The meaning of Christmas

 

Christmas Eve and Christmas day readings

Isaiah 52: 7-10. A messenger appears on the horizon bringing good news to a broken and besieged city that salvation is on its way. When the watchman realise it is good news they spread the message amongst the people of Jerusalem and eventually they all sing for joy. Emmanuel “God is with us” is the message of Christmas, and our role is to react with joy and spread that message until the whole world is singing with joy

Hebrews 1: 1-4. Whilst the humanity of Jesus is the subject of chapter two of Hebrews the letter starts by stressing the divinity of Jesus much like John’s prologue which follows. The wisdom of God is manifested in Jesus “the reflection of God’s glory, the exact imprint of God’s very being”. This manifestation of God’s presence and glory in the world is what we call “the Christ”

John 1: 1-14. The Christ was not a bolt from the blue but was “with God in the beginning” a revelation of eternal truth. The universal Christ made human in Jesus, is the presence of God himself who stands at both the beginning and the end of all history – but was made tangible at a certain point in historical time – making clear and apparent the will and purposes of God to human beings. God is Love and Grace and Truth and He wills the healing and salvation of all creation. Quite a message! And we are charged with living out and spreading that message.

 

What does believing that God’s son walked this earth in human form mean for the way we see and the world, perceive human life, and our place within it.

Our first reading talks about a messenger bringing good news to a city under siege – a message of freedom – of salvation - and that message is heard first by the watchmen on the city walls and then spreads like wildfire amongst the general population, evoking a reaction of pure joy as their dire situation is relieved and they break into song.

For Christians, Jesus Christ is that message that appears to a captive and broken world – and the people who first see and believe it are the watchmen who then pass that message on to a world that badly needs a message of hope. Our watchmen were the apostles and saints, who dedicated their lives to making sure that everybody knew and understood that our captivity is over.

Human beings are held captive by the spectre of death and pointlessness, by the fear that everything they are and everything they do is worthless and without meaning. Held captive by the thought that their lives and the lives of everyone they love are merely illusions – that love isn’t real – that death is the end of an existence that never had any meaning in the first place. They can feel disconnected, alone in a cold heartless universe that doesn’t care about them.

The message of Jesus is – think again!

The world and everything in it is good and we human beings are very good. God exists and loved the world from the very beginning and will love it to the very end.

Love is real – your love has substance because the very nature and being of God is Love.

You are intimately connected to all things through God who is in all things. When you believe the message, your self-perception changes from being a person alone and disconnected from people and the world around us to being a child of God – having a connection with other people and all things and all based on you having an intimate connection to God.

That is the true meaning of the word religion. It means to re-bind to all things -to re-connect - and all things are held together by the spirit of God.

The message is that your death is not the end so everything you do now is not pointless but in fact has eternal importance and meaning so be more mindful about what you say and do.

The message says that even when you fall short, when you pick yourself up and dust yourself down and admit where you’ve failed the depths of God’s forgiveness in inexhaustible.

This message of salvation, a word which means healing and wholeness of your mind, body and spirit, and re-connecting you to the source of all life and being is true good news for all creation. And you are an integral part of that creation.

In the end, the Christian faith is a choice.

Do you choose to believe that the world is just an accident, nothing more than the physical matter you see around us – essentially lifeless and without morality, purpose or ultimate meaning. That you are alone and don’t matter.

Or do you choose to believe the message of Jesus – that the world is good and innately connected by the Spirit of God. That Love is real, morality has substance, that you are intimately connected to all things and that you matter.

The choice is yours and it is the same choice God has always offered as it says in the Hebrew scriptures. (Deuteronomy 30:19)

 ¹⁹ I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live, 

 Choose Life. Choose Christ.

 Amen

 

The Blessed virgin Mary

 

Sunday 20^th December - Advent 4

 

This Sunday the fourth candle on the Advent wreath is lit commemorating Mary, the mother of Jesus as the most obvious antecedent in the Jesus event we call the incarnation. 

2 Samuel 7: 1-11, 16. The important question that this piece raises is “Does God need a house or any special building to reside?” This is of enormous significance for Christians as we believe that the spirit resides in believer’s hearts wherever they may be – that we human beings in fact are the Temple of the Holy Spirit of God (1 Corinthians 3: 16-17). While God’s Spirit lives in us in a very special way, He is also present in all things and believing that God can be located to one place is when you think about it diminishes and attempts to domesticate to universal and infinite God that knows no boundaries.

