Month: January 2021

Hebrews 2.14-18, Luke 2.22-40

The Presentation of Christ in the Temple:

31st January 2021- online; 2 February 2025 – Eldroth, Clapham

If all the world’s a stage, and the loudest and the proudest are the actors, while the rest of us just look on, then the story of Christ’s presentation in the Temple invites us to train our eyes to what is happening offstage; for out there in the wings may just be where the real action – God’s action – is going on.

Let us imagine that we are there in the Temple, ordinary inhabitants of Jerusalem, hanging around for evening prayer, or to meet friends, or whatever. It is just an ordinary day, not a major feast. The Temple is a big and imposing building with its series of courts; there are a variety of sacrifices going on at altars up in front of us, priests doing their stuff with impressive seriousness, other priest-like figures scurrying hither and thither looking as though they know what they are doing, temple guards standing on quite relaxed duty at the various entrances and exits. There are money-changing tables, booths for selling the various animals for sacrifice, and inevitably, a fair smattering of adolescent boys running here and there as messengers, carriers, pick-pockets and so forth.

There is smoke, there is incense, and there are the smells and the background sounds of cattle, sheep and caged birds. In different places, there are people involved in prayer, by themselves, or in groups, some attending the sacrifices, others apparently making deals with the Almighty with much bobbing and bowing. Over all this, there presides the Holy of Holies. The veil is in place, and all that is going on is going on with some, but not too much, reference to the apparently indifferent gaze of the One who dwells there.

Someone tugs your sleeve, and points to a small gathering which is happening just out of the corner of your eye. Nothing special. A couple with a baby come in for the rite of Purification. And who’s that coming up now? Oh, that’s old man Simeon – older than Methuselah! He looks so old that he might very well be the High Priest Simeon himself from three hundred years ago – one of the last decent High Priests in Jerusalem. In fact he probably is a real descendant of his. Funny to think that someone like him would be High Priest today if it hadn’t been for the various bits of skulduggery by which the current bunch had co-opted, bought and stolen their hold on office. Anyhow, the couple have got someone proper to do their rite for them. Old Simeon will take the thing seriously.

Now watch out, awkward Anna has spotted them and is rushing up! Didn’t anyone warn them? She’s older than God and has been around the Temple since before time began. Actually, she’s a survivor from one of those tribes which went into the desert generations ago and didn’t go along with the whole return from Babylon and second Temple project; She thinks that if she stays here day and night, fasting and praying, then God will bring the first Temple back, Ark, Mercy Seat, Fire, Wisdom and all. She makes it clear that she considers the current priestly families to be little more than pretenders, – well she isn’t unique in thinking that, but she has the courage of her convictions, since she actually stays in the Temple to try to make it holy. Good luck to her, and to all whom she pesters!

Ah, now the Evening Sacrifice is about to start up, let’s turn towards the Holy Place, the dwelling of the Most High, and get on with it. Curious though that as the couple are leaving with their child, both Simeon and Anna, normally a mixture of the cranky, the zealous and the infuriating, look suddenly peaceful, as though something had happened to them. Oh well, funny things go on in the Temple! Maybe they got given a bigger than usual tip for their services. Let’s press forward and join in the chanting which is starting up: “I will gaze on the Lord in the Sanctuary to see His strength and his glory”.

Well, of course this is not the version of the story we hear in St Luke’s Gospel, and which we call The Presentation of Christ in the Temple. My version is the majority report – what a normal passer-by would have noticed that day. We celebrate the minority report: for Luke, anything else that was going on in the Temple on that date was quite irrelevant. We get no mention of it, so we have to supply with our imagination.

What we do remember is that on that day, Malachi 3 verse 1 was fulfilled: “The Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple”. Yes, that day God suddenly came into his Temple. But he came in almost offstage, and was noticed only by a couple of eccentrics who had been hoping for him in quite specific ways as fitting in with their expectations for how God would show himself to his people, to Jerusalem and to the Temple; expectations which were regarded as indecent pieces of folk-culture by the people who ran the show in the Temple.

In other words, the shape of the arrival of God on the scene, the God to whose worship the Temple was dedicated, was that of a tiny offstage interruption, scarcely to be noticed. The Temple authorities remained completely unaware of what had happened. Only much later would it become clear to them just how much this offstage event would come to change everything. [1]

We live in a world which often seems like a stage for the loudest and the proudest, the greediest and the wealthiest; and we’re often troubled by what we hear them say and do.

