Sunday Semon: Matthew 6.24-34 Worry and anxiety

Matthew 6:24-34

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. “So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.

 I have a friend who lives with anxiety: the smallest thing can throw his equilibrium and lead him down paths of paranoia as he looks for some motive or outcome that’s designed to do him down. In his mind he has what I call the reverse Midas touch – and I won’t tell you what he believes everything he touches turns into. That’s not only emotionally challenging for him but it’s also draining for those of us he unburdens on. He looks inwards all the time and rarely seems to look outwards.

I can’t imagine what it’s like to live with that level of worry and yet I'm very much of the opinion that worry is a fact of life. Just take a moment to think about what your worries are.  It seems to me that worry is a continuum and we’re all on that line somewhere. Yes, of course significant events can push us further along that line but most of us live relatively worry-free lives in that we’re fed, we’re clothed, we’re housed, we’ve parented reasonable effectively and most of us have enough money to cope. We also live in a society that, whatever its shortcomings, has various social safety-nets in place for the most vulnerable. Where does that leave our personal concerns – the one’s we’ve just considered? How many of them I wonder, are just … well, a bit trivial in the wider scheme of things? So, I’ll share a couple of mine: we’re going abroad in the summer and I am worried how the falling value of the pound will affect our spending power. I’m worried because my younger daughter and her chap are moving back in with us for a couple of months and I’m worried that Ben-the-dog isn’t doing as well as his trainers expect in his guide dog training. They’re all valid worries but saying them out loud makes them seem what they are: a bit shallow.

Knowing that, of course, isn’t much of a consolation if you happen to be prone to anxiety or are going through a particularly difficult patch at work or with the family or have a serious health problem or an unexpectedly large bill. Being told to get a sense of perspective because other people elsewhere are much worse off than you is at best trite and at worst downright insensitive.

My mother’s mantra was always, “Remember the starving children in Africa.”

“O.K. I’ve remembered them. Strangely, that doesn’t make me feel any better. Now what?”

And how well do we take to the suggestion that we should count our blessings in times of personal trouble?

However true Jesus’ statement, “ … can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your life span?” may be, and it clearly is because medical studies suggest that prolonged anxiety significantly shortens our lives, I wonder how someone really burdened and careworn with worry hears such a passage as this today.

This is such a familiar passage that I suspect, with very little notice, most of us could cobble together some spiritual insight: and yet over-familiarity runs the danger of leading us into lazy thinking and trite analysis. After all, we've heard this before and we pretty much know what to expect, so I've decided to go out on a limb a bit and approach this text in a slightly different way.

On Friday I was talking to one of the lads who regularly comes to chapel in the prison. I’ll call him Terry. He’s had a very rocky couple of weeks: he lost his job in the prison kitchens for stealing food, and therefore his major source of income; his partner has gone off with someone else: he started using drugs again and lost his two front teeth in a fight. (Those of you who watched last week’s edition of Panorama will have some inkling of what I’m talking about.) His take on things was very interesting. “I’ve hit rock bottom because I took my eyes off the Lord.” His main worry was not all the woes he faces but the fact that, in his own words, he had ceased to be a pillar for the Lord but had become, instead, a pillock for the Lord. He’s stopped looking inwards and is looking outwards.

His troubles had driven him to some extreme behaviour but his main concern was for his compromised Christian witness. His concern wasn’t what people thought of him but what people thought of the God he follows because, he feared, people judged God through his discipleship. “Call yourself a Christian?” Of course, that’s another sort of worry for him – you’d think - but no, “I’ve given it all to the Lord. It’s my only option. I’m back on track and I’m going to use this as part of my testimony of what God can do in your life.”

“I’ve given it all to The Lord. It’s my only option.”

I am often surprised by the spiritual insights these men have.

I’ve been spending some time in the prison with a man who murdered his wife. I’ll call him Joe. I’ve never met anyone as remorseful, and he has attempted suicide so is on a constant watch because he may try again. At the moment he sees that as his only solution. However bad life is in prison she’s worse off, is his reasoning, and he can’t rationalise that while he’s fed, clothed and warm, she’s lying in the cold ground. “There is no punishment good enough for me.”

He asked if I could take him to the chapel at the very time of her funeral and there is a short liturgy in a book Brunel gave me for those unable to attend a funeral. Distraught as he was, it was a profound experience for him and it has shifted the way he sees things: he wants to start coming to chapel regularly; he is starting to understand that God has forgiven him and that’s the first step to being able to forgive himself. There’s a way to go yet for him, and I’d be grateful if you’d keep both these men in your prayers, the men I’ve called Terry and Joe, but I use these examples because for me they illustrate today’s Gospel in a way that most of our lives probably can’t. For both of them the way out of worry and anxiety and, indeed, self-loathing, has been to turn to God: either to turn back to him or to begin that journey. Out of the depth of their experiences, their pain, their guilt, the messed up lives – theirs and others - and their bad choices, is a sense that hope comes through faith in God. They have started looking outward rather than inwards.

Now, I don’t want to suggest that to experience what Jesus is saying in today’s Gospel needs each and every one of us to plumb the depths and I know that what I’ve said comes perilously close to saying, “Look, other people have it worse than you so get a grip”,  but the context of these stories shows how true Jesus words are when he says, “ … do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? …. You of little faith …. your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness ….”  The Kingdom of God: our spiritual lives and how we live as disciples should be the focus of our concerns. Instead of turning our worries inwards, we should have a wider concern for how we bring God’s Kingdom closer to others.

For Terry, the witness that he was so concerned he’d compromised is part of bringing the Kingdom of God to others: he is striving for it for himself and for others – and prison is not an easy place to be a man of faith. For Joe, it’s about learning that no one is beyond redemption in God’s eyes and, as he undertakes a listener’s course, he will become the go-to man for other prisoners who believe that no punishment is good enough or who are deeply remorseful, to speak to and gain support from. That too will serve the Kingdom of God.

