that carries the uncontainable Creator. By the end of our reading, while remaining the new ark, Mary has also become the new David. Or David has become Mary. By taking upon herself the identity of David, Mary’s son will be the son of David through his mother, in addition to son of David through adoption by Joseph. And the new thing God is doing is revealed to be deeply and lovingly rooted in what has come before, the centuries-long careful building to this moment.

Now, there is a sense in which Mary is not only blessed among women but unique among human beings. She is the Mother of God, who bore the incarnate Son. But there is also a sense in which Mary is a model for the Church, for all Christian women and men. If we forget the former, we lose the latter; if we ignore the latter, we devalue the former.

Mary is the new ark of the Lord: and we are called to carry the presence of Christ into the world. With reverence, but also with haste, and with expectancy.

Mary is the new David: and we are called to respond to God’s call on our lives with joy and humility. With singing and serving.

Each year as Christmas draws near, we return to the story, to hear again, as for the first time, our heritage and our calling. And as we hear these well-worn words, at once so familiar and so strange, so comforting and disturbing, where do you find yourself in the story? Are you bursting with praise like Mary? Leaping for joy with John? Will you be filled with the Holy Spirit, like Elizabeth? Or perhaps you feel more like Joseph and Zechariah, troubled, mute, off to the side looking on from a distance? Brought down, or lifted up? Filled, or empty?

More than likely, where we find ourselves in the story varies from year to year. But like a womb, the story is elastic. There is room for us all. The Lord has spoken, and has, and will, fulfil his word. Blessed are we who have believed.

Third Sunday of Advent 2018

Zephaniah 3:14-20 and Philippians 4:4-7 and Luke 3:7-18

‘Sing aloud, O daughter Zion; shout, O Israel! Rejoice and exult with all your heart, O daughter Jerusalem! … The Lord, your God, is in your midst, a warrior who gives victory; he will rejoice over you with gladness, he will renew you in his love; he will exult over you with loud singing as on a day of festival.’ Zeph. 3:14, 17-18a

‘Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice.’ Phil. 4:4

Today is the Third Sunday of Advent. The moment of light relief in the season of aching and longing for Jesus to return. The week when, if we are using three purple and one pink candle in our Advent wreath, we light the pink candle: the lighter, brighter hue. Gaudete Sunday: the Sunday when our readings from the Old Testament and from the New Testament Epistles exhort us Rejoice, Rejoice, Rejoice! [Gaudete, gaudete, Christus est natus ex Maria virgine, gaudete: Rejoice, rejoice, Christ is born of the Virgin Mary, rejoice] And the Sunday when we hear, again, the good news as proclaimed by John the Baptist.

Our reading from the prophet Zephaniah is an incredible piece of poetry, that speaks of great and glorious reversal. The Lord has taken away the judgements against his people; their enemies have been turned away; the fear of disaster, ended; actual disaster, removed; reproach, spared; oppressors, dealt with; the lame saved; the outcast gathered-in; shame changed into praise and renown; exiles brought home; fortunes restored. Why would a community not rejoice at such a proclamation? And yet, at the very heart of it all, something even greater: that God’s people are invited to rejoice because to do so is to join in with the Lord who rejoices over them.

These words have an original historical context, but they have survived, passed down to us, because they still speak to us. In the context of Advent, they remind us that, at the second coming of our Lord Jesus Christ to judge the world we may be found an acceptable people in his sight—not through any merit of our own, but because God’s righteous and justified judgements against us have been taken away by the same Lord, through the victory over death of Christ who opened wide his arms for us on the cross. Who sings over us on a day of festival.

“Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice” writes Paul to his sisters and brothers in Philippi. Writing from prison. Writing, hoping to be released and reunited with them on this occasion, but understanding that sooner or later faithfulness to the Lord Jesus will mean that he, Paul, will die in a similar manner. Rejoice, in the face of trials, because the Lord is near. If you listen closely, we might even catch the strains of his singing.

“You brood of vipers!” said John to the crowds that came out to be baptised by him, “Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” Strong words. Can’t we just have Zephaniah? Well, if we take Zephaniah as a whole, there are plenty of words as strong and stronger there. His message begins, ‘I will utterly sweep away everything from the face of the earth, says the Lord,’ as he proclaims the coming judgement on Judah, first, followed by judgement on all the surrounding nations; on Jerusalem, and all of the peoples. This is a process of judgement, of purification and restoration. A process of separating the wheat from the chaff.

