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