Can we take a leaf out of their books? Can we trust that despite our woes and worries God is in control? And if we believe that, can we leave those worries behind and concentrate on the job at hand, our witness as disciples and the part that plays in bringing the Kingdom of God closer? Looking outwards and not inwards.

Amen

Sunday Sermon: salt and light. Matthew 5.13-20

 

 

Matthew 5.13-20

You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled underfoot.

‘You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hidden. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.

‘Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfil. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter,* not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. Therefore, whoever breaks* one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

 

We start today part way through Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. Prior to this passage, Jesus had been encouraging the poor and marginalised by telling them how blessed the downtrodden and powerless are in the section we call The Beatitudes, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are those who mourn, blessed are the meek, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, blessed are the merciful, blessed are the pure in heart, the peacemakers, the persecuted and the reviled.”  This isn't written for everybody everywhere, whoever, wherever. Neither is it intended for people with a casual interest in God. It's meant for people who are committed: much of the Sermon on the Mount makes no sense unless you have already decided to follow Jesus. It's a text for pilgrims, for people on a journey of faith.

Paul, when writing to the Christians in Corinth says that he didn’t come using ‘lofty words’.  These words we hear Jesus using this morning are not lofty words: instead they’re down to earth words, down to earth images, salt and light, which convey, as Paul went on to describe it, “God’s wisdom, secret and hidden’ but now made known.”

“You are the salt of the earth,” Jesus says to his disciples. That’s a commonplace statement today isn’t it? “So-and-so is the salt of the earth”, we say. But I’m guessing most of us haven’t paid much attention to where that idea comes from and to me it seems an odd phrase. “Salt of the earth? Why is someone the salt of the earth? How is someone the salt of the earth? What does it mean, particularly at a time when health-conscious people are advised to avoid salt? We live in a culture – certainly in the West – where salt is seen as rather a bad thing: high blood pressure, strokes, heart-attacks etc. Nevertheless we instinctively know that when we describe someone as the salt of the earth we mean that he or she is a simple, down-to-earth, good person – someone dependable, approachable, reliable, and responsible: someone we can trust.

We need to dig a bit and, as twenty first century people, come to an understanding of some of the realities of the first century.

The Old Testament speaks of 'covenant of salt': in the book of Numbers we read, "All the holy offerings that the Israelites present to the LORD I have given to you, together with your sons and daughters, as a perpetual due; it is a covenant of salt forever before the LORD for you and your descendants as well".  'Covenant of salt' means a permanent relationship; eating salt with someone meant to be bound in loyalty. So there’s a significance that is lost to us today but might help us to understand what Jesus was driving at. The people of God, then as now, were, by agreement, in a relationship of loyalty.

In Jesus’ day, the primary use for salt was as a preservative as there was no refrigeration. People used salt to prevent food, especially meats, from spoiling. No doubt people also used salt as we use it, to enhance flavours and to add zest to our food but another thing about salt is that it gives us a thirst.  In the time of Jesus, salt was not purified in the way that we know but was collected from deposits left by the Dead Sea as it dried.  This salt was exposed to the elements and could break apart and lose its flavour.  In that respect salt is a very appropriate metaphor for discipleship, which can and does lose its vigour over time if care is not taken to keep it alive.

Is there a message for us there?

In the same way, Jesus says that his followers are to be a light in the world. No one can hide a city set on a hill, and no one lights a lamp and places it under a basket: that, too, would be foolish – trying to hide a city on a hill, or hiding a light makes no sense at all. Jesus’ friends are to let their light shine out in the world, so that everyone will see that light and glorify God. Why? Because the light is revealing God through the actions of his followers who are lighting the dark places and practices of our societies and working to bring God’s Kingdom closer.

I find these analogies of discipleship a real challenge because they talk of a distinctiveness about Christians and the Christian way of life that I don’t really see very much of in our society, and I include myself in that analysis. The saltiness and the light are there in us to make a difference: certainly a personal difference in the people we are: our attitudes and behaviours; our spirituality and so on, but we are also to make a difference to those around us by the very fact of our being who and what we are: disciples.

 You can’t hide a city on a hill.

Are we that visible as Christian witnesses to those around us? Are we really? I mentioned before about one of the qualities of salt being that it encourages thirst. Do we behave as if we are thirsting for what God wants for us and the societies we live in, or do we behave as if we are full? Full to our own satisfaction rather than God’s?

By our deeds, we who call ourselves disciples are to influence the world for good. We should no more escape notice than a city set on a mountain. If we fail in our discipleship, we are as useless as flavourless salt or as a lamp whose light is concealed.  By inviting us to be “light,” Jesus invites us to make him present in the world. 

The God we know is passionate about justice; the God we know is passionate about truth – it was a passion that took him to the cross, it’s a passion that the Holy Spirit fires up within us, it’s a passion that sends us to the world and to the church with the message that things should be different.  How can we be quiet when we’re so passionate?  How can we be quiet when there’s so much injustice around, how can we stop saying things until people hear, really hear, and are challenged to change as a consequence?

Being salt means that we bring out the true taste of what it means to be a Christian – that’s the taste of justice and righteousness, living in God’s way.  If we lose that then we lose our savour, we lose who we are and we’re good for nothing.

Bland. Food without salt is bland. Are we bland Christians?

Being light means that we’re a beacon in the church, not just locally, but nationally and internationally as well.  We radiate Christ’s light, divine light and that searching light shows up not just where individuals have to change, but where the church has to change and where society has to change.

Are we up for that?

And what does it mean in practice?

