29th January 2012 - The Presentation of Christ in the Temple

The Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple

The most disputed piece of land in the world lies on a mountain top in the old city of Jerusalem. Surmounted today by the beautiful Moslem Dome of the Rock it is the site of the Temple built by Solomon.

The Jewish Temple on this site had been planned by King David but was built by his son Solomon. We read about the dedication of this Temple in the Second Book of Chronicles in the Old Testament which records the prayer which Solomon prayed at its dedication. We hear that after that prayer:

 ... fire came down from heaven and burned up the offerings. The Lord's dazzling glory then filled the temple, and the priests could not go in. When the crowd of people saw the fire and the Lord's glory, they knelt down and worshiped the Lord.

This sign of the Lord’s glory was called the Shikinah glory or the glory of his presence. It had been seen in the tabernacle which Moses had built.  This was the place where God was worshiped during the forty years in the wilderness. Its presence at this point is a sign of God’s continued presence with his people.

The Temple and its worship continued for over 400 years but in the year 598BC the Temple was destroyed when the Babylonians conquered Jerusalem. The prophet Ezekiel describes a vision which took place shortly before the destruction of the temple in which the Glory of the Lord rises from the Temple and departs from it. The Temple was not rebuilt for more than 80 years. However when the Temple was finally reconsecrated in the year 516BC there was no appearance of God’s Glory. One of the questions that was being asked was ‘when would God’s glory return to the temple?’ The prophet Malachi was one of those who looked forward to the day that that would happen.

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At the time when Jesus was born the Temple was a busy place. First of all it was a building site. Herod the King was enlarging and renovating the Temple as part of his major building project. Also the Temple courts would be filled with the greatest Jewish teachers and their disciples. When he was twelve years old Jesus would visit the temple again and become so enthralled by the words of the teachers that he would forget to return home when the time came. Then there were the many hundreds of priests who were trained in the rituals and ceremonies which needed to be performed. Finally, even then, the Temple courts would be filled with the traders selling animals for sacrifice and the money changers who specialised in exchanging the normal everyday currency for the special money required to pay the temple taxes. And there also were a group of the pious in the courts. Mostly elderly they were people who devoted the rest of their lives to prayer and worship in this most special of places. I’ve met people like them today and they glow. Amongst these were Simeon and Anna

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Like all first born Jewish boys of his time Jesus was presented in the Temple forty days after his birth. The law of Moses stated that the first born of humans and of domestic animals belonged to God. An animal should be sacrificed but a human being was to be redeemed, that is, bought back by the paying of a price and the offering of an alternative sacrifice; for the rich a lamb, for the poor two doves or pigeons.

So Joseph and Mary come to the Temple in Jerusalem carrying the baby Jesus. I love David Kossoff’s description of this moment in his Book of Witnesses:

Then a poorly dressed couple approached. The woman rather younger than the man and carrying her baby son. The man carrying the most modest offering allowed by the Laws of Moses. A pair of doves. Simeon got to his feet. He was trembling, and I went nearer in case he should need help. He went forward, not as I thought to bow low to the man, but to take the baby in his arms. He stood and lifted his face and spoke to God, as to a loving friend who’d kept a promise. He blessed God, and thanked him. ‘Now I can die in peace,’ he said. ‘I have seen him – and held him in my arms.’

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This was the moment when Malachi’s prophecy was fulfilled, ‘The Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple.’  But amongst the busyness of the temple no one noticed. The priests had far more important things to do. The teachers were too engaged in imparting wisdom to listen for it, and the workers were simply too busy. Only amongst the small group of the pious, the devout, did two people realise that the day they had been longing for had arrived. Simeon and Anna alone amongst the vast crowd recognised the Lord when at last he came to his temple.

What about us? One of the things which everyone recognises today is how busy we all are. The French Priest, Michelle Quiost wrote:

They pass by on earth, always rushing, hurrying,
jostling, weighed down, snowed under, nearly demented.
And they never get there, there's not enough time.
Despite all their efforts, there's never enough time.

That was written forty years ago, and if anything things have got worse. Yet the truth is often busyness is a choice we make. We cannot make time for anything, for time is not ours to make, but we can choose how the time we are given is deployed. To quote Quoist again:

I don't ask this evening Lord,
for time to do this or that.
I ask for the grace to do conscientiously,
in the time that You gave me,
the thing that You want me to do.

