A Sermon for the Fourth Sunday after Epiphany (31/01/21): Not What He Does But Who He Is

Not What He Does But Who He Is 

Mark 1:21-28

"They were all amazed and kept asking one another, "What is this? A new teaching - with  authority. He commands even the unclean spirits and they obey him." 

There is a profound irony in preaching. As a preacher I find my self doing the very thing Jesus doesn't do. The thing which makes Jesus’ preaching distinctive is the thing that mine and every other preacher’s does not possess. We all preach, in the title of a famous book about preaching, “As One Without Authority.” Which is the very opposite of the way which Jesus preached. We all preach in a way that is the very opposite of what made his preaching so amazing to those heard it. Uncomfortably I find I have more in common with the scribes than I have with Jesus. I, all preachers, and indeed the whole of the church preaches with a borrowed authority. We “preach” with an authority that is not our own. The authority of our words and the testimony of our lives comes from somewhere other than  ourselves. I preach with the Bible open on the lectern in front of me. The authority of my speech depends on the Bible.  What I say commands attention only to the extent to which it witnesses  faithfully to what is there, in the Bible.  The authority of my preaching depends entirely on the authority we afford to this book. 

But there is more than that. It is not just anyone we permit to stand an speak, even with the Bible open in front of them. The authority of the preacher further depends on the authority the Church has given. This authority in conferred through accreditation or ordination. And such accreditation depends on testing and training. The authority of my words depend, in part, on the skills that I have acquired as a theologian, as a biblical scholar, as a composer of sermons and as a public speaker. All this in truth makes me and all other preachers little different from the scribes. Their authority depended on exactly the same sort of network of training testing, permission, and text. 

“What would Jesus do?” has been a popular question, but it is somewhat moot. In truth we cannot do what Jesus does. Because as individuals we are not Jesus. 

Over the last couple of weeks, if we have been following the lectionary, we have had stories in which Jesus at the beginning of his ministry has been displayed. Two weeks ago there was the story of Philipp and Nathaneal (which as it happens I didn’t read and preach on). In that story Philipp takes the news of an amazing encounter that he has had with Jesus to Nathanael. Nathaneal expresses profound scepticism that anything good could from such a  benighted location as Nazareth. Yet nonetheless Nathanael left the shade and comfort of the fig tree he was sitting under and followed Jesus. And again last week the story of the fishermen. One minute Simon and Andrew, James and John are at work in their family businesses, the next they have left the world they have known and followed Jesus at a word. But there is something missing from the Bible's account. What neither of those stories can convey is just what it was about Jesus that made them follow. 

And now Jesus stands in the synagogue in Capernaum and speaks. And everyone who hears him is amazed. Again there is something missing from the Bible. Again the story cannot convey just what it is that is amazing about Jesus. It can only report that he has something that others don't. It can only tell us that when he speaks his words have authority, they demand attention and they demand a response. And it can only tell us that this authority is not borrowed or acquired from somewhere else. The authority which Jesus has, he possesses on his own account.

We cannot do what Jesus does, because we are not Jesus. We do not possess whatever it was that makes him so remarkable. So the task of preaching, indeed the task of the church, is not necessarily to do what Jesus does, but rather to point what Jesus is doing. And more especially the task of preaching and of the church is to point to the authority that Jesus possesses to do what he does. 

That question of what authority Jesus has, how he does what he does, is quickly answered in the synagogue at Capernaum that day. Jesus performs an exorcism on a man possessed by a demon. Which for us probably creates more problem than it solves. Straight away we are plunged into a world that is not our own. We find ourselves in a world in which evil is real and personal, and waiting to seize hold of the unwary and the unfortunate. It is a world of spiritual forces and spiritual warfare. It is a world that seems very distant from our own. It is a world which we might think is hopelessly mythological, out of date and perhaps out of touch with reality. And faced with such a world, and faced with Jesus’ claim to authority made in it, we attempt to explain. 

We are tempted explain that the man's condition was in reality a mental illness. Or say that the story which Mark tells is merely metaphorical, that it is meant to illustrate the kind of power Jesus possesses. We do what Jesus doesn't do. We make his authority dependent on something else. We make it dependent on our ability fit Jesus and what he does into the way we already think the world is. And as it happens that is a world in which we think evil isn't personal and demonic and in which, of course, miracles don't happen. 

Except the man's illness isn't really a mental one. And Jesus' cure doesn't fit any picture of  therapy or recovery that we could recognise in the world which we're trying fit Jesus into. And that is just the point. Jesus' hearers in that synagogue are amazed. They are amazed because Jesus doesn't fit their preconceived understanding of the world either. Jesus shatters their and our notions of how the world is. He brings something new and something different. We should be amazed by him rather than try and fit him into what we already know! 

