Third Sunday of Epiphany

 

Luke 4.14-21 & Nehemiah 8.1-3, 5-6 & 8-10

If we go back a step in today’s Old Testament reading we find Nehemiah, one of many Jews exiled into Babylon, effectively working as the wine waiter for King Ataxerxes. He has had news of the sad state of the Jewish remnant still in Jerusalem and much to his surprise the king allows him to return home to rebuild Jerusalem.

Nehemiah has a sense of shame because he includes himself among those who have sinned and ignored the Law of Moses.

Despite drought, lack of funding and opposition Jerusalem is finally rebuilt.

We know that the state of our buildings has an effect upon how we feel. If our schools are in disrepair those working and studying there will start to question whether this reflects the value put upon their efforts by others. If we visit run down neighbourhoods this is often a sign that there are underlying problems and we naturally feel uncomfortable in the surroundings. Even here our church wardens and others are constantly working hard to organise repairs and maintenance, reflecting the fact that we intend to gather and worship God in this building for a long time yet.

To have the opportunity to prosper people need buildings that provide shelter and opportunities to come together as a community but buildings themselves are only the beginning .

This is where our reading starts today. It still resonates with many aspects of our communities in run down inner cities or remote rural locations where the people feel they have been forgotten, that they don’t matter.

At the time of Nehemiah many of the people in Jerusalem would have been regarded as the dregs of the population left behind by invaders who didn’t even consider them worthwhile taking into captivity. Perhaps they were physically weak, injured or disabled or too elderly to be considered of economic benefit. Like our modern cities such people also lived among their highly educated, wealthy neighbours, some of whom had done well in their exile before returning to Jerusalem.

Just to complete the parallels with our own times one of the challenges to restoration of their relationship with God was that the population was more diverse than was previously the case, some had married people of other nations and religions and had forgotten about their faith.

So it’s against this background that Ezra gathers the people, notably not in the temple but in the public square, not to offer sacrifices but to read the law and to pray. He knows that the people have to come together again regardless of their social standing. They have to learn once again about the will of God for them and put this above their own differences to seek a common destiny.

It seems that the people yearn to be restored with God and find meaning in their lives, so much that they stood hearing and learning in the square for half a day, no 10 minutes sermons slouched on a pew for them, but then they were playing catch up!

We are told that the people wept as they heard the words of the law. Maybe some regretted not making the effort to keep God’s laws and respond to his love, maybe for some it was tears of joy and hope that this represented a new beginning for them not only personally but also for Judaism. It marked the beginning of the synagogue worship where we found Jesus in Luke’s gospel today.

Interestingly the people gathered in the square are told to go and enjoy life but not to forget those worse off than themselves, and to worship God. Simple but profound instructions for anyone reaffirming their faith, do something practical to help your fellow man in need, give to the food bank, financially support those trying to bring relief to the suffering, give some help to a neighbour and in doing so glorify the God who loves you.

In doing so those helped may realise that they haven’t been abandoned after all and find new strength and hope.

Such actions can be on a one to one basis but also form the backbone of who we are and of what we try to build from faith communities through to regions and nations.

Whilst it’s true that God never gives up on any of us it’s a lot easier to believe this when we experience acts of love and support in our times of need. We might suffer terrible illness or we might be stuck in a situation we don’t want to be in, whatever we have to endure it’s made far more tolerable if we can see love and hope around us, even if peoples efforts to bring change for the better fail we know that they care enough to try and that in itself should bring a smile to our faces.

So we heard in Luke’s gospel that Jesus went to a synagogue in Nazareth where he was brought up. In the synagogue, sacrifice was not offered it was a place for teaching and reading. A major difference between the synagogue and the temple was that in the temple the priests were in charge, but in the synagogue there was no priest and no designated preacher. Each man had an opportunity to participate in the time of reading and learning. One would volunteer to read a passage from the scrolls of the Old Testament, and then afterwards, he would sit down and explain what those passages he read meant to him so for Jesus to do so would have seemed perfectly normal to those hearing him.

We all need a bit of encouragement, signs that people believe in our potential, could this have been in the mind of the person who handed Jesus the scroll. Had he heard Jesus talk to others, or heard of him?

Jesus read from Isaiah and his message for the people who have returned from captivity in Babylon. We know that they were trying to rebuild their lives and their ruins and becoming discouraged and it’s in this setting that Isaiah says God will restore, God is here. The passage is one of hope and freedom to people in despair.