One of the questions that our Bishop is asking of us is how we can become more and more a people of prayer.

More than anything else, we need to become a people of prayer; whose daily lives are formed and punctuated by our relationship with God in Jesus Christ.

Let’s not be like those in the temple who missed the point of the whole thing because they were too busy to see it. Today let’s take as our example Simeon and Anna so that we can say with them, “My eyes have seen your salvation”.

22nd January 2012 - Epiphany 3

When people plan a wedding they often have huge expectations of what a perfect day it will be. Most of the time things work out OK but sadly sometimes the wires get crossed and disasters happen. I’ve taken my fair share of weddings over the years and thankfully the church service has always gone to plan but I have had a couple of weddings when the arrangements after the church have not gone as well as the church service. On one occasion the police had to be called to the reception when someone took out a gun and began waving it around, and at another the caterers had failed to turn up so that when the bride and groom arrived at the hall they had hired, it was bare and empty.

There are two weddings in our readings today. The first is the wedding feast at Cana in Galilee at which the wine runs out. The second is the wedding feast at the end of the age when Jesus comes again to claim his bride, the church.

The story of the wedding feast at Cana in Galilee is told only in St. John’s Gospel. It is a familiar story. Like the stories with which I began the wedding was a disaster. A middle-Eastern wedding would last several days and the time would be spent feasting and drinking. It was a point of honour for families of the bride and groom that they should be able to provide for their guests. In the middle-east hospitality is an overwhelming priority and to fail in the provision was to be disgraced in the eyes of your neighbours. And such disgrace would adhere to the couple down through the years. When the wine ran out it was a disaster.

It has been suggested that those being married were members of Jesus’ extended family since Mary seems to be in the know about what is happening behind the scenes. She tells Jesus, “They have no wine”. Jesus seems reluctant to draw attention to himself but he acts. In the place where the wedding is being held there are six large jars of water each holding twenty to thirty gallons of water. Somehow, through Jesus’ action, the water is transformed into wine. I make that 150+ gallons of wine which works out at coming up to a thousand bottles. I think that would have lasted them a while.

I’ve said before that when you hear a story like this it is no use asking “What really happened?” That is a question we can never answer. What we can do is ask, “Why are we being told this story?” John seems to answer this question by filling the story with symbolic detail. It is a wedding feast because God is seen as being like a loving husband to his people. The water for rites of the law of Moses is transformed into the new wine of God’s Kingdom inaugurated in Jesus. The new wine of God’s grace is infinitly better than the old wine of legalism and fear.

All of this is important and commentators go to great lengths to draw out these and other details. But I want to lay that aside for a moment and focus on one thing. The difference that the presence of Jesus made.

Yesterday a number of us from this benefice attended a conference called together by Stephen our Bishop. It was an exercise in listening – listening to our Bishop, listening to one another, and above all listening to God. The conference was part of a process in our diocese entitled “Transforming Presence” in which the Bishop asks us to consider the priorities for the Church of England in Essex and East London over the next 10 to 15 years. Those priorities began with the fact that we are called to inhabit the world distinctively. It is no use us being Christians if that makes no difference to the way we live our lives and to the impact that we have on the society we inhabit.

Jesus’ presence at the wedding feast was a “transforming presence”. Things changed for the better because Jesus was there. The water was transformed into wine; and not just any wine but the best wine. The shame and humiliation of the family was transformed back into rejoicing as they were saved from the disaster which threatened to overwhelm them. The disciples were transformed by seeing Jesus’ action – he “revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.”

When Jesus is present nothing remains the same. His presence is a transforming presence.

In his opening words yesterday Bishop Stephen asked us to consider two questions.

• How can my life be a blessing to those amongst whom I live?
• How can my church be a blessing to the community in which it is set?

My heart rejoiced when I heard those questions. You see, I don’t believe that the church is meant to be a refuge from the world around it. I believe the church is meant be a Transforming Presence in the world. We are called to show through our presence the presence of Jesus. The challenge that has been set before us is to ask how we do that. The answer, I believe, is that we do it by doing the things that Jesus did; proclaiming the good news, reaching out to those in need, and confronting the evil powers which oppress.