 

Interestingly Mark hardly reports what Jesus says. On this occasion there is not a word about what Jesus preaches. The point Mark is perhaps trying to make is that it is not what Jesus says that is so  remarkable. It is not really his words that make the difference. 

Again something we try to do with Jesus, to fill in the gap we perceive and to lend him some authority. So we are tempted to claim that his teaching is qualitatively different from all other spiritual  teaching. Yet what Mark has told us so far in his Gospel is that Jesus’ teaching is essentially a continuation of John the Baptist’s. And what Mark shows us is that John and Jesus have much the same message as the prophets. Indeed there is little that is truly unique or stunningly original about what Jesus says. The point which Mark is trying to make is that what is different about Jesus is not what he says, but rather how he says it, which is to say, what is different is who he is. 

The demon knows before anybody: “What have you to do with us Jesus of Nazareth?” it asks. Part of evil's power is to recognise that which is not evil.  It recognises what threatens it most. Here evil sees and recognises pure, unambiguous goodness, the very presence of God. “I know who you are” says the demon, “the Holy one of God.” The demon knows, whereas the congregation only dimly perceive, that there is a profound and intimate connection between Jesus and God. When Jesus speaks he speaks with his own authority, an authority that he possesses as his own, but that authority is the authority of God. Evil is powerless before him. It cannot remain in his presence. With a word it is dispatched and leaves with a great cry. 

The task of preaching, indeed the task of the church, is not to explain Jesus. But rather it is to convey who he is. It is not to explain Jesus, or to account for what he does, or justify his authority by fitting him into what we already think is real. The point of the church, curiously, is not to persuade, but rather to portray and embody who Jesus is. The task of the church is to know and convey the disruptive power that is present in him. We are to show that Jesus is who he is and that he has the authority to set us free from the power of evil. 

There is a difference between ourselves and the scribes. There is difference between them and our lives and our preaching. That difference is at the other end of Jesus’ story. It is in his resurrection and it is in the coming of the Holy Spirit. We may not be able to do what Jesus does. But the Church is what Jesus is. The amazing presence of God’s speech and God's authority in the world. 

Amen. 

Not What He Does But Who He Is by Christopher Wood-Archer is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 

A Sermon for the Third Sunday after Epiphany (24/01/21): Follow Me and Fish for People

Follow Me and Fish for People

Mark 1:14-20

One day Jesus appeared in Galilee. One day he wasn’t there. And the next he was. And not very long afterwards it seemed everyone had heard of him. Some tried to fit him into what was already happening, as if he were the outcome of a trend or a movement that was already taking place, as if he were the product of forces that were already in play. They wanted to fit him into the pattern of what they already knew,  that somehow he was no different from what was already there. But there was something fresh or different about Jesus. There was an out of time, an unprecedented quality about him.

There were those who swore that they had seen him down by the Jordan in the crowds who went down to see John. But how could anyone tell? Those crowds were so large that people said that “everyone” had gone from Judea and Jerusalem. How could anyone pick out one Galilean from such crowds.

There were others who said that he had the look of someone who had a bit too much time in the sun. It was true that there were those who went out into the wilderness to find God, or find themselves, or find something. John himself had been one of those. Some of those who went out there never came back. And those did return most of them were crazy, like the devils who lived in the wilderness had taken them. And even those who didn’t come back possessed were strange, a little touched. But Jesus had none of that. He seemed self-possessed, self-assured, very clear in his own mind in what he was about. Jesus just came into Galilee, around the lake, in the towns and villages and in the countryside in between, he came into the province and began to preach.

There was certainly a familiar ring about what Jesus was saying:

“The kingdom of God has come near repent and believe the good news.”

Weren’t those essentially the same words that John had been saying. Wasn't that what he had preached? Wasn’t that the message that had got everyone so excited? God’s rule is at hand! The kingdom which will overthrow the Empire is about to happen. There will be an end to oppression and captivity, and we will be free to worship God without fear. Those things are very near, they are about to happen, so you had better get ready. Turn your lives around and live in the hope that the promise of the kingdom gives.

Certainly that was very much what John had been saying. Later others would look back and remember, didn’t Jesus appear not long after John had been arrested? After all you never saw the two of them together. Maybe Jesus was John. John had reappeared, in disguise, or perhaps the same spirit rested on Jesus as had rested on John. Except that John had always been over there, whereas Jesus was right here. For John you had to go out to the edge of the wilderness, down by the river, and wait in the crowds to see and hear him, Jesus showed up right where you were working and living. It was relatively easy to ignore John if you wanted to, but somehow Jesus appeared and there was no avoiding him. The words were the same. But when Jesus said them they had a fresh urgency. Like the kingdom of God really was at hand! Somehow, in a way that no one could quite put their finger on, Jesus was the words he was speaking!