John doesn’t speak to exclude the crowds. He would spare them ruin. And the crowds understand, and respond, “What then should we do?” There is a necessary outworking of repentance, of this great reversal. As the Dutch priest Henri Nouwen put it, “You don’t think your way into a new kind of living. You live your way into a new kind of thinking.” There is a new dawn, a new day, to be lived into.

Today is a moment to raise our heads. A moment for the weary to find our strength renewed by the joy of the Lord. For those whose love has run out to find ourselves renewed in his love. For those who have been brought low to find ourselves raised up by his singing.

Why is this moment given? Because tomorrow we must return to the upheaval of the new thing the Lord is doing in our midst. We must attend once more to marking the fears of imagined disaster we need ended for us. We must attend to making room for the outcasts being gathered-in, and the exiles being brought home. We must attend to the removal of our mantles of shame—and we have a wardrobe full—and the putting-on of garments of praise. There are things to be done, in response, in order to live our way into a new kind of thinking. So today, we rejoice at the resources given us. Gaudete, gaudete, Christus est natus ex Maria virgine, Gaudete.

The work of the people, in response to these texts:

What reasons do we have to be joyful?

How do (or, how might) we as a community express joy?

As a society, we live with well-rehearsed and regularly renewed fear of disaster in relation to Brexit. How might we speak of the Lord’s declared intent to end fear of disaster?

What oppresses us today?

Who are the outcasts in our context, and how might we as a church live out the prophetic action of gathering them in?

Guilt refers to a sense that we have done something wrong. Shame refers to a sense that who we are is somehow wrong, that there is something fundamentally wrong with our identity. Where do we experience shame? And where have we experienced shame changed into praise?

First Sunday of Advent 2018

Jeremiah 33:14-16 and 1 Thessalonians 3:9-13 and Luke 21:25-36

I love stories. My favourite stories are detective fiction. And my favourite detective fiction stories are Louise Penny’s series of Chief Inspector Gamache mysteries, about the head of homicide in Quebec, his team, his family, and his friends. And about me, the reader; my complex humanity, in all its frailty and strength, its hopes and fears, its shabbiness and its glory.

We navigate life by telling stories. This is universal, among humans; and, as far as we can tell, it is not limited to humans but found more widely in the animal kingdom. Even bees tell one another stories, through the medium of dance.

We tell stories to reach out to one another. If you ask me where my accent comes from, I can only answer with a story: My parents are both English; but I was born and spent my early childhood in the Philippines. So, my formative years were in an Americano-English context, not a British-English context. Then, I did most of my schooling in Glasgow. The result is a mid-Atlantic accent that some place as Canadian, and others as Irish; while others still detect a Scandinavian lilt.

On the other hand, if you make me wary, if I do not know if I trust you, my answer will simply be, “It’s complicated”.

We tell stories to reach out to one another, but also to conceal ourselves, to hide. If you ask me a question, and I think that you will think less of me if I reply truthfully, I will construct a web of lies; stir-up a smokescreen between us, on the far side of which I am desperately seeking a doorway out of the conversation. That confession, from a priest, might shock you. But I am human through-and-through. I am written and re-written in complex stories, of which I am a co-author.

The Bible is a story of stories. Stories people co-authored with God in order to navigate life. Stories written and re-written, in times of weeping and of laughing, times of scattering and of gathering, times of keeping and of discarding, in times of silence and times to give voice, in times of war and time for peace. Words carefully chosen, skilfully woven. Stories to enter-into, at times cautiously and at other times, jumping feet first. And this morning I want to reflect on two particular and incredibly powerful genres of story that we find in the Bible: myth, and parable.

In the study of narrative, myth is a technical term. It doesn’t refer to a story that is ‘made up’ (all stories are made up) or a story about gods or heroes (though it might feature those) but to a story that is concerned with reconciliation. With opposites being united. Think of fairy-tales. Think Beauty & the Beast: wealth and poverty, innocence and monstrosity, love and malice, all resolved into happily-ever-after. Myths paint a picture in big, bold, recurring contrasts. Myths dare us to believe that the seemingly entrenched divisions we experience—the gross injustices of life—will be resolved, one day. Myths comfort us when the world is a frightening place.