We live in interesting times: BREXIT; President Trump; politicians on both sides of the Atlantic not knowing the law and seeking to undermine it; arms sales to some of the most despotic regimes around; a growing tide of racism, anti-Semitism and Islamophobia fuelled by hate filled newspapers and the phenomenon of fake news and alternative facts; social inequality on the up for the first time in a generation with zero hours contracts - to name just a few nasty current issues. At the same time it seems to me that the sort of people that are disproportionately affected by these issues are the very people Jesus was talking about where we picked up this morning: the poor in spirit; the meek; the persecuted and the reviled.

Being a light surely means revealing these dark places and practices, otherwise what is our light as disciples for? Are our voices being heard? If not, why not? Are we speaking out? Are we being a prophetic voice to others over the issues of our age?

The German Theologian and martyr, Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s life was shaped by the conviction that the church is only truly the church  when it lives for all God’s children in the world and that Christians fulfil their faith as Christians only when they live for others, and he called on Christians to “speak out for those who cannot speak”. When we realise that he said this in 1934, in the midst of deeply troubling times in Germany, it should make those of us who also live in deeply troubling times pause for thought, because he went on to say that the church has, “an unconditional obligation towards the victims in society even if they don’t belong to the Christian community.”

Is that us? Because it seems to me that that’s exactly what being salt and light means in practice: because Jesus described the downtrodden and marginalised as blessed in The Beatitudes, isn’t a free pass to inaction on their behalf for the rest of us. That, I think, is implicit in the reference from the book of Numbers I mentioned earlier: “ … a covenant of salt forever before the LORD for you and your descendants as well”. A covenant is an agreement. What’s our side of the agreement then? We know what God has done for us. What does he require of us in return?

When I was much younger, there used to be a question that regularly circulated like a spiritual checklist, it asked: if you were accused of being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you? I do sometimes wonder whether we are in danger of going with the flow to the extent that we have become the very type of bland, saltless Christians that Jesus warned about.

We are in a covenant with God. What does God require of us in return? The prophet Micah gave us an answer that encompasses our dealing both with God and with our neighbours, “ … To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”

Perhaps our prayer as we approach the season of Lent should be to ask God to help us to look at our society and it’s marginalised and downtrodden, those who Jesus called blessed, and while we seek to walk humbly with God, to ask that we do indeed act justly and love mercy in our dealings with them: not in a passive, but in an active way as advocates for them.

Amen.

 

 

 

     

Sunday Sermon: Luke 2.15-21. The New Year, tradition, synergy and change.

When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.” So they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger. When they saw this, they made known what had been told them about this child; and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them. But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart. The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them. After eight days had passed, it was time to circumcise the child; and he was called Jesus, the name given by the angel before he was conceived in the womb.

 

 I don’t know about you but when Christmas is over, that’s it for me and I have to keep reminding myself that the Christmas season carries on for several more weeks in the church’s calendar. That conflicts me – and it’s probably an indication of how much I’m influenced by the secular approach to Christmas which seems to go forever with decorations still up and now looking rather out of place to me  – but it’s a discipline for us all to distance ourselves from the now rather empty vestiges of the secular Christmas season and to concentrate more on the spiritual elements. Even so, my heart sank just a little when I first read today’s passage. “Really? Haven’t we already done this to death?” It seems now strangely out of synch to be looking at the story of The Shepherds  –  again  –  when it’s been a week since we celebrated the birth of Jesus. So why does the lectionary deliberately give us this passage? What’s new in it for us to consider that we’ve not already forensically examined and sung about over a week ago?

Well, I think the answer is probably found in v 21 which, at least in my edition of Luke, is a separate little section; a bit of a link between the Nativity and the passage about Jesus’ presentation in the Temple, belonging perhaps more to the latter than the former. After eight days had passed, it was time to circumcise the child; and he was called Jesus, the name given by the angel before he was conceived in the womb.

Circumcision on the eighth day was a standard Jewish ritual and, easy as it is to overlook, it’s a reminder that Jesus was born and brought up in an observant Jewish household. Therefore it’s a useful reminder that the Jesus claimed by Christianity was a Jew, and an observant Jew at that, and the clues to support that are there to be found throughout the Gospels, sometimes to the surprise of many.

So, yes he was circumcised, but I suppose you could argue that this may have been a lip-service ceremony much as baptism has become for many today. But it didn’t stop there: Luke 2 talks about the twelve year old Jesus being taken to the Temple in Jerusalem. Why? Because this is about the age that Jewish boys go through the ritual of Bar Mitzvah, another significant rite of passage for observant Jews.

The Gospels are largely silent about Jesus’ early life but I think we can be sure from the other clues in the Gospels that he was brought up in a religious household: his Jewishness was part of his identity and shaped his spiritual and moral outlook.

Jesus was Jewish not only in a remote, abstract way, but he was Jewish in all the very concrete and particular ways of everyday life: He observed the Law; he went to the festivals; when he healed lepers, he sent them to the priests in accordance with the rules in the book of Leviticus; he paid the tax which supported the Temple in Jerusalem; he went to synagogue services regularly; he even taught people to do what the Pharisees said, although he was often critical of their interpretation of the law. He didn’t so much criticise their teaching as their application of religious law, which he thought was too literal and lacking in compassion. His criticism was that they were inclined in their worst moments to follow the letter rather than the spirit of the law but he held The Law of Moses in the highest regard. He taught that the Law of Moses would never pass away until heaven and earth passed away at the consummation of all things.

Even though the next generations of Christians gradually recognized that the Law of Moses was not binding on those who came to God through Jesus, they also knew that the Law was not bad, nor were those who obeyed it necessarily misguided.

So both in the life and teachings of Jesus and in the lives and teachings of the Disciples, the Evangelists and St. Paul, we find compelling examples of practicing one’s faith not only with good deeds, with moral behaviour, but at the same time through practicing the customs and expectations of their community.

