First Sunday of Lent 2021

 

First Sunday of Lent 2021

Lectionary reading: Mark 1:9-15

Today is the first Sunday of Lent, that time of year when we recall and enter-into the forty days Jesus spent in the wilderness, immediately following his baptism and in preparation for being sent to proclaim the good news—the good news that we are also sent to proclaim. These days spent in preparation are, therefore, a pivotal episode in Jesus’ life. Matthew, Mark, and Luke all include them in their telling the good news. Matthew takes 184 words to do so [in the Greek]. Luke takes 203 words. Mark, whose account we are offered this year, takes only 30.

Thirty words. Not even one word per day! Mark distils Jesus’ wilderness experience to its very essence. Even so, he records something that neither Matthew nor Luke note: that Jesus was with the wild beasts. And here, Mark uses a diminutive form of the word for beasts, and in particular, though not exclusively, venomous creatures: these are small and likely venomous. Desert snakes and scorpions, for example.

Let me step back, and ask, what was Jesus doing in the wilderness, those forty days? In Mark’s account, he is ‘done to’ by others: the Spirit drove him; Satan tempted him; the angels waited on him, or, ministered to him. It is left to Matthew and Luke to give us a clue as to how Jesus passed those days: meditating on scripture [possibly the scrolls of the Essene community at Qumran]. Three times, they record Jesus declaring, ‘It is written…’ Two of those times, he is citing Deuteronomy chapter 8, which references ‘the great and terrible wilderness, an arid waste-land with poisonous snakes and scorpions’ and the other time he cites Psalm 91, which, to the poisonous snakes, adds the lion and its young for good measure (in the words immediately following on from Jesus’ quote). In other words, the wild beasts are Mark’s shorthand for Jesus’ confrontation with Satan, signposts that Matthew and Luke follow.

Why would Jesus be in the wilderness, reading and meditating on this particular passage from Deuteronomy? Well, it is a passage in which Moses is preparing the people to enter into all that the Lord their God has planned for them, without those very blessings becoming a snare. And Moses’ words get to the very heart of our annual Lenten discipline. I’m not going to read them out now, but they are well worth getting to know. And so, my first invitation to you this morning, as we step into Lent together, is this:

Read Deuteronomy chapter 8 every day for the next week.

Read it slowly, prayerfully. You might want to keep a journal, of anything in particular that strikes you as you read, to track, and map, the journey the Lord your God leads you on. You do not need to share those thoughts with anyone else, other than God in prayer; but, trust me, it will help you to observe a holy Lent, to your benefit.

My second invitation to you is this: to take a stone with you.

On Monday, I painted ash crosses on little stones; they have not been handled since. Take one with you as you go, and let it be a reminder of the wilderness: of God’s faithfulness and provision. If you are getting out a bit more these days, carry it with you in your coat pocket. If you are still, for the most part, staying at home, place it on your hearth, or your windowsill, or somewhere where you will see it, regularly. Hold it in your hand: feel its weight, its roughness and smoothness; trace the cross with your finger; call to mind God’s blessings, in good times and bad, and how they have smoothed—and are smoothing—your own rough edges. Keep the stone throughout Lent; and then, on Easter Sunday, when the stone that covered the entrance to the tomb is found to be rolled away, throw it aside, in your garden, or the park, or at the beach.

These two invitations are to you all. I have a third, perhaps not for everyone, perhaps for someone here. The little creatures are often the ones people have phobias about. Did it ever cross your mind that Jesus may have been afraid of spiders? After all, he was fully human. Mark tells us that Jesus was with the creepy crawlies, and angels came to his aid, gave him the strength to face those human fears, pressing deep into God’s loving, parental, training for living life to the full. It may be that this Lent, the Holy Spirit wants to set you free from some phobia that has held you captive. If that resonates with you, I would be glad to pray with you.

A text to read, a stone to hold, and, potentially, a fear to overcome. That will do, for now. Lent is rigorously life-giving, not burdensome. May God give us the grace to say ‘Yes!’ to life. And may our lives, so shaped by God, hold that life out to those around us. Amen.