The second marriage feast in our readings today is the marriage feast at the end the age when Jesus comes for his people. I believe that there will come a time when Jesus will return physically to this earth as Lord and King, and that we his church are called to live now in the light of that future coming. When he comes he will come for his bride the church – for those who have followed him in every place and time.

Now in all the weddings I’ve ever taken one of the most important features of the day was the dress worn by the bride, and Jesus’ bride is also clothed in a wonderful dress.

Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready; to her it has been granted to be clothed with fine linen, bright and pure'--for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints.

The saints – that’s us folks, you and me. At the coming of Jesus the things we do now will be the garb that we wear then.

We’ve got some exploring to do together but it’s clear that we need to look at every aspect of our life in this place so that we can do the righteous deeds that are needed for us to be a transforming presence in this place – living together the life to which Jesus calls us, and doing together the deeds he would have us do.

15th January 2012 - Epiphany 2

Introduction

Many years ago, before the telephone existed, a telegraph company advertised a vacancy for someone who was familiar with Morse Code to fill a job as a telegraph operator. A number of people applied for the job and they were all called for interview. When they got to the telegraph office they were asked to wait. In the room where they sat they could hear the tap tap of the telegraph machine in the background. Suddenly one of the applicants stood up, crossed the room and walked into the supervisor’s office. The other applicants looked at one another and continued to wait. A few minutes later the supervisor came out of his office and told those who were still waiting, “You can all go home, the job’s been filled”. When they protested that this was not fair the supervisor explained, “Ever since you’ve been sitting here the telegraph key has been signalling, “Come straight into the office and the job is yours, but only one of you responded.” Each one of them had been called but only the one who had been listening was able to respond to the call.

Exposition

The theme that, for me,  emerges from our Bible Readings today is the theme of God calling people. The theme is apparent in the Gospel reading as Jesus calls Phillip and Nathanael but it’s the Old Testament reading that I particularly want to look at today. In this reading God called the young Samuel to deliver his message to Eli. For me this is a precious passage which I remember from my days as a child in Sunday School. That’s why I chose that Sunday School hymn about Samuel to follow it. I used to imagine myself as the young boy Samuel laying, half awake, beside the ‘sacred ark’ and hearing the voice of God calling to me. My fear is that through the passing years I may have become more like Eli, sleeping and unable to hear God when he calls because it’s too much effort to listen.

David Adam, the former vicar of Holy Island writes this about this passage:

The story of Samuel at Shiloh illustrates how the Church must often appear. Eli represents the Church; he is old and losing his vision. The light in the church has almost gone out. The sons of the ‘vicarage’, Hophni and Phineas, are not interested in following in their father’s footsteps. Into this situation is introduced a youngster and, as ever, he disturbs the church. Eli is trying to sleep. Samuel lies on his mattress listening to the sounds of the night. A voice calls. Samuel, who is about 12 years old, jumps up and wakes the old man. Eli and says, ‘you called.’ Tired, Eli says, ‘I did not call. Go back to bed my son.’ The Lord calls again, ‘Samuel!’ Once more Samuel jumps up and runs to Eli because he doesn’t know it was the Lord who was calling. Again Eli says, ‘I did not call. Go back to bed my, son.’ It is not long before the Lord calls a third time. For a third time Samuel disturbs Eli. This old priest, his vision fading, is able to guide the young man and send him back to his room, saying, ‘If he calls, you shall say, “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.”’

The Church might be very old and find the young disturbing, but God speaks through new voices. At the same time the young will be lost without the guidance of the old.

Samuel heard the voice and said, ‘Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.’ In this way God was able to speak to Samuel and through Samuel.

How often do we fail to hear because we are unwilling to listen? We are often too busy or too prejudiced to hear the voice of God.

How can we make room in our lives to hear the still small voice of God?

Application

Just before Christmas both and David Keble and I received a letter from a couple who told us they had felt called by God to begin a new church here in Stansted – the Stansted Family Church. My first reaction was to feel threatened. How dare they claim that God had called them onto my patch to set up a church in opposition to mine. But as I reflected on the letter, and discussed it with David, I began to realise that in fact I was responding from fear, not faith. Both of us have been told many times that the people of our two churches are so very busy that they don’t have time to proclaim the Gospel or reach out to those in the community who are different from the people in our churches. Both of us are aware that our buildings consume so many resources that there is little left over to use for our mission. God is not mocked. If we will not do his work he will use others to do it. If Eli can longer hear his voice then he will speak to Samuel.