How do we apply this today? Well, both Jesus and the apostles show us that as part of their Jewish experience, regularly taking part in the full range of Jewish ceremony, practice and ethics was a given, in the same way for us, part of the Christian life involves regularly taking part in the services and activities of our community, the church, based itself on the life and teaching of Jesus.

Now, I don’t want to give the impression that theirs was always a joyful participation or that sometimes the motivation wasn’t simply out of a sense obligation, because, after all, they were human, but they stuck with it, and perhaps for us that’s the learning point as we embark on another new year.

It may seem silly to suggest that our attendance at church, our observance of special feast days, a disciplined prayer life, even our membership of the PCC or various other committees, make some kind of difference to our spiritual well-being, but there are good reasons for thinking that these practices are quite important. Not only do we have the example of Jesus and his immediate followers; we have the evidence of our own lives.

I think it may be a legacy of my days as a teacher, but I’ve always argued that the habit of working on a particular skill or activity day in and day out, inevitably makes us better at what we are doing, even if sometimes it’s a struggle. If that’s true of our navigating the sometimes scary landscape of computer competence, which many in our congregations never thought they’d manage because their generation grew up before the computer was even a gleam in someone’s eye, then the same is true of our getting to grips with the more scary idea of a regular time of prayer with God.

As an example our own Lois Toulson didn’t become an Olympic standard diver without a great deal of effort and personal discipline and sacrifice. I’d argue that same level of discipline and self-denial might well be involved in our questioning the values of our age and society and seeking the mind of Christ over a wide range of ethical issues. I know that the “What would Jesus do?” approach is a mantra that sometimes sounds trite, but it is valid nevertheless – and I would add to that, “What would Jesus think (about such and such an issue)?” and “What would Jesus say (in reply to such and such a statement)?”

Now, not only is churchy behaviour important as practice for worship; it’s also important as a way of training ourselves in discipleship, to the new identity we are developing in the lifelong pilgrimage of faith that we’ve embarked on.

So here we are at the start of a new year when we traditionally make new resolutions – which very often fall by the wayside. Have you made any this year? I’ve not because I think I’ve given up on giving things up: I know I should eat more sensibly and exercise more. I also know I won’t. But as I was thinking about this it occurred to me that “giving up” is one side of a coin with “taking on” the other side. Taking on: perhaps this is the ideal time to follow in the spirit of Jesus’ example and seek to be more disciplined about our religious life, even when sometimes it feels like a chore.

Now I can’t offer you advice on this because I don’t know any of you well enough to presume to know what you personally could take on, concentrate on or do better or more of to more fully engage in the life of faith either as an individual or as a member of a community, this community. I can only do that for myself in the same way that only you can do it for yourselves. Is it a more disciplined prayer life? It might be. Is a more in-depth study of the scriptures? It might be. Is it being more willing to share the faith we hold dear with others? Perhaps. Could it be taking that scary step of making yourself available to be on the reading or intercessions rota? It might be. Could it be volunteering to be a member of a working party that takes a deep and searching look at our worship practice? Who knows? The question each of us needs to be asking ourselves at this time is what do we feel God is calling us to in this new year which would enrich our own spirituality and, through that, to enrich the life of the church? This is an ideal time for a personal spiritual audit and that can feel very threatening because it implies change – and change is something which we aren’t always good at. What are the gifts God has given each one of us that we could better deploy in His service?

But if we believe we have a living faith - as Jesus did, it is something which needs to grow and develop or we risk the disheartening prospect of staleness. Has God been laying something on our hearts that we’ve been holding back on? Have we discussed that with anyone?

Look at the demographic of our three churches. Why aren’t we growing if what we believe is so important that we would want others to share it? That’s an uncomfortable question and one that goes to the heart of our recent diocesan initiative Leading Your Church Into Growth. Another challenging question is what is it that others see in us, the church, and in Christianity in general that doesn’t have them flocking through our doors? And as a supplement to that, what is it that we could be doing better both as individuals and as a community to bring people in? Once we sense we have the answers to that, or at least some of the answers, is it then good enough to weakly say, “Well, we’ve always done it this way. If it ain’t broke don’t fix it”? Well, in my view it is broken and I don’t mean that in a personal way about us here because it’s a problem faced by the world wide church – or at least the church in the West. There is a general spiritual malaise that is dragging us down and belies our belief that what we have to offer is not just life-changing, life-affirming, but in a very real sense life-saving. “We’ve always done it this way. If it ain’t broke don’t fix it.” is the exact opposite of the way of Jesus as seen in the Gospels: his whole ministry was about radical change and challenge to the ways of being religious that characterised the staleness of the religion of his generation, both individually and corporately while staying faithful to the faith that underpinned that religion: rites, festivals, worship, prayer, a love of scripture, discipleship, ethics and so on. These changes didn’t undermine the faith. Quite the opposite, they enhanced it, turning something hidebound in tradition to something living and vibrant.

I remember having a conversation with my late mother about the environment and her reluctance to change to energy-saving light bulbs. A relatively trivial conversation in itself but her words stuck in my mind: “What difference can I make?” I think the technical answer to that is synergy: the interaction or cooperation of two or more agents to produce a combined effect greater than the sum of their separate effects. We can’t change the world as individuals, but changing the world starts with small individual acts because none of us knows what little anonymous incremental steps others are taking which together contribute to real change - and that brings me back to my earlier question, what is God calling us to do better, to take on, to begin which would enrich our personal and communal spiritual lives and which could spread out into this deanery, this diocese and the wider church?

Think of the change we could unleash if every member of a Christian congregation made a resolution to take on something related to their spiritual growth and development in this new year.

Change begins with us.

