Glimpsing God’s back… – The Reverend Canon Michael Smith (Pastor)
The Reverend Canon Michael Smith (Pastor)
Sunday 3 March 2019 Matins
Exodus 33.17-end & 1 John 3.1-3
One of the things we pray for most often here at York Minster is that all the people who come will encounter God in some way. Every day at Morning Prayer we pray for the day ahead and for all who will come to the Minster, and our prayer is that they will encounter God in some way. We often introduce Choral Evensong, at which there are often a lot of visitors, by saying that our prayer is that all who are gathered will encounter God by sharing in our worship together. In addition, whenever I am welcoming a congregation to a wedding I often tell them that this is a place where, over many, many centuries, people have encountered God, so I invite the wedding congregation to be prepared for the unexpected! It is interesting to see people start looking just a little nervous, many thought they had come to a ‘venue’ to watch a ceremony, this introduction warns them that this is not just a ‘venue’ and lots of extraordinary things and encounters have happened here over many hundreds of years, so something might happen to them!
So we pray and talk about people encountering God here a lot – but what do we mean? What does encountering God look like and feel like? What am I suggesting the poor, unsuspecting congregations at weddings might experience?
The first reading this morning tells us of an interesting encounter between Moses and God. They are in conversation and Moses says to God, ‘show me your glory’. God tells Moses that he will pass by him but that Moses must stand in the cleft of a rock as God passes by, Moses will not be permitted to see the face of God but he will see God’s back. So his encounter with God will only be partial.
As Christians we believe that Jesus is God incarnate, but most people who encountered Jesus were confused and bemused by their encounter. Certainly, those who heard Jesus’ teaching and parables were nearly always confused and bemused – they recognised that something important and significant was being revealed but most people, at the time, and many people since, have found God’s revelation in Jesus confusing and bemusing.
It is for these reasons that I am always a little bit nervous of people who claim that their encounter with God is absolutely clear, certain and beyond question. Some act as though God has spoken to them with absolute clarity in ways that cannot be doubted or contradicted. It is as if some people claim that, unlike Moses, they have seen God face to face, they have seen God’s glory. This goes against the experience of virtually everything we read in scripture about people encountering God – encountering God is always partial.
Life is not just about ‘being’, it is about ‘becoming’, becoming the people God created us to be – in a sense, nothing is complete, everything we experience is about growing and changing, which is why our encounter with God, like that of Moses, is always partial, is always a glimpse or a moving shadow. In his book about poetry, ‘The Splash of Words’, Mark Oakley says, ‘ … the bible is a collage of writings that remind us that God is not the easy object of our knowledge but the deepest cause of our wonder.’ p. xxii
So, back to all the people who come to the Minster including the poor unsuspecting congregations at our weddings – what does encountering God mean, what does encountering God feel like? It is about sensing something, feeling something beyond us, something bigger than us. As Mark Oakley would say, it is not about ‘knowledge’ but about ‘wonder’.
It is important that we continue to pray that everyone who comes here, for whatever reason, has their hearts touched, their presuppositions challenged. Creation is not just about the individual, it is not just about what we can touch, what we can see, what we can buy, what we can prove – it is about much more, it is about a God who created us and holds us in love. That is not something we can touch, see, buy or prove, but it is something we can sense and even encounter in a place like this.
In conclusion, instead of a traditional prayer I want to read a short poem as a prayerful offering. It is called ‘Muse’ by Malcolm Guite. Among other things I think it is about encountering God
Muse
I stop and sense a subtle presence here,
An opalescent shimmer in the light,
And catch, just at the corner of my eye,
A shifting shape that no one else can see;
Just on the edge, the very edge of sight
Just where the air is brightening, and where
The sky is coloured underneath a cloud.
And so she comes to keep her tryst with me.
She comes with music, music faintly heard,
A trace, a grace-note, floating in clear air,
As over hidden springs the hazels stir.
Time quivers and then she is at my side;
A quickened breath, a feather touch on skin,
A sudden swift connection, deep within.
The Transformation of Peter – The Reverend Canon Michael Smith (Pastor)
The Reverend Canon Michael Smith (Pastor)
4th Sunday before Lent 10 Feb 2019 Matins
Jeremiah 26.1-16 & Acts 3.1-10
When we read about people in the New Testament we have a tendency to conflate all the various stories we know of them, from all the different books in the New Testament and draw our conclusions about them from that mass of information. We do exactly the same thing with the Christmas story, we nearly always conflate the birth narratives in Matthew and Luke to make one story. This is a perfectly legitimate thing to do, but sometimes it is interesting and helpful to focus on the portrait one author gives us of a person to see what that important character looks like from the account of their life given by that one author. Having heard the dramatic story about Peter in the passage we heard today from Acts 3, I thought it would be interesting to put that story in the context of the portrait of Peter Luke gives us in the gospel that bears his name and in the Acts of the Apostles which we believe he also wrote. In other words – what picture of Peter does Luke give us?
We first meet Peter in Luke’s gospel when Jesus climbs into a fishing boat and, not unreasonably, suggests to the fishermen that they go fishing. Peter, one of those fishermen, says there is no point because they had been out all the previous night and caught nothing. However, they do what Jesus says and, under his direction, they catch a huge number of fish. Peter recognises that there is a remarkable, miraculous power working through Jesus and he falls to his knees and says to him, ‘Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man’. That is the first mention of Peter in Luke’s gospel. Peter then appears in Luke’s list of Jesus’ disciples and we see him helping Jesus with his ministry. Luke then tells of Peter being the first disciple to recognise Jesus as the Messiah and then he tells us that he was present when Jesus was transfigured on the mountainside. As Luke’s story of Jesus unfolds we see Peter again, a couple of times, asking questions, seeking clarification of what Jesus is saying and doing. Then in chapter 22 we hear the heart-breaking story of Peter’s three denials of Jesus. Luke tells us that after the third denial the cock crows and Peter remembers that Jesus had predicted that he would deny him. Luke then tells us, simply and starkly ‘And he went out and wept bitterly’. Peter is mentioned one more time in Luke’s gospel when he ran to the tomb and saw that it was empty and Luke tells us that he was ‘amazed at what had happened.’
So, what we have in Luke’s gospel is the portrait of a faithful fisherman who became a disciple with remarkable insight but who is also beset by self-doubt, fear and weakness.
In the Acts of the Apostles, even before the events of Pentecost, Luke lets us know that Peter is in charge! In chapter 1, Peter speaks to all the followers of Jesus about Judas and his role in betraying Jesus, followed by Peter overseeing the selection of Matthias as the man to replace Judas as one of the 12 disciples. In chapter 2 Peter makes an impressive, authoritative speech after he and the other followers of Jesus have been filled with the Holy Spirit. He explains how Jesus has fulfilled prophecy, courageously he criticises many of those listening for being, in part, to blame for the crucifixion of Jesus, he calls them to repent and he speaks of the hope we have through the resurrection of Jesus. At the end of this great speech and a brief description of how the followers of Jesus cared for each other and met regularly to pray and break bread, Luke says simply, ‘And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved’.
We heard the opening verses of chapter three as our second reading today. Peter and John encounter a lame man at the temple, speak with him and then heal him.
For Luke it’s almost as if there is no break in the ministry of Jesus. In the gospel Jesus himself teaches and heals, assisted by Peter and other faithful but flawed disciples and followers. In the Acts of the Apostles, despite the death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus, the ministry of Jesus, the teaching and the healing, continues and Peter, perhaps the most faithful and most flawed disciple, is the chief person continuing that ministry. He who was taught is now the teacher. He who was healed is now the healer. He who denied Jesus now professes and explains faith in him. He who needed forgiveness now speaks of God’s love and mercy.
