Joseph and his brothers

A sermon for St Luke’s Church, Oxford, 11th September 2023

Readings: Genesis 45: 1-15, Matthew 5: 38-48

This is the start of a sermon series on characters in the Old Testament and how they dealt with the situations they found themselves in.  Today we will be looking at Joseph.

But before doing so – and as a general introduction to the series – there would seem to me to me some basic questions to answer when looking at stories in the Bible. 

Firstly why are the stories there?  There is never any simple answer to this question.  There are always multiple reasons.   Many of the stories are described as if they are historical accounts of real events but some are clearly fictional such as the Parables Jesus told and dare I say it some of the stories in the Old Testament which look like history.  Does it really matter whether a story actually happened or not?   Not really in my view.  It is what they teach us that matters most.  

Secondly are we supposed to follow the example of the hero or heroine of the story?  Not all Biblical characters are perfect by any means.   There are goodies and baddies.   In this series we will be looking at some of the goodies.   But there are no absolute goodies in the Bible except Jesus.   All the heroes and heroines of the Bible turn out to be flawed in some way.  

Noah might have been righteous enough for God to rescue him from the Flood while allowing the rest of humanity to perish for their wickedness but in his old age Noah gets drunk and is found unconscious and naked by his sons.   David might have been Israel’s greatest king but David has an affair with a married woman and then contrives to have her husband killed.  What about Joseph?  Was he a goodie or a baddie or perhaps a bit of both?

Given that there are no absolute goodies except Jesus, I don’t think it is just a matter of following the example of the goodies indiscriminately, nor do I think we can just condemn out of hand the behaviour of the baddies.  But I do think we can learn important truths from what Biblical characters do and what happens to them.     

Thirdly how can we work out what these stories are telling us?  One obvious approach to this is to look at what God does in the story..  God makes a few physical appearances to humans in the Old Testament as when, walking in the Garden of Eden in the cool of the evening, God spoke directly to Adam and Eve, or when God –in the form of three angelic visitors - spoke to Abraham about what was going to happen to him and his ancestors.   In the later books of the Old Testament, God speaks though the prophets.  

But in many stories in the Old Testament God does not make an obvious appearance or speak directly or even indirectly.  In the Book of Ruth which we have studied recently at St Luke’s, God is hardly mentioned, let alone make an appearance. Written at a time when people might look for God to be active through a judge or king, the book of Ruth tells us a story of God instead working through the lives of ordinary people.   So what about the story of Joseph?  Where does God figure in that?

And fourthly, whether God is or is not obviously present in the stories, what do the stories tell us about ourselves and how we should behave towards God and interact with one another?   The Bible provides quite a few instructions from the most basic: ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength’ and ‘Love your neighbour as yourself’, through to the 10 Commandments and on to the laws in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy – not to mention those laws as interpreted and amplified by Jesus.  Many Biblical stories, I would suggest illustrate people following and not following those laws and the consequences.  The story of Ruth, for example is, at least partly, an illustration of the laws about how people are to behave towards foreigners,

So let us ask these four questions of the story of Joseph in turn.   I am rather hoping that most of you will have heard it before or at least seen the Musical by Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber – Joseph and his Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat - or read the 1207 page novel by Thomas Mann called Joseph and His Brothers.  There is also an interesting version of the story in the Koran –the Twelfth Surah, the Yusuf Surah–which is shorter than the account we have in the Bible.  The Biblical account is found in Genesis Chapter 37 to 46 and the bit of the story we heard just now comes from near the end where Joseph is at last reconciled with his brothers.  You’ll remember that they had sold him into slavery in Egypt but Joseph – after various adventures – had risen to become Pharaoh’s right hand man and they – driven by a famine – had come to Egypt to buy food.

So firstly why is the story there?  Well one obvious reason is to explain how God’s people – the people of Israel - end up in Egypt as slaves to be rescued by God some 400 years after Joseph’s death when Moses was their leader.  After the reconciliation, Joseph invites – or more accurately commands - his father and brothers to join him in Egypt.  But this story of a clearly dysfunctional family, paternal favouritism, brotherly love and brotherly rivalry, of interpretation of dreams (six in all) of rises and falls in fortune, etc. is too complicated a story to be just providing a reason for the Exodus.

So secondly, is the story about a person or people that the writers think are worth emulating?  The hero of the story is Joseph.   So are we supposed to follow his example?   Joseph is clearly not a particularly admirable character.  You may remember that at the start of the story in Genesis Chapter 37 Joseph tells his brothers of a dream he has just had:  He says to them ‘We were binding sheaves in the field. All of a sudden my sheaf rose up and stood upright, and your sheaves stood around it and bowed down to my sheaf.”  Now this is at best tactless (he is after all only 17 at this point) but at worst it is malevolent because it exacerbates an already difficult family situation where Jacob the father obviously regards Joseph as his favourite.  Joseph then compounds his error by recounting a similar dream.  

Joseph surely bears some responsibility for his brothers’ behaviour towards him even if that gets out of hand.  Joseph is clearly prone to thinking a lot of himself and this is reflected in other parts of the story. It is his self-confidence which leads Joseph, in effect, to abandon his Israelite roots – even when free to do so he doesn’t return to Canaan - if only to reassure hiss supposedly beloved father who thinks he is dead.  Instead Joseph become an Egyptian prince: he even claims to be the father of Pharaohs at one point which would make him a god since Pharaohs were regarded as gods.  In all of this I am not sure we need to emulate Joseph.

But at the climax of the story – the bit of the story that we heard just now  -Joseph forgives his brothers for selling him into slavery in Egypt all those years ago.  He tells them ‘And now, do not be distressed and do not be angry with yourselves for selling me here, because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you’, reflecting his role in saving the Egyptians, and now the Israelites, from famine.   And in this tale of brotherly rivalry and love ii is Joseph taking the path of forgiveness rather than of revenge that, I think, is being held up for us to emulate.   

But Joseph is not the only son of Jacob that behaves well in this story.  Indeed, it might be said that it is Judah that persuades Joseph to forgive his bothers when Joseph hadn’t decided quite what to do when they make a reappearance in his life.  

Just before the bit of the story we heard just now Judah asks for a word with Joseph in private.  This is in response to Joseph’s trick on his brothers in putting a cup in the luggage of their brother Benjamin and then falsely accusing them of theft.   Judah first pleads for forgiveness for a crime that hasn’t been committed.  Joseph is only demanding recompense from Benjamin on this trumped up charge – he is to remain as Joseph’s slave.

Remember Judah doesn’t apparently know at this point know who he is talking to though perhaps he has guessed by now   Judah then explains that if they were to return to Jacob without Benjamin it would break their father’s heart, as had happened before with another favourite son, and then offers to become Joseph’s slave in exchange.  It seems it is this demonstration that Judah is really sorry for his former involvement in selling Joseph into slavery and that this time when a favourite son of Jacob is in danger he is prepared to sacrifice all for the sake of that brother and his father,  It's this that persuades Joseph to reveal who he really is and tell them that the brothers are forgiven.  

So yes the story does suggest that the actions of characters in the story are worth emulating.  In this case Joseph’s forgiveness of his brother but also Judah stepping up to offer up his freedom for the sake of his brothers and his father.

