Month: December 2018

Colossians 3.12-17, Luke 2.41-52

First Sunday of Christmas, 30 December 2018

Austwick, United Service

 

Today let us celebrate the obsessive behaviour of twelve year-old boys. Let us give thanks for the propensities of the pre-teen male.

We all know twelve year-old boys. Though we don’t see much of them. They make their excuses at the end of the family Christmas meal and disappear into their room for a six-hour session of internet gaming, they bury their heads in a book in the corner while the family party goes on all around them, they go out to meet their friends to put their new bikes through their paces.

Some of us have been twelve year-old boys, others of us have lived with them, and so we know what they’re like – they’re people of passion, their passions often fixed very clearly in one particular direction, a hobby or interest which they spend so much time with, strengthening and deepening their knowledge and skill in it. They’re great people to buy presents for, because you know exactly the thing they’re most interested in.

For one boy it will be the train set – constantly revising and expanding the track, the layout, the rolling stock, spending all his pocket money on engines and accessories, spending all his time poring over railway modeller magazines and on internet railway hobbyist forums contributing to discussions on the finer points of some detail, gaining more and more arcane knowledge of his subject day by day. For another boy it will be kicking a football around with friends, or collecting coins, or birdwatching or… 

The interests vary, but the passion and the intensity is the same. Sir Bradley Wiggins told a reporter, “At 12 I told my art teacher, I’m going to be Olympic champion, I’m going to wear the yellow jersey in the Tour.” [1] There is the young man’s spirit that each of us should nurture and never lose – a spirit of curiosity, a spirit of dedication to discovery, a spirit of determination to grow in knowledge and insight and skill.

Sometimes we are infuriated by the obsessions of twelve year-old boys – because their passions take them away from us, they stop them doing their homework or tidying their room or spending any quality time with us at all. But we acknowledge how their obsessions can positively educate them, socialise and mature them, develop wisdom, and in some cases, can set them up for life.

In my Liverpool housing estate parish, Croxteth, a young man was constantly in trouble with the staff at De La Salle Secondary School because he was never there – he was always up the road at the sports centre kicking a football around with older boys. His family hardly saw him for the same reason – though they knew where they could find him, around the corner practicing his considerable soccer skills beneath an end-of-terrace wall sign which read NO BALL GAMES. And in fact his family fully supported him in developing his skills further than any of them could have originally imagined or wished for. His name was Wayne Rooney. [2]

Rooney, now in the twilight of his playing career is more and more a mentor to youngsters coming into the game; and so the obsessions of young men can lead them in later life to excite, encourage and guide others. I’m remembering my late friend and mentor Jim Hart who spent his teenage years in the early 1950s cycling through much of the country, in all sorts of weathers, often riding through the night with no lights, driven by an urge to explore. In adulthood Jim established the Hunts Cross Cycling Group, through which he shared his passions with another generation of boys, some of whom came to regard Jim as a key role model in their lives. [3]

The twelve year-old Jesus was preoccupied with learning; learning from the teachers in the temple the ways of God. This was no solitary task, for it involved him in sitting among them, listening and asking them questions. And this was no selfish task, for the consequences of it were a young man growing almost visibly in wisdom, and wisdom is a thing which is shared to the benefit of all. The adults who shared their time with him ‘were amazed at his understanding and his answers’. 

His parents must have been used to Jesus spending time with others, because on their way home from Jerusalem it took them a day to notice he was missing; they were anxious about him then, and they couldn’t quite understand why he had done what he did, nor the terse  way in which he explained his actions to them. But after he returned home and was obedient to them, Mary, being Mary, ‘treasured these things in her heart’. And watched Jesus grow ‘in divine and human favour’.

So today let us celebrate the obsessive behaviour of the twelve year-old Jesus. Let us give thanks for the propensities of that particular pre-teen male. Because he shows us how to live towards others and towards God. He encourages us to cultivate within ourselves a spirit of curiosity, of dedication to discovery; a determination to grow in knowledge and insight and skill, an urge to develop in wisdom and maturity. 

You know, our society has a bad habit of belittling young people and their ways, rather than taking an interest in those things which interest them, rather than making ourselves available to them as people who can take their questions seriously, engage in speculation with them. 

