Christmas Morning: The Song of the Angel

 The Song of the Angel

There was once an angel. Now, you know about angels, I’m sure. Shiny, winged creatures, who sing a lot, especially the singing. Glory to God in the highest. Holy, Holy, Holy. All angels sing.

Except the one in this story. From the day he was created he had had a voice like a foghorn, or, if he tried for a high note, fingernails scraping down a blackboard. 

Anyway, one day God called all the angels together. He had an announcement to make. “I have seen the misery of my people on earth,” he said, “and it breaks my heart. There is love. There is joy, but there is so much hatred and injustice that it is often drowned out. So I have decided to do something about it. I am going to send my son to be born among humanity, one of them, to show people what my love looks like And you will be a part of this, because I want you to sing to welcome him when he is born. You have nine months to dream up your songs, and you can start right now!”

The angels were filled with excitement. They rose up into the air and headed off to find a corner where they could compose their new tunes, all except one, our angel, the one I told you about earlier.

When all the others had gone, he stood in front of God and said “Lord, what about me? You know I can’t hold a tune to save my life - what shall I do now?”

But God looked at him and said, “My friend, you have the most special job of all. I am sending you to earth, ahead of all the rest, to find your voice, and your song, because when my Son is born, yours will be the best song of all. So, fly down to earth, and find that song.”

The angel looked doubtful, but he trusted God, so he did as he was told. He flew down to earth, and as his foot touched it, his wings disappeared – he wouldn’t be needing them, and they would just be in the way. It quite threw him off balance though, and he tumbled forward onto his hands and knees, and knelt there, winded for a moment. “Ark! Ark! Are you all right?” came a voice from the nearby trees. There was a glossy, black raven, sitting in a branch. “I’ve had some rough landings, but that one looked very painful, and where have your wings gone?” The angel explained who he was, and what had happened, and what God had told him about how he, the angel, would find his voice and a song to sing to God’s Son when he was born. 

“Can I come with you?” asked the raven. “Maybe I can find my voice and sing that song too – as you can hear, mine is pretty dreadful now. The larks and the nightingales all make fun of me”. 

“Sure”, said the angel, “though I have to tell you I don’t even know where to begin looking”

So the two set off together. Having no better ideas, they thought they would try to find some musicians who might give them singing lessons, so they went to the nearest village and asked around. But when the village band heard them sing, they roared with laughter. It was the same in the next village, and the next and the next. Months went past, with no success. Now and then someone tried to help them, but with a day or so would always shake their heads sadly and say that they didn’t think there was anything they could do. Sometimes people even threw things at them to make them stop, or ran them out of town. 

One day the two friends were sitting by the side of the road disconsolate. 

“God always keeps his promises,” said the angel, “ but, for the life of me, I can’t see how ours will ever be a song his Son will want to hear, and his birth is only just over a month away”. A sad silence fell between them, but it was soon broken by noises even worse than their singing, the sound of an old woman wailing with grief, and a donkey braying feebly, and an angry man shouting “Get up! Get up!”

The angel and the raven hurried along the road and soon they came across the source of the commotion, an old woman, kneeling in the dust, her arms around a donkey that was no more than skin and bones. The man was standing over them, a stick in his hand, beating the poor donkey.

The angel was having none of this. “Stop that! Don’t you dare hit that donkey! What is happening here?”

The old woman looked up at him. “When my husband died, I had no money for food, and I foolishly borrowed some from this man. Now he wants ten times as much back from me, and I can’t pay him, so he says he will take my donkey, and put him to work for him for a month in his stone quarry, pulling a cart full of heavy stones, to pay the debt. But my donkey is so old and frail that I know it will kill him, and he is the only friend I have in the world!” 

The angel thought for a moment. Then he stepped forward and said to the man, “Take me. I will work in the donkey’s place for a month. I am much stronger than he is.” 

The man looked at the angel. He did look strong, glowing with health in fact. So the man agreed. “And when the debt is paid, you must promise that you won’t bother this poor woman and her donkey again,” said the angel. “Of course,” said the man, “my word is my bond”. 

So the angel went with the man, and straightaway started to work in his stone quarry, hauling huge carts piled high with stones. From dawn till dusk he worked, day after day, week after week, his hands blistered and chapped, until finally the month was up. Then he went to the little stone hut, where the owner spent his days, supervising his workers and knocked on its stout oak door and went in. 

“I have worked for you in the donkey’s place, for a whole month, and I hope I have worked well.”

“Yes, indeed,” said the man, getting up from his chair and walking to stand between the angel and the doorway. 

“So now, I shall be on my way. The debt is paid, and you will leave the woman and her donkey alone, as you promised”

But, quick as a flash, the man jumped out of the door, and slammed it shut, and pushed the iron bolt across it, trapping the angel inside.

“No one’s word is their bond when there is a profit to be made. I have no intention of letting you go, and tomorrow I shall bring the woman and donkey here to join you!” And off he went laughing to himself. 

The angel was appalled. What had he done? The woman and the donkey were no better off than they had been. As he sat there, stunned, he heard a flutter of wings, and through a crack in the door, he saw his old friend the raven. 

He told the raven what had happened. “Please tell the woman to escape now, tonight, with her donkey, as far away as they can, and go with them to guard them. 

The raven flew off into the darkness.

But not long after, the angel heard the sound of the bolt on the door being slowly, quietly slid back, and the door being slowly, quietly opened. As he sat up, the old woman’s head appeared around the door. “What are you doing here? Why haven’t you run away?”

 “Shh! We couldn’t leave you behind, after you had been so kind to us and so brave. Come with us, and we will all run away together. Quickly now!”

The angel crept out of the hut, and they made their way onto the road, and headed off, no matter where, so long as it was far from the quarry. All night long and all the next day too they walked, looking behind them to make sure they weren’t being followed. 

As they walked, the angel told the woman who he was, and why he’d come to earth, “but now it is almost time for God’s son to be born, and I am no nearer finding my voice and my song than I was when I started,” he said, sadly. 

“Well,” said the woman, “I hope you do find it – maybe I will find my voice and sing again as well. I used to sing beautifully when I was young, but now age, and sorrow, have left it cracked and wheezy. And as for my friend here, “ she patted the donkey, “ his voice could do with some improvement too!” “Eey -aww”, said the donkey, as if agreeing. 

Night fell, and they all knew that they must rest. There was a village on the top of a steep hill not far away. “Perhaps there will be somewhere there where we can sleep” they said, as they struggled up to the top of it. A ramshackle stable came into view, with a light coming from it. And as they drew near, the angel could swear he heard some very familiar voices singing. He pushed open the door and, sure enough, it was full of angels, and in the middle of it, an animal feeding trough, with a baby in it, wriggling and squirming and squinnying, and a tired looking man and woman looking on. 

Gabriel, the leader of the angels turned around to look at the bedraggled party coming in through the door. “Ah, my friend!” he said, “God told us you would come, and not a moment too soon, because God said you would have the song the baby needed to hear. As you can see, we can’t get him to sleep, so perhaps you can!” And right on cue, the baby started wailing. 

“Oh dear! I am sorry to disappoint you,” said the angel, “but I don’t think my singing will help. It’s no better than it ever was! I have found many things – these friends for a start, who’ve shown me love and kindness and courage – (“ and he’s shown those things too!” said the old woman) – but I haven’t found my voice and I haven’t found a song to sing.”

“Well,” said Gabriel “God said you should sing, so, whatever you think you sound like, I think you should. If it will help you feel less self-conscious, we can all put our fingers in our ears.” And that’s what the angels did, and Mary and Joseph too. 

“Now, “ said Gabriel, “sing!”

And the angel started to sing, and the raven, the old woman and the donkey joined in to encourage him.

Now at this point, you may be expecting me to say that, miraculously, the raven sounded like a nightingale, the old woman found the voice of her girlhood, the donkey sang like Pavarotti, and the angel sang – well – angelically. 

But it wasn’t like that at all. They sounded just as awful as they ever had done, like a thousand fog horns, and all the fingernails in the world scraping their way down a blackboard. It was the worst singing you’ve ever heard.

But a strange thing happened. The baby stopped crying. Then a huge smile lit up his face. Then he clapped his little hands together in delight. Then, as the song came to an end, he fell fast asleep. 

The four friends were astonished. “What just happened?” said the angel to Gabriel. “I have no idea,” said Gabriel quietly, so as not to wake the baby, “but I’m not surprised. God once told me that he doesn’t hear as human beings or angels do. He hears what is in people’s hearts. The finest song, sung without love, sounds to him– how did he put it? – like a clanging gong and a clashing cymbal. But the song sung by people who live with love sounds like the sweetest music in the world. And I suppose – like Father, like Son…it is the same with this little one” he said, gesturing towards the baby. 