For once the lake has been calm overnight. The sea of Galilee today is undisturbed by the winds that blow down from the hills that surround it. The Romans call this body of water Lake Tiberius. Just like them to name the scenery after their emperor. But maybe they are right, this is just a lake. It speaks to a Hebrew unease about the chaotic nature of water that they refer to this relatively small body of water as a sea. There is something about water that reminds the Jews of the void that existed before God spoke the world into existence, and something about water that made them fear that void’s return.

But this morning the sun is shining. Simon and his brother Andrew are standing up to their thighs in that water. Each has a basket slung over his shoulder and a large circular net in his hands. They watch and they wait for any hint on the water’s surface of the fish that swim below. Again and again they twist their bodies and swing their arms and their nets spread themselves out over the surface of the lake, where they land with a small splash, hopefully capturing the fish beneath. They haul the nets back to themselves, empty what is inside into their baskets, and the watching and the waiting begins again.

Even though they are focused on the water, with the sun still rising in front of them, they become aware that someone is walking along the otherwise deserted beach. The stranger stops on the shore behind them, closest to where they are in the water working. He waits and he watches for a while. He speaks. He calls to them over the water:

“Follow me, and I will make you fish for people.”

Only then do they recognise who this figure is. This is Jesus who everyone has been talking about. They draw their nets back to themselves one last time. The bundle the wet cords up and push the nets into the baskets with the few fish that they have caught. And they wade back to beach and join Jesus there. There is no negotiation. Jesus turns and continues along the beach in the direction he had already been travelling. After no more than a moment’s thought Simon and Andrew put their baskets down onto the shingle and go after go after him.

Further up the beach they see Jesus stops again. Near the water’s edge is the boat owned by Zebedee. Simon and Andrew can still feel the chill in their bodies from standing in the water. They do not have the luxury of a boat to work from.  They try to work on their account, but sometimes they hire themselves out to work in the boats of men like Zebedee.  There are always more fish in the deeper water at the middle of the lake, if you have the means to get there.

Zebedee is sitting in the stern of his boat watching his sons and his hired men working. They are cleaning and repairing the large nets that they had been using on the lake overnight. James and John turn and watch Simon and Andrew as the come along the shore following Jesus. Again Jesus stops on the water’s edge nearest where the boat is turning gently on its anchor. And again he speaks the same words across the water:

“Follow me and I will make you fish for people”

There is that moment of recognition when James and John see that it Jesus who is calling them. Right away they put down their bundles of twine and the sections of net they had been working on.  Together they slip over the side of the boat and wade to shore. Again there is no discussion, Jesus turns and continues along the beach. Simon and Andrew, now with James and John follow him. Zebedee watches them go, from the boat.

No sooner than Jesus is announcing the Kingdom of God than he is calling people to do the work of the kingdom. Perhaps his choice to walk along this beach on this morning is deliberate. He is creating a living parable, making a symbolic invitation. He approaches real fishermen so that he can say to them:

“Follow me and I will make you fish for people.”

Whoever he calls, whatever they are doing, his call will make a dramatic difference to them. His invitation and his promise delivers to everyone who accepts them a new purpose and a new set of priorities. What went before in some sense must be left behind, because the kingdom is very close, and it must be acted upon now. And the most pressing priority is that good news. The work of the kingdom is to make that good news heard. The work of the kingdom is to invite people into that renewed sense of purpose and those transformed priorities. The world and everyone in it needs to hear so that they can turn around and head in the direction God is calling them, into his peaceful and loving reign. Perhaps Jesus calls fishermen first, when afterwards he will call everyone from tax-gathers to revolutionaries, he calls fishermen first to turn the word of his invitation to them into a metaphor for his whole mission:

“Follow me and I will make you fish for people.”

"Come with me and I will give anyone and everyone a new life and a new work. But for you Simon and Andrew, James and John, in your case the old life was an analogy, almost a preparation for the new one. From here on in you will be casting a net of faith and you will be gathering people into that new life in all its fullness that is the kingdom of God."

