Month: November 2024

Jeremiah 33.14-16, Luke 21.25-36

 Sunday 1 December 2024: Advent Sunday

Eldroth, Clapham

Jesus said, ‘There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves.’

And the Evening News is full of it: Flash floods in Valencia, a tornado in Marbella, tropical storms in the Philippines.

‘People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken,’ he said. 

And the daily papers promote the shenanigans of reckless world leaders, terrorising their neighbours, tearing up agreements designed to protect the earth, their fingers poised provocatively over the nuclear button.

‘Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near,’ he said.

But how can we raise our heads with the weight of the world on our shoulders?

Recently I spoke about how some, this year, will find it very hard to sing the words, ‘O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie’, for these words may stick in our throat as we contrast them with Bethlehem today, where, rather than watching ‘the silent stars go by’, the occupants lie awake at night in fear of attack by soldiers or settlers intent on forcibly removing them from their homes. [1]

But: ‘your redemption is drawing near,’ Jesus insists.

Back in the day, wise men from the East studied the sun, the moon, and the stars for signs of a redemption which they believed was coming.

And here we are at the start of Advent, being invited to join them in their hopeful search for a new beginning for this broken world.

We who carry the weight of the world on our shoulders – may God give us strength to raise our heads to follow this star.

What does it mean for us to be following the star?

I’d say that it means watching and acting.

Following the star means watching – looking out for what Jesus is doing in this world. 

It means paying less attention to the miserable rolling news and more to the gracious actions of those who practice love for their neighbours – opening our eyes to small acts of kindness: food handed over at a doorstep, conversations over fences; a smile across a street. [2]

It means opening our ears to those working hard to practice loving their enemies – like those Israeli and Palestinian families I’ve spoken of before, each of them bereaved and committed to supporting each other through the grief towards reconciliation. 

The two women, two mothers, one Palestinian, one Israeli, who lead the Parents Circle Families Forum, witness the pain and loss of the conflict every day. In a recent statement they said, 

“So many more bereaved families have joined us in the past year, and our hearts break together with them.

“Like all Israeli and Palestinian mothers, we do not want to sacrifice our children. All we want is to raise our children in peace.

“For us to live, the war must end. Everyone must return home. The occupation must end, and the conflict must be resolved through political agreements.

“The Bereaved Families Forum stands in solidarity with all grieving families and wishes healing and recovery to all those wounded and affected by this war.” [3] 

And following the star also means acting – joining in what Jesus is doing: sharing in those acts of kindness, big and small, which ‘lay dormant within us, like a seed in need of certain conditions to grow’. [4]

Kindness, writes Brian Bilston, 

affects young and old equally;

there is no race or gender immune from it;

it has the power to topple bad governments;

if one person were to pass it on to just three others

and they, in turn, were to pass it on to three more,

in no time at all, the world would be full of it,

and where, might we ask ourselves, would we be then.

Where would we be on the day that kindness fills this broken world? 

Meanwhile….

Will we be with the bereaved bridge-builders of Bethlehem, working together to bring healing and recovery to the earth’s wounded and troubled ones?

Will we be here, in our own place, watching for signs of goodness, practicing grace and kindness?

Notes

[1] Army Shoots a Palestinian Near Bethlehem, International Middle East Media Center, 3 November 2024; Israel approves new illegal settlement on UNESCO site near Bethlehem, Aljazeera, 15 August 2024. Quoted in my talk, A view from Bethlehem: it’s time to call the midwives,  Austwick, 17 November 2024.

[2] Brian Bilston, Kindness (edited).

[3] Nadin Quomsieh and Ayelet Harel, Co-directors, PCFF,  We express our deepest and heartfelt condemnation of the ongoing violence in the region. Parents Circle Families Forum (PCFF) website, homepage, accessed 16 November 2024.

[4] This and the following quote from Brian Bilston, Kindness (edited).

Hebrews 10.11-25, Mark 13.1-8

The Second Sunday before Advent, 17 November 2024, Austwick

Over the coming weeks we will no doubt find ourselves singing the words, ‘O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie’. It paints a lovely picture, but for some of us the words may stick in our throat because we can’t help but make the contrast with Bethlehem today, where, rather than watching ‘the silent stars go by’, the occupants lie awake at night in fear of attack by soldiers or settlers intent on forcibly removing them from their homes. [1]

Maybe Bethlehem was in a ‘deep and dreamless sleep’ when the carol’s original writer, Revd Phillips Brooks, visited there in 1865. But it is hard to imagine that was the case two thousand years earlier, when the ‘holy Child’ in his carol was born. Then, as now, Bethlehem was in occupied territory, and ‘it was the despised Roman taxation system which brought Joseph and Mary to Bethlehem on that first Christmas night. The census declared by Caesar Augustus was intended to identify the value of his assets in Palestine and to increase the revenue for his empire.’ [2]

So on the night when the angels kept ‘their watch of wondering love’, ‘peace to men on earth’ would have seemed a long way off for Bethlehem’s occupants. And thus, it seems apposite to approach this Advent with the words of the adult Jesus standing before the Temple and predicting its fall: ‘When you hear of wars and rumours of wars, do not be alarmed;’ he said. ‘This must take place, but the end is still to come…’. Those words are credible, they have substance, for they speak directly to the reality of life in that land, both then and now. Furthermore they offer comfort to a people troubled by conflict and violence, in the promise of an end to all their suffering, and the whisper of a new day dawning. 