In the Bible reading it’s too late for Eli. Had we read on and heard the words God speaks to Samuel we’d discover they were terrifying words of condemnation:

The time has come for me to bring down on Eli's family everything I warned him of, every last word of it. I'm letting him know that the time's up. I'm bringing judgment on his family for good. He knew what was going on, that his sons were desecrating God's name and God's place, and he did nothing to stop them. This is my sentence on the family of Eli: The evil of Eli's family can never be wiped out by sacrifice or offering."

(1Sa 3:12-14)

For us, I think, there is still time. I don’t believe that God sent me to this place for no reason. God is bringing about two new initiatives which will have an effect on us all. Next Saturday the Bishop of Chelmsford has called together over a thousand people from across the diocese to listen for what God is calling us to. Cheryl, Peter and Matthew from this congregation (together with myself) have been called to be part of that. We want to be listening not sleeping. When we come back we will try to share with you the things we believe God has said.

And also David Keble and I will be running a course on Mission starting on the 29^th of February. It is our hope that every single person from both this Church and the Free Church will attend to ask “What is God calling us to do here?” The next step is then to get on and do it.

Let’s not be like Eli and fall asleep, too tied up with our busy lives to listen to God. Let’s let our words be those that Samuel says, “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.”

8th January 2012 - The Epiphany of Christ

Today we celebrate the Epiphany of Christ. The ancient monastic prayers for this day contain the following words:

'Three Wonders mark this day we celebrate.
Today the star led the Magi to the manger;
today water was changed into wine at the marriage feast;
today Christ desired to be baptized by John in the river Jordan to bring us salvation, alleluia'.

The thing which links these three events is that they speak of God’s revelation of himself to the world in Jesus Christ. In the words of my favourite Epiphany hymn, today speaks to us of “God in man, made manifest”.

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I looked up the word “epiphany” in the dictionary and it gave a number of definitions of the word. The first was simply that it is a Christian festival. The second was “an appearance or manifestation, especially of a deity.” But it was the third which I thought especially helpful. It said an epiphany is, “a sudden, intuitive perception of, or insight into, the reality or essential meaning of something, usually initiated by some simple, homely, or commonplace occurrence or experience.”

The Epiphany is not simply a recollection of an event which happened two thousand years ago but instead is meant to be something which happens in us as contemplate the events which we remember on this day. As we think about the story the Wise Men, or the miracle of water changed into wine, or the time of Jesus baptism we are not simply to observe those as interesting events which happened long ago but by observing them come ourselves to “a sudden, intuitive perception of, or insight into, [their] reality or essential meaning” and because we have that “sudden, intuitive perception” be ourselves transformed so that we never see the world in the same way again.

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One of my favourite stories from the Old Testament concerns Elisha. The King of Aram is at war with the King of Israel but every time he attacks he finds that the army of Israel is ready for him. He accuses his officers of having a traitor among them but they tell him “It is Elisha, the prophet in Israel, who tells the king of Israel the words that you speak in your bedchamber.” So the King of Aram sends his army to capture Elisha. 

When Elisha’s servant gets up early next morning he sees “an army with horses and chariots ... all around the city” and rushes to Elisha to tell him. Elisha responds, “Do not be afraid, for there are more with us than there are with them.” Then he prays, “O LORD, please open his eyes that he may see.” And we are told, “So the LORD opened the eyes of the servant, and he saw; the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha.” The story is in 2 Kings chapter six and if you don’t know what happens next I’d urge you to read it for yourself. It is a wonderful story. But right now I want you to understand what happened to the servant; “the LORD opened the eyes of the servant, and he saw...” He had an epiphany and the way he saw the world was changed for ever.

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“Lift up your eyes and look around you” said our Old Testament reading today, “Then you shall see and be radiant...” I believe that it is utterly central to being a Christian that you see the world differently from those around us. In our Gospel reading today we heard again the story of the Wise Men. Their wisdom lay in the fact that they could see through the external appearance to the reality which lay beneath it. When Herod heard of the baby nothing about him changed. Indeed his first thought is to dispose of the baby so that nothing will change. But the Wise Men had already transformed their lives by coming on a long journey and they were able to see through the outward appearance of an ordinary mother and child to see their God made manifest to them. So Herod continued on the path which would in the end literally consume him physically and mentally. The wise men are heard of no more but are remembered in Christian devotion and, like all who put their trust in Jesus, will rise to live for ever in the new creation.