“But now our job is done,” said Gabriel, “and we must be away back to heaven. Are you coming with us? Wouldn’t you like your wings back?”

The angel thought for a moment. “No” he said. “I think I will stay here with my new friends and we’ll sing our song of love together .”

And that’s what he did, and it is said that he still walks the earth, looking for those who have lost their song, or who think no one would want to hear it, and that he tells them of the love of God, who longs for us to come to him, and sing our songs, just as they are.

Amen 

Midnight Mass 2022: God's Yes

 Midnight Mass 2022

2 Corinthians 1.18-22, Luke 2.1-20

If you want to waste a lot of time on the internet, and you’re fed up with watching videos of kittens, can I recommend taking a foray into the wonderful world of marriage proposals – quite a lot of people seem to propose at Christmas, so it’s even a bit topical. But many things can go wrong with marriage proposals, and you can be sure they will find their way onto YouTube. For example, and it’s just a hint, if you’re thinking of doing this… If you are going to present your beloved with a ring, don’t do it on a bridge, at the end of a pier, or in a waterfall. Online evidence suggests that the ring is bound to end up in the water, never to be found again…

But the major trend in marriage proposals seems to be the public proposal which pulls all sorts of unsuspecting strangers into the enterprise. Some people organise flashmobs. Some choose to pop the question at half-time on the pitch at a sporting fixture. Some propose over the tannoy system at a train station, or go down on one knee in a shopping mall. According to studies 45% of proposals are now deliberately made in public places. It all sounds very romantic, and if it worked for you, that’s lovely, but it’s a risky strategy. Things don’t always go to plan. In particular, it’s always possible that the proposer may not get the answer they hope for, and if they don’t, everyone will know about it… Apparently a public proposal is twice as likely to be rejected as a private one, perhaps because not everyone appreciates being put on the spot in quite such a visible way. 

“Will you marry me?” is a risky question, but it isn’t the only risky question we can ask, of course. There are all sorts of questions which are difficult to ask because we really want and need the answer to be yes, but fear it might be no. Maybe we need to ask our bosses for a pay rise, or a change in working conditions, and know we are putting our jobs on the line by doing so. Maybe we need to ask for help when we are in trouble, but we fear we’ll be judged or rejected for doing so. Asking makes us vulnerable. It means wearing our hearts on our sleeves, putting ourselves, and our need, out there.  If we get too many “noes” we may decide it’s better not to ask at all. 

“Yes,” and “No”. Two little words that can make a huge difference to us, lift us up or cast us down, tip our world one way or another, alter the course of our lives. 

St Paul was thinking about Yesses and Noes in the passage we heard from his letter to the Christians in Corinth earlier. The background to it was that there was some possibility that he might have come to visit them, but as it turned out, he couldn’t. Had he let them down? Had he said “yes” when he meant “no”? Maybe, maybe not – it probably doesn’t matter much to us. But it launches Paul off on a wonderful theological tangent. Whatever our human “yesses” and “noes”, he says, Jesus is God’s Yes to us, the fulfilment of his promises. “In him every one of God’s promises is a Yes!” And because of that we can say yes to him, Paul says - Amen is simply the Hebrew word for Yes. 

Paul suddenly seems to have a vision of the “yesness” of God, of God’s all-embracing, undefeatable love, love which lights up the darkness and the “the darkness does not overcome it.” Even the great “No” of death can’t put out the light of God’s even greater Yes. 

This isn’t a passage that’s often read at Christmas, but I think it ought to be, because, in a way, it sums up the message of the nativity story, a story in which many, surprised people hear God’s “Yes” to them.

There are Mary and Joseph, an ordinary couple from a backwater town in Galilee, who probably never imagined that their lives would have any real significance in the world. And when Mary was found to be pregnant, and not by Joseph, it looked like she would be better forgotten anyway. Disgrace loomed. Explanations about the child being “from the Holy Spirit” were all very well, but I don’t suppose that   cut much ice among their nosy neighbours – to most people the whole situation just looked like a complete mess.

If God was going to choose a family to bring up his Son, the Messiah, would he really choose one like this? That was the question.

Most people would have expected to hear a No, but instead the answer they heard through his birth to them was Yes, he would! 

Those shepherds we heard about in our Gospel reading today heard God’s “Yes” too. Surely, they must have thought, the angels had come to the wrong address, that the angelic satnav had malfunctioned. Would God really want them to be the first to hear the news of his Son’s birth, rather than the rulers or the religious elites? Yes, he did! This is the God who turns the world upside down, and inside out. 

And the Magi, foreigners, from a different culture and faith, complete outsiders. Did this story have anything to do with them? Could they be part of it? Yes, they could! It was their story too. They were welcome, even if they didn’t know the right words to say, the right places to go, the right rules to follow, what any of this was all about. The answer to them was Yes,

And the child they came to worship would go on to live out God’s “Yes” when he grew up, making a beeline for the messiest situations, the people others avoided, the prostitutes and lepers and collaborating tax-collectors. He would even choose to love those who betrayed him and forgive those who crucified him, saying “yes” to them, to their worth and belovedness even as he suffered. 

If you’d asked any of these people whether they thought their lives mattered in the eternal scheme of things, they would probably have laughed at you. But the message of the story, the message of Christian faith is that each one of us is loved, chosen, vital to God. Each one of us is called to hear God’s Yes in answer to the painful, deep questions we sometimes ask, even if only to ourselves in the privacy of our own hearts.

Do I matter? Yes , you do.

Am I loved by God? Yes, you are.

What if I mess up? Does God still love me? Yes.

What if I’m angry with God? Am I still loved? Yes.

What if I am useless in the world’s eyes, if I can’t do the stuff others do, if I feel I have nothing to give? Am I still loved then? Yes.

Can I be forgiven? Yes

Can I start again? Yes

Is there hope for the future - for my future and the future of the world? Yes, yes, yes, there is.

The child in Mary’s womb, the child in the manger, and the man he grew up to be, is God’s Yes to us. As we come to him this Christmas night, God invites us to hear that Yes in our own hearts, to trust it, and find in it the courage to say our own Yes in return; yes to life, to hope and to love. 

Amen

Advent 4 : Whose family?

 Advent 4 22

If you are a fan of the TV series Call the Midwife, you may recall a story which featured in an early episode. I first came across it in Jennifer Worth’s memoirs on which the TV series is based, an account of her experiences as a midwife in the East End of London in the 1950s and 60s

She tells of an older man, a widower in his late fifties, who’d married a woman twenty years his junior.  He loved her very much, with a quiet, loyal devotion, but while she was fond of him, it was plain that it was something of a marriage of convenience for her. 

They hadn’t expected to have children, and the husband hadn’t had any with his first wife, but the woman discovered that she was pregnant, and he was delighted, and took his role as father-to-be very seriously, doing everything to support his wife.

Eventually the time came for the child to be born, and the midwives were called. The husband was banished downstairs to wait, as was normal then, and the baby was delivered safely. A perfect baby boy. The only problem was that while both husband and wife were white, the baby was very clearly of mixed race. It couldn’t possibly be his. There was an awkward silence in the bedroom, until the woman said that she supposed her husband had better be invited up. Everyone expected a huge scene, shouting, tears, crushing disappointment on the part of the husband, but he came into the room, looked in the cradle, picked up the child and announced that this was the most beautiful baby boy he’d had ever seen. He was delighted. The midwives looked at each other. Had he really not noticed? They said nothing; it wasn’t their place. The mother said nothing. And neither did her husband, not then, and not ever. The boy grew up, doted on by the man who called him son, cared for and supported despite the fact that he looked nothing like him. Of course, there were plenty of people who laughed at the husband behind his back, but he took no notice. Jennifer Worth’s verdict was that he’d seen that if he questioned his paternity, the child would be the one who suffered most, and he’d decided that having this child in his life was worth more than any injured pride he might have felt. As Worth put it “Perhaps an angel’s voice told him that any questions were best left unasked and unanswered.” As a result, a child and his mother, who might both have been rejected, knew love and stability. Tragedy was turned into triumph because of that man’s courage and commitment.

It's not hard to see why that story might have come into my head as I looked at our Bible readings today. Joseph knew that whoever the father of Mary’s child was, it wasn’t him. And if 1950s Britain wasn’t a good time to be found to be pregnant by someone other than your husband, first century Palestine was even worse. The penalty for adultery was stoning, and at the very least, having a child out of wedlock was likely to result in rejection and shame, for mother and child, and for their extended family too. 

Joseph faces utter humiliation, when Mary’s pregnancy is discovered, and while we might think it terrible that he was planning to “dismiss her quietly” – break off the betrothal – that was actually the compassionate option. At least he wasn’t calling for her death, which he could have done.  