Of course, you may be as unconvinced by these words of Jesus as by Philips Brooks’ carol. For, almost 2,000 years after the fall of the Jerusalem Temple, the lauded ‘end’ of all this suffering seems no nearer. What comfort is there in Jesus’ words for the present-day Palestinians? As the world continues to watch in horror the forcible removal of the Palestinian people from their land, words of comfort and hope do not come easy, nor should they.

But note carefully what Jesus is saying. In contrast to the politicians of his – and our – day, he avoids offering a short-term (and inevitably violent) ‘solution’ to the problems of his place and time. Jesus teaches of the coming kingdom of God, where change comes slowly, almost imperceptibly, like in a pregnancy. ‘Nation will rise up against nation, and kingdom against kingdom,’ he said. ‘There will be earthquakes; there will be famines. This is but the beginning of the birth pangs.’

Jesus is saying that our troubled land, our aching world, is pregnant. Pregnant and expectant of the birth of a new kingdom in which war and its consequences – famines, disease – will be no more. He’s telling his followers that it is our task to nurture this new kingdom into being. We, who occupy the tension between the present, troubled, reality, and the new, transformed, world which he is bringing into being – we are to help midwife that birth, through the way we live our lives.

Those who midwife this new creation understand that good news emerges not through fierce and rapid actions, but slowly and almost unnoticed: but they trust that it is undoubtedly coming.

The midwives to this new creation know that peaceful change will come not through force, but through tiny acts of grace and love.

They understand that the world will be saved not by those who speak of themselves as heroes – “saying ‘I am the one!’’ – but through those who live modest lives, faithfully.

They put their trust in the gentle art of nurture, the patient crafting of life.

The theologian Walter Wink says that ‘Violence is the ethos of our times. It is the spirituality of the modern world.’ And so our world keeps spinning in a cycle of endless violence, of an-eye-for-an-eye, where Israel-Palestine is just one example. It happens on a different scale even in our own communities, if you think about family conflicts and neighbourhood disputes where people feel compelled to drive a wedge between themselves and others despite the damage and lasting pain this causes everyone involved. 

Jesus urges us to disbelieve all rapid and dramatic solutions to the problems of the world. He encourages us to heed less the bad news which assails us from all sides, surrounds us with darkness and makes us feel impotent to change anything, and to take more time to listen to the good news which he teaches, and consider what a difference it is already making, and can in future make, in our world.

He invites us to share in the coming of the kingdom of God, which grows through a community of faith whose members encourage each other to love, and provoke each other to do good deeds, it grows whenever we do something which demonstrates our love for enemies, each time we offer prayers for those who persecute us. 

Through the gentle witness of Jesus’ followers the new kingdom comes, slowly and almost silently, to all nations. 

The Christian watches for signs of God’s kingdom emerging as we try to engage graciously with the hard questions of our time. The Christian is deeply privileged to be not only present at the birth of this new age in its arrival, but to be actively involved in its gestation. We are at the beginning of the birth pangs. It’s time to call the midwives.

 

Notes

A rewrite of Wars and rumours of wars in a pregnant world, published in Lydford Parish and Community Magazine, December 2012

In homage to the late Walter Wink, author of Engaging the Powers; Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination.

[1] Army Shoots a Palestinian Near Bethlehem, International Middle East Media Center, 3 November 2024; Israel approves new illegal settlement on UNESCO site near Bethlehem, Aljazeera, 15 August 2024.

[2] Stephen Sizer, The dark side of Christmas, 25 December 2015.

Hebrews 9.24-28, Mark 1.14-20

Remembrance Sunday, 10 November 2024, Austwick, Clapham, Keasden

Recently I came across a sermon which was given by a nine-year-old girl called Lucy. It was a short sermon but it asked a very good question which I wanted to share with you today. 

Lucy had obviously been reading her bible, and had noticed the story about God being very angry with the Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, so angry that he sent the angel of death to fly over all the houses in Egypt and kill every firstborn son – the eldest boy in each Egyptian family. [1] 

It’s a terrible picture, all those young men in house after house lying, sacrificed, to satisfy an angry God. I don’t know about you but that picture reminded me of other pictures we’ve been seeing this week – pictures of rows and rows of young men in the trenches at the Somme, lines and lines of people’s eldest sons, brothers, fathers, lovers; and seeing them there and knowing what happened to so many when they went ‘over the top’, I imagined in the dark clouds above them the angel of death waiting to claim them – as sacrifices to satisfy the angry God of war. Many soldiers in the trenches wrote poems describing that sort of vision and the effect it had on them.