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This is what I want you to understand today. That we are called to see a deeper dimension in the world. The dimension of meaning and significance; the "God dimension". There is a terrible danger that we compartmentalise our lives. Indeed often we are expected to do just that. Men and women are told that that you don’t bring family troubles into work, or that your religious convictions are a personal matter and should be kept for your own time. This kind of splitting up of our lives is in total conflict with the wholeness and integrity that is God’s intention for humanity. God’s plan is gather all things together in Christ and compartmentalising which excludes him from particular areas of life or society is nonsense.

God is present in every area of our life and your world if we will only open our eyes and see him. In the words of a hymn I remember from my childhood,

But if we desire him,
He is close at hand;
For our native country
Is our Holy Land.

This is sometimes easier to know in some places than in others. The Celtic Christians spoke of “thin places” where the heaven seemed close to earth. When I go to Holy Island and look out from its eastern cliffs I often sing out loud:

Fishermen talk with him
By the great North Sea,
As the first disciples
Did in Galilee.

Travelling helps us see such things. That is why the ancient discipline of pilgrimage is important. But the aim of going to special places is that we see all places as special. As TS Eliot wrote:

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

Or, to turn again to that hymn from my childhood:

Every peaceful village
In our land might be
Made by Jesu's presence
Like sweet Bethany.

Even our village, even this place. It’s an Epiphany.

1st January 2012 - The Feast of the Circumcision and Naming of Jesus

Today is the 8^th Day after Christmas and is Feast of the Naming and Circumcision of Jesus. Like all Jewish boys Jesus was initiated into God’s covenant with Abraham on the 8^th day after his birth as we read in Genesis Chapter 17 verse 10, “This is my covenant, which you shall keep, between me and you and your offspring after you: Every male among you shall be circumcised.” It is at this point that his name, Jesus, is publicly proclaimed for the first time.

This is a very rich passage and there is a great deal that I could draw out from it but there are two themes that I think I must share something about. One of these is the idea of ‘Covenant’ in the Bible and the other is something about what the name ‘Jesus’ signifies.

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Firstly ‘Covenant’. A covenant is an agreement or contract between two parties, and the Bible gives us an amazing thought that the creator God enters into binding contracts with his people. If you will do this I will do that. In the Old Testament God’s contract is with the descendants of Abraham and the terms of that contract are that God will give to these people a particular area of land if they in return will worship him exclusively. As Ezekiel records, “they shall be my people, and I will be their God, says the Lord GOD.”

But the Old Testament also records that whilst God is faithful the descendants of Abraham prove faithless, abandoning their agreement with the one God and following other gods. As a consequence of this troubles come upon them. God sends prophets to call them back. For example Jeremiah proclaims, “If you return, O Israel, says the LORD, if you return to me, if you remove your abominations from my presence, and do not waver, and if you swear, 'As the LORD lives!' in truth, in justice, and in uprightness, then nations shall be blessed by him, and by him they shall boast.”

But it is not enough. Eventually the prophets acknowledge that human effort is not enough. Something more is needed. Jeremiah tells them,  

The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt--a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the LORD. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.      (Jer 31:31-33)

Isaiah tells us that God’s special servant will inaugurate this new covenant and that it will not be for the descendants of Abraham alone.

'It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the survivors of Israel; I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.'

This new covenant will be for everyone. This is the covenant inaugurated by Jesus.

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This brings us on to the second theme which is the significance of the name ‘Jesus’. We know Mary’s son a Jesus but that is actually a Greek form of the Hebrew name Yeshua, or as we would say in English ‘Joshua’. The name means “The Lord saves” or “the Lord sets free”, “the Lord rescues” or “the Lord heals”. His very name proclaims that Jesus is the one who liberates.

In the Old Testament we hear of God’s people being held as slaves in the land of Egypt but God sends Moses to liberate them. God is a God who sets people free. But that freedom is completed when the people are lead into the land which God promises to them. But is not Moses who does this but his successor as their leader, Joshua. So in the old covenant Joshua leads them to freedom, in the new it is the new Joshua – Jesus.

