Jesus came for everybody

Jesus came for everybody - (whichever tier you are in ) You will have heard this many many times and often when we hear something this frequently it loses its bite, the piquancy, the sharpness. But for its time this was a revolutionary thought especially in first century Palestine where the house of Israel were the chosen people of God, and they knew it and behaved knowing it. Now you might say “ Steve this coming for everyone is a later idea, a modern thought but I want to suggest that when we look closely at the Christmas story the signs were very clearly there.

Firstly if you are the son of God you ought to be able it seems to me, you ought to be able to choose the time and place of your birth. We have evidence that this was so, from the appearance of the star (Jupiter and Saturn conjunction or not) and that Bethlehem was the chosen birthplace in fulfillment of a much earlier prophecy about the Messiah’s birth. And more than this, you may have expected Mary to give birth in a quiet place, a home birth even, but God chose to be born in the middle of a Census. As we heard:

“In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered.” Jesus then is born in a place, where the inns were full, a place  teeming with people of all creeds and races from all over Palestine. When we read a biography we look backwards to events in say authors’, politicians’ or painters’ lives looking for things that influenced them. In the case of Jesus I want us to read forwards. Jesus came into the world not into seclusion but into crowded mele. On Christmas day itself, this night, Jesus came for everybody.

Another sign concerns these three. My knitted shepherds from the travelling crib; “In that region, there were shepherds living in the fields keeping watch over their flock by night.” I need to say from the outset that these knitted fellows are quite inadequate - they are too smart, too well dressed, too refined. Shepherding, although an important job, was a derided one. It was thought to be an occupation for brigands and no self respecting father would encourage his son to take it up. In a book from my shelves published in 1913 there are meticulously researched oil paintings of “Life in the Holy Land,” and there is one showing a shepherd equipped with a sling and a club to fend off predators, dressed in a short sheepskin tunic and there in the lonely, unfenced, uncultivated desert hills where no dwelling is to be seen. These effective outcasts are living in the fields, refugees from the town and strangers to anything but rough sleeping. Yet they are the first to told about the birth and of its importance,

“I am bringing you news of great joy for all the people” said the angel. Furthermore they are urged to go and see the baby. Jesus came on Christmas Day to a full and bustling town and not only that but from the very first Jesus began gathering more of us to him and significantly from the edges, from the social and physical wilderness of the Judean hills.  

Jesus Christ born today came for us all whoever you are, whatever life you have or have had. He came to gather us into one and this intention was clear, clear as starlight from the very beginning.

Amen 

Hearing God

In our passage Samuel is described as a boy. The historian Josephus says he was 12 years old. Eli, on the other hand is old, “his eyesight had begun to grow dim so that he could not see.” It is significant that he cannot see clearly, neither physically nor spiritually contrasting with Samuel who sees well and will do so in both senses. But just now God is difficult to hear :Then the Lord called “Samuel, Samuel” and the boy ran to Eli mistakenly thinking it was he who had called him. 

For a number of years I was a vocations officer for the diocese of St. Albans holding meetings with people, old and young, who wanted to explore and understand whether God had spoken to them. My own experience and nearly always theirs was that like Samual God had been speaking to them for some time but we, I and they had perhaps failed to hear, attributed the words or directions to something or someone else or not infrequently had some suspicions  but had deliberately ignored them. I want to suggest that such mistakes are commoner than we think. We all tend to Samuel’s rationality; three times the Lord called him and on each occasion he went to Eli, who twice saw dimly before recognizing what was happening. Only on the fourth calling does Samuel pay any attention. Samuel was in my view very favoured, he was only twelve and most of us require even more persistence of God before we stop to listen.

I have a childhood memory and it dates from and is associated with the house I lived in only until I was seven. I  was learning all I could from the Catholic Missal that I had been given and was sure that I wanted to be a priest. My mother, like all good Eli's, told me to lie down again!. Not that I regret that at all, it is only when looking backwards that I can  perhaps imagine that maybe God had perhaps been speaking.

Why is it that God is so difficult to hear? To begin with there are so many alternative explanations especially as His word often comes through other people and we can always imagine that they have their own motives for telling us something. For example if now I suggest to someone that they ought to come to church - you can see that this would be easily dismissed as not a divine communication. Samuel, we notice, was spoken to in the middle of the night and I do not know about you but I am very quick to discount the promptings of a disturbed sleep. Added to this why would God be speaking to us anyway? 

Our mistake is too often to set aside a time for God to speak to us, not that I would discourage this at all, but really God may use many avenues to talk to us, words, music, people, nature, poetry, the Bible(!), there is a panoply sensations at any time.