On this stage the performers give every sign of being odious human beings, who flaunt the odiousness, knowing that it maddens their opponents and electrifies their cult. What they do as presidents and primates can cause misery for millions of people; and they seem to exult in the distaste they provoke, they revel in the spectacle in which they are the star players. [2]

Which is all the more reason for us to give thanks for those things which God does offstage. To be grateful for the almost unnoticed intrusions into our daily lives, divine interruptions, which we may realise in time, change everything.

So we give thanks for those everyday people like Simeon and Anna who are eccentric and stubborn enough to hold on to their hopes in a world which has forgotten how to imagine a different future. [3]

We give thanks for our almost forgotten old ones who have always insisted that, despite all evidence to the contrary, God is coming to make things well again… and so spend their days in faithful, expectant prayer.

And we give thanks for our marginalised young ones like Mary and Joseph who, despite living in a world whose future seems to have been cancelled, a world of extinguished dreams, nevertheless insist on bringing their newborns to their Temples as a sign of hope in the persistence of God. [4]

Notes

Updated January 2025.

[1] James Alison, Blindsided by God: Reconciliation from the underside. Presentation for “Anatomy of Reconciliation” Conference, Trinity Institute, New York City, 30 January – 1 Feb 2006. As cited by Paul Nuechterlein in Girardian Lectionary, Christmas 1B, Resources on Luke 2:22-40. Edited.

[2] T.J. Clark, A Brief Guide to Trump and the Spectacle. London Review of Books, Vol. 47 No. 1, 23 January 2025.

[3] Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?. p.2: he takes capitalist realism to describe “the widespread sense that not only is capitalism the only viable political and economic system, but also that it is now impossible even to imagine a coherent alternative to it.”

[4] Mark Fisher on hauntology in eg. Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Hauntology, Depression and Lost Futures. p.8: ‘The 21st century is oppressed by a crushing sense of finitude and exhaustion. It doesn’t feel like the future. Or, alternatively, it doesn’t feel as if the 21st century has started yet.’

Revelation 19.6-10, John 2.1-11

The Third Sunday of Epiphany, 24th January 2021 – online

It was good while it lasted – until the wine ran out.

The party we were having – until the wine ran out.

We were young and wild and carefree – until the wine ran out.

We dined and danced and drank some more – until the wine ran out.

What happens when we notice that our wine is running out? When, with our glasses quarter-full, we find ourselves shaking the last drops from our bottles, looking around for fresh supplies but seeing only other glasses emptying, every other bottle being drained? And it dawning on us that there is no more wine to be found….

Will this end our party – now that the wine’s run out?

How can we be happy – now that the wine’s run out?

Where will we find pleasure – now that the wine’s run out? 

Comfort and enjoyment – now that the wine’s run out?

The wine running out – is that a metaphor for us all as we age, and develop a gnawing sense that  the best times in our lives are behind us?

Or is it a parable about the state of our religion, whose early followers thought would end soon with the rapid return of the Messiah to the world – but two thousand long years later we are all still waiting, and wondering if we took a wrong turn somewhere?

Is the wine running out a way of talking about our world which for the past two centuries or more has dined out lavishly on the riches of nature, drank deeply from every well of water, oil and wine available, drained creation’s cellars dry – and only now is noticing the ruinous effect our excessive consumption of everything is having on everything?

We put our trust in health and youth; but that wine will run out.

We practice age-old rituals; but that wine will run out.

We squeeze all we can get from life; but that wine will run out.

Insurance, shares and life assurance; that wine will run out.

If we think that all these privileges are our entitlement and will keep on coming – then we deceive ourselves. But if we’re able to accept our finitude and recognise our limits, then that puts us not at the end, but rather, open to the possibility of a new beginning. When we allow ourselves to sense that something other can happen with us when our old options seem to be draining away, as we realise that rather than facing the end of a hopeless story, we’re opening the page to a fresh chapter.