Amen

 

 

 

Sunday Sermon: Matthew 1.18-25. Seasonal music, bah humbug and Joseph's story

Matthew 1:18-25

 

Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly. But just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, ‘Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.’ All this took place to fulfil what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet:  ‘Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel’,

which means, ‘God is with us.’ When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took her as his wife, but had no marital relations with her until she had borne a son; and he named him Jesus.

Walking around Leeds City Centre over the last few weeks in this final, and often frantic, run up to the main event I’ve been very conscious of seasonal music.

I don’t understand how people who work in retail cope with the endless loop of Slade shouting “Merry Christmas Everybody” at full volume, or various saccharine-sweet arrangements of Christmas carols. Last week I came upon a Mormon choir singing carols outside Harvey Nichols and I was approached by a personable young man who gave me a candy-twist, the sort you put on your Christmas tree. “Merry Christmas from the Mormons” he greeted me and I thought how petty it would be to point out that it’s still only Advent.

So I did.

Now, I don’t know if the Mormons do Advent but he gave me a very odd look.

I listen to Heart FM and there’s been an overwhelming emphasis on “Christmas Music” – and I put that in inverted commas. I’ve already mentioned Slade, then we have Wizard and their “I wish it could be Christmas Everyday”.

Well I don’t.

Then there’s the Pogues, “Fairy-tale in New York.”

Lovely song but who told that man he could sing?

And who could forget Sir Cliff’s “Mistletoe and Wine”?

Well, I’ve been trying.

How about Wham’s “Last Christmas I gave you my heart”?

I don’t know about you but that conjures up all sorts of medical images I could do without.

I’m sure Harry Belafonte’s on the verge of a UK come-back tour but if I hear “Mary’s Boy Child” one more time I may run screaming from Sainsburys.

We even had “All I Want For Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth.”

Well, all I want for Christmas is sleep.

The Leeds Philharmonic Chorus performed Handel’s Messiah last Saturday in the Town Hall and then the Lord Mayor’s Carol Concert on Thursday and a shortened version of that in the prison this afternoon. All the old favourites, Silent Night, O Come All Ye Faithful, Hark The Herald Angels, The First Nowell and While Shepherds watched – do you know you can sing that to “On Ilkley Moor Bar Tat?”

Heresy.

I’ve concluded that I’m either a traditionalist or a musical snob.

When I taught at Whitcliffe I was constantly asked, “Can we watch a video. It’s Christmas.”

“Well, two points there Aaron…”

“It’s pronounced Arran”

“Firstly it’s November and secondly it’s Advent.”

“No Sir, its Christmas. My Mum’s bought sprouts.”

How can you argue with such logic?

It’s all about expectations isn’t it? The perfect family meal, beautifully cooked, served on time - and no rows. The opening of the presents: a candle that smells of mulled wine. Mmmmmm! Socks – again.

We live in a crescent of town houses and we all have a balcony. For ten and a half months of the year I think it looks quite a classy street. Now it’s like a cross between the Blackpool Illuminations and Las Vagas – but without the tastefulness. We’re into balcony lighting. Competative balcony lighting. Oh the levels of social disapprobation if yours don’t come up to scratch – and ours never do. “Well we’re doing Amish decorations this year.” Blank looks from the neghbours.

And don’t start me on Christmas round-robin letters: “Philippa passed her grade five oboe exam this year.” Look, this is me not caring.

How easy it is to become jaded.

There was a survey on the radio this week that said that an amazing 80% of those surveyed would rather there was no Christmas.

I know where they’re coming from.

Do I hear a Bah Humbug?

Is it just me?

I thought not.

It’s all about expectations isn’t it and expectations can be exhausting.

I think that's why the season of Advent, these weeks before Christmas, seems so full of counter-cultural potential. They imagine such a different way of preparing for the birth of Jesus - one that can't be rushed, one that can't be shoe-horned in between trips to The White Rose Centre.

The time comes when it comes, and it unfolds as it unfolds - and it's an invitation for each of us to stop rushing and for something within each of us to unfold slowly, too.

It is so foreign to our way of living - so foreign to so many of our expectations. So many of us demand a lot of Christmas and demand a lot of ourselves at Christmas, which is possibly why, for many of us, there is a sense of anti-climax when it’s all over.

And yet, as today's Scripture reminds us, the story of Christmas, the story of the birth of Jesus, is precisely about the arrival of something foreign to our expectations and foreign to our familiar way of life. It's a story about learning a whole new set of rules and about learning to see the world with new eyes.

Today’s Gospel story is about Joseph. We too often forget about Joseph. More often than not we tend to focus on the story of Mary. But this year the lectionary gives us Joseph’s story.

The traditional Old Testament reading that goes with today’s Gospel passage is taken from Isaiah chapter 7 and is one of the Christmas readings because it is seen as a prophecy of things to come relating to the long expected and hoped for Messiah, the Lord himself will give you a sign. Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel.  In both the cultures of the Old and New Testaments chastity before marriage was highly valued and by the time of the Gospels the emphasis has shifted to virginity because that was surely implied in the writing of Isaiah. It was the expectation.

 Expectations again.

And we can see from the passage that the punishment for a lack of chastity was a formal, public renunciation of the woman - a ritual that would have shamed her and her family for life.

Now, we don't know much about Joseph. Many suspect that he had died by the time Jesus began his public ministry. Jesus is referred to as "the carpenter's son" on at least one occasion, so it seems as if Joseph's involvement did extend past his time in the Gospel stories. At least somebody remembered him along the way. Somebody looked at Jesus and saw something of Joseph.

But what?

It's hard to say.  Today's Scripture suggests just one thing about Joseph's personality which we can hear in the story and it’s a vitally important personality trait: when Mary is found to pregnant, the Gospel says, Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly. He was just. To put it another way, he was a righteous man but righteousness in his religious culture would have expected him renounce his fiancée in public.