But in his dreams an angel appears to him and asks him to do something that would have seemed extraordinary to those around him - to throw in his lot with this mother and baby. The child is “from the Holy Spirit”, he’s told. God is at work in this situation, in Mary and the child. So Joseph does what he’s been asked, and takes the consequences, sheltering and guarding the little family from the murderous King Herod, taking them as refugees to Egypt, and then returning to live in Nazareth, where it is clear from references in the Gospels that people were very aware that there was something suspicious about this child’s birth. 

It’s a costly choice, but one which Joseph makes freely and deliberately, and there’s a tiny detail in the story which underlines that. The angel tells him to name the child and, in the closing words of the Gospel story, that’s exactly what Joseph does. 

In Jewish thinking either the mother or the father could name the child. In Luke’s Gospel it is Mary who is told to name him. But if the father named the child it was considered a sign that he accepted the baby as his own. There was no way to prove a child’s paternity scientifically at the time; men had to decide for themselves whether to acknowledge a child. Roman custom went one step further. The child was laid on the ground at birth, and if the man decided to acknowledge it as his, he would pick it up. There’s no evidence Jewish fathers did that, but naming the child performed the same function. By doing as the angel asks, and naming Jesus, Joseph treats him as his own, even though he knows he’s not. Mary and Jesus may, technically, not be anything to do with him, but he makes them to do with him, part of his life. Metaphorically, if not actually, he picks him up and takes him into his arms, and says, “my life is going to be tied up with this child’s, and his with mine.” 

We can read, and be inspired by this story in many ways. 

It can be a starting point for thanksgiving for all who father and mother children who aren’t biologically their own – foster parents, adoptive parents, step-parents, godparents, the teacher or youth worker who goes the extra mile for a child in need of encouragement.  

The early Christians saw in this little family an image of the church, a place where a diverse group of people were shaped into a new and different family by their choice to love and care for each other, not by an accident of their birth. We can ponder the story from that point of view too.

But it seems to me that we can also read it as an invitation to look at our own relationship with this child. Are we prepared to let our lives become entangled with his, as Joseph does? It’s tempting to be a spectator in our attitude to faith, to keep our options open, to shy away from commitment, but what would happen, this story asks, if we threw in our lot with Jesus, committed ourselves to living as he did, loving as he did, let him be an abiding presence in our lives, “God with us”? What would it mean for us to name him – Jesus – which means “God saves”? How would he save us? What from? What for? How would he change us, as every child changes their family? This story invites us to pick up the child, to declare that he has a claim on us, that he is ours, and we are his. That sort of commitment won’t ever be simple or trouble free – it certainly wasn’t for Joseph - but in the end, if we could ask Joseph, I think, like that man in Jennifer Worth’s story, he’d tell us it was worth it, bringing blessings that he could never have imagined. 

Amen 

 Advent 3 2022

Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another? 

John the Baptist asks a poignant question in today’s Gospel reading, via some messengers he sends to Jesus. He has to send messengers because he’s in prison. He’s offended King Herod by challenging his incestuous marriage to Herodias, formerly his half-brother’s wife – and the half-brother was actually also her half-uncle – so the whole set up was not only monumentally complicated, but also very definitely illegal under Jewish law. John’s challenge would eventually cost him his life, though, and he must have realised that.  However strong his faith, however strong his passion for justice, there must have been times when he wondered whether speaking truth to power was worth it, whether he shouldn’t have chosen a quiet life instead, kept his head down, and his opinions to himself.

 

John the Baptist’s central message had been that the Messiah, the chosen one of God, who would bring in a new kingdom, a new age of justice and peace and integrity, had arrived in the person of Jesus. He had staked everything on that, but in the darkness of his prison cell, facing death, he seems to have wobbled, and wondered, could he have been mistaken?

That’s the background to John’s question. Have I got it right? Is what I have laboured for worth it?

It’s a question we probably all ask at some point in our lives. It’s at the heart of many a mid-life crisis, that moment when people look at their lives, and wonder what would have happened if they had taken a different route, whether the life they have built over many decades really makes any difference to anyone. Is this it? They ask. Young people aren’t immune to this sort of question, though. It can paralyse  them as they try to choose their path through life, their education, career, relationships. Is this the right thing to do with my life, my “one wild and precious life” in the words of the poet Mary Oliver? They can end up like the donkey who starves to death between two bales of hay because it can’t choose which one to eat, unable to commit themselves to anything, in case they get it wrong. 

At the other end of life – and this is perhaps saddest of all – sometimes people are haunted by “might have beens” or decisions they regret, but can’t do anything about. 

No life can ever be perfect, because we are imperfect people living in an imperfect world, and the trouble with hindsight is that we never get it until it’s too late, but I think we all need to feel that we are doing, or have done, something that matters to us and to others, whether that is in our work, or in our family, in our hobbies and interests, or, as in John the Baptist’s case, in the things we stand up for. I’m sure the same question plagues those today who are imprisoned for their beliefs, like those challenging the regime in Iran, and suffering for it. In John’s case the question that ate away at him  was whether he’d been right to back Jesus, to acclaim him as God’s Messiah?

The idea of a Messiah was much debated in Jewish society in the first century. Some people thought God’s chosen one would be a military leader, some a priest, some a great teacher, some a member of the ruling elites. Many thought he would come in power with obvious fanfare, but few people, it would seem, had their money on him being a carpenter from Nazareth, born to a humble family, with no connections to the ruling classes, no army to support him. Few would have thought he would care so little about his own fame and fortune either, apparently content to associate with people on the margins who would never be in a position to offer him anything in return. John had felt certain at the beginning, but being stuck in prison, with only your own thoughts for company probably has a way of amplifying any doubts and fears you might have.  It’s no surprise that John wondered whether he had really been right to point to Jesus, and tell his own followers to follow him. 

“Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?”  he asks. In answer, Jesus doesn’t give him a theological lecture or a political statement. He tells John’s messengers simply to report back what they hear and see. “The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.” 

Jesus’ message tells John about the real people – this person, this person, and this person - whose real lives are being transformed as they meet Jesus, people who have found in him something they were desperate for, something which brings them healing and hope.

It's a distinctive claim of Christian faith that God came to us in a particular person, at a particular moment - the “Word was made flesh”, as the famous words from Johns Gospel put it. Christianity isn’t, fundamentally, a religion of ideas– though it has often become that – but of experience. In the person of Jesus, those who met him felt that they were meeting God, seeing God at work, and that was enough for them to start calling him the Son of God. What, exactly, they meant by that has kept theologians busy ever since, but it’s important that we realise that pinning down concepts wasn’t the main concern of the first Christians. It was people who mattered. As soon as we make faith a matter of understanding ideas – incarnation, atonement, salvation the Trinity – we start putting the cart before the horse, letting the tail wag the dog. Fundamentally, for the first Christians, their faith was about knowing a person, who had changed them, who had made “the wilderness and the dry land” of their lives rejoice, the “desert blossom” in Isaiah’s words.  

What does it mean, after all, truly to know someone? We can never plumb the depths of someone else, whether they are the son of God or just Joe Bloggs who lives next door. Human beings are a mystery. There’s no way to pin someone else down, to explain completely who they are and why they act; there is always more to discover, they can always surprise us. If we want to tell others about a friend or family member they haven’t met, we don’t reach for philosophical concepts or psychological profiling. We tell stories about them, and the things they have done for us, the real practical encounters we had.  It was the same with Jesus. He wasn’t a concept to be grasped with the mind, but a person, who loved and healed and blessed those he came into contact with. Ultimately, it is the impact he had on those around him which matters, and the impact he has on us. 

And that brings me back to where I started. We don’t know how John the Baptist felt about the answer he received – we can’t even be sure he did receive it, though I really hope he did, because I am sure it would have given him comfort. But if we, like him, are wondering about our own choices and commitments, as we pick our way through the maze of life, perhaps we can draw inspiration from this story. Are we following a path which brings good news to those who need it, freedom to those who are oppressed, welcome to those who are excluded? If we are, whether our work goes seen or unseen, rewarded or unrewarded in this life, we can know that we are walking in the company of Christ, on Isaiah’s Holy Way, the way of everlasting joy.

Amen 

Advent 2 2022 : Trees of life

 

Advent 2 2022

 

There’s something very powerful about trees. Perhaps it’s their size, towering over us, or their age – some are hundreds, or even thousands of years old, far older than we are – but they matter to us in ways that other plants often don’t.

 

Philip and I walked past what used to be a fine stand of trees near Kemsing this week, most of which had been felled because of Ash Die Back disease. There was no choice in that case. It was the only way of stopping the disease spreading, but it was a very sad sight, a huge gap in the landscape, and it reminded me of all the trees around the world which are felled for far worse reasons. Apparently 10,000 acres of trees a day are being cleared from the Amazon rainforest, mostly for cattle grazing and cash crops. It’s an old story – humanity has form for this. Dartmoor was deforested by our ancestors in the Bronze Age, as agriculture developed, and Seal stands on what was once the edge of the great forest of Anderida, which used to stretch almost unbroken up from the south coast to here, and from Ashford all the way across to Petersfield in Hampshire.