Now thirdly what is God doing in this story: he doesn’t speak and he doesn’t intervene or at least obviously so.  There are no miracles here.  Even the interpretation of dreams on the part of Joseph seem more common sense than supernatural – though Joseph does claim God’s help in dream interpretation. [Genesis 40: 8].

The narrator of the story – clearly a fan – but not an uncritical fan of Joseph – claims God is with Joseph – even in the bad times.  When Joseph is in gaol (you’ll remember he was there because of being falsely accused of having sex with the wife of a man called Potiphar) the narrator tells us that ‘while Joseph was there in the prison, the Lord was with him; he showed him kindness and granted him favor in the eyes of the prison warden’.  [39: 22]

And Joseph himself clearly attributes virtually everything that happens to him to God: even to the point of attributing his brothers’ actions in selling him into slavery to God's action.  He tells them ‘God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth, and to keep alive for you many survivors. So it was not you who sent me here, but God; [45: 7]   Do we believe him?   What happens to Joseph leads eventually to the Israelites becoming slaves to the Egyptians.  Was that the work of God?    God’s action in the world is always difficult to discern and it is too simplistic in my view to say that God has helped someone when things seem to going well for them.  God is with us whether things are going well or badly.   But we are also assured by Paul that ‘We know that all things work together for good for those who love God.’ [Romans 8: 28]

This isn’t a story which suggests that if we are good – as Joseph seems to have been once he had arrived in Egypt - things will go well for us.  

So fourthly what do we think the story is mainly about and what can it teach us   I said earlier that stories in the Bible often illustrate God’s instructions for us, in other words God’s way of doing things.  Many of the parables Jesus tells begin with the words: 'The Kingdom of God is like a…'  So I think the story of Joseph is about choosing forgiveness rather than revenge.  Exodus records God telling Moses [Exodus 21: 23-25] ‘If any harm follows [an incident] then you shall give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.’   And this principle – known as the Lex Tallionis – is common to all legal systems to this day.   It’s the principle that goal sentences should be longer for more serious crimes, that the punishment should fit the crime. 

But Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount ‘You have heard that it was said, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also.   Joseph working under the old law is surely right to ignore the instruction to take an eye for an eye and a tooth for tooth, or in his case the enslavement of one of the brothers because of his own enslavement at their hands.   He is surely right to take the better path of forgiveness and not go down the path of demanding recompense.

But remember that Joseph first does play tricks on his brothers before he forgives them – by not instantly revealing who he is and then with the cup incident - seemingly to test them to see whether they are worthy of his forgiveness.  Judah, at least, demonstrates that he is.  Forgiveness is never simple and is often costly.  It is a two way process between the forgiver and the forgiven.      

Now recompense and forgiveness are themes that run throughout the Bible.   The story of Jesus shows us that God forgives us for our sins and doesn’t require any recompense: he has paid that already.   And of course the story of Joseph fore-shadows that greater story.  

A sermon for New Year's Day 2023: Letting go of anxieties

St Matthew's Oxford, 1st January 2023

Readings: Isaiah 49: 8-15 and Matthew 6: 24-34.   

Today is New Year’s Day - a day when we traditionally review the past year and think about the coming year.   My sermon today is entitled, ‘Letting go of anxieties’.   It is by way of a follow up to a sermon I gave on Remembrance Day entitled, ‘Letting go of memories’.  That was about letting go of the past.   Today I want to talk to you about letting go of the future.   My sermon is a sort of antidote to the notion of New Year’s Resolutions.   And it is about being hopeful rather than anxious about the future.

Now anxiety is something we all suffer from to some degree and at some points in our lives.  Anxiety can be so extreme for some of us that we need to seek help from other people.  In this sermon, I don’t want to trivialise anxiety or suggest that I don’t think anxiety isn’t serious: far from it.   Our neighbours who feels anxious deserve our sympathy.  We who feel anxious need to be relieved of our anxieties, to be healed even.

Nor do I wish to suggest that anxiety is unnecessary.  Many of us have good cause to be anxious.  The causes of anxiety can be real enough.  The rising cost of living in the UK is having effects on all of us but particularly on those of us who don’t have much money in the first place.   When Jesus says, ‘Do not worry about tomorrow’, as we heard in our reading just now, he is not saying that there is no reason to worry about tomorrow.  Jesus’ listeners were living in much more precarious times than most of us here today.  He knew his listeners lived in times where ‘where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal’.  Jesus is not being unrealistic about his listeners’ lives nor our own.

However the causes of anxiety can also be imagined.  When we were young many of us were afraid of the dark – a fear which we grew out of.  I like to think that all anxieties are fears which we will eventually grow out of – if only at our deaths.

Anxieties can be about all sorts of different things, about how much money we have to live on, whether we are going to recover from an illness, what we are going to wear at a party.  We can worry about almost anything. 

Anxieties can be for the day after today or they can be for the more distant future, the wider meaning of tomorrow.  In saying, ‘Do not worry about tomorrow,’ Jesus was clearly talking about tomorrow in both senses.   We can predict with some certainty what we will be doing the day after today and therefore whether to anticipate that with pleasure or fear.  But we cannot be absolutely certain: the unexpected can happen without warning.   When it comes to the more distant future, things are even more uncertain, though we know, – in the words of Julian of Norwich - that eventually, ‘All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.'

Even if, in theory, we know that eventually all will be well many of us feel anxious about the future: we fear the effects of the cost-of living crisis, the war in Ukraine, global warming, again not without reason.   What should we do about our anxieties?   Jesus says at the end of today’s reading, ‘Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.’   I think that this means we should let go of those anxieties about the future, live in the present, focus on the now.

Anxieties are, I think, quite difficult to talk about for most of us, because they relate to our identities, who we are.  Many people do not wish to share with others the fact they are running out of money, are feeling progressively insecure.  Anxieties, not ‘just’ about our physical well-being but about our mental health, our gender, our sexuality may be even harder to share.  And when we hear that Jesus has told us not to worry, it may seem like a failure on our part to do so.  We may even be ashamed of our anxieties– perhaps thinking that people will feel the less of us if we were to reveal our worries to them.

 

What do we do with our anxieties?    One way we are naturally inclined to, is to seek to deal with them ourselves, to pull ourselves together as it were.  This can take the form of preparations for the future.  Jesus seems to say that:  on the contrary, ‘Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth…but rather store up for yourselves treasures in heaven…for where you treasure is your heart will be also.’   By storing up treasures on earth Jesus means accumulating material wealth and the supposed security that brings whereas by treasures in heaven he means our good deeds.   He tells us at the beginning of our reading that ‘No one can serve two masters…You cannot Serve God and Mammon.’   Mammon is an Aramaic word for wealth and not just possessions.   Jesus is saying you cannot rely on your wealth and on God.

Rather than rely on our own resources, or indeed our abilities to accumulate the resources which would seemingly make our lives more secure, Jesus says we should be more like the birds who neither ‘sow, nor reap, nor gather into barns and yet have enough to eat’. 