And so, what we need to see is that Joseph was a man who was committed to his faith and committed to following the Torah and its laws. And where those laws were explicit? Well, for a man like Joseph, the path of duty, the path of righteousness would have been explicit, too. But he chose another path because even before his dramatic dream, Joseph had resolved to bend those expectations and to act differently in the face of everything that his time and place and station in life had trained him to do. He resolved to stand aside quietly and to leave Mary and her family with their dignity intact. So he didn't do what would have been expected. He followed the pull of something else.

In being righteous and yet, even so, unwilling to put Mary to shame, Joseph heard the call of something deeply challenging for a man like him and what is so remarkable about him is that he had the wisdom and the courage to follow that call.

Joseph dreamed something wonderful. It must have been astounding, confronting and deeply challenging at both a religious and personal level. God would enter the world. God would be born to his wife, as hard as that was to understand. Joseph had some serious trusting in God to do, but Joseph had to trust someone else, too. Joseph had to trust Mary.

We know Mary was his betrothed, and surely Joseph must have loved her but, still, this took a lot of trust and this is why Joseph's dream is so important. Joseph’s dream was effectively a dream of the salvation of the world and for Joseph, the way of salvation meant trusting someone else and it is often the case that true salvation comes through someone else.

That’s the lesson for us, too. Like Joseph, sometimes, we are to trust God and then step back and let God take the lead. Scripture, then, carries an implicit message that God does appear over and over again, to various sorts of people. Matthew and Luke both have it right, but they are different stories. God continues to come into the world, but we have to trust other sources and God works through those relationships. God works through both Mary and Joseph. God needs both Luke's story of the annunciation and Matthew's story of Joseph's dream. God works through a young woman, and her fiancé believes in her, allowing God to work through him too.

The story does not go on to tell about the role that Joseph played in the life of young Jesus.  We don't know if Joseph even lived long enough to teach Jesus much about carpentry, much less anything else.

But we do know that the love that Jesus talked about, the love he stood for, the love he died for, was just that kind of rule-changing, deep-seeing kind of love: just that kind of non-abandoning, instinctive, sheltering, protecting, guiding love, just that kind of patient, quiet, healing love. It was a love that was strong enough to grasp for something different undeterred by conventions and expectations and limitations - and that's the love of Jesus, and the love of his father, Joseph, and the love of God.

So, Advent invites us to let go of all the expectations I’ve already mentioned. Advent calls us to remember the love of Jesus and Joseph and the love of God. It calls us to let God's peace gradually warm our souls, freeing us for new expectations and the birth of something within us and for us: the arrival of Emmanuel, God with us. Advent calls us to wait for the arrival of hope and to see the shadowy outline of a new world that is just beginning to dawn.

For Joseph, to hear the call of God's love was the dawn of a distinctly new vision. And the Christmas that lives in the heart, too often hidden from many in the secular festival which Christmas has become, remains profoundly countercultural, too. At its core, Christmas is foreign to everything about the culture we live in.

In these final days before Christmas, I don't know what different kinds of music you'll encounter as you go about the work of preparing. But underneath it all, may our hearts hear the quiet song that is God's great love song to us all.

And may it strengthen us to follow love's call with joy and purpose, letting go of everything else.

Sunday Sermon: Luke 23.33-43. The Feast of Christ the King.

Luke 23.33-43

When they came to the place that is called The Skull, they crucified Jesus there with the criminals, one on his right and one on his left. Then Jesus said, “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.” And they cast lots to divide his clothing. And the people stood by, watching; but the leaders scoffed at him, saying, “He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God, his chosen one!” The soldiers also mocked him, coming up and offering him sour wine, and saying, “If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!” There was also an inscription over him, “This is the King of the Jews.” One of the criminals who were hanged there kept deriding him and saying, “Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!” But the other rebuked him, saying, “Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed have been condemned justly, for we are getting what we deserve for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong.” Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” He replied, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”

 

Well, here we are at the Feast of Christ the King which finishes the liturgical year: next week we start Advent, so it seems really strange that today we have as our Gospel passage an extract of the Passion Narrative, chosen for this week, though, because of its emphasis on the Kingship of Jesus. We might do well to begin with a look at what the word "king" means. Though we often hear in Luke's Gospel about the "reign of God" or the "kingdom of God," and though Jesus is often called "Lord," the title of "king" is given him only in the accounts of his triumphal entry into Jerusalem on the way to his passion.

Later, as his passion was beginning, Luke says that the elders of the people, the chief priests, and the scribes brought him before Pilate. They brought charges against him, saying, We found this man misleading our people; he opposes the payment of taxes to Caesar and maintains that he is the Messiah, a king . Then, Pilate asked him, 'Are you the king of the Jews?' He said to him in reply, 'You say so'.

The whole account of the Passion points toward the coming of God's kingdom. When the hour came, he took his place at table with the apostles. He said to them, 'I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer, for I tell you, I shall not eat it [again] until there is fulfilment in the kingdom of God.' Then he took a cup, gave thanks, and said, 'Take this and share it among yourselves; for I tell you that from this time on I shall not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.

Then, as the apostles were quarrelling about which of them should be regarded as the greatest, Jesus said to them: The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them and those who are in authority over them are addressed as 'Benefactors'; but among you it shall not be so. And he added: I am among you as the one who serves. It is you who have stood by me in my trials; and I confer a kingdom on you, just as my Father has conferred one on me, that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom.

Clearly, Jesus, according to Luke, intended to emphasize the radical difference between his kingship and that of the lords of this world who desire power, honour, or wealth. Nothing could point up the contrast more strongly than the crucifixion, the account of which we read today.