Jesus appears. Simon and Andrew and James and John are gone. People want an explanation, not least those who were left behind, Zebedee in his boat and Simon’s mother-in-law in the house. Looking back those who knew them search for some explanation. Why would these young men leave what they had, their responsibilities and their commitments, to follow Jesus just like that. The people who knew them want some reasonable or rational explanation for what they did. Except no such validation of an act of faith can exist. Either Jesus is who he appears to be, or he is not. Either he is the Messiah, a thought which even so soon after his appearing is already being whispered, either he is the Messiah, or he is not. Either God’s rule is so close in him that it is actually present, or it is not. Either you believe what he says, or you do not. Either you do as he asks, or you do not. Either you go after him when he calls, or you stay in the water, or you stay in the boat and do not. There is no external validation for the life which Jesus calls people into. Try as anyone might, no one can find a reasonable or rational explanation for what Simon and Andrew, James and John are doing. Not psychology, if anyone could think of that word, not economics, not politics, there is no reason for them to follow, beyond Jesus himself. Their actions are a decisive act of faith. The life which Jesus leads people into, the mission which he gives, can make no sense unless Jesus is exactly who he appears to be.

Much much later Simon, who by then is called Peter, Simon questions what he has done. In the dark, surrounded by hostile strangers, pressed in by the walls of a courtyard, beside a fire which doesn’t warm him, far away from the open air with just his brother and the cold water of that first moment of calling, Peter has a crisis of faith. He, for two nights, can’t find an explanation, a validation for what he has been doing. Jesus like John before him has been arrested. And, even more quickly than John, he is put to death. Jesus dies not because of the weakness of a so-called king who made a rash offer to a girl  who was controlled by her spiteful mother. Jesus dies to show that the emperor reigns not God. Except Jesus doesn’t stay dead. Simon Peter has enough faith left to go to a tomb and find it empty. He sits again on the beach where it all started, and the call he first heard there is renewed. The kingdom is very near in Jesus, and for Peter his life has to be lived in that knowledge. Peter’s life must consist of “feeding sheep” and “fishing for people.” There is no explanation for that beyond: Christ himself, and that he is alive! And even that demands and act of faith.

Amen.

Follow Me and Fish for People by Christopher Wood-Archer is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 

 

A Sermon for the Second Sunday after Epiphany (17/01/21): Christian Freedom, Christian Ethicss

Christian Freedom, Christian Ethics

1 Corinthians 6:12-20

Paul says:

"All things are lawful to me."

Paul summarises the effect of his theology of grace in a single phrase. This is the outcome of God's grace. What God has done in Jesus Christ has fundamentally changed the way things are. By sending Jesus God has transformed the relationship between the human race and God. In the death of Jesus God has demonstrated his love towards all people. Access to this love, to this relationship, to this new reality is gained simply by placing your trust in what God has already done. This is what theologically we call "salvation by grace through faith." It is Paul's great insight into what has happened in Jesus. But the effect of this is as Paul has put it here:

"All things are lawful to me."

Or to put it another way: The law is abolished. Or rather, the law has been completely fulfilled in Jesus and therefore rendered redundant. For Paul God in Jesus deals with the human condition. On the one hand the cross answers the human capacity for and tendency towards destructive and self-destructive behaviour. God sets us free from our captivity to the negative ways which we can live and relate to one another. On the other hand, Paul goes further he sees that the cross also sets us free from captivity to other human attempts to deal with that problem, even the one which his people have regarded as divinely sanctioned, that is the law. Paul has grasped that the law does not answer the problem of the human condition. It does not and cannot set human beings free from themselves, or free for God. But God has answered this in Jesus. God set us free, so that Paul or anyone else who puts their trust in Jesus can say: "All things are lawful to me."

This is Paul's astonishing claim. This is what Paul says is the Gospel. But almost equally astonishingly to suggest that this is what the Gospel is causes a good deal of offence and creates a great deal of opposition.  Hearing Paul's announcement of the good news: "All things are lawful to me and to anyone else who puts their trust in Jesus" creates a negative reaction. What about. . . ? What about morality? If everything is lawful, what is to stop anyone from doing anything? Surely that is the road to chaos? Doesn't that lead to the collapse of civilisation? This reaction is echoed in the contemporary anxiety about a slide into moral relativism as the power of traditional social morals over society has declined. If there is noting to restrain individuals what will happen to society. To claim that all things are lawful is to prompt moral panic. The law which Paul is talking about was of course just one of the greatest codes of traditional values that ever existed. And Paul has declared that abolished. The slide into moral relativism, "anything goes," it seems begins with Paul.