We can take this view because we know what happened at the Wedding Feast at Cana so very, very well. Jesus’ first miracle, turning water into wine: it’s a joyous tale which everybody loves. It works at the level of a brilliant human story: as one writer has put it, the miracle at Cana is there in the bible ‘Just to remind us of how a very ordinary person took some very ordinary drink among some very ordinary people and enabled them all to be happy’. [1]

And it also works at a symbolic level. For the six stone water-jars which Jesus had filled with water weren’t just any old jars. They were there for the Jewish rites of purification, for ritual washing, for their religion was pre-occupied with the problem of impurity.  They weren’t modest wine containers, they were massive, of a size more suitable to the temple than for a home in Cana. Odd that they were there, in the story – until you realise that ‘this story, is really about the collision between the ministry of Jesus and the conventional religion of his time’: 

The stone jars – notice that they need filling; they are depleted. They signify the old ways which were emptying away. And notice how Jesus is not rejecting the jars and what they stood for; he is filling them. You could say that he is filling the rituals with meaning and then transforming them.  The devout Jews of the time clung to their old rituals, not only because they ordered life but also because they gave them an identity. But the hidden message of this miracle story is that Jesus helps us not to reject out of hand our old ways, but when these old ways lose their power to help and save us, he can refill them and transform them into something even better than before. [2]

It’s a beginning, not an ending – after our wine runs out.

It’s a miracle, not a funeral – after our wine runs out.

It’s renewing, not depleting – after our wine runs out.

It’s a world of new experience – after our wine runs out.

The message in this miracle is that we needn’t spend our time looking back aghast at what seems to be draining away from us. But rather, if we ask Jesus’ help – and we can do that easily, in prayer, day by day – then he can prepare us to be filled – filled with new insights into who we are, filled with new commitments to better ways of being alongside others on this earth. Our bodies weakened with age maybe, but our spirits full. Our old sources of security dissolving in these times, perhaps, but a new sense of God’s provision filling us.

‘Now Jesus lived and gave his love / to make our life and loving new,’ wrote hymnwriter Brian Wren. [3] It’s no surprise that Jesus’ ministry started at a wedding. For the world he invites us into is one of loving commitment from him to us and back again, a relationship of joy which bears all changes, through all the ages.

‘There is a road that leads to Cana’, says the writer Brian Zahnd. ‘The place where the miracles begin. The place where Jesus turns water into wine. There is a kind of Christianity that looks like a wedding feast. It’s why I still say “come with me. Come with me, come to Cana, come to where Jesus turns water into wine.”’ [4] 

 

Notes

[1] Wild Goose Worship Group, Present on Earth: Worship resources on the life of Jesus, p.50.

[2] Paul Nuechterlein, Girardian Lectionary Epiphany 2C: Notes on Gil Bailie, “The Gospel of John,” tape #2.

[3] Brian Wren, As Man And Woman We Were Made.

[4] Brian Zahnd, Water to Wine: Some of My Story, p.172, quoted in Paul Nuechterlein,Girardian Lectionary Epiphany 2C.

1 Samuel 3.1-10, John 1.43-51

The Second Sunday of Epiphany, 17th January 2021 – Online

 

Last week’s talk, if you remember it, might have been subtitled, “Can anything good come out of Crosby?” – which is my home town; and please substitute here the name of the place you come from: “Can anything good come out of there?” For that talk was about the deep wells from which we can draw to sustain and affirm ourselves, particularly through testing times – the deep resources of all that has been given us by family and community and our faith through all the years of our lives. When we’re feeling alone or adrift we have all these riches to draw on: all we need is a little gentle prayerful self-discipline to reach down to recover them. And to remember that of course, plenty of good can come – has come – from that deep place where we have been formed.

Today’s gospel reading invites us to think a little more about the faith aspect of this. In it, first Jesus found Philip and said to him, ‘Follow me.’ And then Philip found his friend Nathanael, told him excitedly about this Jesus, Joseph’s son from Nazareth, and when the cynical Nathanael asked, ‘Can anything good come out of Nazareth?’ Philip replied, saying, ‘Come and see.’ 

‘Follow me’, says Jesus. ‘Come and see’, say his followers to their friends. That’s the way the Christian faith grows. And, if you look deep into the well of your own faith you may be able to identify who it was who first invited you to ‘Come and see’; and you may be able to recall a moment or moments in your life when you heard Jesus saying ‘Follow me’.

For those of us who were brought up in the Christian way the ‘Come and see’ probably came early in our lives, via parents or grandparents, ministers or Sunday School teachers – people who told us the stories and taught us the songs which showed us who Jesus is, who helped us form a picture of him in our mind’s eye and an impression of his character in our hearts. And maybe the ‘Follow me’ came at the time you were prepared for Confirmation, or perhaps you had a direct call from God during a mission or a special service; or it might have been at a more private moment, perhaps a prayerful moment, a moment of clarity and illumination in your life – that Jesus was inviting you to follow him and you were ready to respond. Others might say, I’ve never had a direct call like that, but every week in worship when I am sent out in Christ’s name ‘to love and serve the Lord’ – I go and try my best to do that.