As today's passage continues, we hear those familiar words of the thief: Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom. First of all, did the man know that the name "Jesus" means "God saves"? We will never know and it really doesn't matter because, by addressing Jesus as he does in the last moments of his life, he is the model of all those who in anguish and distress at the moment of death utter, in an ultimate leap of faith and hope, the name from which comes salvation: Jesus.

Then he says remember me. It is an appeal to the living and present God, with the assurance that he desires and has the power to save. On the lips of one condemned to death by human justice, it is the striking prayer of assurance that despite one's confessed sins, God will save.

In his response to the thief's request, Jesus tells him, Today you will be with me in paradise. Luke insists on the "today" of salvation. In a few weeks, we will hear the words, For today in the city of David a saviour has been born for you who is Messiah and Lord, which is the good news announced to the shepherds at Bethlehem. At the beginning of his ministry, Jesus, in the synagogue of his hometown in Nazareth, having read the passage from the prophet Isaiah that announces a year of favour from the Lord, proclaimed: Today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing".  At the house of Zacchaeus, who promised to give half his belongings to the poor and make reparation to anyone whom he had cheated, Jesus declared, Today salvation has come to this house.

So what does all of this mean to us? We noted earlier that Christ's kingdom has nothing to do with power, honour or wealth. If that is so, then what is it all about anyway? Well, if we look at the verse which immediately precedes where the gospel picks up today, we will hear Christ's first words from the cross: Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. And then in our passage today, the soldiers taunt him with the words, If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself. This is the whole point of Christ's life on earth: he became one like us, not to save himself, but to save us and to enable us, as he said at the Last Supper, to eat and drink at my table in my kingdom.

In essence, Christ's life on earth was lived for others. He relinquished his self to live for others. We are called upon to do the same. Especially as we enter upon another season of Christmas buying frenzy, we need to constantly remind ourselves about where our true values should be. In a world where the culture seems mainly to be "Look out for number one, Christ has shown us the way to true happiness, and it doesn't come from anything in this world.

It is worth noting, too, that the Gospels in general don’t seem all that interested in Heaven and Hell. Neither did the early church Fathers. When the Bible talks about the Kingdom of God, the trend for quite some time now has been to understand it as The Kingdom of God … on Earth: God’s sovereign rule breaking through into the here and now.

If we think the question is “Am I going to Heaven? Will I be saved?” the Gospels seem to be suggesting that we have missed the point. At the end of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus laments that many people will call him Lord, but only those who act upon his ethical teachings can be his true followers. That’s quite a different answer to the question. What you're seeking is probably not pie in the sky, but, as Archbishop Desmond Tutu says, pie in the here and now. So maybe the question rightly asked is not “what happens at the end of things?” but more like “what am I supposed to be doing right now? What does Jesus want me to do? To be? How will my life be different if Christ is King?”

Of course, at the time Luke’s biography of Jesus is set this was a really pertinent question because of the ongoing theological and political debate about who really was THE LORD. Was it the God of the Hebrews, Jehovah, YHWH, or was it the Emperor in Rome? Well, those days are long gone but the question remains, certainly theological and yes, political too: who is the Lord? Jesus or something else offered and affirmed by modern culture? The usual things people elevate as gods - power and influence, wealth, celebrity and fame - are subsumed in the Kingdom of God by the supreme values of service, love, self-sacrifice, and faithful community. Life in God's Kingdom is not about self-promotion, it's about renunciation: it's about little actions, often little anonymous actions. Life in God's Kingdom is not about what we have or who we are, it's about what we do. It's not about what the world values, but what God values.

This isn’t a revolutionary idea: in the Old Testament book of Micah we read, This is what the Lord requires of you: to act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God. The message is this: if we love God, if our values are God-values instead of the world's values, if Christ actually is King, then we will love as God loves, give as God gives, forgive as God forgives. If our values are God-values, we can't help but live as Christ taught and in doing so we bring the kingdom of God closer. The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. told how he would like to be remembered, and in doing so, he zeroed in on that ultimate question: If Christ is King, what does that mean? If Christ is ruler over our lives, Dr. King told his audience, then my Nobel Peace Prize is less important than my trying to feed the hungry. If Christ is King, then my invitations to the White House are less important than that I visited those in prison. If Christ is Lord, then my being TIME magazine's " Man of the Year” is less important than that I tried to love extravagantly, dangerously, with all my being.

Perhaps the feast of Christ the King is just the right time for a personal spiritual audit: if we were to take a snapshot of our lives now how are we doing? Ezekiel put it rather well, This is the sin of Sodom: she had pride, plenty of food, and comfortable security, but didn't support the poor and needy. Now that’s not what many Christians will tell us the story of Sodom and Gomorrah is all about but they’ve clearly got it wrong if we accept what Ezekiel is telling us. So in our personal audit perhaps we should be asking ourselves where we are on the true Sodom scale of personal ethics.

How are things going to end? What happens after we die? I don't know, and neither do you. But we do know the shape of the story a loving God is writing. If Christ is King, we know Jesus waits at the end of that story, that he will see us, and know us, and that if we have done what he taught us, he will claim us as his own.

Our prayers for ourselves today should include the petition that as we continue to grow to spiritual maturity we become the sort of Christians who care for the poor and the needy, the outcast and the marginalised, not because of fear of judgement and our place in the afterlife but because it is the Christlike way to behave. It is the way of Christ the King.

And, I have to say, that is question and answer enough for me.

Amen

Sunday sermon: Seven weddings and a funeral. Luke 20.27-38

Some Sadducees, those who say there is no resurrection, came to him and asked him a question, “Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies, leaving a wife but no children, the man shall marry the widow and raise up children for his brother. Now there were seven brothers; the first married, and died childless; then the second and the third married her, and so in the same way all seven died childless. Finally the woman also died. In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had married her.” Jesus said to them, “Those who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage; but those who are considered worthy of a place in that age and in the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. Indeed they cannot die anymore, because they are like angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection. And the fact that the dead are raised Moses himself showed, in the story about the bush, where he speaks of the Lord as the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. Now he is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are alive.”