Samuel was very young but we can still learn from his story: if you think that God may have spoken to you, that you may have beard God’s prompting then you probably have.

Amen

Baptism of Jesus

Jesus is coming ! But from the perspective of first century BC Messianic expectation everything is topsy-turvy from the start. A herald, the forerunner surely should present an image, a taste of the great person they represent, for whom they are an initial ambassador. The first intimation of the coming of the Queen of Sheba should be overwhelming in magnificence. I was living in Paris and had friends in the American embassy when President Bill Clinton came for a visit : There were Jumbo jets full of staff, security organisers of all sorts that flew in before the big day not to mention the final entourage, again of several plane loads, that accompanied him. 

Jesus is coming! As he begins his public ministry he is announced  by a vagrant from the wilderness, clothed with animal skin, tied crudely around the middle who eats locusts and wild honey snatching what he could from the bushes around him. Unimposing in the extreme yet with a charisma that attracts crowds to him on the banks of the Jordan. 

In St. In John's Gospel account of John the Baptist he says: “Among you is the one whom you do not know, the one who is coming after me.” I find this interesting for that phrase “among you.” For again this is topsy-turvy, the Messiah is not coming in a chariot in clouds of glory from above but is there, very ordinarily, having come up from Nazareth, the son of a carpenter yet John says : “I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals.” 

Baptism in first century Judaism was about purifying the body. The Jewish people immersed themselves to remove ritual purity.  Ritual purity is external, affecting the body alone and is temporal rather than permanent. It may for example stem from touching a human corpse or the carcases of certain animals or indeed from certain normal bodily functions. Most Jews were ritually impure most of the time and this did not impede daily life in any way. Only in connection with the sacred did it become significant: A second Temple Jew could not enter the temple precincts in an impure condition.  Ritual immersion though would allow you to become ritually pure again. Knowing this we can appreciate the importance and novelty of John the Baptist’s ministry by the riverside. John’s ritual immersion was a means for becoming morally pure - you were to repent of your sins before being baptised, or in other words this is about inner disposition. There has to be a change, a turning back from previous wickedness and a resetting and regretting of lives lived. Furthermore he announces that following him is Jesus. Jesus’ baptism is not to do with the body; “I have baptised you with water but he will baptise you with the Holy Spirit.” Baptism with the Holy Spirit will be permanent, not temporary outer cleansing, but lifelong inner transformation.

Jesus' baptism will be of the inside - so from the very beginning we can see and are told that Jesus’ coming will be topsy turvy, inside out and totally surprising.”

Amen 

Epiphany

 T S Eliot’s poem “The journey of the magi” among other things brings us into the lives of the travelling magi, allowing participation in their hardships, their regrets and their puzzlement. The poem is written afterwards, but why, why did they come? The Bible is short on explanation:

“Where is the child who has been born King of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising and have come to pay him homage. 

In 1705, the twenty year old Bach, newly appointed  organist at Arnstadt asked for a one month sabbatical so he could make a journey to Lubeck more than two hundred and fifty miles north on the German coast. Partly he needed the time because he walked the whole way. This is equivalent to walking from Norwich to Taunton or from Norwich to Newcastle on Tyne and he did this to hear Buxtehude play the organ. Buxtehude was by the way sixty-eight and a renowned organist holding one of the most coveted musical positions in the land, he had attracted visits from Handel and Telemann. We may imagine that Bach had a hard coming of it, but once arrived he stayed to play in concerts that Buxtehude organised. (In fact he was there three months, overstaying his sabbatical considerably.) 

A little before Christmas my regular Saturday morning listening “Record Review” explored  recordings of Mahler’s first symphony. Somewhat to my surprise the “Building a library” recommendation was a recording made by Bruno Walter in 1961 with the Columbia orchestra in Los Angeles. Bearing in mind that this is almost a sixty year old recording the performance had to overcome the technical advantages of more contemporary recordings. I have some bruno Walter recordings of Beethoven symphonies and they are definitely showing their age - but not this Mahler. The nugget though is that aged 17 Walter went to visit Gustav Mahler in Budapest shortly following the first symphony’s first performance. How amazing that 127 years later Walter’s recording is still a landmark.

The magi, Bach and Walter went to visit someone they had only heard about, an act of homage but more it was also an act of learning. When Bach returned from Lubeck his composing style was altered, musical historians can trace the elements of Buxtehude’s influence; when Walter returned from Budapest his appreciation and knowledge would continue to influence his conducting well into his eighties and when the wise men came back they were totally changed, their Zoroastrianism replaced:

“We returned to our places, these kingdoms but no longer at ease, here in the old dispensation with an alien people clutching their Gods.

Amen