One of the great themes of the New Testament is that the gift that Jesus gives us is freedom. As Saint Paul tells the Galatian Christians “For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.”

God has made with us a new covenant sealed by the blood of Jesus shed upon the cross. This covenant is made to set us free.

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Many of you will know that I started life as a Methodist. There are many things I value from my Methodist background. One of them is the incredibly demanding Covenant Prayer which Methodist use sometime in the early days of each new year. I’m not going to pray it with you today. It is very demanding and I would hate people to just “go through the motions” with it. Instead I have printed a copy for you to take away. What I want you to do is read it and think about, and ask yourself “Am I willing to say this prayer.” Look at what it means. Understand how demanding it is and then, and only then, pray this prayer. And once you’ve done that tell me that you’ve done it.

On this first day of the year we remember the covenant of freedom inaugurated in Jesus and God’s invitation to each one of us to take that upon ourselves.

25th December 2011 - Christmas Morning

“To you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, who is the Messiah, the Lord.”

Ask about has anyone brought presents to show ?

Jesus is often called the ‘Best Christmas Present’ and I’ve been trying to think about what that might mean. The best known verse in the Bible says:

‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. ‘

The whole of the Christian Year is thanksgiving for the way God gives Himself to us in Jesus Christ but, of course, Christmas Day is a particular commemoration of this.

Let’s think about what it means for Jesus to be a gift.

1.      Well first of all, of course, a gift is chosen with a particular recipient in mind. If you don’t know the recipient very well  you can often choose the wrong thing. I bet there are, on this Christmas morning, lots of people who have opened Jumpers that don’t fit  or toys that far too young for them.  I remember quite a few years ago receiving aftershave as a Christmas present, but at that time I had a beard and had done for several years. Of course, that one may just have been a hint.

But the greater the knowledge you have for a person and the greater the love you feel for them the more you want to try and get the present right for them.

When God chose his Christmas gift for us gave us what we wanted but exactly what we needed. He gave us himself in a way that would meet our need to be set free from sin and death, and to be given eternal life.

2.      The second thing we can think about is that a gift is freely given. Can you imagine being charged for your Christmas gifts. “Here’s your present – that will be Two pounds fifty please.” It’s unthinkable, isn’t it. The more love that there is behind a present the less it can be seen as something that is earned. Father Christmas may only give gifts to good children but mums and dads who love their children give them gifts even if they’ve done something wrong. The one thing you can’t do with a gift is earn it, because if you earn it it is not a gift, it’s wages or a bribe.

And the same is true of God’s gift to us of Jesus. “When the goodness and loving-kindness of God our Saviour appeared, he saved us, not because of any works of righteousness that we had done, but according to his mercy”, Jesus is ultimate sign of God’s love for us, and there is nothing we can do earn it. Indeed if we try to earn love or buy it we fail miserably as it says in the Song of Solomon – “If one offered for love all the wealth of one's house, it would be utterly scorned.” Love gives freely or it is not love at all. And God, who is love, gives freely too.

3.      But the third thing we can think about is that gift need to be accepted. I’ve heard about gifts that have been sent back by people. I’ve heard of other people whose first reaction is to give the gift to someone else (and to do that in front of the giver). I’m sure there are packages that will sit around unopened in the days and months ahead.

God has given us his gift in Jesus but we need to accept that gift. At the beginning of John’s Gospel we read:

He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.

God has a wonderful gift for us, be we need to accept that gift. And like any gift given in love that accepting builds up a relationship: the relationship by which the life of God flows into us. And relationships don’t just happen, they need to be worked at.

But this relationship starts with a gift – God’s gift of himself to us. On this day when we celebrate the giving of that gift say to now, perhaps for the first time, perhaps renewing a commitment made long ago; “Lord, I accept your gift of yourself to me and I freely give myself to you in return.” Amen.