And this is why I do not think we should make New Year’s Resolutions.  I don’t think that it is heretical to say so.   The Bible does not command us to make New Year’s Resolutions.   I find in my files the text of a sermon I gave at St Matthew’s exactly 10 years go entitled ‘New Year resolutions: a type of prayer?’   At least there was a question at the end of the title.   I would like to say, contrary to what I said 10 years ago, that New Year’s resolutions are not a type of prayer.  Resolutions encourage us to believe that all we need to do for our lives to be better is to make one more effort.  

In saying, ‘Do not worry about tomorrow’ Jesus is not saying we should not make plans.   Plans are important and helpful, for by looking ahead to what we want to accomplish in the future, we direct our energies as we work with what we have to hand.   After all even birds make plans for having their young by building nests.  Jesus tells us that all that we need has already been given to us.   Just as the grass is already adorned with flowers without making any effort itself, so too are we have been given all that we really need.  But whatever plans we make have should be applied to the resources we have at the present time.

This switches our attention away from the future to the present moment.  A meditation on eating a satsuma might seemingly have little to do with anxieties for the future but it too focuses our minds, if only for a few minutes, on the present moment and in doing so we forget the future.   Ultimately we do not know what we will be doing tomorrow, we can, though it is perhaps easier said than done, let go of our anxieties by living in the present where we do know where we are.

In our passage from Isaiah this morning the people of Judah find it impossible to believe the prophet’s assurance that the days of their exile have come to an end, not just will come to end, have in fact already done so.  Isaiah says that God has told him to say to the exiles ‘Come out’ from Babylon and return to Judah because this is the ’time of favour’ and the ‘day of salvation.

‘Sing for joy,’ Isaiah says to the heavens,’ and exult, O earth; …For the Lord has comforted his people, and will have compassion on his suffering ones’.  But the people say ‘‘The Lord has forsaken us, our Lord has forgotten us.’  They feel the prophet’s message is too good to be true.  The job of the prophet is to persuade the people of God of God’s gracious activity in their lives at that point in time and it is my task today.

Jesus, like Isaiah, announces a new beginning in the shape of the Kingdom of God.  And his teaching about this Kingdom is supremely relevant to our thinking about the future.   At the beginning of Mark’s gospel Jesus announces that, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand.’ [Mark 1: 15].  In other words the Kingdom of God is now.   When the Pharisees ask Jesus about when the Kingdom of God was coming he says, ‘In fact the Kingdom of God is among you’ [Luke 17:20-21].   In some paradoxical way for Jesus the Kingdom of God was both still to come and yet among us, both present and future, both already and not yet.

I think most Christians have concluded that what Jesus of meant was that the future kingdom is the full and final reality, whereas right now we have it partially in ways that are promised rather than actual.   This assures us that the Kingdom is certainly going to arrive, but like a child waiting for Christmas we just have to be patient and wait.  But I don’t think Jesus would have said the Kingdom of God is among us if that was all he meant.  I have come to suspect that we Christians have so stressed the not yet of this announcement of the Kingdom that we have lost touch with the already.   We do of course have the promise of Jesus’ return to console us but in that consolation that things will in the end be better we have miss his assurance that ‘things can be better now.  ’

And of course because we know that all will be well in the end, we slip into an attitude that the mess of the moment has to be put up with and find ourselves thinking and even saying ‘You can’t change human nature’, ‘You can’t change the system’, ‘Politics will always be a dirty business’.  And so we take it for granted that transformation is not here yet.   But if Jesus is right and the Kingdom is already with us, transformation is possible now.

It might seem almost impossible for us humans to let go of our fears for the future, to let God deal with our anxieties.   We hold our anxieties close as if they are part of our identities.    But let go we must.   Just as we are to let go of the past – not to forget it – but to let go of the conflict and suffering it causes us in our present, so we are to let go of the future.   This doesn’t mean that we stop making plans, but that we should let go of our fears for that future .

When I talked about letting go of the past last Remembrance Day I reminded you that Jesus says, in John’s gospel, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.’   That is the we are to let go of ourselves if we are to have a new identity in Christ .  And again, in Luke’s gospel ‘So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple’.   It is in dying to self – and in that I would include our letting go of our anxieties – were we find new life.   In this new life focused on the present we find hope for the future rather than fear.

Dying to self may be almost impossible for us to do by ourselves – and perhaps we need God to help.   But to let go of self is to let God.  To let God is to let God take responsibility for what is seemingly impossible for us.   But by letting go of our selves we open ourselves to the possibility of God’s loving, presence in our lives: his Kingdom of God.   A loving presence that will transform us, give us peace and help us bring peace and compassion to others.   

A sermon for Remembrance Day 2022

 Readings: Isaiah 2: 1-5; Romans 12: 9-21

I have been reading a book by a theologian called Paul Knitter - thanks to a recommendation from [X].  In that book Paul Knitter recounts this story of a meeting of something called the Inter-religious Peace Council in Israel/Palestine in 2000.   He writes:

“We had spent more than a week listening to the grievances, the fears, the angers of both Palestinians and Israelis.   We were gathered with students and teachers at Hebrew Union College in Jerusalem, on Holocaust Memorial Day, after an emotionally wrenching ceremony remembering the victims of Nazi terror.  In our subsequent discussions we heard the Jewish participants talk of the ‘the need to remember,’ never to forget, so that ‘never’ again will such horrors occurs.   As the conversation flowed easily back and forth, Geshe Sopa, Tibetan monk and scholar, raised his hand then quietly but forthrightly asked the Dean of the Hebrew Union College, ‘But why do you have to remember’.

After an awkward, almost horrified moment of silence, Geshe continued, ‘What would happen if you let go of such memories of suffering?’   He went on to speak of the sufferings [that] the Tibetan people are enduring from the Chinese, adding that what is important now, in the moment, is not to cling to memories of the past but to understand that the Chinese are acting out of…ignorance… .  The reaction that follows such understanding is compassion for mistakes made.  We must feel compassion for all who are suffering, on both sides.  We [Tibetans] don’t look at the Chinese as evil, but try to find a peaceful solution and make them happy and peaceful.

Unfortunately, but also understandably, there was no further discussion of Geshe’s question and suggestion.  It was so different, so un-imagined, that it was, probably, not understood.   A similar silence was the response a few days later when Geshe made a similar statement to the director of the Dehieshe Camp for Palestinian refugees [in Bethlehem]."

Paul Knitter goes on to say “To let go of angers from the past [and fears for the future] in order to be free of them and so fully present to the moment is something very difficult for us Christians and Westerners to understand.  Or perhaps we are afraid to understand. "

This idea that we need to let go of our responses to suffering in and to the past is I think relevant to our act of remembrance just now.  Our Christian faith is a historical faith with a strong sense that God has intervened in history – in particular in the history of the people of Israel - and culminating in the death our founder – Jesus – on a particular Friday in around the year AD 33.   So we are bound to have the sense that history is important.   In a way we are a people defined by the past.   But we have a choice as how we remember that past.   I would like to suggest that there is a good and a bad remembering when it comes to Remembrance Day.  A bad remembering is in essence to hold on to the past: a good remembering is to let go of it.   To let go is to let God., as I will aim to explain later.