So, in Luke’s story, what is it that moves Peter from being the faithful but flawed fisherman in the gospel, into Peter the confident and articulate leader in Acts? It is the resurrection, he saw the empty tomb and was amazed, the Ascension, after which all the disciples went back to their upper room to pray, and, of course, the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost after which Peter speaks with even greater authority.
Luke’s message seems clear to me – by encountering Jesus, by encountering the crucified, resurrected and ascended Lord, by being filled with the Holy Spirit – ordinary, flawed human beings, like Peter, like James, John and all the other disciples and, yes, ordinary, flawed human beings like you and me, carry on the ministry of Jesus. The bible tells us, and our liturgy often reminds us, that we are the body of Christ. The story of Jesus we read about in scripture, the regular reminders and celebrations we share in at church of the key events in the life of Jesus, aren’t just about us remembering the story, aren’t just about us honouring Jesus by doing the right religious things, aren’t just about us being pious – no – the story of Jesus we remember and mark and celebrate in liturgy is all about you and me becoming Jesus and carrying on his ministry.
A prayer attributed to St Theresa of Avila – Let us pray
Christ has no body now on earth but yours, no hands but yours, no feet but yours, yours are the eyes through which Christ’s compassion is to look out to the earth, yours are the feet by which He is to go about doing good and yours are the hands by which He is to bless us now. Amen
Clothed with Christ – Canon Dr Christopher Collingwood (Chancellor)
Canon Dr Christopher Collingwood (Chancellor)
Sunday 10 February 2019 – Choral Evensong
Hosea 1 Colossians 3:1-22
I’ve recently read the most exhilarating book: Bow First, Ask Questions Later. It’s original, intelligent, perceptive, profound, witty and funny. Before you rush to order it, though, I ought – in all fairness – to come clean, and all I need to do, probably, is just tell you the subtitle: Ordination, Love and Monastic Zen in Japan. There, now; if your taste buds had been aroused a moment ago, they’ve probably gone to sleep now! The reason I mention the book, though, is because it offers an interesting slant on this evening’s second lesson and, in particular, on what it might mean to be clothed with the new self, with Christ. So, a little introduction to the book first.
When it was written, the author was still in her twenties and is even now, just a year after its publication, only 32. In 2009, when the stock market crashed, she was an English major at an American university, completing a ‘creative writing thesis that was a collection of love poetry’, so, as she says, she was ‘even less marketable than [she] could have been’. Her solution to the problem? She did, as she says, ‘what any self-respecting spiritual white girl would have done: [she] went to India’.
India wasn’t all it was cracked up to be as far she was concerned, so she moved on to Japan, where she met a monk who would become a significant influence in her life. So taken with him was she that she spent six months in his monastery before returning to America to write a novel. It was in her own words ‘a good novel. It was sexy and dark. It was intelligent, vulnerable and kinky, kind of like Franny and Zooey meets Fifty Shades of Grey’. The problem, though, was that she didn’t know how to end it. So if the contents of this novel interest you more than Bow First, Ask Questions Later, I’m sorry to disappoint you. It was never finished! You’ll just have to imagine what might have been!
As so often seems to be the case in life, the apparent frustration of our hopes, dreams and desires often nudges us in the direction of what we’re really seeking deep down, but haven’t quite identified. What Gesshin Claire Greenwood was clear about, though, was that she needed to return to Japan and to the monk who’d so impressed her when she’d first arrived in there. So it was that on 28th December 2010, she was ordained by him as a Buddhist nun, after which she spent another five years in various Japanese monasteries before receiving authorisation from him in 2015 to teach Zen, receiving final recognition of this in 2017.
Towards the end of the book she recalls how just before her ordination she asked her teacher what was the main difference between a layperson and a monk. His response took her by surprise: ‘a monk is someone who wears monk clothing’. The reason for her bafflement was that this answer seemed so shallow, implying that being a monk’s all about dressing up. Now there are plenty of Anglican clergy for whom this appears to be the case! Such people can leave us feeling slightly uneasy. This isn’t what the monk was suggesting. So what was he getting at? His understanding is actually quite profound, and it’s this that might help us appreciate a little more what it means to be clothed with Christ.
Let’s think about the clothes we wear. Over the last few decades, conventions concerning dress have become rather fluid, to say the least. In the 1950s, for example, there were fairly well accepted dress codes: men tended to wear suits for everything and women dressed in varying degrees of formality. In our own time, people increasingly wear simply what they feel comfortable in. This has happened in the Church. Even just a decade or so ago most clergy would have worn the vesture appropriate to their tradition. Nowadays there are some clergy who reject the wearing not only of a dog collar in everyday life, but even of what’s traditionally been expected in church itself. The motivation for this is no doubt that formality puts people off. There may be some truth in that in some instances, yet it’s also the case that there are some roles which do require a certain form of dress. If Her Majesty the Queen turned up for an official visit wearing trainers, jeans and a hoodie, your first reaction might be that it was rather out of character, and your second that she wasn’t really taking her role seriously. And that’s the point. The queen inhabits a role that’s performed in part by wearing clothes that are appropriate to the role. She is what she does and what she wears.
This is true not just of the Queen. When our probationary choristers, for example, are admitted as full choristers, having completed their initial training, they’re clothed with a surplice, which is ceremonially placed over their heads by senior choristers. The surplice denotes their role. They’re not at this stage as experienced or as able as older choristers, but they gain the necessary experience precisely by doing what their clothing indicates. In this way, they grow into the role and little by little perform it with increasing skill and ability. An eight or nine year-old chorister may not be fully fledged, but what they wear denotes that they perform a role in exactly the same way as is expected of the more experienced adults in the choir. The wearing of the surplice instils in the chorister the aspiration to inhabit that role in an ever more accomplished way, an aspiration that’s never exhausted.
It’s something of this that lay behind the assertion that a monk is someone who wears monk clothing. At what stage can a monk ever say he’s all a monk should or could be? There’s continual growth and development, which never comes to an end. The clothing denotes the role to be performed and is a reminder and an encouragement to continue to grow into that role throughout life.
Now this seems to me to be very pertinent to what it means to be clothed with Christ. The Letter to the Colossians doesn’t suggest this involves a particular form of clothing, although for some roles and vocations it might. Rather, clothing is used as a metaphor. The author does spell out, though, what being clothed with Christ actually looks like. The interior transformation by which the old self is stripped off and clothed with the new self becomes apparent, we might say, in the way we wear ourselves. The clothes we put on are compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, forgiveness and, above all, love.
It might be objected, though, that it’s not so simple: we can’t just be these things instantly, as if by magic. But that’s the whole point. We become these things by doing them. We become compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, forgiveness and love by performing them, by doing them, by practising them. There’s always going to be a gap between what these things really entail and how inadequately we perform them, but we have to begin somewhere. We fall short, we get things wrong, but in the process we gradually learn to inhabit the role, wear the clothes more naturally and comfortably. We don’t spend forever thinking about it and pondering the difficulties of it all. We just get on with it. We bow first and ask questions later.
Called the Fullness of Life Together in the Spirit – Canon Dr Christopher Collingwood (Chancellor)
Canon Dr Christopher Collingwood (Chancellor)
Sunday 10 February 2019 – Sung Eucharist 10am
Isaiah 6:1-8 Luke 5: 1-11
When the Bishop of Winchester commended Jonathan to us as our new Dean at his installation eight days ago, he did so with great eloquence and affection. He noted in particular that two phrases are often to be found on Jonathan’s lips: ‘Our life together in Christ’ and ‘Come, Holy Spirit’. Well, I’ve heard Jonathan utter these words already! The first phrase obviously speaks of the life of the Church. So, too, of course, does the second, but the Bishop was quick to add that for Jonathan the Holy Spirit’s perceived to be just as much at work in the world as in the Church. I take this to indicate that the Church and the world exist in a reciprocal relationship, in which the boundaries between the two are far from sharply drawn, precisely because the Spirit’s present in both.