25th December 2011 - Midnight Mass

Some years ago I was able to visit the land where Jesus was born. One of the places that I really wanted to see was the a place called “The Church of the Holy Sepulchre” which covers the place where Jesus died on the cross, where he was laid in the tomb, and where he rose from the dead. I knew from my reading that this was almost certainly the authentic site. That archaeologists and historians were agreed that in the context of first century Jerusalem this place worked better than any other as the place which marked the location of the events it commemorated. But when I got to the church I found it a huge disappointment. The trouble was that two thousand years of history had happened in that place and the things which I wanted to see - the original tomb, the hill on which the cross had stood – had been overlaid by the devotion of centuries. The tomb had been covered with marble, the rocky outcrop in which it had stood had been cleared away. Walls had been built and covered with pictures and the pictures covered with silver and gold. The reality still lay somewhere underneath but centuries of good intentions had buried it.

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Christmas can be a bit like that too. Most people know that it’s got something to do with Jesus, and quite a few know it celebrates his birth but I think we sometimes forget how many of the things we associate with Christmas really have little to do with the original event.

The most recent accretions come from Victorian and Edwardian times. The fellow with the Red clothes comes from this time and owes much of his popularity to an advertising campaign by the Coca Cola company. The importance of Christmas as a religious festival was much undermined during the of the reformation and it is Charles Dickens who is credited with popularising most of the modern customs. The tree, the reindeer and all of that don’t have much to do with the original Christmas.

But then, neither do many of the things that we think really must go back to that first Christmas night. The donkey, for example, who features in so many Christmas songs and poems is nowhere to found in the Bible. He, with the Ox owe their presence to Saint Frances who placed the first Christmas crib in a church as a way of sharing the story with the poor and uneducated. There must have been some animals there, else why have a manger, but just what they were we don’t know

Even the stable at the back of the inn are rather dubious. The Bible does tell us that Jesus was laid in a manger because there was no room in the inn, but that word in Inn could be better translated ‘Guest Room’. In the houses of the poor there was only one room but a slightly more prosperous household would have two, one for the family and one for guests. A night the family animals would be brought inside the house at night for safety and to provide warmth. A platform at one end of the room would provide sleeping space for the family and on the edge of that platform was the manger, the food trough for the animals. One way of reading the story of Jesus birth is that he was born in the family room of the house because the Guest room was full and that Mary laid him in the manger as the safest and softest place for him to be.

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I’m not trying to be a spoilsport. I know that many people have come love the Christmas Card depictions of the stable scene. And like the accretions in the church of the holy sepulchre the accretions which gathered round Christmas have been put there with the best of intentions to make the story more attractive and more interesting. Take them away and it becomes just a story of an ordinary baby born in circumstances not much different from any other. And that, of course, is the point. Jesus was born in circumstances not much different from the general run of humanity. What makes his birth special is not the things we depict on Christmas cards but the one thing we cannot, that this child was God born as a human being, taking on himself our flesh and blood to open the way for us in our flesh and blood to share eternity with him.

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Maybe we need, this year, to look beyond the accretions to see the reality beneath. 2011 has not been a good year for many people and if the predictions of doomsayers come to pass 2012 will be worse. Pretty stories will not give any help as we face the grim reality that lays before us, only the truth will sustain us. And the truth is this. The child that was born in Bethlehem was God born among us. For most of his life he lived obscurely and unnoticed but at the age of thirty he began to preach, and to teach, and to heal. A band of disciples grew around him and he finally attracted the attention of the authorities who swatted him like an annoying fly. He was crucified – a agonizing death – and buried in a borrowed tomb; and two days later burst out of the tomb and lit a fire which has never been put out. Convinced that he had conquered death and every force which makes us less than human, less than children of God, his followers carried the message about him to every corner of the word; proclaiming that one day he would return and the whole earth would bow before him. That the world would be turned upside down, that the rich and powerful would be cast down before the poor and lowly, and that Justice and Mercy would reign forever. And proclaiming that right now we could live in the light of that future coming by living lives of justice and mercy today.

Now that is a story to sustain us whatever tomorrow may bring. The story of God with us.

18th December 2011 - Advent 4

“Here I am, the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to you word.”

The thing I love most about the Christmas story is the way that it focuses down and down to a moment of amazing significance and utter simplicity. It is a moment which has been depicted by artists over and over again. The moment when God becomes man in the womb of the Virgin Mary.

What do we know about Mary.

Firstly, we know that she was a young girl. She is a virgin, not yet married but engaged to be married. Girl’s were normally betrothed between the ages of thirteen and fourteen and married about a year later, so she was – perhaps – somewhere between fourteen and fifteen years old.