 

Trees matter to us, but it’s often only when they’re gone that we realise how much. They’re a vital part of our physical landscape, but they’re equally important to our spiritual landscapes too. Sacred stories from many religions celebrate them. Norse legends speak of Yggdrasil, the World Tree, a giant Ash around which all creation was formed. The Buddha found enlightenment sitting under a Bodhi tree. And trees are hugely significant in the Bible too.

 

It starts with those trees in the Garden of Eden – fruit trees of every kind, given as food for humanity and, in the midst of them, the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the one whose fruit Adam and Eve ate. According to the story, Adam and Eve lost that first paradise as a result, but at the end of the Bible, the Book of Revelation describes the tree of life standing at the heart of the new Jerusalem, the heavenly city, bearing fruit every month of the year, and leaves which are “for the healing of the nations”. It’s a reminder that whatever happens, the God of life is with us, and nothing can defeat his life. Adam and Eve may have been driven out of the Garden, but they were never driven out of God’s heart.

 

Medieval legends say that a seed from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was placed in Adam’s mouth when he died, where it grew, and eventually, after a series of twists and turns too long to recount here, wood from the tree was used to make the cross on which Jesus died. There’s no foundation for that in the Bible, but it shows how important the symbol of the tree was to the medieval storytellers. It represented the continuity of God’s love and purpose.

 

But why all this talk of trees? Well, it came into my mind because both our readings today mention them.

 

In the Gospel reading, John the Baptist thunders at his hearers, “Even now the axe is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire”.

 

He’s challenging people who think they have an absolute right to be at the centre of everything, who are resting on their historical positions in the national life and faith, and have marginalised others in the process. “You may think you are here for ever,” he tells them, “but there’s no tree so mighty that it can’t be felled.”

 

 

It’s important that we recognise that John is talking to particular Pharisees and Sadducees here, part of the religious elites, not to the whole Jewish people. John the Baptist was Jewish, and so were Jesus and all his first followers. There’s no evidence that any of them intended to found a new religion, or reject the old one. John isn’t saying that the Jewish faith is like a tree which has outlived its usefulness, to be felled and replaced by Christianity. That interpretation is sometimes called “Replacement Theology”, and it’s been used to justify appalling treatment of Jewish people, including the Holocaust. Essentially it says, “Judaism got it wrong, but now Christianity is getting it right, so Judaism doesn’t matter anymore”. All too often the unspoken end of that sentence is “and neither do the Jews who practice it.”  

 

But John’s not saying that. He is challenging us all to look at our own sense of entitlement, the feeling that we have a right to hang onto whatever power or position we happen to have, that we, or our pet projects are “too big to fail”. The truth is, though, that the things we think will be there forever, can topple and fall in a moment, especially if all we are focussing on is the top growth, the bit that shows, and not paying enough attention to the health of the roots, and the soil in which they’re growing.

 

There were some ripples of anxiety running around in church circles this week, when the 2021 Census data revealed that those ticking the “Christian” box on it had fallen to 46% nationally. How useful that statistic really is is very much open to question. It obviously doesn’t translate into actual churchgoing, and never has done. I would love to have 46% percent of the parish expressing their Christian faith in church on a Sunday, though we’d need a pretty huge extension, because that would be about 800 people… If we had that many listening to the podcast I would be delighted, but I’m not holding my breath!

 

But our reaction to that statistic tells us something important, nonetheless. If our faith is shaken by the prospect of not being quite so much at the centre of national life as we once were, if it depends on a sense of historical power and influence – then it’s a faith which probably needs re-examining. If we want a faith that’s deep enough to weather the storms of life it needs to be one which is personal, ours, rooted in our knowledge of the love of God for us, practiced and expressed in our own daily life. That kind of faith will endure, sustain us and overflow to others, whether the church is strong or weak, rich or poor, at the centre or out on the margins, plentiful or just “two or three, gathered in his name”.

 

In the Old Testament reading, Isaiah speaks to a nation which was going through a devastating fall from power, defeated by the Babylonians and taken into exile. It was as if the mighty tree of the nation, and the faith it was built on, had been felled, leaving nothing but a bare stump. But trees are amazing things, says Isaiah. Left to their own devices, if the roots are healthy, the stump will send out shoots. That’s what God will do with them “A shoot shall come out from the stock of Jesse”, he says. Jesse was the father of King David, far from an obvious candidate for kingship, a little shepherd boy, the overlooked youngest son of his father, but the greatest king that Israel had ever known.

 

God isn’t done with us, says Isaiah, and John the Baptist echoes his words, as he points forward to Jesus, the “one is coming after me…who will baptise with the Holy Spirit and fire.” All we may see above ground are ruins – the stump of the tree - but God sees the possibility of a wonderful kingdom of peace and justice, and of glorious diversity – lions and lambs coexisting in harmony. God isn’t limited by our imagination, our understanding of what is possible. It’s not the grand top growth that matters to him, but the roots, the hidden parts of the tree, which no one sees, but which bring life out of what appears to be dead.

 

Today’s readings, then, invite us to ask ourselves where our roots are. Circumstances can fell the strongest of us, but if we’re rooted in God, if our sense of worth and purpose come from the knowledge of his love, then his life will spring up in us again, and we will be trees that are fruitful and life-giving to those around us too.

 

Amen

Advent 1 2022

 

Advent 1 2022

 

Today is the first Sunday of Advent, and, as I am sure you know, Advent means “coming”- from the Latin ‘adventus’. What is coming? Christmas, of course. Baby Jesus. Santa Claus. Presents. Tinsel. Carol singing – possibly a bit too much, in my case. Turkey, if bird flu hasn’t wiped them all out. There may also be indigestion coming, and an extra inch or two on the waistline too. Sadly, for many the anxiety of how they will pay for it all, is coming or the sadness of knowing that they can’t. We may be looking forward with excitement or dread, but we know, more or less, how it will pan out.

 

But our Advent hymns remind us that there is more to this season than simply getting ready to hear the story of the coming of a baby in a manger in Bethlehem. “Lo, he comes with clouds descending,” we’ll sing later. This Christ is “robed in dreadful majesty”, not wrapped in swaddling bands. In our first hymn, “Hills of the North, rejoice” we travelled round all four points of the compass, and heard that “The God whom you have longed to know, in Christ draws near, and calls you now”. Advent isn’t just about the Christ who came two thousand years ago, but also about the Christ who comes to us in the present and the future. Are we ready for him?

 

We’re probably comfortable with the Christmas story. We know how it turns out. There may be no room at the inn, but we know the child will at least have a manger to lie in. Danger my threaten, from kings and emperors, but we know the child will survive. Shepherds will be suitably amazed. Magi will manage, finally, to find the child, and adore him. We know that all will turn out ok, despite the dangers and set backs.

 

But what about now? Where is God now? And where will God be in what is to come? That’s the bit we’re not so sure about, but it’s the bit that matters most, because we can only live in the present and the future. The past is gone – it’s good to look back at and learn from it, but today and tomorrow are the only things we can truly engage with, the only things we can change,

 

The imagery of our Advent hymns and readings deliberately invites us to ask those more disturbing questions. They talk about a second coming, something that may sound uncomfortable to the modern mind, making us think about those Medieval images of the Day of Judgement, with the saved rising up to heaven and the damned going down to hell, or of street preachers proclaiming that the “end is nigh”. People have taken literally the idea that “two will be in a field, one will be taken and one left behind”, and tried to scare people into the kingdom – a tactic that rarely works – by asking what it would be like to be the one “left behind”, but it seems to me that this misses the point.  

 

The Bible was largely written by and for people who were suffering, people who were oppressed, little people in a world where big people ruled, people on the margins whose lives were nothing to the people at the centre. The message of the second coming of Jesus, the Day of the Lord, the Day of Judgement, was one of hope for them, not of fear. It told them that things wouldn’t always be as they were now.  The Book of Revelation, much beloved by conspiracy theorist, who can find almost anything in it they want, is really a message to the persecuted Christians of its time, telling them that Rome wouldn’t rule forever, any more than the ancient power of Babylon, which had once oppressed the people of Israel had. To those who first heard that message, it said that God hadn’t given up on them, and he never would. African-American slaves loved these writings too, and they inspired many of their spirituals, because they heard in them the message that, whatever happened – in life and in death - God had not forgotten them. For us too, the message of Advent is that God has a habit of turning up when we least expect him, bringing love and life and new beginnings into situations that seem hopeless to us. “The night is far gone; the day is near” says Paul.  The message of Advent is a message of hope, rooted in our relationship with a God who loves all that he has made.

