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   

In the same boat

There were, you recall two closely linked annunciations in Luke’s Gospel : The first to Zechariah who was alone in the Temple sanctuary when an angel appearing to him, standing at the right side of the altar of incense said: “Do not be afraid Zechariah, for your prayer has been answered. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son and you will name him John.” And the second annunciation was the Angel Gabriel to Mary. “Do not be afraid Mary, for you have found favour with God. And  now you will conceive in your womb and bear a son and you will name him Jesus.”

There is it feels to me something about shared experience be it very good or very difficult that can bond people; being cast off in the same boat brings people together in a special way. I am minded of a small group of my colleagues who when we were training were unexpectedly uprooted from the course of our choice and obliged mid-stream to join a different one with a different curriculum  which was much less suited to us and further more was geographically hard  for us to attend. I am not one for joining old school clubs and in fact rather avoid them, nonetheless I remain regularly in touch with some of this particular small cohort. 

In the  verse immediately after the Magnificat which we read this evening Luke 1:56 simply says “And Mary remained with her for about three months and then returned to her home.” 

So, I fell to wondering why that was? Why do you stay three months with someone who was  but a distant relation? It was not that Mary stayed to help at John’s birth - Luke makes sure that she has returned home before that event which he tells as a separate story in the following paragraph: Luke 1:57 “Now the time came for Elizabeth to give birth.” 

We have to recognise that God’s hand was in both births, both announcements, both angel visits. 

We see this from the first when Elizabeth exclaims “Blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb.” They immediately know that they have a shared extraordinary experience. (Remember without any of the advantages of our rapid communications over long distances.) 

I think I want to write a play (maybe for television) which looks at the three months, brings Elizabeth and Mary together on stage, across the threshold (which we are not told about)  and which follows them exploring together their amazement, fear, excitement, all the feelings of knowing they are each carrying a child with God’s blessing and intentions.

Now there is a boat to be cast adrift in.

Amen

Refiner's Fire

Malachi is the last book of our Old Testament and he is writing to the settled jewish community in Jerusalem in 433 BC some 90 years after the return of the exiles. The Temple has been rebuilt, completed in 516 and is once again splendid and a focus for the presence of God, but while the outside looks as it should, inside the spiritual life of the community is far from well. It does sometimes (or maybe often happen) that following enthusiastic completion of a project that attention dwindles and it seems that the ardour of the people has faded. Among the record of misdeeds that Malachi rebukes Israel for in the first two chapters of his book are many to be laid at the feet of the priests. Most prominently the sacrifices being offered in the Temple were inadequate - instead of bringing the very best, the choicest offerings the priests brought imperfect animals including those which were sick, lame or blind for example. Malachi is so affronted by this that he thunders that it would be better to shut the doors of the temple altogether and offer nothing at all than these polluted offerings. He continues his list by condemning them for not faithfully teaching the law and thereby causing many to stumble. The people of Israel (as a consequence of the poor example set by the priests) have gone on to leave their wives and marry foreigners, something that was specifically prohibited during the period of exile. Malach says the people have wearied God by exalting evil over good.

Now, says Malachi, “The Lord will come suddenly to his Temple.” This is what the people have been waiting for - that God will return. But asks Malachi in view of all these bad things which have come to pass who will be able to withstand his reappearing?  The priests in particular will need to be careful; they will be refined like gold and silver. In Thursday’s podcast I quoted from an 1856 book of Metallurgy:

“In the process by which silver is separated from such impurities as iron, copper or tin, the alloy is mixed with lead, placed in a small crucible made of bone ash and then raised to a full red heat in a furnace. When the alloy is melted, air is blown upon it, this causes the lead and other metals to oxidise. At this stage the refiner watches the operation with the greatest earnestness until the metal has the appearance of a highly polished mirror reflecting every object around it. Even the refinner as he looks upon it may see himself as in a looking glass.”

This is written so it seems to me in alost biblical language and would not be comfortable reading for the sons of Levi : except of course that in the end they shall be so purified that even God may see himself in them

Amen

The prophet of hope

Over these last three Sundays of Advent we have been walking our way through the book of Isaiah who is the prophet who is always full of hope. Now, what happened when the exiles returned to Jerusalem turned out to be less smooth, less accomplishable than they had expected. Arriving from Babylon where they had been used to magnificence and sophistication, they found desolation and ruin. It would take over twenty years for even the foundations of the second Temple to be laid. The exiles were trying to fulfill the prophecy they had been given:

“They shall build up the ancient ruins 
They shall raise up the former devastations 
They shall repair the ruined cities
The devastations of many generations.”

But they found themselves living “in between times”, between the promise and the fulfillment - when wold the Lord return to the Temple? With the difficulties they face the people needed strength in adversity and to give them that, Isaiah reminds them who God is:

"For I the Lord love justice
I hate robbery and wrongdoing
And I will make an everlasting covenant … 
Their descendants shall be known among the nations 
And their offspring among the peoples. "

Which would have reminded them directly of God’s covenant with Abraham. 

Jesus himself used the words from Isaiah which we heard introducing our reading when he read in the synagogue:

"The spirit of the Lord God is upon me
Because the Lord has anointed me 
To bring good news to the oppressed
To bind up the broken hearted "

And Luke writing  in his Gospel concludes this section of it with Jesus’ own words;

“Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

In so many ways we too are in the “in between times.” We feel this particularly now in the middle of a pandemic, a plague among us, with the promise and now clear signs of a vaccine before us, a light of hope, yet like the Israelites on their return  have devastation before us - loss of loved ones, loss of economic prosperity and I think especially for the young loss of opportunity. Estimates by the pundits of a return to “normal” (if that is what we want) vary but are always counted in numbers of years. 

The disciples expected Jesus to return quickly and it is a characteristic of the Gospel of John an early part of which we heard this morning, that we hear most clearly of the four the realization that we are living in the in between times waiting for Jesus to come again. 

And so how to cope with the messiness of a destroyed Jerusalem? How to cope with the uncertain time to wait for the parousia? And how to cope with the uncertainties of our present epidemic.?The answer was  identified by Isaiah, the prophet of hope, who began  by reminding us who God is - for God is faithful, immutable and steadfast and we need always to hold onto that both in good times and bad.