Jesus the man

1^st Sunday of Christmas

Isaiah 63: 7-9

Hebrews 2: 10- 18

Matthew 2: 13-23

I think it the letter to the Hebrews that provides the meat in the sandwich today.

Isaiah talks about the presence of God that saves us, and Matthew’s gospel narrates one of the early examples of terror and jeopardy that marks the life and history of Jesus but it is the letter to the Hebrews that expressly and definitively stresses the full humanity of Jesus.

Just for a bit of historical context the visit of the Magi it is thought happened about two years after the birth of Jesus. The Holy family were by now living in a house as it says in verse 11 and is also the rationale for Herod’s instruction to kill all boys born in that area who were two or under.

Hebrews is emphatic that Jesus shares to the full, the nature of the human family to which he belongs. We are his brothers and sisters who pray to the same heavenly Father.

He shares fully the experience of suffering. death, fear and temptation.

For the body the mind and the emotions can’t be separated. Jesus was not as some early theologians said simply God walking around in a human body who was impassable – not feeling the trauma of what was happening to him.

Jesus would not only die, he will share the fear of death.

He will not only suffer, he will feel suffering as testing or tempting him.

This is true for all humanity. It is not just the physical fact of death that haunts us, it is the fear of it, as an unknown, that end which casts its shadow back into our lives and mocks it as being ephemeral.

It is not suffering alone that is hard to bear; it is the effect of that suffering on our sense of who we are – we can feel diminished as human beings through it.

Suffering and death are felt as a scandal that prompts people to cry out to God for salvation.

Jesus’ total identification with them offers that salvation.

Because Jesus shares our suffering and death and passes into glory he provides the route for all his brothers and sisters to do exactly the same. Because he shares our death we will also share his resurrection.

Salvation also means that evil itself has been overcome by God, providing an endless spring of hope in the human heart for all who believe.

Hebrews also casts Jesus as our great high priest, again because of his full identification with humanity, as the only sacrifice worthy or necessary to forgive all our sins and present us as righteous before God. A once for all sacrifice for the sins of the whole world.

Jesus is our brother, who blazed a trail for us to follow in life and showed us that humanity has a future life lived in glory after this physical life ends.

So even when horrors like the murder of the innocents in Matthew’s gospel occur due to the propensity to evil that exists amongst all people we know from the example of Jesus that this can never be the final word because good triumphs over evil and light casts out darkness and as St. John says, Love casts out fear..

Ultimately the church is a community of hope. 

John the Baptist

Isaiah 35: 1-10. More rousing prophetic writing from Isaiah, predicting a dramatic in-breaking of God into the world with the result that cleansing, refining, completeness and joy will result. The word that encapsulates that state is salvation or peace. In Hebrew and Arabic cultures, Shalom and Salaam are common greetings while in our culture that is now only really heard in liturgical blessings and in the celebration of “the Peace” on Sundays.

James 5: 7-10. For James, patience seems to be synonymous with suffering, and actually patience can be experienced as a kind of internalised suffering when you think about it. Patience doesn’t come easily to many people and is more often imposed rather than sought. James implores his readers to be strong during the time of waiting, assuring them that their final salvation is nearer than they think and not to lose discipline in the meantime,

Matthew 11: 2-11. From the fiery and confident John we heard about last week we now meet John in prison suddenly wracked with doubts. Is Jesus really the Messiah? The reason for his doubts is that he is hearing what Jesus is doing. John was a fierce denouncer of sin, and so surely the primary task of the Messiah should also be “to take an axe to the root of the trees that do not bear fruit”, but he hears that Jesus is reaching out to the poor and marginalised and restoring health to the afflicted so John is a bit confused. Jesus is not turning out to be the kind of Messiah John was expecting!

John the Baptist is a strange idiosyncratic figure. The Bible hints very strongly that he must have been a very uncomfortable figure to be around. His very appearance, clothed in camel’s hair and eating locusts and wild honey and located in the wilderness breathing fire and brimstone against the sins of the people must have been at once a bit frightening but also as is the way of these things, obviously exerted a strange attraction for his perceived integrity and assurance that he was speaking the word of God.