 

But if we are going to find that hope, we need first to have the courage to open our eyes, to wake up. “Now is the moment to wake out of sleep,” said Paul. When times are tough, we are all tempted to close our eyes, to hunker down and hope they will all go away, to deny the problems exist.

 

Whether it’s climate change deniers, Covid deniers, or the really odd idea that disasters like the Manchester Arena bombing or the Sandy Hook shootings didn’t happen and were staged by crisis actors, there are always people ready to believe that bad things really aren’t happening, that troubles have just been made up for some strange reason. But even if we don’t believe that, we can all find ourselves minimising or avoiding situations we would rather not think about. We may not be climate change deniers, but often we carry on regardless, not making the changes we need to, because it all just feels too dark and scary to contemplate.  Like the people Jesus talks about who were “eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage until the day Noah entered the ark” we behave as if its no big deal.

 

Why? I think it’s usually because we feel powerless and hopeless. It’s too big; we’re too small – so the best thing is to ignore it. “Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die”.

 

But Christian faith tells us that while we are often powerless, we always have hope, not in ourselves, but in God – the God who came to us in Jesus, the God who still comes to us, and will never leave us, whether we live or die, succeed or fail. It doesn’t mean that nothing bad will happen, but it does mean that whatever happens we will still be eternally loved, and that can give us the strength to keep loving, to keep living our lives “honourably, as in the day” as St Paul puts it. We may not always see the fruit of our efforts in our own lifetimes, but love and goodness are never wasted, never pointless.

 

The American poet, Emily Dickinson, put it well in her poem, “Hope is the thing with feathers”, which compares hope to a bird that sings through the night, through the storms. It sings, she says, not because of anything we do, but simply because that is its nature, and so it is unstoppable.

 

“Hope” is the thing with feathers -

That perches in the soul -

And sings the tune without the words -

And never stops - at all -

 

And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -

And sore must be the storm -

That could abash the little Bird

That kept so many warm -

 

I’ve heard it in the chillest land -

And on the strangest Sea -

Yet - never - in Extremity,

It asked a crumb - of me.

 

In our dark and scary world, Advent, like that bird, sings to us of the love of God, of the worth and belovedness of all his creation, and it calls to us to look up and discover the hope that is rooted in God, who comes to us, today and tomorrow and forever.

Amen

Remembrance Sunday

Remembrance Sunday 2022

Psalm 85, Isaiah 61.1-4, Luke 21.6-19

I don’t know about you, but I’m tired, and I don’t suppose I am alone in that.  We’ve staggered through two and a half years of the Covid pandemic and its knock-on effects, the uncertainty, the isolation, the disruption to education, health care, jobs, community life. We’re in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis, with many fearing the rising prices,. There has been political turmoil at home, with government ministers and even prime ministers coming and going at what feels like dizzying speed. And, of course, this spring war broke out on European soil as Russia invaded Ukraine. It looks as if it could drag on for a long time, bringing sorrow and devastation to the Ukrainian people – and also many in Russia who don’t want this war too – and displacing many hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians from their homes. It is destabilising Eastern Europe, and reviving the fears of nuclear war which so many of us grew up with. The Russian invasion of Ukraine affects those beyond its borders in other ways too, causing grain shortages and price rises around the world. And on top of all that, we are already seeing the consequences of climate change, which is fuelling some of the conflicts happening now, and could increasingly do so in years to come, as people compete for ever more scarce fertile land and water.

This Remembrance Sunday we aren’t just remembering wars past; our minds are full of wars present, and possibly future too.

If we’re tired, it’s no wonder. We wouldn’t be human if we weren’t. It is all too much for us to cope with. But we wouldn’t be the first to feel like this.

We got used to hearing the word “unprecedented” in the early days of the pandemic, but the truth is that there’s nothing really new under the sun. Throughout human history, people have faced things that were unprecedented to them; wars and natural disasters, hardship and illness, things that seem to strike out of the blue ripping away life, health and security. It’s just that until they hit us, we don’t really understand what they feel like. We see people suffering on our television screens, but they are a long way away. We read about them in our history books, but they are a long time ago. When it happens to us, though, we discover we aren’t as strong and self-sufficient as we thought we were. In the words of Stevie Smith’s poem, we are “much further out than we thought, and not waving, but drowning.”

The people who wrote the Bible passages we heard today were people like us. The challenges they faced felt unprecedented to them. Most of the Bible was written by people who lived under the cloud of war, persecution and oppression. The Jewish Scriptures, which we call the Old Testament, were largely drawn together either during or just after a long period of exile, when Jerusalem had been destroyed, and its people deported to Babylon.  It was devastating; everything they knew was wiped away, just as it must have felt this year to Ukrainian refugees, just as it does to refugees who come to this country from other places too.

And in our second reading today, Jesus warns about persecution his followers will face from often fickle and frankly insane Roman Emperors, of families betraying each other, of hatred and destruction.

Sometimes people think of the Bible as an old, dusty book, irrelevant to modern life, but it’s the testimony of people like us who lived in times like ours, people who knew that their world was in a mess, who knew “the devastations of many generations”, as Isaiah put it, the “wars and rumours of wars” which Jesus speaks of. 

Our Biblical ancestors were frightened. They had no idea what to do next. They were exhausted by the trials of life, too, by the ever-present violence, just as we are. They felt as if they were living at the end of the world.

But in the readings we heard today they tell us that, despite all of that, we can find hope, if our eyes are open to it. It depends, according to them, on learning to draw on strength beyond our own strength, trusting that what we see is not necessarily all there is to see, that suffering and war don’t have to have the last word. 

They found that strength and vision in God. ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, says Isaiah, because he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed,  to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and release to the prisoners…’ There will be garlands instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning. Just because something looks hopeless doesn’t mean it is hopeless. Jesus read these same words to a rather shocked crowd in his local synagogue at the start of his ministry, applying them to himself. His audience was scandalised – who did he think he was. But those who encountered him found that this was just what he did do. People oppressed by poverty and discrimination, as well as by the occupying forces of Rome – found liberty and dignity in him. Broken hearts were bound up, people were set free. People found hope that broke through their despair and life that burst from the graveyards where their dreams were buried.  And so do many who follow Christ today. They find new life, new birth in the midst of death.

Sometimes that new life emerges in the stillness of prayer, but it can also be discovered through the love of others. And we in our turn, can be good news to them – channels of God’s peace, as the song puts it – inspired to play our part in our community, doing the little things that make life better for others – the kind word, the small act of care, the willingness to take on responsibility for things that might seem dull or trivial, but need to be done if our community is to thrive.

It's ok to be tired, and its ok to say we are, to admit that we have no magic wand, that we can’t solve the world’s problems, that we have no grand answers. In fact, if we can’t admit that, we won’t get far at all. It’s only when we know our hands are empty that God can fill them. The Bible calls us to stretch out those empty hands, to lift up our heads, to open our eyes, and look for the love and kindness which is, in reality, just as real and present as the hatred and sorrow are.  

In a moment, the choir are going to sing a setting by Philip of some words written by Amy Carmichael, who worked in India in the early twentieth century, among the poorest of the poor. She often felt despair, just as we may do when we see the devastation of war, still, again, tearing lives apart in our world. She wrote of her despair, but also of her trust that God heard her. That was what gave her the peace she needed, that gave her strength to go on.

On this Remembrance Sunday, God invites us to bring our despair and our tiredness to him, so that we can find his peace within our turmoil, the peace that passes understanding, that comes from knowing that in life and in death, he is with us and will never forsake us. Amen 

The Pharisee and the Tax Collector: Last after Trinity

Last after Trinity 2019

Psalm 84, Luke 18.9-14

A Pharisee and a Tax Collector walk into a Temple…

It does sound a bit like the beginning of a joke, and maybe Jesus meant it to. There’s something wonderfully over the top about his description of these two men. Jesus is definitely hamming it up in his description of the Pharisee’s pomposity and the Tax Collector’s humility. This is a tiny satire, just over a hundred words long, but with a world of meaning in it. 

Who are these people? Jesus’ first audience would have known very well, but we might not. 

The Pharisees, who often feature in the Gospels, were one of the main religious groups of Jesus’ time, one of many factions within Judaism fighting for their version of the true faith.  They were known for being very serious about the religious law. They saw it as a gift from God to help them live well. They delighted in it, debated it, argued about it zealously.   

But zeal about anything can easily slide into legalism and puritanism, and some of the Pharisees – not all, but some – seem to have behaved like this. They were offended by what they saw as Jesus’ lax observance of the law, as he welcomed all comers and accepted people as they were. They’re often treated as stock villains by the Gospel writers, which really isn’t fair, because we are all capable of behaving like this.