This theology of grace does appear to create a problem around morality and ethics. The negative reaction in part by a minority response to Paul's theology both among the first Christians and ever since. There have always been some who have heard Paul's words and taken them as an excuse to do exactly as they have pleased. It has happened rarely, but often enough for the Church to recognise it and it as a heresy and give it a name: antinomianism. That is literally, the ideology of being against the law. From time to time a very small number of Christians have decided that if the law is abolished the best way for them to demonstrate their trust in the God, is to show they are not trying to earn God's favour. And the best way to do this is by actually disobeying the requirements of the law. You see the twisted logic that is at work there. But this has never by the biggest reason for the reaction against Paul's theology of grace. More generally this interpretation of the gospel has been rejected because people can't see how things hold together without something or someone in control. Freedom proves to be a terrifying prospect, for individuals and for those concerned for society as a whole. Without rules how does religion or society even hold together. Without the controlling influence of traditional values doesn't everything just disintegrate. The Church itself has in effect often said: "Paul we hear what you are saying, but we find the law, traditional values, moralism so much more reliable." The church itself has often feared the consequences of this theology of grace. For time to time parts of the church has had to rediscover this theology of grace, with Martin Luther or with John Wesley. And they were opposed for it in the their own day just as Paul had been. But just as often the church has fallen quickly back into moralism. Methodism begins with the recovery and reassertion of this message of God's gracious act and its transforming power. But it didn't take very long for Methodism to fall back into a rather narrow and censorious form of moralism. It has always been this way with the Good News that God sets us free.

But Paul himself defends his theology from those who take him to mean "anything goes." He does so both against those who take this as good thing, and use it as an excuse for doing whatever they like. But also he does it to those who hear it negatively, and who condemn him for rejecting morality. Paul has to do this again and again. To the Church in Rome he writes:

"What then are we to say? Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound?

He immediately goes on to answer his own rhetorical question:

"By no means! How can we who died to sin go on living in it." (Romans 6:1-2)

To his friends in Galatia he writes:

"For you were called to freedom brothers and sisters, only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self indulgence." (Galatians 5:13)

And to his his favourite, but also his most troubled Church, he writes:

"All things are lawful to me"

Which is his one phrase summary and assertion of his theology of grace and of Christian liberty, but he continues:

"But not all things are beneficial."

Paul does not abandon morality or ethics. Anyone who has read very much of what Paul has written knows that he is deeply concerned with how Christians should live, how they should behave. He is committed to a disciplined moral life. But he gives a new theological basis for a moral life.

Paul continues:

"All things are lawful to me, but I will not be dominated by anything."

Paul is clear, God has set us free. But he is also clear that most of all we are in danger from ourselves and from the weakness of the flesh as he would have put it. Having been set free from the constraints of the law and from traditional social values, the real risk is that we become captive once more. And the greatest risk of that comes from our own desires. Being embodied as humans gives us natural desires. The ones which catch Paul's attention here are the desires for food and for sex. But equally being human leaves us wanting security, and comfort or pleasure, it often leaves wanting prestige and wealth and power too. These things make us a danger to ourselves and to one another. It is easy for our desires to take control of us and drive us to pattern of behaviour that are not as, he says, "beneficial." This is exactly what the law and traditional social values seek to protect us from. But Paul grasps how and why this has failed. And how and why God's action in Jesus and a theology grace are necessary. For one thing the law simply doesn't work, it simply doesn't provide the means for humans to escape themselves to be reunited with God. But more to the point it leaves human beings captive to another human appetite, the desire for control. This is what grace and Christian freedom replace.

Paul often makes a contrast. He contrasts life in the flesh with life in the Spirit. He doesn't make that contrast directly here, but it is implicit in what he is saying. The basis of Christian freedom, and the basis of Christian behaviour, Christian ethics, is the presence of the Spirit. As he does say here:

"Anyone united with the Lord becomes one spirit with him."

For Paul the basis of all Christian life, the fundamental motivation behind how Christians behave is the living presence of God within them. Christians live and act in the knowledge that having placed their trust in Jesus, God is really present in their lives. A Christians becomes so filled with the love and grace of God, that whilst they are completely free, that freedom becomes an opportunity only to reflect God's goodness. Life lived in the Spirit is one which is free to be beneficial to itself and everything that surrounds it.

My Grandmother, late in her life, and she was almost 91 when she died, late in her life she reflected on her life in the Church. She said that she had been listening to sermons for more than 80 years, and that she could remember almost none of them in particular. Except for one. As a young woman my Gran had smoked quite heavily, as fashionable young women in the late 1920s often did. She said she heard a sermon on this passage from Paul's letter to the Corinthians. As his text the preacher took the line:

"Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you."

That is the line in which Paul points to the basis of Christian moral behaviour. There is no law in Christian teaching against smoking, indeed the Bible knows nothing at all about smoking. But there is no law in Christian teaching against anything else either. Only the recognition of what God has done in Jesus, of God's real presence dwelling in our lives, and of the power of that to transform us. Hearing that line from Paul's letter to the Corinthians my Grandmother quit smoking on the spot!