But what precisely are we remembering on Remembrance Day?   Our liturgy just now summarised this with the words, ‘We remember with thanksgiving and sorrow those whose lives, in world wars and conflicts past and present, have been given and taken away.’  This means, of course, not just the people who lost their lives in the First and Second World Wars but in all wars right up to current wars including that between Russia and Ukraine.  And, of course, Remembrance Day is not just about remembering lives lost but also the suffering and grief that is caused by war for those caught up in it – both combatants and non-combatants.  Perhaps there are even some here today who have suffered – and may continue to suffer - because of war.  If so we should remember them in our prayers and I am sure we will do so later in this service.

However a bad way of remembering wars and conflicts is to glorify them.  By that I mean to remember the lives lost in victories rather than in defeats, of those on our side rather than on theirs.  To glorify war is to see war as necessary, even as God’s will, instead of a mistake.  It is to view it as a series of courageous acts of bravery worthy of medals rather than of the much more mundane daily living in terror and fear, the loss of courage and of decent into despair.  It is I think worth remembering today that there were about 100,000 British soldiers who deserted during the Second World War whose stories are seldom told.

On Remembrance Day we are sometimes urged to see lives lost in wars as acts of sacrifice – analogous to Jesus laying down his life for his friends.  I think we should be suspicious of such sacrifice language.  It is to give a meaning to war, even a justifiable purpose, which is to come close to glorifying it. 

Furthermore most of those who lost their lives in the First and Second World were conscripts - as a many of the Russian soldiers in the current Russia-Ukraine war.   These conscripts did not and do not voluntarily give up their lives, their lives were and are being taken.   Rather than sacrifices, most lives lost in war are reasonless slaughter or worse the results of orders from politicians and military leaders far from the fighting.

But there are good ways of remembering wars.  There are those that result in lessons learnt so that we might avoid wars in the future.   I also want to suggest that a good remembering helps people let go of their anger, their grief, their suffering as a result of the past as a step to resolving conflicts in the present (as Geshe Sopa suggests). To remember wars in a good way is the opposite of glorifying them.  It is to see them for what they are but then to let go of the memory.  

Our readings today, from the book of Isaiah and then from Paul’s Letter to the Romans, were about war and conflict – and of course the authors cannot but acknowledge their reality.  Neverless they do not dwell on past wars and conflicts.  The eyes of Isaiah are firmly on the future and of Paul are firmly on the present.

Isaiah, in his prophecy of the future, sees a time when there is no more war, when people ‘shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks [and] nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more’. 

Paul, in his epistle to the Romans, in the passage we heard today, talks about conflicts between neighbours rather than nations but what he says is relevant to all conflict..  Paul here, is echoing the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus tells us to ‘Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.’  Paul, similarly, urges the Roman Christians not just to bear with their enemies but ‘No, if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink.  He then rather spoils this, in my view, by claiming that by this means they will be heaping burning coals on their enemies’ heads.

Neither Isaiah nor Paul ignore the reality of past war and conflict.  But both recommend handing over the ultimate resolution of conflict to God. Isaiah says,‘He (God) shall judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples.’  Paul says, ‘Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.’  In other words, if we have taken sides in a war or conflict, we are to cease our partisanship and let God decide who was or is right or wrong.  This is of course almost impossible when the conflict is current such as the China-Tibet conflict or the Russia-Ukraine war

Now it might seem paradoxical to suggest that remembrance should be linked to letting go.   Because to let go might seem to be to forget.   But I am not saying that letting go is to forget what happened – rather to let go of the feelings that those memories of what happened invoke.   

When I was a child there were still people who felt grief and sorrow for family and friends lost in the Second and even the First World War.   And indeed many people in Britain were still angry with the Germans and the Japanese.   But those of us left commemorating Remembrance Day in church today can have no memory of those who died in the Second World War – let alone the First World War.   However war and conflict are very much still with us and we may know people who have died or suffered in more recent wars: in Iraq, Afghanistan and now Ukraine.  

So are we to let go of our grief at those losses?  Yes I think so.   As the writer of the book of Ecclesiastes puts it: ‘There is a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance.   More important perhaps is to let go of our anger: in particular that directed at our former or even current enemies. Letting go of our anger generates the possibility of forgiveness, of reconciliation and therefore of peace. 

Jesus says in John’s gospel ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.’  It is in dying to self – and in that I would include our letting go of our anger about and grief for the past – we find a new life, a new way of looking at death and suffering.

Letting go of anger and grief – indeed dying to self - may be almost impossible for us to do by ourselves and that is where God comes in.   To let go is to let God.  To let God is to let God take responsibility for what is seemingly impossible for us.  God has given us the final answer to war and conflict by dying on the cross.  His is the true and final sacrifice.  There is no need for any more.  

Paul says to the Galatians ‘I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.’  This is a remarkable text but I think Paul is saying here, amongst other things, that we to let go of self is to allow Christ to be Christ in us and that this new reality is something we should seek.

So to conclude.  By letting go of our anger and grief about past wars and conflicts, and even current wars and conflict, we open ourselves to the possibility of God’s loving, presence in our lives.  A loving presence which will transform us, give us peace and help us bring peace and compassion to others.   This is worth remembering not just for Remembrance Day but for all our lives.

 

 

 

 

 

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Penitence, guilt and shame

 

Sermon for the 7^th March 2021, St Matthew’s, Oxford

Readings:   Exodus 20.1-17; 1 Corinthians 1.18-25 and John 2.13-22

Today is the third Sunday in Lent.  The Church of England’s website says: ‘Lent may originally have
followed Epiphany, just as Jesus’ sojourn in the wilderness followed immediately on his baptism, but it soon became firmly attached to Easter, as the principal occasion for baptism and for the reconciliation of those who had been excluded from the Church’s fellowship for ..serious faults. This history explains the characteristic notes of Lent – self-examination, penitence, self-denial, study, and preparation for Easter…’   And this account of Lenten themes is followed by a 12^th poem about Lent

Now is the healing time decreed

for sins of heart and word and deed,

when we in humble fear record

the wrong that we have done the Lord.

So this morning I would like to focus on the Lenten theme of penitence.   And that poem reminds us that penitence is or should be a ‘time of healing’: a positive rather than a negative experience.

But looking at the passages for today - the Lectionary readings for the third Sunday in Lent – i.e. the set readings for today - it is not very easy to see how they speak to this idea that Lent is for self-examination, penitence, self-denial, study, and preparation for Easter.   I guess the three passages are linked together in some way as the people who choose the Lectionary readings always try to make sure they deal with related issues but I can’t see what connects them. 

I guess the reading that is most obviously connected with Lent is the reading from Exodus where we hear, for the first time, God’s 10 Commandments. 

The 10 Commandments are so well known that we might even be able to recite them and lest we forget them they are even written behind our altar over there.  They are so well known in fact that we can easily forget their importance: perhaps even treating them as self-evident.  

Some of them indeed embody moral ideals that are common to many traditions such as: ‘You shall not steal’ but others seem less self-evident such as: ‘Remember the Sabbath day, and keep it holy’.   Nowadays you can still be put in gaol for theft but not for forgetting it’s the Sabbath.   These differences in the commandments remind us that they are God’s revelation to the Israelites rather than a set of rules the Israelites worked out for themselves for regulating their society. The book of Exodus underlines this revelatory aspect to the 10 Commandments by having God give them to the Israelites directly, rather than through Moses, God’s normal way of communicating with the Israelites at the time.