The Pharisee Jesus describes in his little story is, on the face of it, a good man. If we take him at his word - and I think we are meant to - he isn’t a thief, a rogue or an adulterer.  He takes pains to establish publicly  here that he isn’t a tax collector either. They were despised for very good reason. They collected taxes on behalf of the Romans, to fund their occupation. They were seen as collaborators, traitors, and they often lined their own pockets at the expense of their own people, making them pay for their own oppression. When the Pharisee in Jesus’ story says that he is not like one of these, most right-thinking people would have nodded in approval.  

But however good he looks superficially, there are hints in the story that he isn’t going to turn out to be the hero. He stands by himself – making sure that everyone can see and hear him – but there’s no real conversation with God happening. He might as well be talking to himself.  It’s the tax-collector, Jesus says, who “went down to his home justified”, not this apparently pious Pharisee. ‘Justified’ in the Biblical context, means ‘put right’, sorted out. The tax collector, for all his sins – and they probably were many – goes home having done the business with God that he needed to do. The Pharisee, though, goes home exactly the same as he came in. Nothing has changed in his heart, so nothing will change in his life, because he doesn’t think there is anything to change, or if he does, he isn’t willing to acknowledge it, to others or to himself. God can’t do anything with him, because he won’t admit that he needs help. If we don’t acknowledge our need, how can God meet it? If we don’t accept that we need to change, how can God change us? There’s a lovely promise in the book of Revelation that God will “wipe every tear from our eyes”. John Donne, the 17th century poet and preacher once commented in a sermon on it  “then what shall God do with that eye that hath never wept?” If we deny our need for help and consolation, we miss out of the joy of that beautiful moment, he says.

The Pharisee thinks he’s got his life all sorted out – or he wants others to think that. What can God possibly need to do for him? God has been made redundant! But the tax collector, knows that he needs God. He knows that he can’t do this whole messy business of living on his own and he’s not pretending that he can. He comes to God because he has to, and, as a result, he is the one who goes home set right, with his tears wiped away, knowing he is loved. 

The Psalm we heard this morning, Psalm 84, is thought to have been sung by Jewish pilgrims on their way to the Temple in Jerusalem for one of the big festivals there.  Zion is another name for Jerusalem. As they slogged along the path in the scorching heat, they sang to remind themselves of why they were making this journey. They were going to the place which was, for them, their true home. “How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord of hosts! My soul longs, indeed it faints, for the courts of the Lord.” Even the birds were welcome to make their nests there! 

It wasn’t just the physical beauty of the place which drew them. They expected to meet God there. Of course, God could be encountered anywhere, but this, for them was his dwelling place, the focus of their faith. The Temple was destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD and there is a mosque on the site now, but Jewish people still go to its last remnant, the Western Wall, to pray, and they do so for the same reason as their ancestors. It’s the symbol of their relationship with God, a reminder of his presence with them wherever they are. 

For Christians, it’s Jesus who embodies God, who is his Temple, his presence with us. We encounter him in the words of the Bible, in the bread and wine of the Eucharist, in one another, and in those we are called to serve and love. The Psalm invites us to look on those places with the same delight those Jewish pilgrims expressed.

But however we meet God, this parable tells us is that if it’s going to change us, it has to be an honest meeting.  We may seek God in an ancient sacred site, an ordinary parish church, at home, at work, out shopping, on the weary commute on the train, in a conversation with a friend, or even a confrontation with an enemy conducted with integrity. The important thing is that we are ready and willing to do the business that needs to be done with him, to hear his word of comfort or challenge, or welcome, or guidance, to take it in and let it change us, not to try to hide, to pretend that all is right, to justify ourselves – we’ve seen plenty of that from politicians in recent weeks, but it’s something we are all capable of. 

 “Happy are those in whose hearts are the highways to Zion”, says the Psalm.  “Happy are you” in other words, “if you have, deep within you, well-trodden paths, familiar routes that lead you into God’s presence”. Highways aren’t made by accident. They take work, and time and intention. There’s likely to be mess and disruption too. Our pathways to God are no different. Sometimes God has to dig around in us, blast away the obstacles, move tons of spiritual earth - and we need to let him, opening our ears and our hearts to him so he can change us. 

A Pharisee and a tax collector walk into a temple… and so can we, if we want to, into the place where we meet the living God. But will we go home, like the Pharisee, the same people we were when we came in, or will we go home justified, changed, even just a little, like the tax collector?  That depends on us.

Amen

Trinity 18: Wrestling with God

Trinity 18 2022

Genesis 32.22-31, Luke 18.1-8

One of my favourite sculptures is a representation of the Old Testament story we heard today, the story of Jacob and the Angel, which can usually be seen in the Tate Britain in London. It’s sculpted from a gigantic block of alabaster, and it was made by Jacob Epstein in the 1930’s. Epstein has caught the moment when Jacob realises he can’t win this wrestling match. It’s a very ambiguous image. Is Jacob being crushed by the angel, or upheld and embraced? Epstein probably meant us to be unsure, just as the Biblical storyteller does. 

To understand the story, and this moment of ambiguity, we need a bit of background. Jacob is one of a pair of twins, who have been at loggerheads since before they were born, wrestling in their mother’s womb. Esau is born first, but only just. Jacob is holding onto his heel. Jacob’s name, means “the supplanter”, because that’s what he spends most of his life trying to do – supplant Esau, take his place as the first-born. In his culture the first-born son got everything. He became leader of the family, the head of the clan. He controlled all the property, and he got the blessing of his father. Jacob thought that role should have been his, that he would do it far better than Esau, and he may have been right. Esau comes across in the stories as more brawn than brain, a good hunter, but none too bright. So, in a series of events too long to explain here, Jacob tricks both Esau and his father, Isaac, and at the crucial moment, Isaac gives the blessing of the first-born to Jacob instead of his brother. 

He seems to have won, but his trickery does him no good. Esau is furious, and Jacob has to run for his life, back to his mother’s family home hundreds of miles away in on the border of what is now Southern Turkey. There he makes a new life for himself, with his mother’s brother, Laban. Decades pass, but in the end, the pull of home is too great, especially as Laban turns out to be just as manipulative as Jacob. So Jacob decides to go back, and face the music with Esau.  . 

The story we heard takes place on the night before Jacob crosses the boundary into Esau’s territory. The Bible is deliberately vague at first about who the mysterious figure he encounters is, but you don’t have to be a psychological genius to see this wrestling match as a reflection of the struggle that’s going on inside Jacob, torn between the desire to go home and the fear of how Esau might react. He is still hoping there might be a way to manipulate and manoeuvre himself out of trouble.

The stalemate in the wrestling match is, perhaps, the moment when he realises that there is no magic solution to his dilemma, no way forward without pain and cost to him, not least the pain of admitting that he wronged his brother. But he seems also to recognise that it is in the struggle and the pain that he will find the peace he longs for, that there are some things you can’t trick your way around. “I will not let you go, unless you bless me”, he says to his opponent. Epstein’s sculpture captures that moment of relief for Jacob in this, as the wrestling becomes an embrace. Here is someone, finally, who pushes back as hard as he does, who won’t let him go, who holds him accountable. Jacob realises that this figure represents the God who loves him even when he loses. 

Jacob is blessed not despite his struggles, but because of them. He’s given a new name – Israel – which means “one who struggles with God”. It’s a very significant name. Earlier in his life, when Jacob had run away from Esau and from home, he thought he was running away from God too. On his journey he found himself in the desert, with nowhere to sleep but the hard ground. But as he slept, he had a dream of a ladder set up between earth and heaven, with angels going up and down on it. “Surely God is in this place, and I did not know it” he said, in wonder. He thought he had left God far behind, but he discovered that God was still with him, as much at home in the desert as anywhere else. This wrestling match at the ford of the Jabbok tells him that again, as he is confronted with the reality he has tried to walk away from, and the God whose challenge and whose call he has tried to ignore.  

People often apologise to me if they feel they are wrestling with faith, questioning or doubting or feeling angry with God. When we are going through tough times we often try to put on our best face, to say all the right things. But this story tells us that God would rather we wrestled with him and shouted at him than pretend that everything is fine, treating him with distant politeness, or ignoring him completely. The Bible is full of people having a go at God, demanding to know “how long, O Lord!”. Even Jesus, in the Garden of Gethsemane, tells his Father that he really doesn’t want to do what he's called to, and in today’s Gospel reading he tells us that it’s ok to feel we are being like that desperate widow, stroppy, mouthy, so long as we keep showing up. God isn’t an unjust judge. He doesn’t need to be battered into submission, but it’s important for us to feel we can be honest with him and tell it like it is. If we argue with people, it is, at least, a sign that they matter to us, that we care about what they think, even if we disagree with them. And where there is an argument, there can be a reconciliation. It’s when we ignore people, avoid them or treat them as irrelevant that there is nowhere to go, nothing that can be done to change the situation. 