 

Appendix 1: Mark 1:9-15

‘In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’

‘And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness for forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.

‘Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.’

 

Appendix 2: Deuteronomy 8:1-20 (with the words Jesus cites in italics for emphasis)

‘This entire commandment that I command you today you must diligently observe, so that you may live and increase, and go in and occupy the land that the Lord promised on oath to your ancestors. Remember the long way that the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, in order to humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commandments. He humbled you by letting you hunger, then by feeding you with manna, with which neither you nor your ancestors were acquainted, in order to make you understand that one does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. The clothes on your back did not wear out and your feet did not swell these forty years. Know then in your heart that as a parent disciplines a child so the Lord your God disciplines you. Therefore keep the commandments of the Lord your God, by walking in his ways and by fearing him. For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land with flowing streams, with springs and underground waters welling up in valleys and hills, a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and honey, a land where you may eat bread without scarcity, where you will lack nothing, a land whose stones are iron and from whose hills you may mine copper. You shall eat your fill and bless the Lord your God for the good land that he has given you.

‘Take care that you do not forget the Lord your God, by failing to keep his commandments, his ordinances, and his statutes, which I am commanding you today. When you have eaten your fill and have built fine houses and live in them, and when your herds and flocks have multiplied, and your silver and gold is multiplied, and all that you have is multiplied, then do not exalt yourself, forgetting the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, who led you through the great and terrible wilderness, an arid waste-land with poisonous snakes and scorpions. He made water flow for you from flint rock, and fed you in the wilderness with manna that your ancestors did not know, to humble you and to test you, and in the end to do you good. Do not say to yourself, ‘My power and the might of my own hand have gained me this wealth.’ But remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth, so that he may confirm his covenant that he swore to your ancestors, as he is doing today. If you do forget the Lord your God and follow other gods to serve and worship them, I solemnly warn you today that you shall surely perish. Like the nations that the Lord is destroying before you, so shall you perish, because you would not obey the voice of the Lord your God.’

 

The Transfiguration 2021

 

‘Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them. And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, who were talking with Jesus. Then Peter said to Jesus, ‘Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.’ He did not know what to say, for they were terrified. Then a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!’ Suddenly when they looked around, they saw no one with them any more, but only Jesus.

‘As they were coming down the mountain, he ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead.’

Mark 9:2-9

If I may be honest, I have been finding recent weeks hard going. I know that I am not alone in this. There may be light at the end of the tunnel, but in the meantime, to press that analogy, the railway carriage is claustrophobic. I am not taking in the mountain air. I cannot even watch the mountains drawing ever nearer through the window: only the ghost of the carriage reflected back at me. How do I meet with God, in this airless box?

The gospel reading for this Sunday is truly astonishing. It takes the seemingly ordinary, and reveals something extraordinary, as we shall see. And that might be exactly what is needed, today.

Our passage is set in a time when nothing has happened for six days. ‘Six days’ echoes the six ‘days,’ or epochs, of creation; and so, six days is more than the inside of a week: these days, in which nothing creative is recorded, sprawl on and on, outside of time. These days could just as well describe the insubstantial days I have ghost-walked through since last Sunday. And six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John.

In recent days, various combinations of our household have gone out for a walk around the block. But this phrase Mark chooses, took with him, is more than a record of who came along. It is the same word Matthew uses when he recounts an angel telling Joseph do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife. It means to actively, intentionally, join another person or persons to yourself. In this action, Jesus brings Peter and James and John into covenant relationship with himself, to the effect that from here-on in you can read ‘Jesus and Peter and James and John’ as ‘Jesus-Peter-James-John,’ or ‘Jesus = Jesus + Peter + James + John.’ An ordinary little phrase, took with him, that transforms all their identities.

Next, Jesus led them up a high mountain. Again, the phrase ‘led them up’ means more than simply that they were out for a ramble with Jesus out in front. These words are used to describe offering something up a sacrifice, and also to bring something through a sequence of stages to a consummation or goal. In other words, Jesus joins his friends to himself as one common identity—later described as the Body of Christ—and presents that new being to his heavenly Father, in order that it might reach its ultimate purpose.