The 10 Commandments form the basis of the Jewish Law as set out thereafter in the rest of the book of Exodus, in the books of Leviticus and Numbers and then repeated in the book called Deuteronomy.  And since Jesus said that he had not come to abolish the law but to fulfil it we can be sure that they apply as much to us today as they did in Old Testament times.   There is a sense in which everything in the Bible that follows on from God’s giving the Israelites the 10 Commandments, and that is about the rules we should live by, are, at heart, just an elaboration of those commandments.   For instance when Jesus famously discusses the Jewish Law in his Sermon on the Mount, he directly mentions two of the commandments: the 6th ,‘You shall not murder’ and the 7^th, ‘You shall not commit adultery’ and reinterprets them for his listeners of the day.  But much of what else Jesus says about the Jewish Law in that sermon indirectly refers back to the 10 Commandments or to his summary of those commandments: ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind’ and: ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.

It is, I think, worthwhile exploring how each of the 10 Commandments gets elaborated in the Old Testament and then the New.  Not that there is time to do that today.   But just as one example: the 9^th commandment is: ‘You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour’.   In general, I have taken this to mean, ‘You shall always tell the truth’ but, of course, it’s more specific (and limited) than that.  It’s recognising that lies that hurt other people are a special kind of lie.   Exodus 23 verses 1-3 say:  ‘You shall not spread a false report. You shall not join hands with the wicked to act as a malicious witness. You shall not follow a majority in wrongdoing; when you bear witness in a lawsuit, you shall not side with the majority so as to pervert justice; nor shall you be partial to the poor in a lawsuit’.  The other Sunday we were talking about social media and how it can easily it can be misused.  We might have usefully pondered on those verses when thinking about how we should bear witness against our neighbour - i.e. talk about our friends - when it comes to using social media.

Now some of the 10 Commandments seem relatively simple to stick to such as the 6th Commandment: You shall not murder’.  That is until you delve into what the Bible says about them in more detail.   Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount: ‘You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, “You shall not murder”; and “whoever murders shall be liable to judgement.”   But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister you will be liable to judgement’.   I think we can safely say that the 10 Commandments as understood by Jesus are almost impossible to follow.

I have gone on too long about rules for living by when I really meant to talk about penitence: that is feeling and saying sorry for breaking the rules, like the 10 Commandments.  Breaking what we see as the rules can make us feel guilty or ashamed.  And here I want to make a distinction between healthy guilt and unhealthy shame.    The main difference being healthy guilt leads to a change of heart and action.   Unhealthy shame leads to demoralisation and inaction.

Healthy or appropriate guilt is the recognition of how far our behaviour, the way we live our lives, our economic systems, our social norms, etc. fall short of what God wants for us.   Moreover it’s important to remember that this recognition should be a collective act not just an individual responsibility.   I know that we are trashing the planet, through eating too much meat, flying more than we need to, etc.  but that is not just my fault, it’s everyone’s fault.  It also the fault of the institutions in control: the international institutions such as the United Nations but also multinational companies, national governments of both the left and the right.  Moreover the Christian church has played no small part in exacerbating the environmental crisis through its teachings on our relationship with nature and we need to recognise its role in that.

The recognition of how far away we are from obeying the 10 Commandments indicates that we have a general relationship problem, with ourselves, with other people, with nature and more fundamentally with God.  We should feel guilty about this relationship and we know that by recognising our dependency on God, God will restore that relationship. We all, like sheep, have gone astray and we need to turn to the Good Shepherd to lead us home.

This going astray (commonly called sin) and turning back to God in consequence (repentance) play a big part in some versions of Christianity.   So much so that you might sometimes be led to think it is the only important part of the good news that is the Gospel.  In my youth the Preacher at the church I attended would, virtually every week, remind us that there is an ‘I’ in sin.   Here’s the beginning of such a sermon I found from a bit of quick Googling: ‘There’s a reason the word “sin” has an “i” right smack in the middle—and a big “I” at that! Sin is all about me. When my world revolves around me, with me at the center of everything, sin is bound to result….’   

Now I think there is hardly any biblical basis for this idea that ‘Sin is all about me’.  Sin is much more complicated than that.  There is a sin called pride but pride is not the only sin and false modesty: to forget that we are made in the image of God, is equally sinful.  The notion that sin is all about me completely ignores the story of the Fall in which Adam and Eve - the first humans – by disobeying God – changed the nature of all our relationships and in particular our relationship with God.   It thereby ignores the fact that we live in a sinful world that we are all embedded in a sinful system.  But, besides such sermons having dubious authority, they can generate unhealthy shame rather than healthy guilt.

Unhealthy shame is unjustified feelings of guilt inflicted on us by others.   Jesus experienced such shame at his trial and crucifixion.   Remember he was, amongst other things, spat upon, stripped naked and whipped, and mocked by bystanders before he was finally crucified.   Human beings, throughout history, have inflicted shame on one another from the mundane (now recognised as completely unacceptable) bullying inflicted by children on one another to the truly horrific such as that inflicted by the Nazis on the Jews in the Holocaust.  But perhaps the most insidious forms of unhealthy shame are religious or quasi-religious. 

A big problem with ‘I in sin’ sermons and the like is that they can make us feel hopeless rather than liberated.  They can easily flip from encouraging healthy guilt to inflicting unhealthy shame.   It is certainly impossible to live up to the rules that God would like us to live by and we constantly fail to abide by those rules if we try.  This should not be a cause for despair because we know God forgives us (as we have been reminded today by our saying a confession and Jon pronouncing an absolution during this service).  But humans also have a tendency to feel guilty about things we shouldn’t: about things we have no control over, such as our sexuality or our appearance or even abuse by others.  And we can easily made to feel guilty about things we have little control over such as addictions or relationships that have gone wrong in the past.  Our capacity for unhealthy shame is extensive and preachers should urge us to guilt and repentance with caution.  I hope I have not fallen into a trap today.

This is not to say that our unhealthy shame doesn’t need healing.   For some of us shame can be chronic and toxic.  Shame by its nature is also often hidden.   What we feel shameful of is difficult to share even with those we love.   Moreover the idea that God sees and knows everything about us is for some a source of fear rather than comfort.   Psalm 139 which begins: ‘O Lord, you have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from far away’ is for some deeply troubling.   Even our notions of God can exacerbate shame rather than alleviate it.

While shame may often be hidden I think it is much more common than we might tend to think.  Those of us who do suffer from shame can think we are the only one who is and that is just not the case.

There is a similarity between healthy or guilt and unhealthy shame in that both can be redeemed and potentially transformed by the death and resurrection of Jesus.   We know that whatever we are guilty of, in the way we lead our lives, has been forgiven by God, once and for all, through the cross.  In this we can be certain.   We can also say that through enduring shame of all kinds, Jesus opens the way to the defeat of shame as of death and suffering.  But it is often harder, I think, to feel that shame can be defeated.   In my own experience the way of healing shame is through sharing the experience with another in whom you trust and who, after you have done so, will continue to accept you for what you are.   The person who loves you more than any other and who will not reject you whatever you are or whatever you have done is God.  