For many of us, following Jesus starts with a sense of our own imperfection, and a need to turn to him for help to make a better person of ourselves. It may be that we see in him the one who can direct us in a more worthy and fulfilling path through life. And over time we gain a heightened understanding, through experience, that following Jesus means accepting the high standards he demands of us – requiring our humility in putting God and others first; calling on us to be self-sacrificial in relegating our strong urges for status, comfort and security to follow a way which may lead us downwards in status, into uncomfortable places with no guarantee of security. Following Jesus means unlearning our dependence on the things that money, education and influence can buy to make space for us to develop a purer, simpler trust in his providence. 

Following Jesus is challenging. The philosopher Julian Baggini in his recently published book called ‘The Godless Gospel’ looks into Jesus’ teachings from an atheist’s point of view and discovers, in his words,

a belief system which goes against the gentle image of Jesus as an advocate of homely moral truths that we can all warmly and easily embrace. Much of his teaching is discomforting, and quite a bit is objectionable…. The moral philosophy of Jesus is often challenging and radical, for believers and infidels alike. [1] 

If it’s so hard, being a follower of Jesus, and by the standards of the shallow and materialistic culture around us, quite unattractive-sounding too, then what on earth are we inviting people to open their eyes to when we tell them, ‘Come and see’?

Is it that in Jesus the challenge to put the poorest and powerless first teaches us how to become compassionate? [2]

Is it that in putting God and others first – humbling ourselves, in Jesus’ words – we become less judgemental, more forgiving people, more aware of our dependence on others, and open to the truth that ‘We only come alive in healthy relationships because we feel each other’s brokenness’? [3]

Is it that when we embrace Jesus’ challenge to commit to what is good and true, turning our backs on what is pleasant and easy, we understand that we have discovered treasure in a field, the pearl of great price?

Is it that when we follow the one who challenges us to reach high, higher than we can ever actually reach, we learn how to exercise in our moral life in the way which sports people and artists exercise in their specialisms? Like them we know that perfection is unattainable, but it’s about being aspirational people, about cultivating a seriousness of intent, resolved to work towards becoming the best people we can be.

When we invite others to ‘Come and see’ Jesus, this is to show them one who strengthens our character as we take his example and his teachings into our hearts and practice, shaking us out of any complacency into lives lived intentionally for the betterment of ourselves and the world around us. 

‘Follow me’, says Jesus, and we thank God for the gift this has been to us in the past and is now. ‘Come and see’, say his followers to their friends, and we ask God to help us open other people’s hearts to this encounter and experience. That’s the way the Christian faith grows.

Notes

[1] Julian Baggini, The Godless Gospel: Was Jesus a Great Moral Teacher?, p.10. 

[2] The ‘Is it that…?” section is my rewrite of Baggini, The Godless Gospel, p.169-171.

[3] Elizabeth Oldfield quoted in Baggini, The Godless Gospel, p.169.

Genesis 1.1-5, Mark 1.4-11

The Baptism of Christ, 10th January 2021 – online

Since Christmas, I’ve been reading a heavyweight book – heavy in size, I mean, not in content: 370 pages, over 500 photos, 50,000 words – which I’ve found fascinating because it reconnected me to a strand in my life which I had thought was long past, but it turns out still means a great deal to me. 

It’s the 125-year history of Marine Football Club [1] who, if you follow the local news, will know are the North Liverpool team from the Northern Premier League Division One North West, the same league as Clitheroe and Kendal Town play in, who this afternoon are hosting in their tiny Crosby ground the mighty and glamorous Tottenham Hotspur in the Third Round of the FA Cup. Even just saying that fills me with emotion, for I watched Marine for many years, from the age of about eleven till I was well into my forties, on and off, and throughout my teenaged years that was every week, at home and sometimes away. [There’s a picture of me in the book, in the crowd celebrating a Marine goal, all gangly arms and long hair…] 