Romans 16: 25-27. The mystery of God, the eternal word, whose Spirit manifests the Kingdom of God whenever anyone follows the way of Love was always true but only became fully apparent in the life, works, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. God didn’t start loving the world 2020 years ago in Jesus Christ– it was always true

Luke 1: 26-38. The mystery – the eternal Christ – was incarnated (revealed) to a largely unsuspecting world in the body of a woman, Mary. Mary’s “Yes” was absolutely pivotal to the revelation happening at all. This is why Mary is so revered in both Eastern and Western Christianity and attracts so many honorific titles. Symbolically she is the “New Eve” undoing the disobedience of the first Eve. Theologically she is forever honoured with the title Theotokos which means the God-bearer.  

 

One of the unfortunate consequences of the reformation in the Western world is the unseemly culture war over the position of Mary the mother of Jesus in our respective denominations.

 

Thankfully I was privileged to serve for three years in an Eastern Orthodox country where of course there has never been a reformation and I gained a more rounded and deeper appreciation of Mary’s place within truly catholic (in the sense of universal) Christianity, untouched by the fights and struggles in the West between Roman Catholics and Protestants, for which I am eternally grateful.

 

The entire Christian understanding of the relationship between God and the world and how God can be accessed by human beings depends on the whole notion of understanding what “Emmanuel” really means. God is with us – He is not separate from us and can never be separate from any of us or anything.

 

This has always been true and will always remain true but that core mystery was only fully revealed to us through the birth of Jesus Christ and that happened through Mary.

 

Atonement – being at one with God – is something that has to be attained through believing in an “atoning sacrifice” in much Western theology but in classic catholic/Orthodox understanding of the world – we have always been at one with God and the sign and seal of this innate oneness is the incarnation.

 

We are also a religion of original blessing. Prior to any notion of original sin, God created (as it is written in Genesis) all that is and saw that it was good. Human beings as I’m sure you remember were created as VERY good.

 

God always loved the world from the very beginning. He didn’t suddenly start taking an interest 2020 years ago.

 

Mary’s role then is pivotal. She has always been lauded as a sign and symbol of the Christian life, in the following way;

 

Mary said yes to the Spirit which grew inside her until she gave birth to the physical Jesus in Bethlehem. That is the Christian way also. We also have to say yes to God and his spirit will grow within us until we give birth spiritually to Christ in the world. Mary is an icon of the way of Christ.

One of my most precious books is by Rowan Williams called “Ponder these things” a series of reflections on Orthodox icons of Mary and Jesus – Madonna and child.

 

I can’t hold a candle to Rowan’s intellect or insight – he learned Russian so he could read his favourite Orthodox theologians in their original language for example- but I can ride on his coat tails.

 

His insight is that icons of Mary holding the infant Jesus nuzzling up to his mother are profound revelation into the nature of the relationship between humans and the Divine.

 

The infant Jesus is dependent, vulnerable, adoring his Mother. Mary, looking out imploringly to the viewer is saying to us “This is your God”.

 

We have the capacity to nurture God in our lives or neglect and ignore Him until he just shrivels up and dies.

 

My most recent insight was on the use of the word “virgin” to describe Mary. One that breaks through centuries of wrangling and disputes over the meaning or mistranslation of words to understand the virginity of Mary as less to do with biology and more to do with a fundamental attitude towards God and life was a real breakthrough for me.

 

Humility, a chasteness of heart and mind that simply receives with gratitude from God despite not knowing where the journey will end is a state of being that precedes her “yes” to God.

 

“Let it be to me according to your word”.

 

And as I wrote earlier in the week, once we can say that along with Mary, we are truly ready for Christmas.

 

John the Baptist - Advent 3

 

Sunday 13^th December – Advent three.

The third candle is lit honouring the role of John the Baptist in the Christian revelation.

Isaiah 61: 1-4, 8-11. This piece of Isaiah is quoted by Jesus in the synagogue (Luke 4:18-19) ensuring that it is one of the best-known pieces of old testament prophesy, which he uses to refer to himself. In its original context it is addressed to Jewish returnees from exile in Jerusalem between about 540 and 520 BC. and is the prophet convincing his listeners of his credentials as a true prophet of God. The people were free but impoverished but the soaring rhetoric powerfully expresses hope for the future.