John drew people out into the wilderness to hear what he had to say because people recognised him as a prophet. And prophets can make us feel uncomfortable.

But today we encounter a different John. He is now in prison because he upset Herod by denouncing his affair with his sister-in-law – another example of his fearlessness and puritanical opposition to sin.

Obviously in his mind, he thought that Jesus as the Messiah should be cut from the same cloth as him, only bigger and better.

But we hear in the opening verses of our gospel reading today that John is receiving reports of a different kind of person, and it is because of this that John is confused and it puts doubts in his mind and some of his disciples are sent to ask Jesus

“Are you the one to come, or should we expect another?”.

What prompts this question?

John hears in prison what Jesus is doing, presumably acts of healing and mercy.

Now to John, a fierce denouncer of the sins of the people, surely Jesus must also be a denouncer of the people and his task should be to carry out the final judgement, cutting down the rotten trees that don’t bear fruit.

What he hears is a man who preaches in the synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom and heals every disease and infirmity.

John is confused because Jesus is not what he was expecting.

But his question gives Jesus the opportunity to reply in referencing two texts from Isaiah (35: 5-6, 29: 18-19) and saying to them. See what I’m doing for the blind, lame deaf and poor.

Yes there is judgement but his primary role is the restoration of the needy and the giving of life to the lifeless.

John has to re-assess his expectations of the nature and will of God.

He and we and all believers are invited to come to a new assessment of God and his purposes, one where judgement is a feature but where the primary concern is to save everyone. Jesus hopes that this new understanding doesn’t upset too many people and says “Blessed are those who take no offence at me”.

Unfortunately, there are many today who think that Jesus’ main concern, like John the Baptist thought, should be the condemnation of sinners, rather than offering a helping hand to the lost.

Then the focus changes to Jesus’ assessment of John. Jesus says that he is a prophet, more than a prophet, preparing the way for him, and yet, one who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than John.

Why? Because when you accept the true nature of God, Jesus and the kingdom, knowledge of the surpassing character of the kingdom is greater than John’s misapprehension of the nature of God.   

This isn’t belittling or disparaging John but is an acknowledgement of the surpassing character of the new revelation of the truth about God.

The sinfulness of mankind is a given, and a cornerstone of Christian doctrine about the truth about humanity, but the hallmark of the kingdom of God is repentance and forgiveness, grace and mercy. God came into the world to save sinners (1 Timothy 1:15).

Prophecy

Isaiah 11: 1-10. Jesse was the father of King David, and this prophesy foretells a perfect future king of the Davidic line which Christians have always naturally attributed to Jesus Christ. Matthew’s gospel opens with a grand genealogy charting the line of succession from Abraham, through Jesse, through David, ending with Jesus in chapter one of his gospel via the male line. Although Joseph it is claimed elsewhere by Matthew and Luke, was not the biological father Jesus was nevertheless “of the house of David”.

Romans 15: 4-13. This is affirmed by St. Paul quoting verses in Isaiah 11, and also Deuteronomy, 2 Samuel and psalm 117, with special reference to Jesus’ universal significance (to the gentiles). Paul’s prayer is that we be a people defined by hope, by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Matthew 3: 1-12. Matthew also quotes a prophesy of Isaiah and applies it to John the Baptist. John the Baptist was a “link” between the prophets of old and the coming of Jesus. He was a wild and woolly character and his ministry occurred in the wilderness. This was all meant to evoke the prophets of old and the message was clear. This Jesus may be something “new”, but he is foretold and in the direct path of all that went before in Israel’s history.

A prophecy is either a prediction of the future or a divinely inspired utterance speaking into any given situation and it has a long and important history in the Judeo-Christian tradition.