I want to explore something of what this means in the context of today’s readings, especially the gospel. The broad theme is that of vocation. In the first reading we heard of Isaiah of Jerusalem’s evocative and transformative vision of God in the temple – the God, we might note, whose glory fills the whole earth – with its call to the prophet to speak uncomfortable words to the people of Judah in the latter part of the eight century before Christ. In the second we heard of Jesus calling those who’d been hard at work fishing all night but without success. When they responded to Jesus’ invitation to ‘put out into the deep water’, and saw the result, they ‘left everything and followed Jesus’. I want to speak about the significance of the sea in all this, but I’ll come back to that later. Let’s start with vocation.
What do you think about vocation? Do you think you have one or do you think it’s just for clergy? Let me suggest that every single human being has a vocation and it’s not primarily to be ordained or even to be particularly churchy or religious. In the first instance, it’s simply to be fully human, to be who we have it in us most truly to be. Deep within every human heart is a longing for love, acceptance, relationship and inclusion, a profound desire to experience life not as fragmented and broken but as complete and whole. Jesus shows us what it looks like to be fully who we truly are. His full humanity’s seen to be realised only when it’s completely open to and at one with the transcendent source of all that is, the one he called, ‘Abba, Father,’ just as his divinity’s revealed not as something separate from humanity but as love poured out and into all that is, with absolutely nothing left over.
People responded to Jesus – and still do – as the one in whom all longing, human and divine, meets: our longing for God and God’s longing for us. So to be drawn into ever greater union with God is at one and the same time to be drawn into ever closer relationship with every other human being and, indeed, with all creation. The Church’s primary vocation is to be a community, a communion, of love, united in the Holy Spirit of love, sharing with one another without reserve in the overflowing life and love of the Trinity.
We all know only too well, though, that the Church isn’t always experienced like this. The Church itself is fragmented and broken not only at an institutional level, but also in local communities. This is true to a greater or lesser extent of every church community I’ve ever been involved with. The plain fact of the matter is that even when we respond to the call to attain our full humanity and maturity in Christ, we still share as human beings in the brokenness of the whole world. Being called into life together with God and with one another in the Church doesn’t remove our difficulties in one fell swoop. Rather, we travel together in full awareness of both our brokenness and also of what and who we already are in Christ. We might say that it’s our being in Christ that gives us the freedom to live with our brokenness and to be open to healing and transformation.
It remains the case, nevertheless, that some people – many perhaps – have been hurt and broken by the church itself. In our own time, the significant number of people who’ve been subjected to clerical abuse, for example, testify to this. So, too, do LGBTI people, who’ve often been silenced and excluded, women who’ve suffered discrimination, and divorcees who’ve been made to feel as if they’re beyond the pale. Many have been hurt by the judgmental and harsh attitudes and actions of the Church, and sometimes the Church has had to play catch up with the rest of the world, which, by contrast, can appear to be rather closer to the Spirit than the church itself.
Some simply feel let down or disappointed by the Church, as a result of which they’ve given up on it and looked for what they want and need elsewhere. Among these are those who look for the fulfilment of their deepest spiritual longings outside the Church. I often find myself having conversations with people who used to be part of church communities but who found they were no longer nourished and sustained by what they were given. The many, for example, who’re looking for more silence or for a less dogmatic approach to things. Others feel that the Church doesn’t engage enough, if at all sometimes, with the really serious issues facing us: poverty, injustice, inequality, global warming, migration and so on. The drive to respond to these issues is as often as not found outside the Church. So this very awareness pushes us to look for where the Spirit’s at work in the world as a whole, as well as in the Church.
Some Christians find this rather uncomfortable. The world, they argue, is at best ambiguous, at worst full of temptation and danger, capable of leading us astray. It’s better to play safe, they say, and stay within the secure boundaries of the Church rather than engage too closely with the world.
The difficulty with this is that, as I’ve already suggested, the church itself isn’t always a safe place. The Church can just as much be a place of danger and corruption as the rest of the world. Importantly, too, perhaps, the Church can also be used as an escape from the rest of the world, from life itself and the challenges if brings. Life isn’t always comfortable, though, either in the church or beyond it, and the Spirit’s constantly blowing us out of our comfort zones. The Spirit may sometimes be a still, small voice, but it can also be a hurricane: powerful, uncontrollable and irresistible, just like the sea.
Those who made a living from fishing knew they were encountering danger on a daily basis. In Biblical times, the sea wasn’t just a force of nature, it was a place of chaos and disorder. And yet, Jesus invited the fishermen to put out not just to sea, nor to the shallows alone, but into the deep water, the place where safety and security can’t be guaranteed, where human beings are vulnerable to the elements and definitely out of their comfort zone. The sea, after all, has the capacity to overwhelm and destroy, and yet it’s also teeming with life and energy. If the sea was for those fishermen a symbol of chaos, it was also the place of abundance, grace and generative power: they found so many fish that they could barely contain them in their nets.
The fishermen were surprised by catching anything at all, let alone the sheer size of the catch. Abundance came from the most expected place. So, are we prepared to launch out into the deep? What gifts of abundance and grace in the world do we reject? What gifts might those outside the Church have to offer to it? In what ways do we inhibit such gifts from being offered? Where’s the Church called to listen to the voice of the Spirit in the world today? For the Spirit’s the Lord, the giver of all life, drawing all into union with God and with one another. Only together can we fulfil the divine call to be fully human, to be truly who we are.
So it shouldn’t just be Jonathan praying, ‘Come, Holy Spirit’, but all of us. So come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of all your people, and kindle in us the fire of your love, that the call to us from the depths of the Father’s heart to be who we truly are might be made real in the fullness of our life together in Christ.
The longer Song of Simeon – The Reverend Canon Michael Smith (Pastor)
The Reverend Canon Michael Smith (Pastor)
Sunday 3 February 2019 – The Feast of the Presentation – Evensong
Haggai 2.1-9 & John 2.18-22
What follows is a meditation rather than a conventional sermon. At the heart of the celebration of the Feast of the Presentation is the encounter that took place in the Temple in Jerusalem between an old, holy man called Simeon and Mary, Joseph and the 40 day old baby Jesus. Simeon sang a song of praise we call the Nunc Dimmitis and this song is sung or said every day as part of our Evening Prayer. This meditation is based on that encounter and on Simeon’s role in particular, but is also inspired by a number of other things related to the story like, growing old, visiting, working and worshipping in magnificent buildings like this and the people who come to places like this to mark major life events, like baptism.
Another name for the Nunc Dimmitis is, The Song of Simeon. This meditation is called – The longer Song of Simeon.
The longer Song of Simeon.
Waiting.
Waiting for the Messiah.
Waiting to die.
Waiting is fine,
in a building like this Temple.
Dawn is best – before the crowds.
As the great doors open
shadows brighten and cold stone is warmed by sunlight.
It is as if I am alone with God.
Sometimes sitting in the cool silence.
Sometimes walking,
the noise of my stick echoing around these walls
much older even than me.
I stop and lean or sit,
Yearning, one day, to be absorbed into the stone
to be eternally embraced by the beauty and grandeur of this sacred place.