1 Thessalonians 5: 16-24. A piece demanding that our whole lives be oriented towards God – a life nor compartmentalised into religious and secular bits but where every decision and every moment have a relationship to the reality of God. But the “good” and the “evil” are not quantified, leaving the discernment of God’s will to be tried and tested (not automatically accepted) within the community. The church is called to be a community of moral discernment to test the various voices that claim to speak God’s will, to see if there is divine guidance for the confusing decisions of life.

John 1: 6-8, 19-28. The one “who you do not know” is coming after me, challenges the church to acknowledge its presumptuous assumption that we do know who Jesus is. Portrayed as an innocuous infant, dispenser of salvation, revolutionary leader, spiritual guru or a dozen other ways, all of them grasps just one facet of Jesus’ identity. They are all subsumed within the understanding of Jesus as the incarnation of the eternal word – the Christ.

According to the Bible, John the Baptist always acknowledged that he was secondary to Jesus and was merely pointing the way to the true Messiah.

That may be true for the man himelf but not for many of his followers and many people followed this charismatic preacher in opposition to Jesus.

Even today in the Middle East, the descendants of a people that reveres John the Baptist as the final prophet – a people called the Mandeans – number some tens of thousands – though now dispersed as a result of the Iraq war.

The fact that the New Testament acknowledges the fact that Jesus let himself be baptised by John was a huge problem for the early church because it suggests subordination to John and the fact that when John ended up in prison his previous certainty failed him and he managed to get a message to Jesus asking him directly whether he really was the true messiah or should they wait for someone else?

In the words of Jesus himself, He identifies John as the prophet Elijah (Matthew 11:14) who the Jews were expecting to precede the coming of the Messiah and He also says that he needed to be baptised by John to fulfil all righteousness (Matt. 3:13) which is indicative of his complete humility. As Paul writes in Philippians “He didn’t cling to equality with God. He emptied himself, taking the form of a slave.”

When Jesus replied to John’s question about his authenticity he responds by simply asking to be judged on what anyone can see for themselves, and therefore challenging John to make a decision.

“The blind see, the lame walk, lepers are healed, the dead are raised and good news is preached to the poor”. What do you say?

Word and deed completely in accord. Here is someone who demonstrates the difference that would be made if the presence and purposes of God were fully manifested in a human being. A healing, life-filled and life-giving existence.

When faced with such a person as Jesus “the Christ” it is not surprising that we shrink because we know how imperfect and compromised we all are, and the standards of Jesus seem so far beyond our grasp  which is why the lives of the saints became so important to the church.

Because they weren’t perfect beings at all. Think about St. Peter after whom this church is named. Flawed, imperfect, misunderstanding and who actually denied even knowing Jesus in his hour of need.

We can readily identify with a man like that who despite all of those human faults and failings – his underlying faith and insight led to him being described as the Rock by Jesus.

Perhaps I should also say that this is probably why Mary, the mother of Jesus is so popular. When faced with an Angel of God telling her something extraordinary she just accepted it in complete obedience and humility. “Let it be to me according to your word.

That is an example of a response that is a model for all human responses to the prompting of the Spirit of God.

A response that Paul writes about today as well. A whole community that collectively says “Let it be to me according to your word” is the church.

And we follow Paul’s injunction to Rejoice always, to pray without ceasing, to give thanks in all circumstances, not to quench the Spirit but discern what the Spirit might be saying to us.

We are of course an imperfect and flawed community. We are bound to be because we are made up of human beings, but I have faith that just like Peter, or Mary or any of the saints or apostles, if we just keep finding it within ourselves to say Yes to the Spirit of God, to say “let it be to me according to your word” we will be led inexorably to a far better place.

Amen

The Peace of God

 

Sunday 6^th December – Advent 2

Our first live services for a month and I will be presiding at Holy Communion at 9.30am at All saints East Budleigh, John Archibald will be presiding at Morning prayer at St. Michael’s Otterton, and Rev. Karen Young will be presiding at the 8am and 10am at St. Peter’s Budleigh Salterton.