So yes Lent should be a time for self-examination and penitence but for a purpose: preparation for Easter.  Yes Lent should be an occasion for seeking forgiveness for those things we feel appropriately guilty about, but by God’s grace it might also be a time to find healing and liberation from shame.  In both cases Lent, like spring, should be time of renewal as we once again we prepare to remember all that God has done for us by his death on the cross on that first Good Friday and his glorious resurrection on that first Easter Sunday.

 

Sermon for Epiphany 2021

 

Isaiah 60: 1-6 and Matthew 2: 1-12.

 

This is my third sermon this Christmas and all three have the underlying premise that Christmas hasn’t; and cannot be cancelled.  And now it is about to be Epiphany perhaps I should also say that Epiphany isn’t cancelled either.  In these sermons I have sought to remind people that Christmas cannot be cancelled because of that first Christmas more than 2000 years ago when Jesus was born.   When God became a human that Christmas it was a defining moment in world history.   It meant that Christmas is going to be celebrated forever whether we like it or not.  It is not in our power to cancel Christmas although, over the years, some have tried to do so.

In my sermon today I want to focus on an aspect of Christmas - the giving and receiving of gifts.   The giving and receiving of gifts is part and parcel of Christmas perhaps because, as part of the Christmas story, the wise men who visit Jesus after he is born present him with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh (as we heard in our reading just now).  But surely it’s also- and more importantly - because God’s incarnation in the form of a baby born to Mary and Joseph in Bethlehem that first Christmas is the greatest gift God could give the world.

I want to explore the giving and receiving of gifts as a sacrament.  St Augustine, in the 5th century AD described a sacrament as ‘an outward and visible sign of an inward and invisible grace.’  And I think there is a hidden, spiritual dimension to gifts at Christmas that isn’t affected by the Corona Virus or anything else.  My last mention of the virus I promise.

I suppose you might say it is a bit late to be thinking about Christmas presents: but it’s on this day, Epiphany Sunday, when we remember the visit of the wise men and what that visit signified.  And of course present giving doesn’t stop at Christmas.  I think we can safely say that receiving’s God’s gift of his son and giving gifts ourselves are things we, as Christians, are called to do throughout the year.

 As I said in my previous sermons this Christmas, some people, down the ages, have tried to cancel Christmas and all that it involves.   A well-known fictional example is the White Witch in CS Lewis’ ‘The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe’.   In this story the four Pevensee children: Lucy, Edmunds, Susan and Peter, stumble into the land of Narnia through a Wardrobe which is ruled by a witch who makes it ‘always winter and never Christmas’.   But the arrival of the children coincides with the return of Aslan the Lion to Narnia and the witch’s power starts to wane and the snow that covers the land begins to melt:

While three of the children – Lucy, Susan and Peter- are travelling through Narnia to meet Aslan, with two beavers showing them the way, they come across Father Christmas

 "I’ve come at last," said he. "She has kept me out for a long time, but I have got in at last. Aslan is on the move. The Witch’s magic is weakening.

And Lucy felt running through her that deep shiver of gladness which you only get if you are being solemn and still.

"And now," said Father Christmas, "for your presents. There is a new and better sewing machine for you, Mrs Beaver. I will drop it in your house as I pass. "

"If you please, sir," said Mrs Beaver, making a curtsey. "It’s locked up."

"Locks and bolts make no difference to me," said Father Christmas. "And as for you, Mr Beaver, when you get home you will find your dam finished and mended and all the leaks stopped and a new sluicegate fitted."

Mr Beaver was so pleased that he opened his mouth very wide and then found he couldn’t say anything at all.

 “Peter, Adam's Son," said Father Christmas.

"Here, sir," said Peter.

"These are your presents," was the answer, "and they are tools, not toys. The time to use them is perhaps near at hand. Bear them well." With these words he handed to Peter a shield and a sword. The shield was the colour of silver and across it there ramped a red lion, as bright as a ripe strawberry at the moment when you pick it. The hilt of the sword was of gold and it had a sheath and a sword belt and everything it needed, and it was just the right size and weight for Peter to use. Peter was silent and solemn as he received these gifts, for he felt they were a very serious kind of present.

"Susan, Eve's Daughter," said Father Christmas. "These are for you," and he handed her a bow and a quiver full of arrows and a little ivory horn. "You must use the bow only in great need," he said, "for I do not mean you to fight in the battle. It does not easily miss. And when you put this horn to your lips and blow it, then, wherever you are, I think help of some kind will come to you."

Last of all he said, "Lucy, Eve's Daughter," and Lucy came forward. He gave her a little bottle of what looked like glass (but people said afterwards that it was made of diamond) and a small dagger. "In this bottle," he said, "there is a cordial made of the juice of one of the fire-flowers that grow on the mountains of the sun. If you or any of your friends is hurt, a few drops of this will restore them. And the dagger is to defend yourself at great need. For you also are not to be in the battle."

"Why, sir?" said Lucy. "I think- I don't know - but I think I could be brave enough."

"That is not the point," he said. "But battles are ugly when women fight.  And now” – here he suddenly looked less grave – “here for the moment is something for you all!”

Now here, in this story, the presents given and received, while still being useful, point to, and signify something more.

The gifts that Mr and Mrs Beaver receive from Father Christmas might seem purely practical – just like the frying pan I gave Nicky one Christmas - but Father Christmas knows that a new sewing machine and a repaired damn are precisely what the beavers really want and need.   But the gifts that are more interesting are surely those strange presents given to Lucy, Susan and Peter.

Those gifts hardly seem appropriate for children.  Three of the gifts: the sword, the bow and the dagger, are weapons for fighting with.   Surely children shouldn’t be encouraged to fight?   But life will involve battles and children, as they grow up, will need weapons to fight with:  if not against witches, against the powers of evil.  The other three gifts to the Pevensee children from Father Christmas surely remind us that in life we cannot rely on our weapons and our fighting abilities.  We will need assistance in our battles: a shield for defence and a horn for calling for help.  Psalm 12 tells us that God is the shield and horn of our salvation.  We will, inevitably be wounded in the battles of life, and then we will need healing.   Note that Lucy’s gift of the bottle of cordial made of the juice of one of the fire-flowers that grow on the mountains of the sun is not just for herself but for her friends when they are wounded.  Later in the story the six gifts all turn out to play a significant part in events as they unfold.

Now what about those three gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh that the wise men gave to the baby Jesus.  Why did the wise men give those things in particular?   Like the gifts Father Christmas gives to the Pevensee children they are hardly appropriate for a baby and are surely much more suitable for an adult.  Like the gifts to the Pevensee children the gifts of gold, frankincense have meaning and significance.

 Matthew doesn’t tell us explicitly why these gifts in particular but they are clearly reminders of prophecies of Jesus in the Psalms and in the books of the prophets such as in our Old Testament reading today.  Here Isaiah prophecies:

A multitude of camels shall cover your land

    the young camels of Midian and Ephah;

    all those from Sheba shall come.

They shall bring gold and frankincense,

    and shall proclaim the praise of the Lord

 

Gold, frankincense and myrrh are gifts deemed fit for a king in the prophecies and this is probably one reason why the wise men have often been thought to be kings.  From very early on theologians tried to work out the particular meaning of the three gifts and what each symbolised.  It was probably Origen of Alexandria in about 248 AD who first proposed that gold was a symbol of Jesus’ kingship on earth, that frankincense (an incense burnt in temples) was a symbol of his deity, and that myrrh (an oil used for embalming dead bodies) was a symbol of the importance of his death.  Thus the gifts not only hark back to the old prophecies but point forward to Jesus life.