Now in these serious and sobering times, soccer might be dismissed as being not weighty enough a subject, and at the start of the first lockdown last March Liverpool manager Jürgen Klopp sagely put things in perspective by describing football as being “the most important of the least important things”. [2] But in reading the Marine book and reconnecting with old friends over the Spurs game, I reckon I’ve found that my rekindled enthusiasm for all things Marine is not just escapism or nostalgia. It’s about family – who nurture us – for it was my granddad Cyril Davies who introduced me to that club as a youngster, and we bonded on those terraces more than we did anywhere else. It’s about community – which extends us – as you’ll well know if you’ve ever been part of a small sports club; where the players and supporters and directors are all on first-name terms and all work together to do what’s needed to keep the organisation afloat. It’s about friendships – which add substantially to our sense of well-being, friendships with people who we can be ourselves with, in fact, have to be ourselves with for they know us too well for us to pretend otherwise, friendships of the sort that last a lifetime, that may come and go but are always fundamentally there. And it’s about having a sense of place, of belonging, of somewhere you know is your heart’s home. ‘Community is at the core of football, and with it notions of identity and place,’ says the writer on football culture Martin Cloake. [3] 

We draw from deep wells. Sometimes we forget, but in times like these, times when we may be feeling vulnerable, alone, misplaced, insecure, when life’s certainties are being challenged by circumstances we can’t control, it’s good to remind ourselves of the deep wells from which we draw. 

We draw from deep wells. Each of us has our family history – the stories of those who’ve nurtured us, and how we’ve matured through our relationships with them. Each have been formed in community – extended by our involvement with others in common tasks and mutual interests. Each have our friendships – which have given us our sense of value in the eyes of others. And most of us too have a sense of place, a home where our heart is. In these times when we are physically distanced from many of these people or places, it might help for us to take time each day to draw from them again – to spend time on the phone or writing a letter or revisiting old photographs or books or films which remind us of them – for by bringing these people, places, things to the surface and contemplating their significance to us, we may help restore in ourselves a peace of mind, a sense of self and of well-being.

Of all the deep wells from which we in our particular faith tradition draw, one of the deepest is the waters of our baptism. Those who have been baptised are blessed from time to time when reminding  ourselves of what this means. The family which our baptism connects us into – the family of God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit, to whom we intimately belong. The community of faith – the church in all its forms, including those brothers and sisters for whom baptism is not such a key thing, but with whom we practice a spiritual life, by sharing in those acts of worship which sustain  us. And within that community of faith, there’s our friendships: with those who especially affirm, encourage and understand us. These are all deep wells from which the baptised may draw. 

There is also our sense of place, those churches, cathedrals, chapels – or places in nature or the built environment – where we especially feel closer to God and our sense of ourselves. We may be unable to visit them just now, but at any time we may bring them to our heart’s surface as we prayerfully seek God’s renewing in our lives.

One deep well on which I draw is my friendship with two spiritual elders with whom I worked for a season in my life and whose valuable soul-friendship continued on afterwards. From them I learned to value the idea that ‘most people know most of what we need to know about God already, we don’t need new information, but we do need encouragement and confidence to trust our own instincts.’ Henry and Roy edited a book about this called The God You Already Know, in which they say that

We believe that if we pay attention life will teach us most else that we need to know. God’s creation is good, and life is basically friendly and can be trusted. We acknowledge that sometimes we get things wrong, or that bad things sometimes happen to us. But we believe that when either of those things does happen, then under God we can learn something from it and grow. God is not in our experience a punishing God but a loving God. God’s creation is basically good, and we as a part of that creation are basically good too, at least in God’s eyes. [4]

Their message is that ‘we can for the most part trust ourselves, our deepest desires and instincts.’ And ‘with the support of a faith community and a modest degree of self-discipline in prayer’ we can draw on the deep wells which are the resources life has given us. Is now a time when you feel you’d benefit from doing this? May God guide and bless you if you do.

 

Notes

[1] Barry Lenton, Marine Football Club 125 Years.

[2] Paul Wilson, ‘Football matches aren’t important’: Klopp sends message to Liverpool fans. Guardian, 13 March 2020.

[3] Martin Cloake, ‘Community is at the core of football, and with it notions of identity and place’. Sporting Intelligence, 3 September 2014, an edited extract from the book of Taking Our Ball Back: English Football’s Culture Wars. Martin Cloake also happens to be a Tottenham supporter.

[4] Henry Morgan (funnily enough also a Spurs fan!) and Roy Gregory, eds, The God You Already Know: Developing your spiritual and prayer life.