Isaiah 40: 1-11. This piece of Isaiah was written while the Jews were in exile in Babylon (587 – 540 BC) so is, as it says a note of “comfort” which is much stronger in Hebrew than in English and conveys a promise of action and hope in the future. The future messianic aspect, that Christians applied to Jesus, was of the promise of a future leader (God himself) “who would feed his flock like a shepherd: he will gather the lambs in his arms” That the imagery from this piece about making straight paths in the desert is used in the opening chapter of Mark’s gospel reading today has ensured it is one of the best known pieces of prophetic writing.

2 Peter 3: 8-15a. Peter addresses the fact that the “return” of Jesus is not happening as expected by combatting the scepticism and moral laxity by maintaining the “Day of the Lord” will happen but not according to our limited perspectives and timeframe. When the end comes it will be sudden, not according to any timetable so we should live lives marked by holiness and godliness and peace and righteousness until that time.  Those qualities characterize the mood of the Advent season 

Mark 1: 1-8. The role of “making straight the way of the Lord” is ascribed to John the Baptist by the Christian church. There is continuity and obvious discontinuity between the Jewish religion and the new “way of Jesus” but here great effort is made to portray John as a wild and woolly Old Testament prophet in the wilderness here. The text is saying that however new and unique Jesus may seem, he was no bolt from the blue – he was foretold and expected and in line with Old Testament prophesy.

 

That the Christian way ushered in a radically new way of being and seeing and understanding the relationship between God and creation is beyond question. So radical is it that we measure the passage of time itself from that point when we estimate the time of birth of the man we came to know as the Christ.

In that way you can say that Jesus marks a complete break with what went before, a kind of discontinuity with Judaism.

What the opening chapter of Mark does is proffer the scenario that however different Jesus might seem, there is also continuity with the Jewish revelation and prophesy.

Mark does this skilfully by drawing on Old Testament prophesy and marking out John the Baptist as the Herald prophesied by Isaiah and deliberately describing John as the quintessential Old Testament prophet – the wild man in the wilderness, breathing fire and judgement dressed in camel’s hair and eating locusts and wild honey.

However radical Jesus’ message might be, Mark wants to make clear that He is understood as being prophesied and therefore of God and the Jewish religion.

Jesus’ life and death and resurrection were momentous things in themselves but as Christians meditated on these events the full import of what became known as the incarnation began to be fully appreciated and understood and this new understanding bore fruit both within the pages of the New Testament and in the further and ongoing revelations through the church Fathers, a process that has never stopped down to the present day.

The revealing of the full meaning and import of Emmanuel – God with us – is never ending. The Spirit of God reveals the mind of God to those receptive to his prompting continually, and what the gospel means for us all has to be continually re-interpreted for each age and context.

A favourite question we were invited to ponder at college was “What does salvation look like to a single mum on benefits living in a flat on the 19^th floor.”

What can our faith give her? What does good news look like in concrete terms? 

Conversely, what does salvation look like to a successful happily married businessman living in a detached house in the home counties surrounded by adoring children.

What can the gospel of Jesus give to that man?

That second scenario I have personal insight on because there was such a wonderful well-dressed handsome man with a beautiful wife and lovely children attached to my first church where I attended in Kent. I can still picture him in a casual white suit on our Sunday school picnic playing with the children. I remember admiring him as having a perfect life.

I also remember that he threw himself under the Eurostar train on Christmas Eve. Wracked by anxiety, he just couldn’t face the future.

In the concrete details of their lives, salvation will perhaps look very differently to the two different people but whether you are poor or well off, all of us share basic human needs.

I am sure we could all reel off a few basic needs, but one of them that is common to all people in all situations is also one that seems to elude us and that is peace. Peace in our hearts, minds and souls. 

Not just peace as in “an absence of conflict” - a peace of mind more akin to the Hebrew concept of Shalom – that speaks of wholeness, contentedness, an inner stillness.

This is the peace of God that transcends all human understanding I speak about during the final blessing. God is here within you and he loves you eternally.

This elusive peace can be glimpsed in moments when we realise that God is in all things, including us, and he loves us no matter what and will forgive us when we turn from what we know to be wrong.

It is easy to say the words but it takes much longer to absorb those words and they become a reality in your life. Even if you don’t feel much peace in your life right now – keep saying and believing those words for they are the words of truth and the truth will set you free.