Isaiah is probably the best loved and most deeply mined oracle and in our readings today you have Paul quoting multiple prophetic sources to support his argument and in the gospel reading you have John the Baptist who is presented as an answer to prophesy and one who makes prophetic utterances of his own.

Prophets have had a problematic history of course for no-one can say for sure if a prophesy is true or not. The only sure way of knowing is if the prophecy comes true and when the time gap can be hundreds of years or even thousands of years in the case of end-time prophesy that is not so simple. Tales of false prophets, just saying things they thought people wanted to hear are legion in the old testament as well as people being paid to say certain things.

This is why authority and trust are so important. If we are to trust the prophesies of the Old and New Testaments, we need to trust that the people who have canonised these texts have the authority to do so.

The only thing that all Christians have in common is the Bible. But the reason the Bible consists of the books it does – we trust the authority of the undivided catholic church – which decreed that these books would form our New Testaments and no other readings. They had lots of choice – there were/are hundreds of other documents that could have been chosen.

The Bible didn’t fall from heaven – it is a product of the church and all the prophesies within it carry the seal of approval of the whole undivided church.

That could never happen again, because the universal church is so divided, we long since have been unable to speak with a united voice.

The prophesy that is most important to us during Advent is that all the promises fulfilled in the birth of Jesus will be further fulfilled at the end of time in the final consummation, the final reckoning, the final judgement.

We are promised that one day every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord (Philippians 2: 10-11).

The divine utterance of Paul inspired by Isaiah, canonised by the authority of the universal undivided church, through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit of God is the substance of the hope that inspires every Christian.

This prophecy of a blessed, redeemed, glorified future without pain or suffering, where death is no more in a new heaven and a new earth is the vision of the future that sustains Christians and inspires our present.

And as it says in proverbs “Without a vision, the people perish” (29:18)

Advent Sunday

Advent Sunday

Isaiah 2: 1-5. In this well-known piece Isaiah look forward to a future time when people will recognise the Lordship of the one true God, follow his ways and peace will reign in the whole world.

Romans 13: 11-14. Paul says that as time goes on we obviously are nearer the time Isaiah is looking forward to, so as the first-fruits of the new Christian revelation of the truth of God it is incumbent on Christians to embody the ways and morals of God to become signs of this coming Kingdom. The way of God is revealed and modelled of course on the life and way of Jesus Christ

Matthew 24: 36-44. When that final consummation happens no one knows – not even Jesus – only the Father in heaven. But make no mistake when it does happen it will probably take us all by surprise. Jesus counsels us to stay spiritually alert and active in God’s service until that day comes and not get weary of following the way of Jesus in-between times.

Advent is a period of watching and waiting in anticipation of something wonderful that is going to happen.

But watching and waiting for what? The birth of Jesus? Eagerly watching and waiting for something that already happened 2019 years ago surely can’t be the whole story can it?

The content of Advent is certainly linked to the first Advent of Jesus in Bethlehem two Millenia ago but as our Advent readings make clear today, what the church has been looking forward to ever since has been the final wonderful consummation of all things.

What Christians are looking forward to is summed up in our best known and widely used prayer. In the Lord’s prayer we pray;

“Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven”.

That is the primary Christian content of Advent, allied to and dependent on the first Christmas certainly, but deals with the end-game, the wonderful climax to the chain of events that started with the incarnation of Jesus Christ in Bethlehem all those years ago.

Obviously, this makes little commercial sense so in our secularised world Advent has been conflated to simply looking forward to the commercial celebration of Jesus’ birth, so it is our duty in the churches to re-kindle the sense of expectation and longing for the time when the Father’s kingdom has come, is established, and all sin and twistedness, corruption, graft and injustice, are dealt with and consigned to the dustbin.

This heightened sense of longing also induces feelings of sorrow for the state of the world as it actually is now, when we consider what we are looking forward to.

That is why the liturgical colour of Advent is purple, signifying penitence. In looking forward to and craving the glorious promises of God to be fulfilled we can’t escape the reality of how things are in the world at the present time.