We often misread Paul. He does giving a lot of instructions about what he thinks Christian living should look like. We read him as if he is laying down a new law that Christians should be subject to. If that were the case his greatest theological insight would be contradicted and meaningless. God in Jesus Christ set us free! But not free to fall into some other form of captivity. And he means either captivity to our own desires and wilfulness, or captivity to the ways in which humans have sought to restrain and regulate ourselves, by the law or by traditional values. What Paul is fact does is merely offer a series of exemplifications of how his theology might play out life in differing circumstances. For Paul God sets us free to allow God to live with and within us, and to allow grace to transform us. That is what he means when he says:

"All things are lawful to me, but not all things are beneficial."

Amen.

Christian Freedom, Christian Ethics by Christopher Wood-Archer is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 

 

A Sermon for the First Sunday after Epiphany (10/01/21): The Beginning of the Good News

The Beginning of the Good News

Mark 1: 4-11

John the Baptist appears in the wilderness. Something new is happening. Out of nowhere, in the middle of nowhere, John appears. His appearing has no context. There is no backstory. There is no build up. John does not fit into anything that is already happening. He is not the effect of some direct cause that anyone could see. Suddenly John is just there. And what is more, pretty soon everyone knows it. John is one of those people who everyone has heard about, but no one can quite remember when or how they heard. There was a time when John wasn’t there, but now he is. And no one is quite sure when of how it happened. He just appears.

That is not to say however that John is without precedent. John’s appearance, how he looks, tells everyone everything they might need to know about who he is and why he has come:

John was clothed in camels hair with a leather belt around his waist.

Seeing John everyone recalled a story; How long ago one of their kings had had an accident in his palace. He had fallen out of a window and lay injured on his bed convince he was going to die. How he had sent his servants to a nearby town, Ekron, to inquire of a god there if he was going to die. And how on their way they they were intercepted by:

A hairy man with a leather belt around his waist.

Who questioned why the king had sent them to inquire of the god in Ekron, as if there were no God in Israel. Who also informed them that their king’s injuries were indeed fatal. Everyone knew when they saw John that this is Elijah. John is the prophet, the prophet who has come to remind them that there is a God in Israel. Indeed he is the one who announces that the only true and living God is the God in Israel, and that they have an urgent need to respond.

His location too is a reminder. He appeared in the wilderness and he ate locusts and wild honey. In the memory of the people the wilderness was where they had come from. Their name for themselves, “Hebrews,” is a constant reminder of this and of what they had left behind. It means “crossed over.” They, or at least their ancestors, were the ones who crossed over the Jordan and entered the land which God had promised them. Here was Elijah calling them back to what they once were, to a time when their lives were more austere, to a lifestyle that was like surviving on only what a desert could provide. But calling them back to a time when God was very close to them, when God had intervened on their behalf, when God had guided and sustained them through many years of wandering and had delivered them into the land he had promised. John was calling them back from what they had become.

None of them could remember when it was that they had accepted the life they were now living. None of them could remember when it was that they had lost sight of God. None of them knew why it was they put up with the disillusionment and disappointment of this life, held down and held back by forces which they simply accepted as normal. But John’s appearance and his voice woke them up to what was missing in their lives and what needed to be done.

And the people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him.

John calls them all to be ready. He calls to turn their lives around in so dramatic a way that it was like a completely fresh start, as if they were beginning again. He offers them the opportunity to mark this transformation with the sign that is offered to outsiders who wish to join God’s people, with baptism. John gives them the chance to start again as God’s people. All that has separated them from God can be set aside. It can be, because God is about to do something completely new!

John is not the main event! He has stirred the whole nation, and yet he is only a prelude. Just as wandering in the wilderness had only been preparation for life in the promised land, just as every prophet had only every pointed beyond and ahead of themselves, so too is John the Baptiser’s ministry. He appears in the wilderness only to make the people ready and to announce the one who is coming. This, everyone who saw John the Baptiser knows, is the role of Elijah, to announce the one who comes in the name of the Lord, to establish God’s kingdom. John is very clear about the contrast between himself and the one whom he precedes. As great as the social movement he has created is, as remarkable the awakening he has provoked is, as dramatic as the response he has prompted is, these are as noting compared to what is about to happen. John makes the contrast in the starkest terms he can find:

The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me. I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals.

For John the contrast is between the greatest and the least, between the master and his lowliest servants. The crowd standing beside the River Jordan, look down at their feet and wonder. How can this be? Who could be greater? Here is someone who prompted and entire nation to take off their own sandals and join him in the water of a river to wash away their past. Now he is telling them that he couldn’t kneel down in the dirt to take the sandals of the one who follows him. They have all submitted themselves to be immersed in the water of the river by him, but he tells them that the washing they will receive from the one who is coming will be in the Holy Spirit. What the one who comes will do will be like being blown away or like being consumed by fire!