And this is revealed in what happens next. Jesus was transfigured before them. Now, unlike ‘took with’ or ‘led them up,’ ‘transfigured’ is not exactly an everyday word to us. And yet, it describes something absolutely familiar. It is the same word from which we get ‘metamorphosis,’ where something changes form in keeping with its inner reality. It describes the process by which a caterpillar becomes a butterfly; or an acorn, an oak tree. Acorns don’t look anything like oak trees; but they are one in substance. We can confidently say that acorns don’t become butterflies. We can also observe that oak trees produce new acorns, and so the lifecycle carries on.

When Jesus is transfigured on the mountain, what we are seeing is the Church, embryonic in Peter and James and John, as it will be in maturity, once the Son of Man (a communal term Jesus borrows from the prophet Daniel to refer to himself as representative of his followers) had risen from the dead. We are beholding the acorn and seeing the oak tree. We are observing the caterpillar and imagining the butterfly on the other side of the traumatic death-and-rebirth of the cocoon tomb. And there to witness this vision are Elijah and Moses, both of whom had solid credentials in witnessing God pass by them on a mountaintop, neither of whom had directly seen that divine glory revealed in this life.

Despite being terrified, the three friends grasp the significance of this fairly well. In suggesting that they build three tabernacles, for Jesus and Moses and Elijah—no mention of themselves—they have understood that they are now one with Jesus. But—nod to Moses and Elijah—the mountain itself, with its clefts and caves and cloud covering, is the place of meeting with God on the mountain; the tabernacle is the place of meeting with God in the valley. Go down, Moses, Elijah. Go down, Jesus-plus. Go down, press on to death and the tomb, trusting in love that is stronger than death and in the new life that springs from that love.

And what of us, in our confinement, acorn buried in the hard winter ground awaiting the spring? What about us in the shabby reality of our present circumstances, a Church that is so far from all that God would have us be, her clothes stained by scandals and injustices so ingrained that no launderer on earth could bleach them clean?

Even here, Jesus takes the initiative; comes and takes us to himself, not to a place but into the closest imaginable lifelong relationship; lifts us up, presenting us before the Father, into their shared delight; and brings us through to maturity, not back to how things once were but to where they are heading, to an altogether greater glory. That is where we are going, together. To be honest, some days I identify more with Elijah, with Moses, with seeing only in my minds eye what others will experience in their bones. And yet, Jesus. And yet, Jesus.

Perhaps we might make three dwellings after all, not on the mountaintop but in the valley of the shadow of death; and learn to embrace the now-and-not-yet—the kingdom at hand, breaking-in, and the kingdom yet-to-come—as Jesus brings us through the sequence of stages that end in the consummation we long for? Before we get to Eastertide, we must journey through Lent. May God grant us a vision of that glory, to strengthen us to endure these days.

 

Candlemas (2021)

Watch our service for Candlemas here.

Third Sunday of Epiphany (2021)

24 January 2021 Third Sunday of Epiphany

Lectionary readings Revelation 19:6-10 and John 2:1-11

Our church building is closed at present, in this the third national lockdown. While the building is closed, I shall be livestreaming a weekly Service of the Word at 10.30 a.m. on Sunday mornings, via the church Facebook page. You do not need a Facebook account in order to watch.

The Order of Service can be downloaded and printed from here.

This morning’s recorded service can be found here.

 

Later this year, Jo and I will mark our Silver wedding anniversary. Twenty-five years ago, as we were preparing for married life, we were given some advice for our wedding day: before we went to bed that night, we should sit down together, alone, and each tell the other about the day. Of course, we would have both been there—at least from the start of the service—but we would have noticed different things, would have had different conversations with guests at the reception; and, in any case, the act of rehearsing the day that had been, and listening to it being described from another perspective, would help to fix the memories in our minds. Special occasion though it might be, without taking the time to intentionally reflect on what had taken place, it is amazing how quickly even a wedding can be swept away in the river of time passing.