A parable, on the other hand, is a story that disrupts us, that lures us in with the familiar only to discomfort us. A parable presents us with a tension that is unresolvable, and asks us to simply live with it, because maintaining the polarity is important, just as it is essential for the life of a battery to maintain the polarity between anode and cathode. The Book of Jonah is a parable. It ends with Jonah in an unresolved stand-off with both God and the people of Nineveh (Jonah 4:9-11). To this day, the tale rudely reminds us of our own prejudices. Whereas myths settle us, parables unsettle us, agitate us. Whereas myths empower us to rest in God, parables empower us to repent where we have wandered far from home.

We need both myth and parable—which is why the Bible gives us both. And in our gospel passage on this first Sunday of Advent, Jesus tells us a myth (Luke 21:25-28 and 21:34-36), with a parable inserted within it (Luke 21:29-33).

Speaking to people living under the rule of an occupying superpower, Jesus retells an earlier myth of God’s redemption—of God’s reclaiming what is his and restoring the fortunes of his people. This is a vision of opposites being united, or re-united: the bringing-together of the heavens and the earth, of God and humanity, of Israel and Judah, of the Jews and the gentile nations and peoples. Only myth can convey a vision expansive enough to keep hope alive in the darkest hours, when all around are overwhelmed by dismay or lose their heads in the chaos. And this is not a sop to placate those who hunger for justice, but a subversive feast for the soul, to strengthen us on our journey, in our struggle. Not wishful thinking, but hope-full thinking.

But into this vision of redemption, Jesus adds an element of discomfort for us, the parable of the fig tree coming into leaf. Why a fig tree? Well, you may remember that when our first parents, having disobeyed the Lord God, realised what they had done, ‘they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves’ (Genesis 3:7). When God came looking for his own, they were afraid and hid. As the collection of stories grew, the fig tree came to be a symbol of the Jewish people. And in a deeply important touchstone we read that ‘During Solomon’s lifetime Judah and Israel lived in safety, from Dan even to Beer-sheba, all of them under their vines and fig trees’ (1 Kings 4:25). This is a parable that speaks of God’s coming being something we want to hide from…but also something we long for—an unresolvable tension we are asked to live with.

The vision of redemption has, within it, an element of discomfort for us because at the heart of the fulfilling of God’s promise is justice; and so, we need to name and confess and repent of the ways in which we have chosen, or settled-for, injustice instead. We are not sole authors of our stories (they simply wouldn’t be robust enough if we were), but we are co-authors, not least in the plot-twists of the next chapter.

Today is the start of Advent, the season of preparing our hearts for the coming of the Lord. It is a season of myth and of parable: of rejoicing that light shines in our darkness and of facing up to whatever that light might expose. It is a season of paying close attention to the tension between our being comforted where we long for God’s coming, where we cry out for justice; and our being discomforted where we need to repent, where we need to be shaken out of our unrighteous self-interest. Because that place of tension is where God and our fellow human beings (neighbours and strangers), as co-authors, are calling us to write what comes next.

This Advent, may we step deeper than ever before into the fulfilment of the Lord’s promise, given to us in Jesus. Amen.

Notes:

To be clear, I believe that Christ ‘will come again to judge the living and the dead’—I just believe that myth is the genre we need to speak of such a thing.

If you want to read more about myth and parable, I recommend Mighty Stories, Dangerous Rituals: Weaving Together the Human and the Divine, by Herbert Anderson and Edward Foley.

Louise Penny’s novels are so tightly constructed in terms of unfolding character development and narrative arc that, if you want to read them, it is absolutely essential to read them in order. And stick with them.

I think one of the reasons I so enjoy Louise Penny’s novels is because she brings together myth and parable: the comforting, healing, hidden village of Three Pines; and the hidden recesses of the human heart brought to light—unlocked by the four key confessions Gamache lives by: “I’m sorry” “I don’t know” “I need help” “I was wrong”.

In his letter to the church in Thessalonica, Paul also draws on both myth and parable. In our reading today, he weaves together night and day, being kept apart and being face-to-face, lack and restoration. These verses sit within the context of parable: these people are experiencing persecution that will not be resolved—at least not in the foreseeable future—and, moreover, and most disconcertingly, some of their number have died, and the Lord has not yet returned.