So the congregation have heard Jesus read and no doubt when it comes to the talking bit some will have been thinking I wonder how long he’ll go on for today but before their thoughts could turn to other things Jesus says. "Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing." Did he really just say that some will have thought as they struggled to come to terms with this life changing message? Jesus is dropping a bomb shell on this congregation. He is telling them that he is God’s salvation in the world. God’s promise of freedom has come to his people.

Now when Jesus said, "Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing. " He was offering similar hope to the people oppressed by pagan enemies as Isaiah had to the returning Jews. But Jesus also went beyond Isaiah, he didn’t mean that one nation would be restored, he was talking about God’s plan of salvation for all people, instead of just the nation of Israel.

Jesus says that part of his salvation is to preach the good news. The good news is that God is with us, God cares about us. There is forgiveness, there is hope, and there is renewal.

The old adage that good news doesn’t sell newspapers may be true. Peace is good news yet no one would read a newspaper that said no one was robbed in Seal today. Serving each other is good news but it wouldn’t sell many papers to say that a Christian showed God’s love today as she comforted someone mourning the loss of a loved one yet in performing these acts we become the good news that Jesus speaks of.

Like the people in our readings there may be times when it feels that problems are insurmountable yet for all prepared to look we see again and again that God never gives up on us no matter what situation we find ourselves in. My prayer is that as many people as possible come to know this and that we each can play our part in making this good news known.

Amen         

Kevin Bright

23 January 2022

Baptism of Christ/Plough Sunday

 

Luke 3.15-17, 21-22

 

Today is the day in the Church’s calendar when we remember the Baptism of Jesus by John in the River Jordan, the first time he’s publicly acclaimed as the Messiah.  But it’s also traditionally known as Plough Sunday, the day before Plough Monday, the first Monday after Epiphany. Plough Monday was the day when agricultural labourers were expected to go back to work after the twelve days of Christmas. It was the beginning of the farming year when they would start ploughing the ground ready for seed sowing. It was a hungry and uncertain time for many, with food supplies dwindling. Many people were casual labourers, relying on finding work day by day. Bad weather could mean there was no work, and families could easily be plunged into destitution. They were all hoping and praying that the year would start well, that there would be work and food in these coming, harsh months. So on Plough Sunday they brought their ploughs to church to be blessed, and sometimes dragged them around their villages too, hoping to be hired but also begging for money to tide them over when there was no work. Some parishes had their own plough, kept in the church, to lend to those too poor to buy their own. Philip and I have occasionally come across a few of these parish ploughs still on display in country churches, though I doubt whether they are used!

 

My guess is that most of us won’t be doing much ploughing in the days to come, but that “return to work” feeling is still very real at this time of year. This coming week is the first full working week of the New Year – no more bank holidays until Easter. Children are back at school, and those tasks we have been putting off until “after Christmas” are now getting harder to ignore. January and February can often feel grim , even if we don’t have to work outside. It’s grey, cold, damp, with not much to look forward to. Even in the best of years, we can feel like we’ve come down to earth with a bump – and, let’s face it, this year is not likely to be the best of years. Covid cases are still very high, food and energy prices are rising, many jobs and businesses are increasingly insecure, and many people are just exhausted. The tough times seem to grind on and on, with no promise they will end any time soon.  

 

But today’s Gospel story of the Baptism of Christ, might offer a bit of help. As I said earlier, this moment - Jesus’ baptism - marks the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry. We know very little of his early life, apart from one story of him staying behind in the Temple in Jerusalem, much to Mary and Joseph’s alarm, when he was twelve years old. We assume that he was simply growing up, like any other child, learning Joseph’s trade, working alongside him. But now here he is, among the mass of people who have come to John for baptism.

There’s nothing that obviously singles him out. But John somehow knows who he is, and this is the moment when Jesus steps out of the crowd, identified by the dove and the voice from heaven. Nothing will ever be the same again. It all starts here – this is his Plough Monday moment – when he steps out into the work God has called him to do. And for all that there will be joy and love and blessing in his ministry, there will also be hard work, challenge, pain and fear. Whether he likes it or not, there is no going back. 