Next, we know she is from a humble background but not from absolute poverty. Today, of course, Nazareth is one of the best known  towns in the world but at the time of Jesus conception it was a shanty town. Nazareth was an outlying village to the City of Sepphoris  , a city that is never mentioned in the New Testament. Sepphoris was one of King Herod’s building projects. It was to be a Greco-roman city, built in stone and marble, and housing all the facilities of Greek and Roman life. Around the city were various shanty towns where the skilled and unskilled labourers lived. Nazareth was one of these towns and in it lived the carpenter Joseph. The word carpenter is a broader word in the New Testament than in today’s world. It means a worker in wood and stone. So Joseph would have been a builder who had moved up from his home town of Bethlehem to seek work in the place where work was to be found. Mary would have been from a similar background.

The last thing we know about Mary is her name. In Hebrew the name Mary is Miriam. In the Old Testament Miram was the sister of Moses and was she who watched over the infant Moses after his mother had placed him in a basket of reeds and floated him down the river Nile to the place where Pharaoh’s daughter was bathing. This was, of course, to save him from the command that all boy children should be killed. It is Miriam who shows great initiative by suggesting Moses’ own mother as his wet nurse. Later Miriam would participate with Moses in lead the Exodus of the Hebrew slaves from Egypt and is described as a prophet. She dances and plays the tambourine  and sings of the downfall of the Egyptian army, “Sing to the LORD, for he has triumphed gloriously; horse and rider he has thrown into the sea.” Miriam was the greatest female hero in the history of the Jewish people and her name must have been given to vast numbers of Jewish girls. In the New Testament there are a number of woman called Mary, and sometimes it is difficult to know which one is being spoken of.

So what do we have? We have a young woman with a very common name, from a background which is poor but absolutely so, engaged to a builder. The outsider, looking in, would have seen nothing special at all.

To this girl there comes a visitor – a messenger, which is what the word ‘angel’ means. This messenger tells her that God has chosen her for a special task. I love the way this is described in Charles Causley’s poem, Ballad of the Bread Man.

Mary stood in the kitchen
Baking a loaf of bread.
An angel flew in through the window.
We’ve got a job for you, he said.

God in his big gold heaven,
Sitting in his big blue chair,
Wanted a mother for his little son.
Suddenly saw you there.

Unsurprisingly is taken aback by this. How can she have a child when she is not yet married and is still a virgin? She is told that the child will be conceived through the power of God’s Holy Spirit and will be the Son of God.

Outside life is going on just as it always has. There is nothing for anyone to see that shows how significant this moment is. As human beings carry on with their ordinary everyday tasks the fate of eternity hangs in the balance, waiting for Mary’s word . And it comes, “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word.”

From now on her life will never be the same. This ordinary girl will walk beside Jesus as he grows in the awareness of his nature and mission, and will stand beside his cross – her agony a reflection of his. He will be '...for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed  so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed” and for her “a sword will pierce your ... soul.' 

She will know the joy of his resurrection and will be present on the day when the Holy Spirit is poured out on the Church. She will become, in the vision of John, “a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars.”

And all because, at this point, she said “yes”. A “yes” that holds nothing back.

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“Once to every man and nation, comes the moment to decide” wrote the hymn writer James R. Lowell. To each one of us there comes appoint when we decide who will sit in the driving seat of our life and steer its course. Mary’s choice place God firmly in control. She didn’t always get it right. I’m glad we are not bound like our Roman Catholic brothers and sisters to hold a view of Mary that places her beyond the realms of normal human beings. The Gospels show her, on at least two occasions, failing to understand what Jesus is about. She didn’t always get it right, but she always followed the path that her ‘Yes’ to God set before her.

And so must we. Outside the busy world is going about its normal business. The frantic rush of preparations for the Christmas holidays goes on unabated. But today God speaks to us. In the words of a song we often sing he asks us,

Will you come and follow me if I but call your name?
Will you go where you don't know and never be the same?
Will you let my love be shown? Will you let my name be known,
will you let my life be grown in you and you in me?

Will you leave yourself behind if I but call your name?
Will you care for cruel and kind and never be the same?
Will you risk the hostile stare should your life attract or scare?
Will you let me answer prayer in you and you in me?

Will our answer be, like Mary’s, “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word.”