As the sun climbs in the sky, the people come
to work
to stare
to buy and to sell
to fulfil religious duties
to pray.
Alone, in groups, little families.
I look with tender regret at those little families.
Mine is grown and dispersed
leaving me old and alone
waiting,
waiting for the Messiah,
waiting to die.
These families come to give thanks for life.
Some are proud and wealthy
they march with confident joy,
‘thank offering doves’ fluttering in a cage.
Families wanting to be seen and admired
for their good fortune having been blessed by God
with new life.
Some are poor.
They drag reluctant, noisy children with them,
barely able to afford the pigeons with which they say ‘thank you’ to God.
They look bemused – is this new mouth to feed really a blessing from God?
Families come,
babies cry,
crowds shuffle through this holy place
and I watch
waiting
waiting for the Messiah
waiting to die.
Today, I saw them,
a man and a woman with a new baby
just like all the others,
but different ……
They were pigeon-poor.
What was it that set them apart?
What was it that I recognised?
As they walked nervously through the great doors
it was like the sun in the morning rushing in
brightening the shadows
bringing warmth, even life, to cold stones.
As they walked past me I heard the baby murmur
a tiny sound
and the great echo worked in reverse,
the murmur became a song which increased in volume
as it bounced around these ancient walls
filling this sacred space with divine music.
Incense, candles, oil lamps and sacrifice,
prayer comes in many forms
but, as they walked past me
prayer seemed to be embodied in them,
prayer at its most eloquent in love shared.
Waiting is over.
In this little family
In this tiny baby I saw God,
I saw the Messiah.
Surprised at my request,
reluctant to let go of her new precious gift
she gave me the child to hold.
And as I looked into those eyes
I saw vulnerable humanity
I saw powerful deity
I saw the whole of creation
I saw love.
What did he see?
An old man with a grey beard!
A tear fell from my cheek to his.
I kissed his head.
It looked paternal, friendly
but that kiss was more,
worship
affirmation,
adoration.
I gave him back.
Thank you.
I can die now.
Light has come.
I held the hands of the man and the woman.
Take care.
My tears and my kiss were of joy and love.
Take care.
Such love
Such love will know tears of pain, his own and that of others
Such love will be kissed by treachery
Take care.
I walked away,
the waiting over
the Messiah met,
ready to die in peace.
The rich tapestry of scripture -The Reverend Canon Michael Smith (Pastor)
The Reverend Canon Michael Smith (Pastor)
Sunday 27 January 2018 – 4th Sunday of Epiphany
1 Corinthians 12.12-31a & Luke 4.14-21
‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.’
This is a fascinating passage of scripture. It appears first in Isaiah 61 where it is clearly about the prophet being the one who will be filled with God’s Spirit to ‘bring good news to the poor’. Then, as we heard in the gospel this morning, Jesus, visiting his home synagogue, reads these words from Isaiah and claims that he is the one who now fulfils these words, he is the one who has come to ‘bring good news to the poor …’ And then to top it all, we heard this morning in his first letter to the Christian community in Corinth, Paul says,
‘Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it’ so now, we are the ones who should ‘bring good news to the poor ……..’
The rich tapestry of scripture!
These are well known words. They will resonate with every churchgoer who hears them again today – we know them well. But what do they mean? They sound great, radical, prophetic, but what do they actually mean, and, in particular, what do they mean for us?
What is ‘good news for the poor’? Perhaps ‘good news for the poor’ is some food. For a young homeless man who joined us for our early morning prayers last week, good news was simply having a chance to sit by a radiator! Thinking globally, good news for the poor might mean a new school or hospital. Perhaps good news for the poor is a permanent job or if you are unable to work, enough money to survive? Are these kinds of things that Isaiah and Jesus had in their minds when they spoke these words?
What does it mean to ‘proclaim release to the captives’? In some versions of the bible this is translated as ‘setting prisoners free’ – is that what Isaiah and Jesus had in mind, criminals being released from prison? Or, perhaps they were thinking about people in slavery, are they talking about slaves being set free?
‘Recovery of sight to the blind’ We think we know what Jesus means when he says these words because we know that, from time to time, he healed blind people, he restored their sight. Is that what Isaiah was talking about? As far as I know there are no records of Isaiah healing blind people. And what of us reading this passage, what do we mean as ‘the body of Christ’ today when we talk of restoring sight to the blind?
What does it mean ‘to let the oppressed go free’? Who were the oppressed in Isaiah’s day? The poor, slaves, people living in exile probably. Who were the oppressed in Jesus’ day? The poor, slaves, Samaritans, lepers, women perhaps? Who are the oppressed in our day, who needs to be set free?
All very interesting. When we think of how this passage relates to us, the ‘body of Christ’ today we nearly always read it as though we are the “do’ers”, we are Isaiah or we are Jesus. In other words we read it and understand that we are the people bringing good news, proclaiming release, restoring sight, liberating the oppressed. This is a perfectly legitimate way to read these words and, to be honest, probably the way we are intended to read them – we are filled with the Spirit through our Baptism and through our sharing regularly in the sacrament of Christ’s body and blood. We are called to be the liberators, proclaimers of good news, healers. However, I have been thinking this week as I have been mulling over these words, that it might be helpful, and revealing, from time to time, to read this passage in a different way, to read this passage not as the “do’ers” but as the “receivers”.
There are lots of ways to be poor, Poverty is not just lack of money. Perhaps even we, the privileged and relatively wealthy people of York are poor in some ways? Perhaps we are poor in time, we spend so much of our time being busy, being important, paying the bills, that our relationships suffer? Perhaps we are poor in spirit? Perhaps we spend far too much of our time amassing material things and material security that we are starving the spiritual side of ourselves? Perhaps we need to hear the good news that God can break into our busy, acquisitive, self-centred worlds and renew and reset our priorities. Perhaps we need to re-orientate our lives to love our family and our neighbours a little more and ourselves and our ambition a little less? God, through word and sacraments, can enrich our lives and relationships and feed our spiritual hunger.
You don’t have to be in prison to be imprisoned. People are imprisoned in addictions of one sort or another, others are imprisoned in unhealthy or destructive relationships, others are imprisoned by chronic illness. Our God teaches us that none of these have to be life sentences, by living in community, by loving our neighbours and our enemies, by being vulnerable to his healing touch there is nothing from which we cannot be liberated, healed, set free by God.
Jesus makes it clear on more than one occasion that he does not heal the blind simply to improve the lives of one or two people, he heals the blind as a sign that he has come to help everyone see in new ways, or see as they were created to see. How much of the world do we close our eyes to? We close our eyes to suffering but I think we also close our eyes to beauty and to love and to goodness as well. Narrow-mindedness and bigotry are also a form of blindness. I think we need Christ’s healing touch to enable us and encourage us to see the world and other people as they truly are, to see God’s creative presence everywhere and in everyone.
What oppresses you? What stresses you out? Pressure at work? Impending exams? Traffic jams? Moaning children? Nagging parents? When people who were oppressed went to see Jesus he reminded them of the priority of love and he also lavished forgiveness and mercy upon them – Mary Magdalen, Zacchaeus, the rich young man, they were all oppressed in one way or another and they were liberated by the teaching, forgiveness and love of Jesus. We can be liberated too.
We need to hear this gospel again and again. Yes we are called, as the Body of Christ, to fulfil it. But we are also called as fallen human beings to hear it and to be encouraged and inspired by it. We are people who need God to speak his Good News into our poverty. We are people who need God to release us from all that imprisons us. We are people who need God to heal us and help us to see the world and others with greater truth and clarity and we need God to liberate us from all that oppresses us. God gives generously to us, we should give generously to God and to others.