But that’s just my thoughts. You’ll want to know what Lucy’s question was. This is what she said:

When I think about God I think of a person who would never murder or kill anyone. But when you think about it you wonder, because wasn’t it God who swept the angel of death over Egypt? It makes you think doesn’t it? Is God against it or is he not? I mean what had the boys done to die? It was the Pharaoh wasn’t it? Now do you realise how little we know about God? [2] 

Now it’s well over a hundred years since the Battle of the Somme where over a million men were wounded or killed, making it one of the bloodiest battles in human history. [3] But people are still killing or being killed in wars and terrorist actions throughout our world. Thinking about Lucy’s question, does this mean that a wrathful God is still out there looking for boys – and girls – men and women, to sacrifice to satisfy his anger? Some believe the answer is ‘yes’, and will go to war or kill innocent civilians or even go so far as to kill themselves in the name of this image of God. 

But remember what Lucy said at the start of her talk. ‘When I think about God I think of a person who would never murder or kill anyone’. I think that Lucy has found another God in her experience, and in her bible.

As well as reading about the vengeful God of Israel, sacrificing Egypt’s sons, I think that Lucy may  have come across that other old story, of God leading Abraham up the mountain and Abraham bringing with him his firstborn son Isaac, thinking that God would want him to sacrifice Isaac to him – because that’s what people thought God wanted them to do in those days. But when they got up there, God told Abraham, ‘Hold on, don’t kill your son. Sacrifice this wild goat instead.’

Did this story help Lucy realise that, way, way back in ancient times, God told Abraham, the father of Israel, that he does not want anyone murdered or killed in his name or for his sake?

Now, you might be thinking, if I were Lucy I may have wanted to know why God thought it was ok to say ‘no’ to sacrificing humans but that it was still ok for the goat to get it. Well, if we read on in the bible we find the prophets who told the people how God really wanted them to  behave. 

Like Micah, who shows us God looking at all those poor goats and sheep and cattle being sacrificed in the Temple and telling the people, ‘I want mercy from you, and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings.’ [4]

Or Amos, through whom God tells the people, in the language of his day, ’I hate your glitzy TV telethons and fancy church services. Offer me your animals or grain for sacrifice, if you like, but I won’t accept them. I’m not listening to your chirpy pop songs – or your lovely choirs. What I do want is to see justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.’ [5]

Maybe Lucy read the words of the great prophet Isaiah, who had a vision of a God who devoted himself to ‘settling disputes’ for the peoples of the earth. In this vision he saw them ‘beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks’. Their weapons of war into implements for farming and tending the land. As Isaiah saw it, in the future which God was planning, ‘Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore.’ [6]

So, here’s some insight into the God who Lucy noticed, ‘a person who would never murder or kill anyone.’ A God whose mission is to help people learn the ways of peace, not war. And if we and Lucy go to the gospels and read about the life of Jesus, we find on every page Jesus giving examples of how this peaceful world might look. He calls it ‘the kingdom of God’, and teaches that in this kingdom those who are suffering in life will be blessed, people who show mercy will receive mercy, and the peacemakers will be called children of God. When Jesus turned over the tables of the money-changers selling birds for sacrifice in the temple, this was God again saying, ‘no more sacrificing to me, let the doves and pigeons and all my creatures fly away, free.’ [7]

Nine-year-old Lucy has given us something to think about today. Is it really God who is angry and vengeful and bloodthirsty – or is it us? Is it because of our violent, angry, conflict-driven nature, our desire to dominate and control, that we settle for a fiery old God who demands human sacrifices to cool his anger and satisfy his vengeful spirit? Or are we with Lucy, a seeker after peace, longing for a merciful God whose deepest desire is for us to learn how to live in peace with each other?

You see, I suspect that, though some people will keep invoking the fiery old God of human sacrifice to support their warmongering ways, it’s the gracious God of peace and well-being whose power is growing, through people like Lucy, through ordinary people like you and me, in this world. 

So for instance here in the UK this week is National Anti-Bullying Week, which educates us to ‘stop bullying and create safer environments in which children and young people can live, grow, play and learn’. The theme for the week is: ‘Choose Respect’. The organisers invite us to ‘Imagine a world where respect and kindness thrives – it’s not just a dream’, they say, ‘it’s in the choices we make’. [8]

Peace is a doing word. And Anti-Bullying Week is one sign, a small but powerful sign, of God at work in our world. The God who Lucy discovered as she looked closely at her bible stories. The God who would never murder or kill anyone. The God who is actively building his kingdom of peace in this world, and who invites us to be active in making peace where we are too.

 

Notes

A rewrite of What kind of God? preached at Queen Camel, and Lucy finds another God – who doesn’t need our sacrifices, preached at West Camel Methodist Church on Remembrance Sunday, 13 November 2016.

[1] Exodus 12.12.

[2] Brian D. McLaren, The Great Spiritual Migration: How the World’s Largest Religion Is Seeking a Better Way to Be Christian, p.120-121.

[3] Wikipedia: Battle of the Somme.

[4] Hosea 6.6.

[5] Amos 5.21-24.

[6] Isaiah 2.4.

[7] Matthew 21.12-13.

[8] See the Anti-Bullying Alliance Anti-Bullying Week web pages.