We have a bad habit of mocking those who attach themselves singlemindledly to a subject and let it define them – not least those young men who spend all their time at computer keyboards. And yet when we consider Bill Gates and Steve Jobs and the emergence from their bedrooms to their boardrooms of thousands of other youthful computer pioneers we have to accept the odd truth that: the geek shall inherit the earth. What can we learn from them? How can we add to their understanding?

And one of our society’s worst habits, particularly among religious people, is the way that we shy away from discussing God together: even suggesting that makes me feel that I’m crossing some sort of taboo boundary. 

Thank God that Jesus was born and raised a Jew. For Judaism is a faith which people develop primarily in conversation – about God – with each other. God is an open subject to be discussed with others, and we grow in maturity together through having those conversations about how the scriptures relate to our lives. ‘Judaism values debate and does not stifle it’. [4] 

This week the Israeli writer Amos Oz died aged 79. Fascinating to read that this man, who became  Israel’s best known literary voice, from his youth developed what he called a “deep love” for “one of the greatest Jews who ever lived” – Jesus Christ. As a teenager on a kibbutz, Amos Oz became enchanted by “his poetry, his humour, his compassion, his warmth, his simplicity,” he said. “I realised that unless I read the gospels, I would never have access to Renaissance art, to the music of Bach or the novels of Dostoevsky. So in the evenings, when the other boys went to play basketball or chase girls – I had no chance in either – I found my comfort in Jesus.” [5]

As we consider those adults around Amos Oz who would have helped him nourish his interest in Jesus, let us also thank God for those grown-ups who welcomed the young man Jesus into their company to engage in their theological discussions with them: without their nurture of him, how would the young Jesus have grown towards manhood? They too, are examples to us.

I think that some of the best times Christians have are in small groups which meet to look at scripture together and bring our our own experiences and questions to open conversations about it. When we do this we don’t always found the definitive answers, but exploring the questions together has been very good. The church should be a place which welcomes discussion, which cultivates curiosity and encourages questions about God. It’s an aim of mine to get some of these sorts of conversations going in 2019.

So this coming year, let us celebrate the young and the singleminded, and those of every age who are determined to grow in understanding and wisdom. Let us be among them. Let us encourage  them. And let us determine to explore our faith, more deeply and more keenly,  together, as Jesus and the temple teachers did.  

 

 

Notes

Previously preached in Devon in 2012 and Somerset in 2015.

[1] Hattenstone, Simon, “Bradley Wiggins: ‘Kids from Kilburn aren’t supposed to win the Tour'”. guardian.co.uk, 2 November 2012.

[2] Boy on Bicycle, Man in Boats, my blog entry at johndavies.org, Friday, September 15, 2006. I intend to publish Jim’s cycling memoirs at some future date, to honour the man.

[3] Wikipedia, reports that Rooney joined the Everton youth team at nine years old, so by twelve he was well on the road to professional flourishing.

[4] Conversation and debate in Jewish culture, from myjewishlearning.com.

[5] Julia Pascal,  Amos Oz Obituary, Guardian, 28 December 2018; Jonathan Freedland, Interview.  Amos Oz: ‘I love Israel, but I don’t like it very much’, Guardian Books, 23 September 2016.

Jeremiah 23.5-8, Matthew 1.18-24

Holy Communion, Parcevall Hall, Wharfedale, 18 December 2018

Joseph had a dream. In it the angel told him to put his fears and social inhibitions aside and take Mary as his wife, for the child was God’s special one. 

The Christmas story is full of people having dreams. Do you remember old Zechariah being told of the coming birth of his son John; or Joseph’s other dream where the angel told him to escape to Egypt to save his precious baby’s life. And the very similar dream of The Magi where the angel told them to avoid scheming Herod and to go a different way home?

It seems like God likes telling us things in dreams. 

It seems like the best time to hear God speaking to us is when we¹re asleep! 

I wonder if you’ve ever had the experience of having had God speak to you in a dream?

I wonder if you’d be open to the idea as you turn the light off tonight?