 

Whenever I read the Gospel stories I’m regularly amazed – although I shouldn’t be, I suppose – by how many times Jesus is approached by smart-arses. One of the dangers we fall into is assuming that the Jews of Jesus’ time had a common set of beliefs. They didn’t. We hear a lot about the Pharisees, now we have the Sadducees: they were a Jewish sect who denied the resurrection of the dead. They put stock only in the first five books of the Old Testament. If it wasn’t clearly stated in the Pentateuch, they didn’t accept it. As far as they were concerned, there was no mention of the resurrection of the dead anywhere in what were called “The Books of Moses.”  If it didn’t say it in the Pentateuch, the first five books of their Bible, they just didn’t believe it. In fact, the first five books of the Old Testament were the only Bible they had.

That is the backdrop to this confrontation between the Sadducees and Jesus. And since Jesus is the new prophet in town – and most of his time so far has been spent skirmishing with the Pharisees and/or the scribes – it is now the Sadducees’ turn to take him on. They are determined to see what this upstart Galilean is made of. So, they have come to him with their clever little riddle. They want to embarrass him theologically in front of his growing group of followers and seekers, thinking that perhaps they can get Jesus to deny the authority of God’s Word: There was a woman who had no children and was married seven times to seven brothers. Each died and then the woman died. And the question was, “At the resurrection who is she married to?” Come on, Jesus, see how ridiculous this resurrection thing actually is.

Have you ever had anybody do that to you? Get you into an argument over your beliefs?  It doesn’t happen to me as often as you might think, but it has happened and how I respond is largely based on what I think is the motive of the person who is doing the asking. Is he asking a serious question, or is he trying to get me to validate an attitude he’s had for a long time and has no intention of changing? It’s very often the latter, and I suspect that’s the way it was for Jesus when he was confronted by the religious leadership in Jerusalem.

I have this mental image today of the spokesman for the Sadducees, having delivered what he presumably believed was his oh-so-innocent killer question, looking round at his fellow Sadducees with a knowing wink as if to say, “That’s got him! Aren’t I clever?”

There’s a wonderful picture of Jesus cleansing the temple which does the rounds on Facebook from time to time. Someone’s added the caption, “I wish to make it clear that an explosion of temper remains an option. Here’s my role model.” I identify with that sentiment regularly but at the same time I do wonder how Jesus kept his cool when faced with people whose primary motive seemed to be to attempt to make him look foolish while making themselves look clever.

Nevertheless he begins to expose them.  There’s no evidence that Jesus changed their minds, but then their minds weren’t open to changing, so what he said was more for the benefit of the wider audience, particularly given that Luke has established Jesus as a Torah-observant Jew, concerned for the traditions of the ancestors. First, He points out the fact that in the age to come there is no marriage because there is no death.  Part of the purpose for marriage is to bring two people together in love and to begin a home that glorifies God.  Marriage is God’s institution, his idea for the good of everyone involved.  It is, however, only for this present age.  The glorious age to come is nothing like this present age. Jesus is saying that the reality of the resurrection is so different from this reality that the subject of marriage isn’t relevant.  They are thinking of the next reality in terms of this reality and because they aren’t willing to think outside the box they aren’t going to grasp the greater implications of the resurrection.  They are questioning Jesus on the basis of this world, the world that they know and so can’t make sense of what Jesus is saying. The age of the resurrection is not like this one, the one with all of these unfair social arrangements that we have made and the everyday cruelties and injustices we tend to see as part of our norm.  It will be the world as God intended it to be. Effectively Jesus is saying to these men, “You are looking at the right topic, the resurrection, but you are asking the wrong question. Your view, your understanding is too narrow.”

So Jesus brushes off the Sadducees with a theological shrug that simply rejects the premise of their case, and they vanish. In the next scene, some scribes appear and warmly approve of Jesus’ debating style, and with that, all questioning ends. It must have felt a strange theological victory for Jesus, and slightly discomforting, when the Scribes were on his side given the disputes he regularly had with them, but then religious discussion often finds strange allies.

The age to come is something we struggle to comprehend because when we think of our future, we tend to think on the basis of our past. What happened yesterday will pretty much happen tomorrow.  But God's world is something completely different. This passage gives few specific details about the nature of the resurrection, though it does stress that we should not limit our imagination - let alone God's design - for life after death by our own experiences. Eternal life will be qualitatively different from what we know in our current existence. Time itself - and with time death - will have ceased. For this reason, there’s no point speculating too much about the exact nature of the resurrection but while we don’t know what relationships will be like, we know that we will be related to each other in and through our relationship with God. Our funeral liturgy reflects this - and the Sadducees would have had apoplexy reading it. It talks of a new Heaven and a New Earth, quoting the book of Revelation; it talks of a world with no pain and no sadness, where God will wipe away every tear; a place of joy and reconciliation in the eternal presence of God. I don’t know about you, but that’ll do for me because if that’s so then everything else will fall into place.

To conclude, discussion on the question of resurrected life can consume our energies and sometimes lead us nowhere. It is, after all, a matter of faith and in the end, a mystery. Christians really do not have to spend much time arguing about it one way or another. If we live now as those who have already entered the journey of eternal life, facing into deathly issues and struggles in the here and now as though we do not fear death, then we will convince more people than in any attempt at proving things about life after death.
 

And so when good things happen to us in this life, we should rejoice, and thank God for those good things while remembering that better things are coming. And when bad things happen to us in this life, it's natural to feel disappointed, and maybe even a little depressed. But let’s remember that there is a new life coming. We have something wonderful waiting for us in our future and it doesn't matter that we don't know the exact details.