In modern jargon people call it “ghosting” when a friend abruptly stops replying to texts, emails, phone calls, blocks you on social media, vanishes from your life. Often I find that people try to  “ghost” God. They stop praying, stop coming to church, avoid the people and places that remind them of him, or they just hide behind pious platitudes.

The message of these stories we have heard today, though, is that not only does God want us to be honest with him, he also wants us to know that it’s safe for us to do so, and that this is the gateway to the blessing we long for, because we can then discover that we are loved indestructibly, whatever we have done, and whatever life has done to us. Jacob’s story starts with him longing for the blessing of his earthly father, which he can only get by cheating, but it ends when he discovers the blessing of his heavenly father, which nothing can take away from him. 

We don’t have to be polished, polite or dignified. We don’t have to pretend. We just have to show up as we are. God does not bless us despite our struggles. He wants us instead to find the blessing that’s within them, to let our prayers change us, bit by bit, into people who know that however far we run, God runs with us. Amen

Harvest: Stone soup

 Harvest 2022

2 Corinthians 9:6-10, John 15.1-11

I began last week’s sermon with a folktale, and, as it happens, I’m going to begin this week’s in the same way. This week’s story goes like this:

A traveller came to a certain village, and asked for some food, but none of the villagers would help him. So the traveller said to them, “never mind, I’ll make myself some soup, using my magic stone, and then there will be plenty for us to share.” He produced a stone from his pack, and asked if he could borrow a pot. The villagers were intrigued, so someone fetched him a pot – a large pot – which he filled the pot with water. He built a fire, and set the pot over it, and then, solemnly, dropped the stone into the water. Now and then he stirred the water about a bit, and eventually he took a sip from his spoon. 

“Is it ready?” asked the curious villagers.

“Hmm” he said. “It is tasting good, but it would be even better if I had an onion to put in it.”

One of the villagers happened to have an onion – she’d had a glut in her vegetable patch that year - so she fetched it and gave it to him. 

Once again they waited, until he tasted it again.

“Not bad,” he said, “but it would be even better with a carrot, if anyone happened to have one.” Someone scurried home to fetch one, and the traveller added it. 

They waited, until he tasted it again, and said that, with a little salt it would be truly excellent. So, someone gave him some.

Again and again, he tasted and added herbs and vegetables, a few bits of bacon, some beans to thicken it, all given by the villagers.

Finally, he proclaimed that now the soup was ready, and that, if anyone wanted some, he was very happy to share it. So, everyone fetched a bowl from their homes, and everyone ate their fill, and said that it was the best soup they had ever tasted. The traveller thanked them, cleaned off the stone, which was all that was left in the bottom of the pot, put it carefully back in his pack and went on his way, leaving everyone to wonder what, exactly, had just happened…

That story, called Stone Soup, is told across many different cultures in many different forms. Sometimes it’s a magic nail, sometimes magic wood, rather than a magic stone but the essence is always the same – people who didn’t want to share what they had being persuaded, or some might say tricked, into doing so, but everyone benefitting at the end. Like most popular folktales its power is that we recognise ourselves in it.

Like those villagers, we can all be reluctant to give, and for all sorts of reasons. We may not be sure of the person we are giving to – the traveller in the story was a stranger, why should the villagers help him? We may not want to get involved; what if more is asked of us later, and we find we can’t back out? We may be fearful that if we give something away we won’t have enough for ourselves and our families – we often cling to our possessions, even become hoarders, out of fear rather than greed. 

“God loves a cheerful giver,” said our reading today, but like those villagers we often have to be cajoled into it, persuaded by glossy adverts or gimmicks like buying red noses or sponsoring someone to do some extraordinary challenge. If we really care about someone, though, none of that is necessary. If it’s a friend or a child or a parent or a partner – someone we have a loving relationship with, we will usually give very generously to support them. It’s as natural as breathing. We don’t think twice about it. Our gifts are a token of our love. It doesn’t occur to us to hold back, or calculate the return to us, because our lives are linked to those we are giving to. That’s the kind of giving Paul’s talking about in his letter to the Corinthian church. 

The background to the reading is that the Christians in Corinth have promised to help out the Christian community in Jerusalem, who are suffering – there has been a famine and persecution there. For some reason, though, they haven’t yet come through with the promised cash. Paul is reminding them that these are their brothers and sisters, fellow human beings who happen to be in need, part of their own family. He is calling them to see their relationship with those they are helping. Jerusalem may be far away. They may not know the people there. But they are family. He also reminds them that their giving is rooted in and tied up with their relationship with God. If they are secure in his abundant love, they will be able to be generous and abundant in their love for others [, just as, in the Gospel reading Jesus tells us that we need to be grafted in, linked to one another and to God, the source of our lives.] We may not always feel we have much to give, but in giving it, we discover that we are richer than we thought, because we become part of something that is so much bigger than we are, and generosity breeds generosity.

At our Harvest services we support Rochester Diocese’s Poverty and Hope appeal.  Like those Corinthian Christians, we will never meet most of the people who benefit from our gifts, but they too are our brothers and sisters, part of one human family. What happens to them happens to us too. That’s always been true, but perhaps because we now get ‘as it happens’ rolling 24 hour news from all around the world, we are much more aware of that. Whether it’s the effects of climate change, or unfair trading practices, the world is getting smaller by the year. It can be quite exhausting, quite overwhelming, but the key to not being overwhelmed is in that story I began with. It might be that no one in that village had all the ingredients that went into that soup, enough to feed an entire village, but everyone had something to give, and through making the soup together, they didn’t just create some food, but also new relationships, which perhaps lasted long after the traveller had left them. 

The money we give today to the Poverty and Hope project is designed to do just that, to build relationships. As the book of Proverbs says “Like cold water to a thirsty soul, so is good news from a far country.” Whether it is empowering people in the shanty towns of Brazil, or supporting rural education in Myanmar, providing clean water in Tanzania or supporting communities in Zimbabwe to make their voices heard, we can be good news to people who are struggling, and they can be good news to us, challenging us to change the structures that keep inequality going,  so that we can all live in a fairer world which, in the end, will be good for everyone.

I’m going to finish with a message from the Bishop of Tonbridge, which tells us more about the projects this year’s appeal supports.

The way to faith: Trinity 16

 Trinity 16 2022

There’s an old German folktale recorded by the Brothers Grimm in which, for reasons far too complicated to explain, the hero finds himself ambushed by robbers in a forest, and bundled into a sack. The robbers tie a rope around the sack, haul it up into the trees and scarper, leaving him dangling up there with no way down. Fortunately, he hears someone coming along the forest track on horseback. He peers out through a tiny hole in the sack and sees that it’s a student from the local university. He doesn’t know, of course, whether he will be a friend or foe, so he decides to use a bit of low cunning. As the traveller comes closer, he calls out a cheery greeting from the sack. The student asks him what he is doing up there and whether he needs help.

“Help? No, not at all. This is no ordinary sack. It is the sack of knowledge, and anyone who spends time in it will know everything there is to know about everything – philosophy, science,literature…

The student’s eyes light up – this will be a lot easier than all that book-reading he has to do. “I don’t suppose you’d let me swap places with you for an hour or so?” he asks. 

The man in the sack agrees, trying to sound as reluctant as he can. The student lowers him down to the ground, and changes places with him, and is hauled up into the trees instead.  The sack swings there for a few minutes, and then the student shouts down “Tell me, how long does this take to start working? I’m not feeling any more wise than I did before.”

“Ah, give it a little while,” says the man down below, “and I can guarantee you will have learned a very important lesson indeed…”

And the student did, even if it was only that you should never trust the word of a man who is tied up in a sack… 

Of course, we all know that you can’t acquire all the knowledge of the world by sitting in a sack, but the promise of a quick fix is still very tempting. The enticing gym membership offer which we buy, but then never use, the language learning app which says you’ll be fluent in three weeks, which we never open, the musical instrument bought in an enthusiastic moment, but never actually played… We’ve probably all been there, hoping it would all happen by magic somehow.

The story of the sack of knowledge came into my head as I read that desperate request from the disciples to Jesus in today’s Gospel. “Increase our faith!” they cry. They’re starting to realise that living as he calls them to, living justly in an unjust world, is more challenging than they thought it would be. And they know they aren’t up to it. So, they ask Jesus for more faith, as if it is some sort of magic substance which you can go into a faith shop and buy half a pound of.

They are making a category error, like asking “how big is yellow?” The question makes no sense, because yellow doesn’t have a size. In the same way, faith isn’t something that can be dispensed – one lump or two? It’s something which we discover within us as we do the things God calls us to, and find that he is right there helping us. Jesus tells his followers that faith the size of a mustard seed is enough, if you actually do something with it, because it’s the act of doing something with it which makes it grow. 