Sometimes of course we dream when we¹re awake. People dream of better times ahead – of winning the lottery, of getting that better job, of finding that ideal partner, of receiving the longed-for care of our family. We are born to dream, it¹s part of who we are. 

“I have a dream!” said Martin Luther King, Jr., the black civil rights leader, many years ago, “I dream that someday the children of former slaves and of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table as one family, and live in a nation where they will be judged not by the colour of their skins, but by the content of their characters.” 

To make that dream come true, Martin Luther King, Jr. got people organised in all sorts of protests and eventually the change he dreamed of did come. Even though he lost his life in the meantime all his efforts had been worthwhile. 

Good King Wenceslas was a dreamer. He dreamed that by trudging through the snow to deliver gifts to the poor man, he would close the gap between them, put things right between them. 

And Bob Geldof was a dreamer. Remember him? He dreamed that a bunch of lazy, self-obsessed musicians could start to put an end to the famine in Africa. That was thirty-four Christmasses ago now, and for all the funds it has raised we know that his project Band Aid really has helped to feed the world. 

What do you dream of? For yourself? For the world? 

I’m inspired by people like those who dreamed up the Bradford Emmaus project, dreamed of providing a home for some of the city’s rough sleepers and not just a home but meaningful work in their social enterprise. This dream is now a reality of course, and the rough-sleepers have become residents and companions, in the Emmaus community, regaining self-esteem and grasping the opportunity to regain control of their lives.

I think that God loves a dreamer. Because dreamers are people able to see the world in a new way; to see the possibility of re-shaping the world into the way that God intended.

This Christmas, dream on. And may God be with us in our dreams….. 

 

 

Note

Originally preached as Dream On, in Liverpool on Boxing Day 2004.

Parcevall Hall is the retreat house of the Anglican Diocese of Leeds, near Appletreewick in Wharfedale. I lead their Tuesday communion occasionally.

 

 

Zephaniah 3.14-20, Luke 3.7-18

Third Sunday of Advent, 16 December 2018

Austwick, Clapham

 

We believe in the Last Judgement. Week by week we say together, ‘He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead’. Our creeds affirm that, after the Resurrection of the Dead and the Second Coming of Christ, every nation will be finally and eternally judged by God. But such language might seem a little disconnected from our lives, in a week when our judgements have mostly been on the level of who to include on this year’s Christmas Card list.

John the Baptist believed in the Last Judgement. He believed the Last Judgement was coming soon: ‘Even now the axe is lying at the root of the trees’, he said, ‘every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire’. The Judgement of John is a Judgement to fear. He  expected the coming Judge to judge with great force. John’s Judge comes carrying tools of destruction and wielding lethal fire. It is the fear of death that motivates those who want to escape that Judgement. Their good works, their obedient behaviour, are driven by fear of destruction. 

Do you believe in the Judgement of John? Many people do. Many people believe that at the end of time we will each stand before Christ, who will send us to an eternity of either life or the lake of fire. Only if we surrender ourselves to Him will he save us. But all this fear, and all this fire: does it ring true to us? Maybe not, for the judgement of Jesus is something else altogether.

Gospel scholars tend to agree that Jesus started out as a disciple of John; he was baptised by him and there’s quite a trace of John’s apocalyptic judgement language in some passages of Jesus. But we see from the gospel stories, as Jesus began to shape his own ministry, that John found it hard to understand Jesus. For Jesus’ view of judgement was quite different from the way John saw it. While John’s messianic Judge came carrying the powers of death and destruction, in fearful fire,  Jesus renounced all such powers; he came as a child, came as a servant; he came as one prepared to give everything away in the cause of love and life; the fire he wielded was the gentle heat of God’s Holy Spirit.

This Jesus refused to call himself a messiah, except once under extreme duress in the kangaroo court which led to his execution. He was keen to avoid being seen as a divine ruler breathing retribution through nostrils of fire; far keener to call himself the Son of Man, the human one. Jesus was less concerned with wreaking judgments on others, more concerned with demonstrating what it means to be fully human. [2]

Note how Jesus taught his followers, ‘Do not judge, so that you may not be judged’ [3]. And how, unlike John, Jesus had little to say about the last judgement. Rather, he focussed attention on living well in the here and now, on following the Son of Man in becoming more fully human, in the image of the loving Father.