 

In one sense, Jesus doesn’t need to be baptised at all. John’s baptism was a baptism of repentance, washing away sin. Christian faith has always proclaimed that Jesus had no sin to wash away, so his baptism, one of the few stories recorded in all four gospels, is a theological puzzle. But for Jesus, this baptism seems to be essential – in some of the Gospels, John tries to refuse, saying that Jesus should be baptising him, and that is implied in what he says here too, but Jesus is determined. Being baptised is his way of showing that he is with us, fully part of this world, one with us in his birth, his death and resurrection, but also in the mundane ordinariness of daily life, prepared to get messy, prepared to get washed. So John baptises Jesus, and as he rises from the water, a dove descends on him, the symbol of the Holy Spirit, and a voice from heaven says “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well-pleased”.

 

Most of us when we start a new job or take on a new role suffer a bit from “imposter syndrome”, wondering how we came to be there, waiting for people to discover that we don’t know what we’re doing. We need affirmation. Reading the Gospels, it’s clear that Jesus was sometimes daunted, afraid, exhausted by the challenges he faced too, as we are, but this voice from heaven is the ultimate endorsement, a sign to him and to those around him that God is with him, working through him, however unlikely that might look or feel. We often find him listening for that voice as his ministry unfolds. We hear of him withdrawing to pray, but it wasn’t just in those quiet, private moments that he sought his Father’s presence. He also looked for it in the people he met. You might be a tax-collector, a Samaritan woman at a well, a leper, a grieving widow, a grubby child. Everyone else might write you off, but Jesus looked for – and found - God in you. He told his followers that if they couldn’t find God at work “in the least of these, my brothers and sisters” they wouldn’t be able to find him anywhere. He approached life as if every person, every place, every moment, was a gateway to heaven, and so it was.

 

I don’t know what the coming week will bring for you, what furrow you will be ploughing on your own Plough Monday tomorrow. You might be at work. You might be at home caring for others. You might be retired, and feeling at a loose end, or so busy you wonder how you ever had time to work. You might be living with long term disability or sickness; it might take all your time and energy just to get by. I hope there are some bits of your daily reality, whatever it is, that you enjoy, but there are bound also to be people we don’t get along with so well, tasks we’re bored by or wish we didn’t have to do, things that make our hearts sink rather than sing.  What would happen, I wonder, if whenever one of those “heart-sink” moments loomed,  we wondered to ourselves “where might God be in this?” How might it change those tough times if we believed that every person, every place, every moment might be a gateway to heaven for us, somewhere we could find the light of Christ, the glory of God, hidden beneath the drabness and the difficulty. It’s worth a thought, worth a try. It can’t do any harm, and it just might transform our lives.

 

Ploughing our own furrows matters, whatever sort of furrows they are. Sowing the seed matters. Turning up for work matters. Caring for those who we have responsibilities towards matters. Engaging with our communities matters. Our daily reality matters. Our day to day callings may be different from one another but in his baptism, Jesus reminds us that whatever we go through, he goes through with us, showing us heaven right here on earth. God speed the plough. Amen

Epiphany Sunday 2022: Paying homage

 

Matthew 2.1-12

 

“Where is the child who has been born King of the Jews?” the wise men ask, “for we observed his star at its rising and we have come to pay him homage.” That phrase “pay homage” comes three times in this story. Herod uses it, though we know he is lying. Then finally, at the end of the story the wise men find the child they’ve been looking for, and we’re told that, “They knelt down and paid him homage,” as they give him their gold, frankincense and myrrh.

 

But what does it mean?  Often we use it just to suggest admiration. The New Year’s honours list “pays homage” to people whose service we want to recognise, for example. But it’s a phrase which came to us originally from the medieval world of knights in shining armour, who had to “pay homage” to their Lord, kneeling before him to swear loyalty. The “hom” in “homage” comes from the Latin word for a person, “homo”. When a knight “paid homage” to his lord he was pledging his service to him, putting himself, life and limb, into his hands. He was saying “I’m your man. I belong to you. Where you tell me to go, I'll go, if you tell me to do something I'll do it.” 

 

So, in the Gospels, when the wise men see a new star in the sky, which they believe is the sign that the long-promised Jewish Messiah has been born, and come to pay homage to him, they aren't just coming out of curiosity or respect. They’re coming because they want to be part of his kingdom, the kingdom they’ve read about in the Old Testament prophecies: a kingdom of peace and justice. They want to be Christ’s men. They are declaring their allegiance, declaring who will rule their lives from now on.