The gifts the wise men bring can in no way repay the greater gift given that first Christmas: God’s gift of his son for the salvation of all, but the gold, frankincense and myrrh were a concrete sign of the wise men’s gratitude for the child.  Matthew tells us that when they found the baby they were overwhelmed with joy and opened their treasure chests.  In copying the action of the wise men in giving gifts at Christmas we join in with the Christmas story and express our joy and gratitude for God’s greatest gift to us.   

This joining in with Jesus’ story is also what we do when we join together at Holy Communion.  Then we re-enact the Last Supper Jesus ate before his death on the cross and in a sense participate in that death and subsequent resurrection.   At Holy Communion the bread and wine represent the body and blood of Jesus which in turn are a sign of everything Jesus has done for us through his suffering and death on the cross.   The bread and wine are gifts which we are commanded by Jesus to accept, with his words ‘Do this in remembrance of me’ but they are also gifts that we, as his followers, willingly receive and feed on in our hearts by faith with thanksgiving.

As I said St Augustine, in the 5th century AD described a sacrament as ‘an outward and visible sign of an inward and invisible grace.’  The specific sacraments he had in mind were ceremonies such as baptism and Holy Communion, but other things besides.   But what is this grace of which he speaks?  It is that of himself which God freely gives us.  It is that which gives meaning to our lives including our gifts.  By God’s grace we are forgiven our faults and given a new life.   It is that which means that we are required to give our lives to God and thence to each other throughout the year and not just at Christmas.

 

Gathering 

A sermon for Midnight Communion, Christmas Eve, 2020

The topic for my sermon tonight is gathering.  This seems to be an appropriate topic this Christmas given the prohibitions on gathering because of the Corona Virus.  And to start with I want to remind you of that verse from Matthew’s gospel where Jesus is talking to his disciples about how the church community should act and be.  Jesus says, ‘For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.’   Gathering has a human dimension but also a spiritual one.  Tonight I want to suggest that God gathers us and gathers with us in ways we might not expect.

The Christmas story is full of gatherings.  Mary and Joseph are required to gather with other members of their tribe in Bethlehem by the Roman authorities.  This is for the purpose of a census.  Meanwhile some wise men, hundreds of miles away, are gathering together to embark on a journey to Bethlehem because they think a new star heralds the birth of a new king of Israel.   And on the night Jesus is born some shepherds are gathered together on a hill-side, just outside of Bethlehem, until their chatting around a fire is interrupted (as we heard in our reading - Luke 2: 1-20) by some angels.  

These are the sort of gatherings that are the consequence of humans being social beings and which, until recently, we took entirely for granted.   When you are watching tv programmes filmed last year, don’t you find yourself thinking: how come those people are gathering in such large numbers without any attempt at social distancing?   Now, when we are restricted from gathering, how much we miss it?

Gathering has or had a purely practical function.   Meetings of 10 or so people in one room were until last March a routine part of my work.  We gathered together to discuss and agree what work needed to be done before the next meeting.   The shepherds outside Bethlehem were gathered together presumably because it is easier to watch sheep if there is more than one of you and also a lot safer.  Gathering is useful for all sorts and types of work. 

But gathering is also part and parcel of celebration.   When Jesus was born some angels – as the carol ‘O Little Town of Bethlehem’ says – ‘were gathered all above’.  The shepherds once they had been told by the angels that something wonderful was happening in a stable nearby – that that very moment a Savior was being been born, the Messiah, the Lord – all rushed together into Bethlehem to see the baby – and to celebrate his birth, returning to their sheep ‘glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told’ by the angels.  Just like the shepherds we gather together at services like this one to celebrate the birth of Jesus at Christmas.

 And we also gather together at Christmas meals and parties whether we believe in the story that originally prompted the celebration of Christmas or not.  This need to gather together in celebration also seems hard-wired into our very beings and is why the restrictions on gathering together this year because of the Corona Virus have been felt to be so cruel.

Now of course shared meals are central to celebration.  In a little while we are going to remember a Passover meal celebrated by Jesus the night before his crucifixion.  For 2000 years Christians have gathered together to share bread and wine to remember the story of Jesus’ birth, life, death and resurrection and what God has done for us through him.   Now gathering at the Communion meal, while it is physical with real bread and real wine, also has a spiritual side.  At Holy Communion we gather with all Christians alive today, across the ages and across the globe – virtually if you like.  At this very moment Christians throughout the UK are celebrating Midnight Communion but also they are also doing so in Iceland, Portugal and Ghana and other countries in our time zone   And at Holy Communion we don’t just gather with one another we gather with God. 

Now this sermon is a sequel to the one I gave at the Carol Service at St Luke’s the Sunday before last.  In that sermon I expressed the view that it was absurd for the Daily Mail or anyone else to think that Christmas could be cancelled.   I reminded people that Christmas cannot be cancelled because of that first Christmas more than 2000 years ago when Jesus was born.   When God became a human that Christmas it was a defining moment in world history.   It meant that Christmas is going to happen forever whether we like it or not.  

That birth in Bethlehem meant that God is still here with us this Christmas.  So however different and difficult it will be for us this Christmas it has not been cancelled, it cannot be cancelled because it not in our power to cancel what God has done for us.

In my sermon at the carol service I reminded people that in C S Lewis’ ;The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe' the White Witch had tried, ineffectually, to cancel Christmas in Narnia by making it ‘always winter but never Christmas’.   Here is an extract from near the middle of the book when the White Witch is pursuing the three Pevensee children, Peter, Susan and Lucy, in a sledge drawn by reindeer with Edmund the fourth Pevensee child on board.   At this point the Witch’s power to stop Christmas coming is waning because Aslan the Lion has returned to Narnia.

And then at last the Witch said, "What have we here? Stop!" and they did.

How Edmund hoped she was going to say something about breakfast!  But she had stopped for quite a different reason. A little way off at the foot of a tree sat a merry party, a squirrel and his wife with their children and two satyrs and a dwarf and an old dogfox, all on stools round a table. Edmund couldn’t quite see what they were eating, but it smelled lovely and there seemed to be decorations of holly and he wasn’t at all sure that he didn’t see something like a plum pudding.

"What is the meaning of this?" asked the Witch Queen. Nobody answered.

"Speak, vermin!" she said again. "Or do you want my dwarf to find you a tongue with his whip? What is the meaning of all this gluttony, this waste, this self-indulgence? Where did you get all these things? "

"Please, your Majesty," said the Fox, "we were given them. And if I might make so bold as to drink your Majesty’s very good health—"

"Who gave them to you?" said the Witch.

"F-F-F-Father Christmas," stammered the Fox.

"What?" roared the Witch, springing from the sledge and taking a few strides nearer to the terrified animals. "He has not been here! He cannot have been here! How dare you—but no. Say you have been lying and you shall even now be forgiven."

At that moment one of the young squirrels lost its head completely.