Note how Jesus came as a child, came as a servant.  Now, children and servants do have power to judge others. But not a messianic power. They judge from a position of vulnerability, their judgements are their response to the way that powerful people have dealt with them. And so a child will say, ‘I like my uncle, he always tells me stories that make me smile’. And a servant will say, ‘I can’t respect my employer because when I work extra hours he gives me no extra pay’. 

Note how Jesus judges that way, in saying, ‘Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me. For just as you did it to one of the least of these my children, you did it to me’. [4]

Jesus judges as a vulnerable one, exposed to the deathly powers of others. Putting himself in the position of those the world destroys, he relinquishes the power to destroy others: the judgement of Jesus is not concerned with death. When his judgement comes, it comes on the other side of death, death which he has overcome, and it carries the power of life in all its fullness. Jesus gives everything away for love and life. He judges in love; the purpose of his judgement is to encourage us to become more fully human by living generously towards the least of the children of the world.

It’s not difficult to see the Judgment of John at work around us today; in our world of eye-for-an-eye, tooth-for-a-tooth militarised politics where we judge a people to be violent so we destroy them with fire. See it closer to home, where we judge other nationalities to be threatening, so we close our doors to them; where we judge the poor to be feckless, the refugees to be opportunistic scroungers, the homeless to be junkies, the neighbours to be nuisances – so we refuse to help them. It’s a hard thing to admit but just like John, vindictive judgmentalism is in our blood.

But so also is mercy, pity, peace and love. [5] Those who embrace Jesus the Son of Man, have no need to fear judgement and so no desire to execute judgement on others. Our life in Jesus is a process of working towards full humanity, of being slowly and graciously formed into the image of the God who made us in love and forms us in forgiveness. ‘There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus,’ writes Paul [6]; ‘[You will be] blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ’, he said. [7]. Embracing the life of the Son of Man releases us from the death sentence. No longer motivated by a fear of death, it is a love of life which motivates those who place themselves alongside Jesus. 

If Jesus judges us at all then he judges us in love, in self-giving generosity, in the gentle fire of the Holy Spirit. He epitomises mercy, pity, peace and love. His judgement gives us the power to live in the loving, giving, generous power of the Son of Man, the human one. This is the lasting gift we can give to others now and at all times.

 

Notes

[1] First preached as The judgment of Jesus and the judgment of John in Devon in 2012 and Somerset in 2015.

[2] This sermon is influenced by Anthony C. Thiselton, The Last Things, A New Approach, and by Walter Wink, The Human Being: Jesus and the Enigma of the Son of the Man, like all the works of the late writer, a seminal text.

[3] Matthew 7.1

[4] Matthew 25.34-36

[5] “And all must love the human form, In heathen, Turk, or Jew; Where Mercy, Love, and Pity dwell There God is dwelling too. ” – we sang the hymn of William Blake’s The Divine Image (to the tune ST ANNE, ‘O God our help in ages past’) prior to this sermon.

[6] Romans 8.1

[7] 1 Corinthians 1.18

Malachi 3.1-4, Luke 3.1-6

Second Sunday of Advent, 9 December 2018

Austwick, Clapham

 

My name is John the Baptiser. And this is an open letter from me to all the people of God at the Church here in [NN]. 

I wanted to write to clear up a few misunderstandings about me that seem to have built up over the years. I want to do this, because what people think about me reflects back onto what people think about Jesus. I hope that if people understood a little more about me they’d appreciate more about the Son of God as well, whose sandals I’m not fit to carry. 

I’m just a bit worried that people have written me off as a bit of a freak. The wild man who came in from the desert ranting and raging. All those paintings of me out in the desert, surrounded by wild beasts, dressed for the wild outdoors; with wild, windswept hair, like the Ken Dodd of the desert. Caravaggio paints me like I’m in deep inner torment, struggling to come to terms with what’s in my head, out there alone in the wilderness. 

To be honest, that’s close to the truth. Because, as the 20th century writer Daniel Berrigan says, the desert is a place of combat and rebirth. I didn’t go there to escape. I went there to wrestle with my faith, to give myself totally and completely over to God in thought and prayer, to discover who God wanted me to be. 