Not so long ago now, we happened to take our wedding album off the shelf and go through it again. In fact, we have two albums: the one put together by the official wedding photographer; and another put together by a friend, who took lots of informal shots, quite deliberately from different angles: those guests milling around outside the church while particular group shots were being organised and taken. Going through another box, I found a photo someone else had taken, from that morning, of Jo arranging her hair in a full-length mirror propped-up in the living room of the little house we had bought as our first home. And I was transfixed by it; taken back to a moment I had not been present at, and through all the moments since.

Our readings today share a wedding reception theme. John’s Gospel gets going with the account of a wedding at which Jesus, along with some of his family and friends, were guests. This was, more or less, In the Beginning. And Revelation essentially concludes with another wedding, the heavenly banquet marking the consummation of the love between Jesus and the Church. Like any wedding, the Start of a New Chapter in the relationship.

And you will notice, at a wedding in Cana, that different guests notice different things. The wine has run out. We do not know how many guests have noticed yet, but soon enough everyone will. For now, Jesus’ mother notices, and brings it to her son’s attention, in front of his friends, though perhaps most of the guests, caught up in conversations of their own, will be quite unaware of this mother-and-son exchange. [Unlike the other Gospel-writers, John never refers to Jesus’ mother by name, perhaps out of respect; reserving ‘Mary’ for the sister of Martha and Lazarus, chapters 11 & 12, for Mary Magdalene, chapters 19 & 20, and, once, for Mary the wife of Clopas, chapter 19.]

Next, his mother draws Jesus to the attention of the servants; and Jesus notices the six large stone water-jars, and instructs that they be filled to the brim. From these, water is drawn and taken to the chief steward, who is oblivious of what has been going on, above. He only experiences water that had become wine; and he is confused; perhaps even frustrated. Has the bridegroom interfered in his own role, directing the servants to serve inferior wine to the guests when they arrived, wine that should have been kept in reserve until they would not really notice? Why would anyone keep back the good wine until things were winding down and everyone was thinking about going home anyway?

Neither the master of ceremonies, nor the bridegroom, know what has transpired; though the servants do, and so do Jesus’ friends, one of whom is recounting the story. And it is an unusual retelling. John does not tell us that Jesus changed the water into wine, or even that the water turned into wine; but simply, almost in passing, that the water had become wine. John does not speak of Jesus performing miracles, but of his performing signs that reveal his glory, to those who would believe in his name, those empowered to become children of God (John 1:10-14).

Did you notice that the jars were empty, or at least, no longer full? The water in them had been used, for its special purpose, ordinary water used to symbolise being washed clean. Jesus instructs the servants to refill the jars, and they do so to the very brim. Perhaps you feel depleted today. Even if you know that your failings are washed away by God’s forgiveness, perhaps you are aware of being somehow diminished in your capacity, and this might give rise to anxiety or frustration, heart sickness or anger? Such responses would be entirely understandable in the circumstances we are living with. And yet it is precisely in such emptiness that room is made for Jesus’ glory to be revealed, in your life and mine, drawing others to worship God, to experience union with the divine mystery.

I wonder how the conversation went, between the servants, at the end of a long day before they settled down for the night? Or the conversation between Jesus’ disciples, as they made their way home? Or between Jesus’ mother, who, as far as we can tell, was a widow by this point, and Jesus’ younger brothers and sisters? I wonder how the conversation went between the bridegroom and his bride, what they made of this strange disruption of their wedding day, if the bridegroom thought to mention it at all? And I wonder where you have seen Jesus’ glory revealed, in your own life?

His invitation to you today is to be filled again, not by the water of John’s baptism, but by the life-giving Holy Spirit.

 

Second Sunday of Epiphany (2021)

 

17 January 2021 Second Sunday of Epiphany

Lectionary readings Revelation 5:1-10 and John 1:43-51

Our church building is closed at present, in this the third national lockdown. While the building is closed, I shall be livestreaming a weekly Service of the Word at 10.30 a.m. on Sunday mornings, via the church Facebook page. You do not need a Facebook account in order to watch.

The Order of Service can be downloaded and printed from here.

This morning’s recorded service can be found here.