As we hear these words again today let us rejoice in the rich tapestry of scripture. There is not just one way to read and understand passages like this, we can dig deep to find new meaning for today, we can hold such passages and look at them from different points of view and God’s truth, like a magnificent diamond with many facets, shines out from every angle. These words should not only inspire us to action, they should also bring us comfort. The Good News of God’s love is not just something for us to proclaim it is also something for us to receive.
Christian Unity – Just do it! -The Reverend Canon Michael Smith (Pastor)
Christian Unity – Just do it!
Sunday 20 January 2019 Evensong Week of Prayer for Christian Unity
1 Samuel 3.1-10 & Ephesians 4.1-6
When we were taught how to preach we were told that we should begin by telling the congregation what you are going to tell them, then you should tell them, then you should tell them what you told them. This is a simple lesson in communication. A beginning, a middle and an end tends to be helpful.
If you think about it almost every book you read will have an Introduction or a Forward which tells you what the book is about or why it has been written and possibly something about the context in which it is set. We are used to this way of doing things. We like things to be clear. We like to know what we are letting ourselves in for.
It’s the same in meetings and in business. We like an agenda, clear aims and objectives, a start time and a finish time. We like to know what our goals are and we also like to do things in such a way that we can measure our success at reaching those goals.
These are good ways of communicating and working. They get things done and ensure that time and talents are used efficiently. BUT it is only one way of working and it seems at odds with the approach of the gospel writers and St John in particular. John says of his gospel ….. these things are written;
‘ … so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.’ Chap 20 v.31
Now if you or I had been writing this gospel we would have put that little sentence at the beginning in the introduction – John puts it at the very end of the penultimate chapter of his book. He tells the story of Jesus and then tells us why! A strange way of doing things if you think about it. So why does he do it this way?
Perhaps the reason why John takes so long to tell us why he has written this story is that he understands what it takes for people to come to belief. John knows that people do not come to belief in Jesus in the same way that they will come to belief in other truths like historical facts or scientific equations. It takes time – it’s only when we have experienced the story of Jesus by listening to it and letting it touch us and inspire us – it’s only when we have tested out the teaching of Jesus and tried to live our lives the way he says we should live them – it’s only then that we truly come to know Jesus and to say that we have come to belief in him.
The disciple Andrew understood this as well. In the gospel story Andrew fetches his brother to meet Jesus and he simply says, ‘come and see’. He doesn’t try and tell him about Jesus, he doesn’t try to tell him what Jesus means to him. He doesn’t hand him a religious tract and he doesn’t invite him to a meeting to hear the Truth of Jesus set out in logical or systematic argument. Authentic proclamation of the gospel is not telling people about Jesus and hoping that they will accept it. Authentic proclamation of the gospel, as John and Andrew knew, is to invite people to come and see, come and experience, come and share, come and share in our community.
This seems to me to be entirely consistent with the approach of Jesus. He never asked anyone what they believed. He never said ‘I’ll cure you of leprosy if you believe in me’ – he just cured them. He didn’t say ‘If you believe in God the way I believe in God and if you do all the right religious things then, follow me’. He just said ‘follow me’. It’s as simple as that. We follow Jesus first, faith and belief follow.
It seems to me that in this week of prayer for Christian Unity it is good to do things the gospel way! Perhaps we spend too long when we think about Christian Unity trying to set out an agenda, working out what we are going to do, we try to set aims and objectives. When we do this we don’t get very far. Perhaps we just need to get on with it – in the words of the Nike advert, perhaps it is better to ‘Just do it!’ I don’t mean that we should ride roughshod over each other’s traditions or each other’s particular beliefs and dogmas – but we should just get on with being as united as we possibly can. If we live together in mutual love and respect then the rest will follow.
It’s not only Jesus’ love that is unconditional it is his invitation to follow, to live his way. We find this difficult. We like conditions. We like deals. We get used to deals – every advert we ever see on the TV or on a billboard is offering us a deal. We’re so imbued with deals we cannot get our heads around a God who does not offer a deal, God just offers love and fellowship and, in Jesus, God offers an invitation. Too much discussion about Church Unity is based on the idea of a deal – if you accept something we hold dear then we’ll think about accepting something you hold dear. If you compromise we will compromise. The only things that Christians need in order to build unity are a desire to follow Jesus and an instinct to love each other. That’s all. We should simply get on with trying to follow Jesus and loving each other without spending endless meetings and synods trying to work out where we may be headed.
This may seem naïve and I suppose it is. But surely the differences there are between the various Christian denominations significant and important though they are, are nowhere near as significant and important as the invitation we have received to follow Jesus and to love each other.
It’s in just getting on with doing things Jesus’ way that we come to belief, it’s in just getting on with loving each other that we come close to God. It’s in just getting on with living in as much Unity as possible that fuller Unity will come. Let’s ‘Just do it!’
I am sure many of us will be watching the next episode of Les Miserables this evening. The stage show concludes with these words attributed to Victor Hugo which articulate a profound truth which cannot be contained or measured and it is not subject to any deal,
To truly love another person is to see the face of God.
It’s by just getting on with living the Jesus way that we draw close to God. It’s just by getting on and living as closely as we can with all our Christian sisters and brothers that true unity will come.
A prayer for unity from the Quaker tradition
Dear God, We give thanks for places of simplicity and peace. Let us find such a place within ourselves. We give thanks for places of refuge and beauty. Let us find such a place within ourselves. We give thanks for places of nature’s truth and freedom, of joy, inspiration, and renewal, places where all creatures may find acceptance and belonging. Let us search for these places in the world, in ourselves, and in others. Let us restore them. Let us strengthen and protect them, and let us create them. May we mend this outer world according to the truth of our inner life and may our souls be shaped and nourished by God’s eternal wisdom. Amen
Epiphany – The Reverend Catriona Cumming
Epiphany 2019
6 January 2019
They say that a preacher has two, maybe three sermons.
And every sermon they ever preach is a variation on those two or three.
At the heart of most of my sermons are these questions:
Who is Jesus?
What is Jesus like?
The whole of this season is essentially a time for the Church to ask these questions?
And added to this… And so what?
Om Christmas Eve I held the figure of Jesus – the bambino, in my arms, and took him to the crib in the Lady Chapel.
And this I know: though ‘his yoke may be easy, and his burthern light,’ to quote Matthew’s Gospel and evoke Handel, our Lord’s likeness is pretty heavy.
Holding a baby in your arms you are very aware of their weight. The solidity of them, and their fragility – both together.
You’re aware of their smell.
That new baby smell which binds them to their family, strong and fragile.
Jesus is small, and weighty, and fragile.
He, like all babies, is full of possibilities for the future, and yet his world is about the present – he is concerned with the business of growing, of becoming.
Jesus is present in the world.
He is engaged in the struggles of living a life which consumes all of who he is.
When I was in theological college we would describe times when we were doing ordinary stuff – reading the paper, doing the laundry, propping up the bar (I will leave you to imagine what I did most frequently), as being “incarnational”.
It was an ironic way of saying ‘I am avoiding doing all the things I should be doing like papers, or revision, by engaging in displacement activity, and it’s FINE, because I’m being “incarnational”.’
The incarnation is the fullness of God dwelling with us: God present in the whole of human existence, enlivening and enriching and transforming that existence so that all is holy – precious in God’s sight.
Jesus, present in the world, transforms each breath, and makes it holy.
Who is Jesus?
What is he like?
Jesus is something else.
It’s interesting to me that the writer of Matthew’s Gospel refers to Jesus at the beginning of this chapter by name.
But in the next eleven verses he is referred to as the child, the Messiah, and described as a ruler.