Jesus receives the biggest build up in history. And then he walks into the scene virtually unnoticed:

In those days Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptised by John in the Jordan.

Had any in the crowd ever wondered; what it would be like if God turned up in person? What would it be like to actually encounter God? What would it be like to actually encounter God? Those who perhaps did have such thoughts probably quickly thrust them to one side. Meeting God must be a terrifying experience. How could anyone bear to be in such a presence. The sheer holiness of God would render even the best in us nothing. The glory of God would annihilate us. Even baptism, repentance, forgiveness of sins and a transformation of life don’t seem sufficient to make that a comfortable prospect. The coming of the Lord has always been pictured as a terrifying experience. The scene has always been imagined as the power of God meeting the power of the world and wiping it out. The day of the Lord has always been expected to be great and terrible.

Jesus slips into the crowd and joins them at the water’s edge. He unlaces his sandals and steps out of them and down into the Jordan. He approaches John, who places a hand behind Jesus’ head and the other on his chest. John sees just another one who has come to claim a place close to God, another one who responds to the urgent call that he has been making. John lowers him into the water, as one who identifies with the human condition and its separation from God. John lowers Jesus backwards under the water for a moment and then raises him up again.

The Day of the Lord as it turns out is not as anyone had expected. The power of God does not act the way everyone had assumed. When God comes in person to establish God’s reign he does not do it with the violence that had been anticipated. When God acts to save, God does so without destroying anyone who might be saved. God makes himself known without imposing himself by force on anyone. God becomes like us, and slips into the crowd, slips into human existence and human history, and from there begins the work of salvation.

Centuries before another prophet Isaiah had cried out in near despair:

O that you would tear open the heavens and come down. . .

Jesus emerges from the waters of baptism and sees just that:

He saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him

John was not mistaken. The one who comes after him is immeasurably greater than he is. This is the beginning of the Good News. The prelude has finished. This is the main event. And its central character is this Jesus from Nazareth. The power of God is brought to bear on human life and human history in this humble fashion, as one who joins a crowd unnoticed, as one who identifies with the human separation from God, as one who joins us in our longing to know God. But he does so also as the unique revealer of God to us. The wondering about what God is like, or what it would be like to encounter God can cease. Here is the one in whom God is known, the one who restores us to God. Here is the one whose resemblance to us, and whose identification with us does not remove the other reality that is present in him. As the voice of God declares:

You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.

With that the preparation is complete. The Good News has begun.

Amen.

The Beginning of the Good News by Christopher Wood-Archer is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 

A Sermon for the Second Sunday of Christmas and Epiphany (03/01/21): Unexpected Homage, Unexpected Opposition

 Unexpected Homage, Unexpected Opposition

Matthew 2:1-12

The birth of Jesus is announced in Jerusalem by the arrival of a group of foreign magicians! We call them wise men, and in comparison to most of their contemporaries they seemed wise. They studied the stars, and other natural phenomena, in order to discern what was happening or about to happen. We shouldn’t forget that the Bible actually calls these men “Magi.” Nor should we overlook the connection between the words “magi” and “magic.” On the hills around Bethlehem Jesus’ birth was announced to shepherds by angels. In Jerusalem, the same birth is announced to the great and  powerful by a group of strange foreigners!

At the very least this indicates that the change that God is bringing about in Jesus is observable from the outside. Something in the nature of things has changed with the birth of this child. A change that could be observed by those who looked closely at these things. As they themselves put it: 

Where is the child born to be King of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising.

Something fundamental has changed about creation. The sky itself has been altered. And these strange men have seen it. What God is doing is visible on the outside. Which rather begs the question: Why was it not spotted on the inside?

The whole history of this people,  the people of Israel,  their whole history has been waiting for this moment. This is the time they have been living for when God would intervene directly to save his people. There is a whole class of people in this society dedicated to looking for this :

The chief priests and the scribes of the people.

In some very really sense this is what they are for. They exist to get the people as a whole ready for this moment. But it would seem they were as surprised as everyone else in Jerusalem when the magi showed up.

Or were they? I do wonder about the chief priests and the scribes, and about their attitude and reaction to Jesus. After the magi arrived and when Herod asked them:

Where was the messiah to be born?