 

Two readings this morning, both ascribed to John, who was one of Jesus’ first disciples. As a young man, he witnessed his teacher be executed by the Romans, probably not the first crucifixion he had witnessed, nor the last, but this one, uniquely, resulted in claims that God raised Jesus from the dead. Why? To vindicate him as the one appointed by God to judge his chosen people, Israel, for their collective sins; and then judge the surrounding nations who had (repeatedly) been used by God to judge his people but had (repeatedly) overstepped the mark.

In the years since, most if not all of John’s closest friends had been executed for preaching this message. Nonetheless, the number of believers had grown and spread like wildfire across the Greco-Roman world; including Gentiles—non-Jews—who chose to come under the authority, the rule, of this Jesus. However, the majority of the Jewish people—those who shared Jesus’ cultural identity—rejected their proclamation. Within a generation the Jews had rebelled against Roman rule, and had eventually been crushed, the Temple destroyed. The Christian sect were increasingly pushed out of the synagogues—out of Jewish community life—and sporadically persecuted by Roman officials, including, occasionally the decrees of the emperors.

Against this backdrop, John, by now an old man and bishop or overseer of the Church, finds himself exiled from Ephesus to the Aegean island of Patmos. And there, he has visions, writing down a symbol-rich encouragement to the churches of the Roman province of Asia Minor, who were experiencing the same hardships. In the passage we heard read today, John draws on the imagery of the Day of Atonement. This was the culmination of an annual time of repenting from sin, and where possible making amends, imploring God’s forgiveness and that your name might be recorded in the Book of Life, not the Book of Death: God’s annual judgement on each soul.

The many rituals of the Day of Atonement included two goats, or sheep. One was offered as the (regular) sacrifice for any unintentional sins of any of the people that had come to light, its sprinkled blood making the people of God and the place where they met with God ritually clean. The High Priest then laid hands on the head of the other, living, goat, confessing all of the legal guilt and moral blame (iniquities) and all of the rebellious acts (transgressions) of the people as a whole, symbolically conferring their sin onto this ‘scapegoat’ which was then taken out into the wilderness, carrying away their sins with it.

This was, and remains to this day, the holiest of moments for anyone of Jewish heritage, and one that had been wrestled with since the destruction of the Temple. And in John’s vision, Jesus, the Lamb, is both goats. He is the sacrifice whose blood covers the sins of priest and people, and purifies the place of encounter—in exile on Patmos, or caught up to the heavens. And he is the living scapegoat, on whom the sins of the people are laid, and who carries them away, never to be seen again.

In this vision, Jesus is affirmed as the one who has fulfilled these roles, once and for all, bringing those who believe into a new reality: Life, not Death. Even in exile, in eighteen months of isolation from the community, enjoying Life at God’s decree. Experiencing personal, relational well-being.

Our Gospel reading was written by John, some time earlier, recounting his experience of following Jesus. In the passage we heard read, we see Jesus calling his first disciples, friends drawing other friends in. Just a few verses earlier, Jesus has been identified by John the Baptist as the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, though, for now, he is carrying with him only the sins of his hometown, Nazareth, from where, Nathanael is certain, nothing good comes. And we get to listen-in on a strange conversation between Jesus and Nathanael about his being under a fig tree. In the Hebrew bible, the fig tree symbolises living in peace. The visionary Micah foresees a time when the nations will seek wisdom from God’s people, who will rule over them, removing the means of violence and idolatry; declaring, ‘but they shall all sit under their own vines and under their own fig trees, and no one shall make them afraid; for the mouth of the Lord of hosts has spoken.’ The visionary Zechariah foresees a time when God will send his servant, through whom he will remove the guilt of the nation on one day, and that on that day, ‘you shall invite each other to come under your vine and fig tree.’

 

But what does any of this have to do with us, today? In one sense, not much. The (his)story-arc John imagines will be fulfilled when successive Roman emperors bow before the claims made concerning Jesus as King of kings, and in the influence of the Church over European civilisation for a thousand years. But all of that is behind us now. The call of the Church today is to live in faithful improvisation, shaped by the same story.

In polarised societies that shape us to see ourselves and our tribe as blameless—to shrug off our complicity in structural evils as well as what we consider private wrongdoing; and, when found out, to demand others demonstrate unity with us without repentance on our part—in such societies we dare to confess our sin.