Now I’d like to get this across: in all of this, I had my family behind me. My father was a priest and both my parents were devout religious people, always in the house of God in prayer. They always said that my birth was miraculous, because they were very elderly when I came along, and through dreams and visions they knew for sure that it was God’s doing. That’s why old Zechariah, my dad, insisted on calling me John – which means ‘God’s gift’, rather than naming me after himself as expected. It made everyone think that I’d turn out to do something significant for God, and soon after my birth my father spoke some words about me which Christians still repeat today: 

You, child, will be called the prophet of the most high, for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give his people knowledge of salvation by the forgiveness of their sins. [1]

Those words were really my commission. Or my calling. I carried them with me through childhood and when I grew a bit older and my elderly parents had passed on, I had to work out what this commission meant. You yourselves know, as people of God, that if you feel you’re being called you have to do a lot of thinking, a lot of praying, a lot of listening to God, to work out what your next moves should be. So I went into the desert to do this. 

I suppose in some respects that does make me seem like a wild man; because especially in the 21st century people are encouraged to be individualistic but they’re not encouraged to be different. And especially if they decide to follow the way of faith in God – that’s too freaky; that’s wild behaviour. 

But it didn’t seem that way to me at the time. For I was the child of a priestly family following my own call into ministry. And there were other people out there in the desert, small communities  practising their own particular ways of serving God, studying the scriptures. Like the Essenes, for whom repentance was central; they had ‘purification baths’ in which they made themselves clean. The Essenes helped me see how I too should offer people a baptism of repentance; so I took that idea back out of the desert into the country places around the river Jordan. 

The other thing that became clear to me out there in that place where I encountered God, was that the words of the prophets of old, somehow applied to me. Isaiah convinced me that it was my task to be ‘the voice of one calling in the desert: prepare the way for the LORD; make straight in the wilderness a highway for our God.’ 

And when I remembered Malachi talking about a messenger acting like a refiner’s fire or fullers soap, ie, purifying the people; I realised it was my calling to call people to repentance, it was my joy to tell people to clear a way in their lives for the coming of God, in all his glory. 

I say it was my joy despite many people thinking asking people to repent of their sins sounds too  harsh, particularly to modern ears; but the reality is that when people face their shortcomings and failures, when they do repent – in other words, turn away and turn around – it brings them a glorious new beginning in their lives. Remember how one of your Anglican hymn writers put it: 

On Jordan’s bank the Baptist’s cry / announces that the Lord is nigh; 

awake, and hearken, for he brings / glad tidings of the King of kings. [2]

My call was to wake people up to something wonderful, something that should make them sing. Because as Isaiah puts it, people are like grass, tossed around by every breeze that life blows at them, liable to wither and fade away, and the good news of the coming of God into the world is that they don’t have to be like that any more. What Jesus taught and showed was that people who are prisoners to themselves or their circumstances can find release in him. As they turn to him and turn around, they find themselves, and begin to experience the world in a whole new way. 

Some people through the centuries have called me the last of the Old Testament prophets. That’s a grand title. I’m content to be remembered as the man who prepared people for Jesus; a sort-of divine warm-up act; the one who came onstage first to set the scene, to get the audience in the mood for the main performance. Like all warm-up acts my talent is tiny compared to the one to follow; but I hope this letter has helped you understand that what I offered wasn’t freakish or crazy, not in God’s terms. I hope I was faithful to the reverence my parents showed almighty God, and true to the story that God continued telling through Jesus. Whose sandals I’m not fit to carry. To him be all the glory. 

Yours,

John the Baptiser 

 

 

 

Notes 

I have preached earlier versions of this sermon in Liverpool in 2001 and 2004, and in Devon and Somerset between 2011 and 2017. The talk can be illustrated with various pictures of John the Baptist – icons, Hieronymus Bosch, Caravaggio. 

[1] Luke 1.76-77

[2] On Jordan’s bank the Baptist’s cry, Charles Coffin, 1736.