The dominant motif of Advent is light shining in the darkness. This is also a Christmas motif of course. What we are waiting, hoping and praying for is the fulfilment of what started in Bethlehem.

The light shining in the darkness from the crib in Bethlehem we want to see suffusing the entire world, bringing righteousness, judgement, peace and salvation to all things.

“Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven”

Paul is clear in Romans that he wants the future to inspire our present.

“NOW is the moment for us to awake from sleep” he writes.

Be the change we want to see in the world by emulating Christ in our lives. “Put on Christ” is how he phrases it.  

Not through fear of what might happen to us if we don’t, but because we cannot help but be formed, and our characters moulded by that future promise.

And what we pray for is also a promise.

But here’s the thing. No-one has any idea when that promise will be fulfilled. Not even Jesus himself knows as he states plainly in Matthew’s gospel today. The only one who knows is our Father in heaven.

It is futile, again as the Bible says, to try and predict or deduce from events how or when the final things will take place.

There have been plenty of millenialists, as they are called, down through history, who have predicted the end of the world. There are some, like the Jehovah’s witnesses who have predicted the end of the world 20 times in the last century. They have something in common with every millenialist who has ever lived. They are have all been proved absolutely wrong.

No-one knows when the end will come, which is true both of our own end and the end of history.

Which is why Jesus instructs us to keep ourselves in a state of spiritual readiness for whenever that time comes. That sets us apart from a society that goes on as if nothing is ever going to happen, and He uses the analogy of Noah, building an ark, something people all around him must have been very amused by, while they went about their business.

“Stay awake and spiritually alert” says Jesus. Keep praying for the promise to became reality and for that promise to be made real in our own lives.

Yes, Advent is a time of waiting and watching and anticipation. For Christmas yes, but far more for what that first Christmas ushered in, the promise of God’s acknowledged rule in and through all things;

“Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

Christ the King

Jeremiah 23: 1-6. Jeremiah prophesies a future King of Israel called "The Lord is our righteousness". Christians (the new Israel) identify this as Jesus Christ of course.

Colossians 1: 11-20. Paul tells us that the Father has "delivered us from darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved son". He then tells us what qualifies Jesus for this role as king of this kingdom that is very close to reading John 1: 1-18. In Jesus all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and all things will be reconciled to Jesus in the end

Luke 23: 33-43. Jesus' kingship is mocked and his reign is misunderstood. He is tempted to avoid the cross (his very mission) and save both himself and his taunters. His kingship (kingdom) is misunderstood as essentially of this world only and with consequences for Palestine alone, rather than being eternal and universal.   

Who do you look to for leadership, moral guidance, direction or inspiration. A political figure (less and less common), a celebrity (very common nowadays), some spiritual guru perhaps?

But for a Christian that question should be absolutely simple.

We look to our king, Jesus. That term might be problematic if you are a republican perhaps but we are not talking about political systems here, we are making clear to whom we owe our loyalty, who we follow and who inspires us so ”King” fits the Bill more than any other description. “Christ the President” doesn’t really cut it and actually the kind of king that the Bible yearned for and often described was more like a shepherd who looked after his sheep.

Jeremiah rails against the imperfect shepherds that had beset Israel and looked forward to a future perfect king of Israel and his name will be “The Lord is our righteousness”.

The Christian church is the new Israel and Jesus is that perfect shepherd, our righteous king. Unlike the failed shepherds, Jesus is also divine and so is perfectly just, perfectly loving and also sees through all our pretence. He can’t be fooled and will also rebuke us when we go astray.

His power though at his crucifixion is mocked and misunderstood. In Luke he is tempted to misuse his power for his own ends, to save himself from the cross, but he refuses. He has bigger fish to fry. His mission is to serve and die for the whole world. He proves his steadfastness and trustworthiness in looking past his own needs and fulfilling God’s will. We have a sacrificial king, the suffering servant prophesied in Isaiah, who was willing to die for us.