He is the subject of prophesy:
so it has been written by the prophet:
“And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah,
are by no means least among the rulers of Judah;
for from you shall come a ruler
who is to shepherd my people Israel.”
Jesus is light, and hope.
He is the focus of expectation, and the dreams of his people.
The light and hope this child personifies is strong enough to reach out into the darkness – to other nations, drawing wise men from far away.
It is extraordinary to think of the weight of those expectations and dreams, resting on this baby.
This afternoon, at Evensong, we will bring gifts to the bambino in the crib.
With those gifts we bring our own hopes and expectations, which we lay on Jesus, and our own ideas of how that hope will be realised.
But we also bring our doubts, and fears.
Who is Jesus?
What is he like?
It is said that Jesus came to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.
Underlying the Gospel passage is a sense of fear.
Herod, hearing the wise mens’ message is frightened – and all Jerusalem with him.
Jesus’ presence doesn’t merely inspire fear in the ruler, but in the whole city.
Because Jesus’ presence means something new is happening.
Change.
Something which we still fear.
If this baby was the signal of something new, then what does that mean for the rulers, and the ordinary people, of this city?
Of this world?
If the life and ministry of Jesus, if the incarnation tells us anything, it is that God does not, will not, operate within the confines, the norms of our politics and society.
God in Jesus will not be confined.
Jesus is honoured as a ruler – and yet will be seen as a rebel.
The Incarnation is described as a mystery.
In fact it is bewildering.
It is bewildering that the Creator of the stars of night should dwell with us, should come to us fully divine, and yet unable to hold his head up.
It is bewildering that one who inspires fear in kings and cities, draws wise men from afar, should be found in poverty.
It is bewildering that after 2000 years, we still find ourselves drawn to this child – despite not quite grasping what this means in this world, here and now.
When asked who Jesus is, and what he is like, a number of answers and images may spring to mind.
One is what we see now in the crib in the Lady Chapel: Jesus as a baby, weighty and fragile, arms outstretched, unable to lift his head.
Another is the cross: Jesus with his arms outstretched again, this time in pain and suffering.
One who is fully divine but unable to lift his head, apparently weak and helpless.
In neither case can we fully answer who Jesus is, and what he is like.
For this season though, I will hold in my mind the weight of the bambino.
The solidity and fragility of a child.
I will hold the thought that the baby Jesus, being, growing, was perfectly himself.
I will call to mind the concentration and determination it takes to be alive in this world, and remember that in Jesus God has been and remains present in the every day struggles, challenges, triumphs of each person’s life.
I will balance the hopes and fears I have for the year to come, with the hope that God is present, and is doing something new on a cosmic, and also at a personal, cellular level.
There was another question I asked right at the beginning of this sermon.
Who is Jesus?
What is Jesus like?
The whole of this season is essentially a time for the Church to ask these questions?
And added to this… And so what?
What does it mean for us, that our everyday existence has been shared by God?
What does it mean for us that the King of kings and Lord of lords lived as he did?
These questions do not have easy answers.
In a year of uncertainty, as we try to work out our place in the world, perhaps the Church can ponder these questions, and the hope we might bring to this city, this nation, this continent, this world.
The Manifestation of the All-Inclusive Love of God – Canon Dr Christopher Collingwood (Chancellor)
Sunday 6 January 2019 – Matins
Jeremiah 31:7-14 John 1:29-34
Peter Cornelius’s anthem, The Three Kings, which we’ve just heard, takes me right back to my school days. I can remember the very first time I heard it in a darkened chapel with candles flickering, and being utterly transfixed by its simplicity, imaginative power and capacity to evoke wonder. In particular, as a relatively young boy, I was mesmerised by the sounds of the baritone solo wafting lyrically over the steady and solid harmonic accompaniment provided by the choir. I can still remember the name of the boy who sang the solo when I first heard it. To me, of course, he looked and sounded like a grown man, but I was also struck by the sense of vulnerability, precariousness and fragility of this solo voice. Perhaps without realising it, it spoke to me of my own vulnerability and, by association, that of the Magi making an arduous and perilous journey as they followed the leading of the star to the place where the Christ-Child lay. The combination of all these things said something to me then – and still does to this day – of the journey we’re all called to make through life into union with the one for whom our hearts seek and long.
There could scarcely be a more appropriate anthem than this for today, the Feast of the Epiphany, celebrating as it does the culmination of the long journey made by the Magi to the manger. Given that the Epiphany’s associated almost exclusively with the kings or the wise men, it might have struck you as slightly bizarre that neither of the two biblical readings had anything to do with them. Indeed, the second reading concerning the baptism of Jesus seems to have been appointed in the lectionary with the almost deliberate intention of ignoring them. Similarly, at Evensong today, at the end of which we shall make our way in procession to the crib in the Lady Chapel to present gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh, the first lesson from the Prophecy of Isaiah has a definite case for being included, since it actually mentions gold and frankincense, but the second, the story of the wedding at Cana, where water was turned into wine, seems to be almost completely irrelevant. In the immortal words of the comedian Peter Kay: ‘What’s that all about?’
Well there’s actually a profound connection between the wise men, the baptism of Jesus, and the turning of water into wine at Cana. From the earliest days of the Church, these three things have all been associated with one another precisely because they’re all epiphanies of a kind: manifestations, revelations of who Christ is. The story of changing water into wine in the Gospel of John actually ends with the words: ‘Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory.’ We might not hear specifically about the kings or the wise men at Matins or Evensong, but at the celebrations of the Eucharist this morning, the story of the journey of the wise men to the Christ-Child was indeed included as the gospel reading. So at all three services on this day, these three events are held together in close liturgical relationship. They show us different facets of the Epiphany. Each points distinctively to something of what’s being manifested or revealed.
The baptism of Jesus reveals the nature of God as ecstatic love: Jesus awakens to his identity as the beloved Son of the Father, each of whom overflows in love for the other in union with the Spirit. The story of the water being turned into wine at the wedding in Cana speaks of the sheer zest for life, of the very fullness of life that pours forth from God in Christ, a fullness which isn’t just enough but more than enough: abundant, overflowing, unstoppable and uncontrollable. The story of the Magi speaks of inclusion, for they weren’t Jews but gentiles. The heart of this Epiphany is that it shows that God is for all, not just for an exclusive group by virtue of their birth, race, religion or status, but for all, so that all might know themselves to be included in the abundant love of God and enabled to live life in all its fullness. So while all three events celebrated today are indeed epiphanies, it’s on what we call the Epiphany, that is the manifestation of Christ to the Magi, the Kings or the wise Men, representing all gentiles, that I want to focus briefly as I draw to a close. And, in particular, I want to refer once again to the music we heard a few moments ago.
There’s something very evocative about that solo voice, which has to do, I think, with a sense of loneliness or, better perhaps, solitariness. Relationship is absolutely crucial to being human – and indeed to being God, too – but simply being with other people isn’t a guarantee against loneliness. It’s been remarked, hasn’t it, that it’s possible never to feel more lonely than in the middle of a crowd. Similarly, it’s possible be in solitude and yet feel completely in communion with everyone and everything, to sense that everything’s included. This solo voice speaks of something unique and deeply personal, and because it’s unique and so personal it’s also universal: the reaching out, the longing for union and fulfilment. It’s no coincidence, perhaps, that the last notes sung by the soloist to the words, ‘Offer thy heart’, form the musical interval of a major sixth, the interval which, in the hands of the composer Richard Wagner, for example, especially the minor sixth in his opera Tristan und Isolde, conveys that universal sense of yearning and longing for love. The human search is ultimately for love, and the Manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles shows us that our yearning is met by God’s yearning for us in Christ. In him divine and human love meet, combine and are at one. To offer our hearts to God means having the confidence to be exactly who we are with God, and trusting, knowing that we’re loved as we are, that we’re included along with everything and everyone else in the abundant, overflowing, limitless love of God. This great Feast of the Epiphany invites and encourages us to travel with the whole of humanity into the very fullness of God, so that not one person, not one single thing is excluded now or ever.