Jesus goes on to develop the point by painting a little word picture. “If you’re a slave or a servant,” he says – the two words are the same in Greek -  “you don’t expect your master to drop everything and do your work for you – it’s your work”. It’s a problematic image for us, because we automatically start thinking about the evils of slavery and exploitation, but Jesus is just using a scenario he knew people would be familiar with. 

His words may sound rather harsh, but essentially he’s telling them that the growth of faith is an intrinsic, natural result of doing what they are called to. It’s not some sort of magic, nor is God is not a sort of heavenly slot machine who’ll give out goodies if we put in the right coins – saying our prayers, turning up at church. Helping others too, can be just a bargaining chip, if we do it in the hopes it will get us into God’s good books. That sort of transactional view of faith insults God, treating him as if he can be manipulated, put into our debt. But on top of all that, it doesn’t work, because it produces a faith, if we can call it that, which tends to fall apart as soon as anything bad happens to us. 

If we believe that God will give us health, wealth and happiness if we do the right thing, then where does that leave us when sickness, poverty and unhappiness strike, as they almost will? The natural conclusion is that either we’ve done something to deserve punishment, or that God has reneged on his side of the contract. It leads to us stigmatising others who are suffering too. 

The prophet Habakkuk was battling that sort of ‘transactional’ thinking about God in our Old Testament reading, probably written just before the Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem. The nation was falling apart politically, socially and morally in front of Habakkuk’s eyes, knowing that they would soon be overrun by mighty armies. Some of the other prophets said that the nation had brought all this on itself. It was a punishment from God. Whenever there is a disaster – plague, war, earthquake – you can be sure someone will say this. It’s attractive, in an odd sort of way, because it gives us at least some sense of control. We can kid ourselves that if we had acted differently, we could have prevented these bad things happening. Even if that’s nonsense, it’s better than feeling we have no power at all.

But Habakkuk took a different position which faced up honestly to our powerlessness. Bad things happen to all sorts of people, he said, the good and the bad alike, without any rhyme or reason we can fathom. What we are called to do is to look for God even in the midst of them. It is fine to lament and to cry out to God, as Habakkuk does,  to ask “how long, O Lord?” but his faith doesn’t depend on getting an answer , still less on God swooping down and delivering him miraculously. He’d learned to find God in the darkness and the troubles, and that meant that he had a faith that was indestructible. The book of Habakkuk ends with the lovely words, “Though the fig tree does not blossom and no fruit is on the vines; though the produce of the olive fails, and the fields yield no food; though the flock is cut off from the fold, and there is no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord… God the Lord is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, and makes me tread upon the heights”. 

Habakkuk has learned to trust God, not because he understands what God is doing, but because he knows who God is, what his character is, that he is a God who never stops loving his creation, or withdraws from it, no matter what we do. 

Jesus, whose way of salvation led through the pain of the cross and the darkness of death, knew how important it was that his followers learned Habakkuk’s lesson too, not to look for a magic bullet or a quick fix, or even just someone to blame, but simply to get on with living in his way, walking in his path, doing the work he calls us to.  As we do so, his promise is that we will discover that God is with us, in failure as well as success, weakness as well as strength, death as well as life and our faith will be indestructible too.  

Amen 

Comfort my people: On the death of HM Queen Elizabeth

 Isaiah 40.1, 6-11. Luke 15.1-10

 

Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God. In these last few days, I have been very aware of how much we all need comfort at the moment - to comfort ourselves, to comfort one another, to be gentle at this time. Of course, it is the late Queen’s family whose grief is paramount and greatest, just as it would be for any family who are bereaved, but this is a bereavement which touches us all.  I have been doing a lot of listening since Thursday; listening to people’s stories about the Queen, their memories of her reign and, in some cases of the reign of her father and even grandfather too. But I have also been listening to stories of people’s own bereavements and sorrows, triggered by this very public death.

 

Bereavement is always complicated. Nearly thirty years of taking funerals has made that obvious to me. Every situation is different, every person is different, and our feelings may change from day to day, hour to hour, or even minute to minute. That’s just as true for this national bereavement. Everyone is affected, but each of us feels this death differently, and needs to grieve in our own way, at our own pace.

 

Over the last couple of days, I have been thinking hard about what we might need to change for our worship today – readings, prayers, music and so on. There are guidelines from the Church of England nationally, but there aren’t any hard and fast rules. One of the decisions I pondered was whether to include the National Anthem in today’s service, the new one of course – God save our gracious King... But whichever way I approached it, somehow, it felt too soon. I know that the moment the Queen died, Charles became King. That is the fact, but facts are one thing, and feelings are another, and it felt to me as if we needed a chance to say goodbye before we say hello, whatever the constitutional position is, which is why I’ve decided to leave that for another week, to allow this Sunday to be a moment to acknowledge what, and who, we’ve lost, before we look to the future and the new things that are coming.  

 

Losing and lostness loom large in today’s Gospel reading - so that was one thing I knew I wouldn’t need to change today. Jesus tells stories about a lost sheep and a lost coin, and how those who lost them felt. The word “bereavement” literally means to have something torn away – riven – from us.  When someone precious to us dies, we soon realise that a piece of the landscape of our lives is missing. We notice the empty chair, the silence where there should be a voice, the shoes that still hold the shape of the feet that once wore them.

 

We lose people in the present and future when they die, but we can also find we’ve lost their past too. We realise there are questions we never asked, and that we’ll never know the answers to now, knowledge that’s vanished with them. And though time may soften the sharp edges of grief, the gap can never be filled.

 

When someone dies, it’s often not just them who we feel we’ve lost either; there can also be a sense that we’ve lost ourselves too, at least for a while. We lose our role in their lives, our identity in relation to them, the things we used to do for them and with them. They don’t need our help anymore. In the case of the Queen’s death there is a sense of a whole era slipping away, out of our grasp. We don’t even quite know what to call ourselves. A week ago we were Elizabethans, but who are we now? The jury seems to be out on whether we are Carolines, Caroleans, Carolingians… Time will tell, though I do how we won’t just be Charlies…

 

“You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone” they say, and it’s true. Often we only realise how much something matters to us when we’ve lost it. 

 

As I said earlier, lostness is fundamental to the parables Jesus tells too; a lost sheep, a lost coin. But it is only the starting point of those stories. It’s what happens next which really matters in them, as the shepherd tirelessly searches for and finds the sheep, and the woman turns her house upside down until she discovers where that lost coin has rolled away to, and both of them celebrate joyfully because of it.

 

Why do they search so diligently? It’s because the sheep and the coin are of such great value to them that they know they can’t afford to write them off. We don’t search like that for things which don’t matter to us or are easily replaced. I have lots of pairs of cheap reading glasses, because I know I will never be able to remember where I left them, so I just have to trust that one or another pair will come to hand when I need them. But that one sheep matters to the shepherd. It’s unique. He’s even prepared to leave the others in the wilderness so he can go after it. And the coin the woman lost was probably part of her dowry, the money she brought into her marriage, which was the only thing, in Jewish law, that she owned independently, and was often a safety net to be kept in case her husband died or abandoned her.

 

“Which one of you wouldn’t do the same for something that really mattered to you?” asks Jesus. The context of the story is that he is being attacked by the Pharisees, religious experts who considered themselves to be the in-group, the favoured ones. They disapprove of the time and energy he’s giving to tax-collectors and sinners, marginalised people who were often written off, or simply not noticed.

 

Jesus’ reminds his critics what it feels like to love and treasure something or someone. “Think of something or someone you would go to the ends of the earth to find,” he’s saying “That’s how God feels about these people you despise, because that’s how God feels about everyone. They are of infinite value to him, just as you are.”

 

Ours is a God, says Jesus, to whom nothing and no one is lost. Ours is a God who holds together everything in heaven and on earth, saints and sinners, monarchs and commoners, the past, the present and the future, the things we knew were important and the things we didn’t give a second thought to until they were taken away from us. Ours is a God who will go to the ends of the earth to rescue us, whoever we are, who will “feed his flock like a shepherd, gather the lambs in his arms, and gently lead the mother sheep” who will recognise our need, come to us where we are and lead us home.

 

As we say goodbye to a much-loved monarch, letting her go into the arms of the God she served, and who inspired her service to us over her 70 year reign, we recognise that we are also saying goodbye to a whole era. We may be painfully aware of what we have lost. We may feel lost ourselves sometimes. But we are not lost to God, any more than our late Queen is. The God who found her and held her throughout her reign, and now holds her in the life and joy of heaven, also finds and holds us, wherever we are, and wherever we wander, and that is the comfort we really need. Amen