Jeremiah 33.14-16, Luke 21.25-36

First Sunday of Advent, 2 December 2018

Eldroth, Keasden

 

Have you ever made a promise you couldn’t keep? I know I have; often with the best intentions of keeping it but ultimately failing; occasionally just to keep another person happy or to avoid conflict or dodge a difficult decision – the sort of empty promises which sometimes come back to bite you.  

We’re all only human, we’re bound to get caught up in promises made and broken, well intentioned words which don’t work out. And we’ll also be on the receiving end of those broken promises sometimes, with the emotional pain, sadness or anger that goes with it.

In our time and place, people are inclined to disbelieve promises. We live in an age of empty words in public life, the broken promises we’re daily dealt leading to a breakdown of trust between the people and those meant to serve us, is some sort of crisis of our times. 

In private life too, we make it hard for ourselves by speaking promises we cannot keep. I’m thinking of the modern trend in non-religious marriage ceremonies for couples to create their own vows. Almost always they are along the lines of “I will always be at your side”, “I will never let you down”: absolute promises that will inevitably fail. What wisdom, then, in the words of the traditional marriage vows, promising devotion and commitment along realistic lines, “for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health…” and so on.

In all of this we appreciate the importance of creating and cherishing moments in our lives when we speak words of solemn promise. Our marriage vows are the obvious ones, or the words spoken for us or by us at our baptism, the oaths we make in a court of law. Words freighted with deep and heavy meaning, words we don’t speak lightly.

And we deeply appreciate the power of words to transform, to form new worlds from promises made. When we make a vow we know that our words express our promise that the people we once were, will be transformed into different people for the future. Isn’t it interesting that however little we regard ourselves as religious, so many of us feel the need to utter such words of promise in a church or on a bible, in the presence of God.

Recalling these sorts of promises puts us in the right frame of mind to consider the words which Jeremiah recorded:

‘The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will fulfil the promise made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah…’

Our God is a God of certain promise. The hearers of Jeremiah’s words would remember the earlier promises of God, fulfilled – his promise to Noah of mercy and new beginnings for a broken world, his promise to Abraham of a new nation, to Moses and his people of a promised land. And now, they hear God make the promise of a righteous branch to spring up – one who would bring justice and righteousness to an unjust and unrighteous people, one who would bring salvation to Judah and safety to Jerusalem – one they would call The Lord, our righteousness.

For us, that man of promise is Jesus. For us, Jesus is the source of all that is just and right. For us, Jesus is the one who brings salvation and keeps us safe. 

How vital this knowledge is in the world we live in today. A world continuing to promise itself that we are civilised and progressive whilst terror inflicts itself into ordinary people’s lives as never before.  A world promising that endless consumption is the way forward while the forests of California burn and the icecaps of Greenland melt. It’s a world we recognise as being very much like the world Jesus described to his disciples in this passage which we heard today, a world where ‘People … faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens [seem to] be shaken.’

We hear the words of Jesus, week by week in our churches and – if it is our practice – we read them day after day in our homes, and we understand Jesus’ words as words of deep promise.“Come unto me, all you that travail and are heavy laden, and I will refresh you,” he once said, and The Book of Common Prayer call them his ‘comfortable words’.

The words of Jesus in today’s gospel passage don’t seem that comfortable. But they serve to impress on us that though the signs of the times seem dark, and we may feel the weight and the burden of them, nevertheless he is coming into the world, and that means that ‘[our] redemption is drawing near’. 

When is Jesus coming into the world? Always and every day, every moment we open the door of our lives to him.

How can Jesus bring redemption to this world? Through the lives of his followers living out the values of his peaceable, gracious, loving kingdom, through small acts of kindness towards neighbours, friends, and in particular towards our enemies, those who persecute us, and the vulnerable ones around us.

These are the words of promise which Advent brings. Words with the power to lift the heaviness of the world from our shoulders; words which shine light into the world’s darkness as we let them come alive in our lives.

There will be other promises of Jesus which are especially helpful or comforting or inspirational to you. In this prayerful time we share this morning, you might bring those special words to mind, those gospel passages and messages which have always encouraged you and helped you on your way.

‘Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away’.

So today, again, with confidence today, hold on to Jesus, and his words of promise to you. 

 

 

Notes

[1] A revised version of the sermon preached in Somerset in 2015 and at Sourton in 2012.