Epiphany – The Reverend Deacon Abigail Davison (Curate)
The Reverend Deacon Abigail Davison (Curate)
Sunday 6 January 2019 – Evensong
Tonight we celebrate the feast of Epiphany, one of the church’s oldest feast days and the time when we recall the visit of the wise men to the child Jesus. I understand that current scholarly thinking puts Jesus (at the time of the Maji’s arrival) at a very similar age to my own toddler daughter and I have to say, after celebrating my third Christmas now as a mother, I have a new found empathy with Mary being made to receive these slightly bizarre, though I’m assured very symbolic and important gifts, politely and with a smile on her face. Someone gave my daughter a recorder last year. If you only take one thing away from this sermon, then please let it be this: if you truly love your neighbour, do not gift their toddler a recorder for Christmas.
But of course, it wasn’t about the gift, it was about the giving. I don’t necessarily understand the motives behind giving anything noisy to a small child, but the giver definitely felt it was the right thing to do. I wonder if we could think about this question tonight then: what prompts us to give? What motivated those wise men to get up, leave home, and travel all that way to bring those gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh? It wasn’t demanded of them. It wasn’t expected of them: I don’t think social pressure compelled them to give. Was it charity or given out of pity? Gold, frankincense and myrrh were costly, but not necessarily the most helpful things to give a family if they were in need (and I’ve little doubt there were people closer to home and in greater need than the family of Mary, Joseph and Jesus). Perhaps they thought that there was something to be gained in return: a sort of payment made in advance?
The gospel account in Matthew tells us that they went because they saw a light. It was a light that they believed would lead them to a new King, the King of the Jews. So they went to pay him homage, which is something you do with kings, especially if you want to gain their favour for future years. I suspect that once they found this king they understood that it was not an earthly quid-pro-quo system they would be dealing with.
So why did they give to this child? It wasn’t because they had to: who was there that could compel these men to give anything? It wasn’t charity: what did He need? It wasn’t a payment: what could you pay Him?
I think it was a response. A poor, human response, perhaps as unnecessary as the gifting of a recorder to a toddler, but nonetheless (and much more) graciously welcomed, not because of what the gifts were but simply because of the act of giving them. It wasn’t about the gift, it was about the giving.
Or was it? Epiphany isn’t about the giving, it’s about The Gift. God’s gift, the gift of the Christ who is our light, the light which called those wise men from so far away. Epiphany is the revelation of this one true Gift. It’s a revelation that’s made to all, to Jew and to gentile, to those with much to give, and to those with seemingly little. And it’s a Gift that’s offered to all – like the wine at the wedding in Cana when Jesus revealed his glory, there’s more than enough for everyone.
I want to leave you with this though. In moment we will bring the traditional gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh (or representations of them at least) to the crib scene in the Lady Chapel. Now this point sounds a bit negative but it’s not meant to be and it’s definitely theologically accurate, I promise: there is nothing you can give to God that will make you more worthy or appropriate to receive The Gift that he has offered. I have a friend who I trained with and who tells me she often says to herself “you’re not doing God any favours you know”. It’s not meant to be negative, it’s meant as a reminder. God doesn’t need you to give and what could you give Him anyway? There is only what He’s given you, to give. So give that. In accepting The Gift you can become a gift. And always and only give, because you have seen what was given.
The Divine Disruptor -The Reverend Canon Michael Smith (Pastor)
The Reverend Canon Michael Smith (Pastor)
Sunday 30 December 2018 11.30am Matins
Isaiah 41.21 – 42.1 & 1 John 1.1-7
One of the problems with making the events we celebrate at Christmas into a lovely, easily accessible story is that we tend to forget the profound nature of what we are celebrating, we tend to overlook the theology of what occurred and we tend to gloss over the deeply challenging nature of the message Jesus proclaimed. I heard a sermon recently that described Jesus as ‘the divine disrupter’. Despite the fact that the events we celebrate at Christmas can be made into a nice little story, they actually tell us a great deal about God, the way God is and the way God works, and it’s all very strange and disturbing and disrupting!
I have discovered a lovely prayer recently which helps to shake us out of the complacency of slipping into the lovely, old, comfortable Christmas story like we slip into a pair of lovely, old, comfortable slippers. Listen to this;
Lord Jesus Christ, you came to a stable when men looked in a palace; you were born in poverty when we might have anticipated riches; King of all the earth you were content to visit one nation; Creator of the universe you accepted the hills and plains of Galilee as the backcloth for your ministry. From the beginning to the end, your life held people in suspense, and its surprises force us to reconsider our values and priorities.
Come to us Lord Jesus, Do not let us take you for granted or pretend that we ever fully understand you. Continue to surprise us so that, kept alert, we are always ready to receive you as Lord and to do your will. Amen
This prayer reminds us that the Christmas story is peculiar and unusual, it reveals God in a way we would never have expected.
By focussing on the birth narratives of Matthew and Luke we tend to ignore the fact that Mark doesn’t make any allusion to the birth of Jesus in his gospel, so anxious is he to tell us of the significance and impact of Jesus’ ministry. And we tend to skim over what John says at the beginning of his gospel because it sounds fantastic, but it is a bit difficult,
‘In the beginning was the Word ……. and the Word became flesh and lived among us.’
What we celebrate at Christmas is not just a nice story. Yes, it centres on the birth of a child but it is not just good news for nice neat families who have the privilege of being able to gather together to enjoy and celebrate ‘family-ness’ at Christmas. The events we celebrate are all about God becoming one of us, the way it happened is almost incidental. The way it happened is certainly incidental to St Mark and St John!
Isaiah, in our first reading, speaks of a ‘herald of good tidings’ but goes on to say that no one actually listened, their response was a delusion, their response to the good tidings was to make images which were empty wind. That certainly resonates with the way the Christmas story is received by many of us. You know the aphorism, ‘don’t throw the baby out with the bath water’ which means that sometimes when we are trying to strip everything down to bare essentials we mistakenly get rid of the essence, the thing that is essential. With Christmas I think we could turn this aphorism around, we are in danger of throwing away the baby (the essence of Christmas) because we love wallowing in the lovely warm Christmassy bath water!
What is important about what we celebrate in this season is not angels and babies born to virgins and shepherds and wise men, what is important is that ‘the Word became flesh and dwelt among us’, God became one of us, one with us to share in our lives forever, to accompany us in our lives every step of the way. So Christmas is not just good news for children, it is not just good news for families, it is good news for those who are struggling, for those who are sick, for those who are bereaved, for those who are in prison or oppressed, for those whose faith is only a faint glimmer, for those who feel that God has abandoned them. The Good News of Christmas is that God is saying to all people, ‘I am with you’, ‘I walk with you’, ‘I suffer with you’, ‘I weep with you’, as well as ‘I rejoice with you’.
There are those who would say to this, ‘So what?’ ‘So what if God walks by my side as I suffer, what difference does that make, I am still suffering?’ Christmas does not stand alone, in a few months we will be celebrating Easter which shows us that by being one with us God leads us always to new ways of being, God leads us to new ways of living, God reveals that healing, resurrection, re-creation, new life is what God wants for all people.