 

But theirs isn’t the only homage being paid in this story. There are others who show whose people they are by the way they act, who they’re siding with. I’ve always been fascinated by the role of King Herod’s scribes in this story.  They know that something important has happened.  Visitors have arrived in Jerusalem, claiming that a new king has been born. Whether the scribes believe it or not, they should be sitting up and taking notice if they are at all serious about their study of the Hebrew scriptures.  They even know where this is supposed to be happening. ”Bethlehem, that's where he'll be”, they say to Herod.  Yet not one of them goes to Bethlehem to check it out. Do you know how far it is from Jerusalem to Bethlehem? About 5 miles or so.  A morning’s walk.  But they stay right where they are, in Jerusalem with Herod. They have to. They’re Herod's men. He’s the one they pay homage to. It’s his wishes they fall in line with, his words they obey, his view of reality that they’ve bought into. Perhaps they’ve done so out of fear, or perhaps they have been seduced by promises of status and wealth. Whichever it is, they’ve decided that they would rather stay on the right side of the devil they know, than risk looking for the Messiah they don't.

 

It’s a story that is both ancient and modern. It could have come from the court of any tyrant in history, or the boardrooms of any business run by a domineering boss, or the entourage of any celebrity with too much power and wealth for their own good. The dynamics at work have been amply illustrated this week as the trial of Ghislaine Maxwell came to its conclusion. She chose to throw in her lot with the abusive Jeffrey Epstein, enabling his abuse as she groomed and trafficked young teenage girls for him and his wealthy and powerful friends. And all those around them decided not to see, not to hear, not to challenge, not to report. They all paid Epstein homage. They declared themselves to be his men and women by doing this. And once you are in that sort of world; it’s very difficult to get out. “Sleep with dogs; wake up with fleas” as the saying goes.

 

Part of the tragedy of the story of tyrants like Herod or abusers like Epstein and Maxwell is that in the end, it all seems so pointless and joyless. However much “fun” there was to be had at the parties– and I put the word “fun” in inverted commas – however much glitz and glamour there is in this sort of world, it all comes threaded through with fear; the fear of discovery, the fear of repercussions, the fear of losing your place in the charmed circle if you step out of line.

 

The sordid story of Maxwell and Epstein was, for me, cast into even more stark a light because it came in the same week as the death of Archbishop Desmond Tutu. The contrast couldn’t be greater. He had no power or status or wealth, and never sought them either. He was born in a poor family, in a country where the colour of his skin meant the dice would always be loaded against him. And yet, his life was rich with all the things that matter, with love, respect, and most of all joy. While the wealthy people who populated Epstein’s parties rejoiced in their power, Tutu said “We are fragile creatures, and it is from this weakness, not despite it, that we discover the possibility of true joy” and he added “If you are setting out to be joyful you are not going to end up being joyful. You’re going to find yourself turned in on yourself. It’s like a flower. You open, you blossom, really because of other people.” (From the Book of Joy)  Tutu famously championed the philosophy known as ubuntu, an idea that is summed up in the phrase “a person is a person through other people” which says that the essence of being human is recognizing that we are connected to one another, and that what we do affects others as their actions affect us.

 

For Desmond Tutu ubuntu was at the heart of his faith. His commitment to loving connection with others, was rooted in and informed by his decision to pay his homage to Christ – to put his life into the hands of the child in the manger, the man on the cross. In Christ, he saw the God who commits himself to, and connects himself with, humanity, being born, suffering and dying with us. If God so loves us, how can we not love one another? If God is one of us, how can we not be one with each other? If God holds us all in his hands, we need to hold one another in our hands too? And if all that is true, then how can we discriminate, oppress and hate one another? 

 

The story of the wise men, the story of Desmond Tutu, and the story of Maxell and Epstein, all remind us that who we are is shaped in large part by whose we are, to whom or to what we pay homage.  Herods can come in many forms, but whenever we find ourselves giving a great deal of time or energy to something, or allowing it to rule our lives in some way that feels unhealthy, we need to ask, “ Is this a Herod?  Is it something genuinely worthwhile or is it something which draws me to it out of greed or fear?”  Jobs and hobbies can claim more of us than they should – turning from occupations to obsessions. Ideas and philosophies – including religion – can become tyrants. Roles which give us status can end up being allowed to define who we are and what we feel we are worth.

 

But this story tells us that there is one to whom we can rightly pay homage. There is one to whom we can rightly give our allegiance and our life. There is one who will take and use the gold, frankincense and myrrh which we bring him - those symbols of our resources of time and talents - for our good and the good of the world. Paying homage to him, putting our lives in his hands, will lead us to joy that nothing can take away from us.

Amen