"He has—he has—he has!" it squeaked, beating its little spoon on the table. Edmund saw the Witch bite her lips so that a drop of blood appeared on her white cheek. Then she raised her wand. "Oh, don’t, don’t, please don’t," shouted Edmund, but even while he was shouting she had waved her wand and instantly where the merry party had been there were only statues of creatures seated round a stone table on which there were stone plates and a stone plum pudding.

Now we might think that our plum puddings, this year, have been turned to stone.  

But CS Lewis’ story doesn’t end with the animals and their feast being turned to stone.   Aslan the Lion, towards the end of the story, releases all those who have been turned to stone by the White Witch and restores them to life.  He restores this Christmas gathering to what it should be: a glorious celebratory feast.

Of course gathering is easier in person – whether it be for Christmas Dinner or Holy Communion - but as I must keep on saying, gathering also has a spiritual dimension that transcends the physical.  Remember those angels at the first Christmas.   And we clearly do not have to be physically present to gather, as this year of Zoom meetings, Zoom social gatherings and Zoom services, like this one, demonstrates.   At the end of the day the Corona Virus cannot and does not prevent us from gathering. It certainly cannot prevent us from gathering with God.

That verse from Matthew’s Gospel again ‘Jesus says, for where two or three are gathered in my name, two note not even six, I am there among them.’     

 

Love came down at Christmas

 

A sermon for a carol service at St Luke's Church, Oxford, 13^th December 2020

The theme of my talk today is ‘Love came down at Christmas’.  This, you might remember, is the first line of a carol with words by Christina Rossetti.   The carol starts:

Love came down at Christmas,

Love all lovely, Love Divine,

Love was born at Christmas,

Star and Angels gave the sign.

 Here Christina Rossetti is saying something amazing.  She is of course talking about the birth of Jesus, with angels bringing the good news and a star over the stable, at that first Christmas more than 2000 years ago, but she goes beyond an evocation of the scene to an explanation of what it was all about.

Our first reading from the opening words of John’s gospel – sometimes called it Prologue - is a traditional reading for Christmas carol services and also talks about love coming down at Christmas albeit in a slightly different way.   If Jane had carried on reading our first reading this evening she would have come to the verse ‘And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.’ 

It may not be immediately obvious who or what John is talking about when he talks about ‘The Word’ in this and previous verses in the Prologue but from the context it is clear that John has in mind two different persons: Jesus and God.   A bit odd I know to think of a word as a person but there it is. 

So ‘The Word became flesh and dwelt among us’ can either mean ‘Jesus became flesh and dwelt among us’ or – more surprisingly - ‘God became flesh and dwelt among us.’   That Jesus became flesh and dwelt among us is hardly surprising: a human person when they are born, if not before, becomes flesh, and so too with Jesus.  But John saying that ‘God became flesh and dwelt among us’ still, after all these years, has the power to shock us.   Surely the one thing we can assume about God is that he is not fleshy, he is other-worldly, he is beyond us, up there in Heaven?  But this is not so.  God really is down here with us.

Now when John told us that the Word became flesh he was saying something that had never been said before.   Other Jewish theologians has said things like. ‘In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God’ and ‘by the Word God created the world’ but to equate Jesus – a human being – with that Word was truly shocking, then as it is now. 

This idea of God becoming flesh and dwelling amongst is not only shocking but mysterious.  How can it be?   Now a mystery is something which is difficult if not almost impossible to understand but I think it is at least worth trying to understand this mystery because unlike some other mysteries it has such importance for our lives.

Poems sometimes have the power to reveal mysteries that prose cannot.   Christina Rossetti says that ‘Love came down at Christmas’, not that ‘God came down at Christmas’ as John had said: his  prologue doesn’t mention love at all.   Christina Rossetti however is on safe ground when she says ‘Love came down at Christmas’ because John tells us elsewhere in the Bible that ‘God is love’ (1 John 4: 8) and that ‘Love is of God’ (1 Joh 4: 7).

And the idea that love came down at that Christmas over 2000 years go and indeed is still with us this Christmas is, perhaps, a tiny bit easier to understand than God becoming flesh in the shape of a baby.   Even in these commercialised times Christmas is surely a time for love and for expressing love.  Love within families and between friends as expressed by giving and receiving presents and sharing celebratory meals and indeed sharing our love of God at services like this.    But also, hopefully, extending that love to people less well off than ourselves.  Of course some might just see Christmas as a time to indulge ourselves but I don’t think many of us really do.  

Christina Rossetti, in her poem, makes the connection between divine love coming down at Christmas and our earthly love for one another in the second and third verses of the poem.    John tells us that love is of God i.e. that God is the source of love – all love – and when we love one-another we, like the miracle of that baby born with angels singing and a star overheard – reveal something of God’s love for us and the possibility of our love for him.

Now I was struck by reports in the press about a month ago that our Prime-Minister was intending to cancel Christmas as if that was in his power to do so.  And of course there have been attempts to cancel Christmas in the past – famously by Oliver Cromwell.   The most telling example of someone trying to cancel Christmas, I think, is in the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C S Lewis.  Bear with me for a moment: this does connect up with love coming down at Christmas I promise.

You may remember that, in the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Lucy was the first of the four Pevensee children-to get to Narnia through the wardrobe.  There she finds a world all covered in snow and meets a fawn called Mr Tumnus who explains to her that’s it’s a witch – the White Witch - who seems to control everything that goes on in Narnia including the weather

Here is Lucy explaining to her brother Edmund what Mr Tumnus has told her about the White Witch:

‘I’ve been having lunch with dear Mr Tumnus the Faun, and he’s very well and the White Witch has done nothing to him for letting me go, so he thinks she can’t have found out and perhaps everything is going to be all right after all.

The White Witch?’ sad Edmund; ‘who’s she?’

‘She is a perfectly terrible person’ said Lucy.  She calls herself the Queen of Narnia though she has no right to be a queen at all, and all the Fauns and Dryads and Naiads and Dwarfs and Animals – at least all the good ones – simply hate her.  And she can turn people into stone and do all kinds of horrible things.  And she has made a magic so that it is always winter in Narnia – always winter but it never gets to Christmas.'

But we know from later in the story that the White Witch is only seemingly in control.  And here, incidentally, we might think of Covid-19 really only seemingly ruling our lives at the moment.   In the end Aslan – the lion – comes to Narnia and frees the world from the White Witch and one sign of this is the return of Christmas.

We can be assured that Christmas cannot be cancelled whether by Oliver Cromwell, our Prime Minister, should he have wanted to do so, or the corona virus.   This is because love came down at that first Christmas when Jesus was born.   When love came down that Christmas it was a defining moment in world history.   It also meant that love is still here with us at Christmas.  So however different and difficult it will be for us this Christmas it has not been cancelled, it cannot be cancelled.  Love came down at Christmas 2000 years ago and still is with us today.

Here is the complete poem by Christina Rossetti:

Love came down at Christmas,

Love all lovely, Love Divine,

Love was born at Christmas,

Star and Angels gave the sign.

 

Worship we the Godhead,

Love Incarnate, Love Divine,

Worship we our Jesus,

But wherewith for sacred sign?

 

Love shall be our token,

Love be yours and love be mine,

Love to God and all men,

Love for plea and gift and sign.