Christmas is not just good news for those of us who can come to church, sing Away in a manger and then go home for Turkey and presents in front of a roaring fire. Christmas is good news for all people, and we as Christians, we as ‘the body of Christ’, are called to help make it so by our compassion, generosity, understanding and love towards all people.
What Then Will This Child Become? Growing in Love and Compassion – Canon Dr Christopher Collingwood (Chancellor)
Canon Dr Christopher Collingwood (Chancellor)
Sunday 30 December 2018 – Sung Eucharist
1 Samuel 2:18-20, 26 Luke 2:41-52
As some of you may be aware, Sue and I have a new granddaughter. We met her for the first time in August, when she was just three weeks old. To do that, we had to travel to Jordan, where she was born, and where she lives with Andrew, our second son, and Dania, his wife, who’s half-Jordanian and half-Egyptian. We’ve had the delight of having them with us for Christmas and we’re all agreed that our granddaughter is the perfect embodiment of her name: Farah – ‘Joy’ in Arabic.
A newly-born baby’s full of promise, potential and possibility, and I find myself pondering in relation to Farah the question posed by the family of John, later to be dubbed ‘the Baptist’, when his parents, Zechariah and Elizabeth, brought him to be circumcised: ‘What then will this child become?’ For them, as Luke recounts, the birth of their child was a sign of something new, mysterious and promising, a sign of God’s presence and activity among his people after what seemed like a long time of apparent absence. As I look at Farah, I marvel at her capacity to evoke feelings of sheer love by virtue of nothing more than the fact that she simply is, that she’s just there. Most mothers know what this is like. The love of a mother for her newly-born child isn’t wrenched out of her reluctantly, nor does the mother wait to love her child until the child somehow deserves it. A mother loves her child simply because she’s her child.
This is a love I, too, have for Farah, a love that doesn’t seem to be of my making or of hers. It’s simply there; it arises spontaneously and naturally from deep within. From within this love, though, I find myself wondering what she will become, how her life will unfold and what it will bring. I also recognise in myself a degree of sadness that I won’t live long enough to see her live her life to its end. I shan’t see the fulfilment of the promise, potential and possibility that she represents right now, but then that’s life isn’t it. We live our own lives and then make way for the next generations to live theirs.
And Farah’s arrival also makes me reflect on my own life and the course it’s taken thus far with all its twists and turns, joys and sorrows, ups and downs. There’s a temptation in all of us to live vicariously to some extent. Parents, especially, can project on to their own children their own unrealised hopes, longings and ambitions. That’s a danger, I guess, for grandparents, too. In truth, of course, what we’re all called to do, whether in family relationships, friendships or passing acquaintances, is to enable every single human being, as far as it lies within us, to be who they really have it in them to be. All of us both help and hinder that possibility in all sorts of ways.
It’s in Luke’s gospel, more than in any other, that we find the questions of promise, potential and possibility presented to us in relation to Jesus. Luke allows time for Jesus to grow and develop, to discover who he really is and, in so doing, to show us, too, who we, deep down, really are. And Mary and Joseph play a pivotal role in Jesus’ nurture and development.
Luke alone includes the story of Jesus visiting the temple on the threshold of adolescence, as we heard in today’s gospel reading. Mary, of all people, must have wondered what would become of her child from before his birth. Luke depicts the sense of anticipation and expectation she had when she visited her cousin Elizabeth, pregnant with her own son, John. Luke tells us that when the shepherds leave the manger, Mary ‘treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart’. Something similar is said of her after the visit to the temple when Jesus gets lost: ‘His mother treasured all these things in her heart’. It’s as if Mary gives Jesus everything a child could ask for, primarily love, but a love which includes, crucially, perhaps, allowing the child space to grow without imposing or projecting her own desires on him. Jesus was for Mary, and indeed for Joseph, so it would seem from Matthew’s gospel, something of an enigma, someone incapable of being manipulated or controlled, someone who always seemed to put them into question, rather than the other way round. So Mary ponders and watches as things unfold.
On the surface, the account of Jesus’ visit to the temple at the age of 12 appears to portray him as a stereotypical, stroppy, very-nearly teenager: thoughtless about his parents’ concerns and responsibilities, insensitive about their feelings, and wrapped up in his own world. This, though, would be to read into it our own 21st century sensibilities and thus rather to miss the point.
Practically every parent will know what it’s like, shall we say, to ‘mislay’ a child. It’s happened to us twice and the feeling of utter dread’s almost impossible to describe. This wasn’t quite how it was for Mary and Joseph. What appears to be carelessness on their part was probably nothing of the sort. In order to celebrate the Passover, families and friends usually travelled to and from Jerusalem with others in large groups. It would simply have been assumed that Jesus was somewhere in the party. Only at the end of the day would it have become clear that Jesus wasn’t with them. At that stage, no doubt, panic set in, but when they found Jesus safe and sound, deep in discussion with the teachers in the temple, there was almost certainly that mixture of relief and then anger: ‘Oh, Jesus, thank God you’re safe. If you ever do that again, we’ll kill you!’ Luke’s concern, though, isn’t really with psychological analysis; it’s with something else.
Luke’s Jesus is in one sense rather precocious: he can hold his own at the age of 12 with the best teachers of the day. But that’s rather the point. When he says, ‘Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?’ or in the more familiar but equally acceptable translation, ‘Did you not know that I must be about my Father’s business?’, Luke’s showing that the answer to the implicit question, ‘What then will this child become?’, lies in his total orientation to God. His very being, life and identity are found in God. At the same time, though, this doesn’t give him carte blanche to ignore human considerations, conventions and concerns; he submits himself in obedience to Mary and Joseph and, as a result, grows in wisdom and in divine and human favour. What his life shows, as it unfolds and develops, is that to be truly and fully human requires our being utterly grounded in God, just as to be divine means for Jesus to surrender himself in all humility to the needs and demands of humanity. And these two orientations meet supremely as the manifestation of love and compassion.
The answer to the question, ‘What then will this child become?’, is to be found in the way Luke presents Jesus in his teaching and in his life as the very embodiment of love and compassion. In his first sermon in the synagogue in Nazareth, Jesus reads from the scroll of the Prophecy of Isaiah, but stops reading at the point where vengeance is mentioned. He turns his back on violence, power and force in favour of compassionate understanding and self-giving love, something he’ll live out in his own passion and death. Only in Luke do we find the parable of the Good Samaritan, depicting as it does how the hated outsider is closer to the spirit of the Law of love than those who purport to live by it. Only in Luke do we find the parable of the so-called Prodigal Son, in which the father sees the world not through the eyes of success and failure but through the unchanging, unchanged and unchangeable love for his son. Only in Luke do we find Jesus on the cross praying with love and compassion for those who put him there: ‘Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.’
This seems to run completely counter to the way things are in the world, where love, compassion and forgiveness are taken so often as signs of weakness. Yet the opposite’s actually the case. Real strength is to be seen in the willingness to let go of oneself in and through the apparent weakness of love and compassion. This is so because Jesus shows us that this is who God is and what God’s like. The whole purpose of Luke’s gospel is to show us that God’s love and compassion know no bounds. Jesus demonstrates that being about his Father’s business issues supremely in manifesting divine love and compassion for all. And his whole ministry is about living that out in whatever way it’s called for, but particularly in his concern for those who suffer, for the marginalised, the excluded, the disadvantaged, the poor, the powerless, the disreputable, the unloved and the unlovable.
I may not live long enough to see what will become of Farah. What I do know, though, is that the more she grows in love and compassion, the more she will become who she truly is, as, indeed, is the case for you and me as well, for we’re all created in the image and likeness of God, who is love and compassion. The rest is simply detail.