I wonder if they didn’t already know the question they were about to be asked. If they too hadn’t already discerned that some fundamental change in the universe had taken place, and that this change meant that the messiah had arrived. But then they, like the rest of Jerusalem, were afraid of how Herod would react when he got the news. So they kept the information to themselves. But their plan to keep quiet and to keep safe failed when the wise men rode into town. I wonder if the chief priests and scribes of the people know all along that Jesus is the Messiah. That from the very moment of his birth to the events of that last week in Jerusalem that climaxes with Jesus’ execution, they know but are afraid of what it means. Like so many religious people, when the decisive moment comes, the chief priests and the scribes suffer a failure of nerve and a loss of faith. Faced with their world being turned upside down with what God is about to do; afraid of the consequences and the reaction of the power of this world, which is always represented by people as cruel as Herod; and looking at the power empire, not really trusting that God can overcome such power, they do what religious people often do: They side with the status quo. They try to keep things the same rather than let God do what God wants to do

The wise men present Herod with news he doesn’t want to hear. They announce to him the birth of a rival:

When King Herod heard this he was afraid.

Even though he wields great power Herod is afraid. He is constantly anxious about threats to his rule. From the top there is only one direction to go, and that is down. The more you have, the more you have to lose. And the more anxious you become about the possibility of that loss. Herod suffers from continuous anxiety about his position. So much so that he has already murdered half his family to be sure to eliminate any threat to his rule. Perhaps more clearly all the other people in this story, and still better than most people now, Herod understands who Jesus is. He knows that his rule, and the rule of every king and every government is called into question by the presence of Jesus. For most people, that is for everyone who doesn’t presume to rule in the world, for most people Jesus’ arrival can be greeted as good news. When the angels show up on your hillside, or when the wise men ride into town this is a cause for celebration. But for rulers and others who possess power and wealth Jesus’ arrival is bad news. Their game is up. The kingdom which Jesus establishes replaces and supersedes all the other kingdoms of the world. Jesus’ kingdom demands a loyalty and obedience that rulers like Herod and all the kingdoms of the world demand exclusively for themselves. Jesus’ rule is a better rule than any that those kingdoms can offer. Jesus genuinely saves his people.

So Herod has a problem with Jesus. Herod knows how he should respond to the arrival of the Messiah. He knows he should go and pay homage. He knows he should give thanks and praise God for what God is doing. But we know that he is lying when he says that that is what he wants to do. Herod is concerned only for himself, and for his on-going position of wealth and power. So he can only reject, and deny, and ultimately attempt to destroy Jesus.

At first the wise men don’t realise this. They are wise. But they have rather limited knowledge. They know enough to celebrate the birth of the King of the Jews. And they do so by bringing appropriately symbolic gifts: Gold, the metal always associated with the wealth and power of rulers; Frankincense, whose smoke as it burns represents the presence of the divine and whose fragrance symbolises the sweetness of prayer; And myrrh, a spice used in embalming symbolising the fate of every human who was ever born, death. This much the wise men know, that the child who has been born brings together kingly rule, divine presence and human frailty all in one place. But as outsiders their knowledge is limited. Observing the phenomena of nature, like the rising and setting of stars, can only take you so far towards an understanding of God. There is no way to go from what we can see, or observe or reason, to a true knowledge of God. And our understanding of the world always distorts our understanding of God. Which is all too evident from the big mistake the wise men make. They go to Jerusalem. They make the assumption that more or less everyone would make about a new born king. They assume they would find him in a palace. It is the same mistake that is so often made about God. An assumption that is so often made is that God’s power must look like human worldly power. So looking at the world the one place we might never look for God is as a child in an out of the way town like Bethlehem. Which is why God, the true and living God, can only be found with the assistance of scripture.

When the chief priests and scribes are called in to redirect the wise men that is where they look. Their answer comes from prophecy:

In Bethlehem of Judea, for so it is written: “And you Bethlehem in the land of Judah  are by no means the least of the rulers of Judah, for from you shall come a ruler who is to shepherd my people Israel.”

Who God is, and what God does can only be fully known by paying attention to the whole story. Of which these scenes in Jerusalem and Bethlehem are themselves part.

In the end the wise men are warned off going back to Herod. In his own land the king’s word should be law. Herod has been quite explicit in his instructions, in his commandment even, to the wise men:

Go and search diligently for the child and when you have found him bring me word

The wise men disobey the king! Faithfulness often requires resistance to the status quo. A resistance which the chief priests and the scribes have refused to offer. The wise men going home by another road is an act of civil disobedience. The kind of act which faith frequently requires. Because the power of this world knows and fears Jesus and seeks to deny and destroy him. The chief priests and the scribes' failure of nerve and loss of faith meant that they could not and would not act for God against Herod. Discipleship requires this kind of resistance which the wise men show first.

Amen 

Unexpected Homage, Unexpected Opposition by Christopher Wood-Archer is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0