In a strange irony, the reason Jesus was killed was nailed to his cross and the charge against him read “The King of the Jews”. But the scope of Jesus’ kingdom had been misjudged. They thought his kingdom was a worldly one and his aim was to simply remove the Romans from power.

In fact his kingdom was universal and everlasting and the kingdoms he challenged went far beyond the Roman empire and included all the temporal powers of this world, past, present and future.  

And although it is only Christians in this world that recognise his divine rule, actually Christ is king over all creation. As Paul writes “for in him all things in heaven and earth were created” We are the lucky ones, we are blessed because we have seen and recognised his rule. One day everyone will bow the knee regardless when the truth is revealed to them. Paul says that one day, everything in all creation will be reconciled to this fact, both on earth and in heaven – so every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord and King.

So we have privileged knowledge. We already have been transferred to the kingdom of God. We are already children of God because we are privy to the truth. We are presented holy and blameless and above reproach to the Father through Jesus.

We need a new boldness and a new confidence in this fact. We need to let that fact empower us.

Our kingdom is forever. Our king is forever.

We have God himself on our side, so we have nothing to fear. In God’s grace we have the ultimate assurance, comfort and safety net. We have a freedom to be bold and try new things. Even if we fail we still have God’s blessing. If we sometimes trip and fall God will still pick us up again.

Our shepherd king will always hold us in his grasp and never let us go. He went so far as to die for us – why do we think he’d let us down now?

Christ is our leader, our moral guide, our inspiration, our servant, brother, shepherd and KING.

 

For all the saints

All Saints Patronal festival

Hebrews 12:18-24. This soaring prose paints a picture of what awaits believers and is reminiscent of the west door of a gothic cathedral, with the angels, saints and prophets welcoming into heaven the church on earth. In the midst is God himself but with Jesus, not Moses as the mediator. A mediator whose blood calls for forgiveness unlike Abel’s blood which called for judgement. Lastly the author uses the phrase “we have come” to indicate that this vision is an experience of the present. 

Matthew 5: 1-12. The beatitudes have two halves; the statement that certain people are blessed, and the promise of their reward. In effect, all the promises are one promise, you receive all these gifts in the Kingdom of God. Likewise, the first halves refer to everyone who is entering the kingdom of God. All of us are poor, meek, mourning for the way things are in the world, longing for God to rule, abandoning status and privilege, peacemakers and inevitably persecuted by those who oppose God’s rule. We can’t choose which ones we accept or reject.  

Hebrews makes a distinction between the God presented to Moses in Exodus 20 as a dangerous, frightening and inaccessible presence with the God revealed in Jesus Christ. The author invites his readers to Mount Zion, the heavenly Jerusalem. For in Christ we now have access to the true God and the great community surrounding Him.

The imagery that the author of Hebrews uses is reminiscent of what greets you at the grand entrance of a Gothic cathedral, a cavalcade of saints and angels and the spirits of the righteous made perfect, with Christ at the centre leading us into the presence of God.

This is not just a vision of a future hope, but Hebrews states that “you have come” to this. This is our present not just the future. This is the reality for all the saints.

And what is a Saint? Well that depends on whether you understand that term in its original Biblical meaning or the meaning it accrued later on when the church needed examples to inspire the faithful.

Whenever you read the word saint in the New Testament, that means you, any Christian from the first disciple to this present time.

Because a Saint means literally a witness, a witness to the fact that Jesus is the Son of God who died on a cross for our sins and was raised from the dead. This is what a Christian is; a witness to the gospel.

In early Christianity, a saint started to mean someone who died for the faith because the Greek word for saint is Martyrios from where we get the term – a Martyr.

That started a chain of events where saints began to be understood as a breed of super-Christians, a tradition we all recognise when we speak about saint this or saint that, but when you hear of the Saints in the Bible that is every single Christian witness – including every single one of us.

When we sing “For all the saints” or sing about the saints going marching in, we are a part of that crowd of witnesses.