We dare to admit that we are not the authors of our own lives, let alone of the Good Life others might be permitted to participate in; but that our best effort brings death, albeit unintentionally. This is true whether it is the ways in which we rail against those who vote differently to us, or the ways we justify to ourselves why we are entitled to break the rules of social responsibility towards our neighbours in a pandemic.

We dare, instead, to believe that our participation in Life is brought about for us by the life of Jesus, the Lamb of God. And so, united with him, we are free to participate in relationships where unintended wrongs are neither ignored nor taken offence at, but lovingly brought to light, repented of, and forgiven.

We dare allow ourselves to be embraced by Life, by sheer gift we neither earned nor are somehow entitled to, welcoming even the difficult days of isolation as the place where we might see a glimpse of God’s glory, revealed in Jesus—and that might be enough, for us to live in peace.

In a divided world, we dare to sit, to meditate on all that God has done, for his ancient people and for all of the peoples, and we dare to extend hospitality, to find ways—even when bodily proximity is not the loving thing to do—to reach out to another person.

In a world where the environment is groaning, we dare to plant trees, metaphorical and literal, in whose shade our children and grandchildren will sit with the children and grandchildren of our enemies.

What have these old stories penned by an old man two millennia ago have to do with us today? Friend, the ink is not yet dry. The Lamb alone can open the scroll of the book of Life; and, if you ask him to, he can yet add your name.

 

Baptism of Christ (2021)

 

10 January 2021 the Baptism of Christ

Lectionary readings Genesis 1:1-5 and Acts 19:1-7 and Mark 1:4-11

Our church building is closed at present, in this the third national lockdown. While the building is closed, I shall be livestreaming a weekly Service of the Word at 10.30 a.m. on Sunday mornings, via the church Facebook page. You do not need a Facebook account in order to watch.

The Order of Service can be downloaded and printed from here.

This morning’s recorded service can be found here.

 

Second Sunday of Christmas 2021

 Second Sunday of Christmas 2021

Lectionary readings: Jeremiah 31:7-14 and Ephesians 1:3-14 and John 1:10-18

One of the ways that I find it helpful to approach scripture is through lectio divina, or ‘divine reading’. This way of reading comes from the western monastic tradition:

we begin by stilling ourselves and reading through the passage slowly (lectio), perhaps more than once, open to whatever God’s Holy Spirit might want to bring to the attention of our spirit;

then we take time to reflect on any phrase that captures our attention (meditatio), asking the Holy Spirit to lead us into an understanding of this word for us today—a process that might involve others through a corporate sharing;

we then turn what we have heard from God back to God in prayer (oratio), in repentance or praise;

and finally we end in spending time with God in companionable silence (contemplatio), resisting rushing away.

As I sat with the passages set for today, my attention was drawn to these words from the Old Testament reading:

‘…their life shall become like a watered garden, and they shall never languish again.’ Jeremiah 31:12c

Their life shall become like a watered garden. Whose life? That of the remnant community, those who had been scattered by God and would be gathered—brought home—by God. It will help us to reflect on the context. Jeremiah was a prophet who spoke for God to the people of Judah during the reigns of Josiah, Jehoiakim, and Zedekiah until the captivity of Jerusalem. We read of his call to this task, God saying, “See, today I appoint you over nations and kingdoms, to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant” (Jeremiah 1:10). The book that bears his name is a collection of speeches that point out to the people of Judah that, like Israel to the north, they have been unfaithful in their covenant relationship with God; that their corporate actions will result in judgement and exile, unless they repent, and, eventually, unavoidably; but that God’s faithfulness will be seen in and through their exile, and in their eventual return from exile.

Now, some time before Jeremiah, the northern kingdom of Israel essentially disappears from history, during the reign of the Assyrian king Sennacherib (704-681 BCE). To the south, the king in Jerusalem rebelled, withholding tribute to Sennacherib, who besieged them, and, despite divine intervention to protect Jerusalem from destruction, reimposed even greater tribute payment. I mention this because Sennacherib had a world-famous garden constructed in his capital, Nineveh.