When we accept that God loves us so much He died for us, and was raised for us, we accept the responsibility to change our ways and grow into a more perfect image of our creator. What that looks like is given to us by Jesus in the part of the sermon on the mount we call the beatitudes or the blessings.

Every saint, which is what we are, is characterised by being poor in spirit, meek, mourning for the state of the world, longing for God to rule, abandoning status and privilege and to be peace-makers, for which as a whole we should expect persecution. 

We can’t choose one over another. They are the characteristics of a saint we must strive to nurture.

In a similar fashion, the promises are all one – the promises are all characteristics of the Kingdom of God, or the Kingdom of heaven as Matthew calls it.

God will comfort, fill, be merciful, and declare to us all that we are his children.

The eight main blessings are sandwiched between the same promise delivered twice in verses 3 & 10 – for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

And in this kingdom, God is still judge, but with Jesus, not Moses as the mediator.

Again, contrasting and comparing the old testament with the new covenant,

Hebrews compares the sacrifices of the temple with the blood of Abel, murdered by Cain, the blood that demanded vengeance from God and contrasts that with the shed blood of Jesus which demands forgiveness and mercy.

As in some other parts of the new testament, Christians are seen to stand between the times, already receiving the kingdom, but in expectation of its future revelation.

We stand at the great west door of that awe inspiring gothic cathedral, able to see and touch and marvel at the glory of it and know that we can go inside and one day we will forever.

In God we trust

Jeremiah 14: 7-10, 19-end. Two laments from Jeremiah where the sins of the people are acknowledged but where God is also accused of letting his people down and ignoring them. This feature of Judaism, being ready to criticise God, is largely absent from Christianity. It is an interesting question whether we would benefit either psychologically or spiritually by adopting a more Jewish perspective?

2 Timothy 4: 6-8, 16-18. Scholars tell us that this is not a genuine letter by Paul but that doesn’t diminish its spiritual power. In it, Paul is depicted as remaining steadfast and valiant, sure of Christ’s ultimate victory and his own vindication despite being left to face his struggles alone.  Imagery taken from the games which were a prominent feature of city life in the ancient world has provided hymn writers for generations with attractive imagery.

Luke 18: 9-14. The man who was justified before God was not the proud man sure of himself and his status, but the sinner who was aware of his shortcomings, was ashamed of them and threw himself on God’s mercy. A valuable lesson that it is grace by which we are saved not works.

The themes today are the human condition and our relationship with God.

Jeremiah in his laments admits to the communal wickedness of the people yet still craves the help and support of God.

The end of Jeremiah’s piece today acknowledges the fact that there is no other God from whom they can ask for help so it is in effect a plea for mercy.

In his letter, Paul too is at the end of his tether, left alone by his supporters, but he has an unshakeable faith in the mercy and goodness of God. He is sure that he has followed God’s will and plan and is confident of his prize which he calls the “crown of righteousness”.

He felt God’s closeness and in his weakness that gave him strength.

Acknowledging our weakness and sinfulness before God is exactly the point of the gospel reading today. The proud man, sure of his own righteousness, and looking down on others with disdain is not the man who was justified before God. He doesn’t have a right relationship.

The man who was justified (that is declared righteous in God’s eyes) was the man who fully acknowledged his sins, was sorry for them, and begged God for mercy.

The tax-collector in this parable displays a proper self-knowledge and proper humility before God, whereas the Pharisee seems to think he is God’s equal and is blind to his true status.

Knowing that the line between good and evil cuts through every human heart and realising our need of God’s mercy lies at the heart of the Biblical revelation.

The core Christian understanding of our faith is that we all have sinned and all of us need to rely on God’s mercy.

We are saved by faith in God’s grace.

God’s Grace saves us. Totally free, unmerited saving Love and mercy offered to every single one of us. This is presented as an objective fact – the truth.

How we make that truth effective in our lives is through having faith in God’s Grace.