To return to Jeremiah, by now Assyria has been swallowed-up by Babylon, and Nebuchadnezzar II (605-562 BCE) [the book of Jeremiah refers to him as Nebuchadrezzar] turns his attention to Jerusalem. He defeats Jehoiakim, carrying him and his officials off to Babylon, and making Zedekiah king in Jerusalem in his place. But when Zedekiah rebels, Jerusalem is besieged once more, and destroyed; Zedekiah’s sons are killed in from of him, and then his eyes are put out. Another wave of exile to Babylon follows, and also a wider dispersal, including down to Egypt.

It is on the far side of this exile that Jeremiah foresees that ‘their life shall become like a watered garden.’

And this is where it gets interesting. You see, according to five writers of classical antiquity, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon were one of the wonders of the world. They were, according to all, a wonder of engineering, a series of tiers, to recreate the sense of being in the mountains despite actually being on the plain. They were, according to one source, constructed by Nebuchadnezzar II; according to another, they were irrigated from the Euphrates by means of Archimedes’ screw. And the thing is, we don’t know whether the Hanging Gardens of Babylon actually existed (there is no archaeological evidence, and no Babylonian record), or whether they were a poetic construction—a way of boasting about the grandeur of the capital of the greatest empire on earth—or, perhaps, if they were a misattribution of Sennacherib’s (well-attested) gardens in Nineveh. But we do know that they were a powerful symbol, with a life of its own. Whether the gardens literally towered over the exiles in Babylon, or only over the imagination of those left behind in a ruined Jerusalem (whose Temple—another wonder of the world—would be destroyed), the image of God constructing a well-watered garden in and for his own capital city was also a powerful one. Here is an image of hope, of a reversal of fortune. Unlike Babylon, Jerusalem had no river from which to draw water. But perhaps Ezekiel, carried off into exile and building on Jeremiah, adds another tier with his vision of a river flowing from the (rebuilt) Temple (Ezekiel 47)—the River of Life.

In our Gospel reading we hear that in Jesus, the invisible God has been made known. Not simply a poetic construction, nor a misidentification, but a manifestation of grace and truth. We are not called to be a people who make empty power-claims, nor bask in glories from another age, another place. We are those being gathered into Jesus, to know the God who is grace and truth, who calls us to live lives that are generous and authentic.

And here we are, at the start of a new year, hoping to move beyond the disaster that Covid-19 has wrought over the past year, needing to build an uncertain future now that we have finally left the EU. Knowing that it will take time, but looking to the future. Is our hope in our national exceptionalism, or in God’s lavish goodness? Will our future be one of levelling-up our communities through pioneering infrastructure, or white elephants for the pleasure of the super-rich?

And so, we turn to God in prayer. We give thanks for the hope that You have put in our hearts, a hope of communities—of our community—restored and renewed, made fruitful. Lord, help us to embrace that hope, when we are tempted to despair. Lord, help us to hold on to that hope of a watered garden, in the depths of winter when the water is frozen-over and the ground is hard, and the plants have been cut back and allowed to rest. Soften our hearts where they have grown cold and hard. Lord, may we rest in You; and, in Your time, may we experience new growth, and bear fruit, fruit that will last, as Your Spirit flows with life and power. Lord, would you rebuild Your Church in this land, that we might be mighty trees in whose branches there is shelter for all. Lord, may our roots go deeper this year, deeper into Your faithful loving-kindness. This past year has been hard for us, in so many ways. We thank you that You are with us in our exiles, working for our good even when we find ourselves far from home; and we thank you that, in time You lead us back, you gather us together. Lord, we look forward to the day when we will be able to sing for joy again, and hug and shake hands and sit and eat together when we come together in your presence. May other people be brought into that place. Bless the city where you have placed us, in the plans to regenerate the riverside, with new housing and places of work, bridges across the Wear, public gardens along the river. Bless our families, the young and the old, and those who care for them. And bless this word to us in 2021: ‘…their life shall become like a watered garden, and they shall never languish again.’ To the glory of Your name, amen.

And, having prayed, we sit in silence with God, enjoying one another’s company, not rushing on with our service…