In our gospel this morning, John 2:1-11, Jesus performs his first miracle generating an overabundance of wine at a wedding feast in Cana. The marriage feast is used throughout Scripture as a metaphor for the coming of God’s kingdom as in Isaiah 62:1-5, when God’s people are promised that: “as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you.” The metaphor of marriage goes deeper than the joy of celebration, it is a relationship built on a promise, a promise of unending commitment. Our faith in this promise is often shaken, by events in own lives and in the world around us. In Isaiah, the people are feeling forsaken, abandoned, in Cana, there is the threat of scarcity. Isaiah’s promise and Christ’s miracle and the words of this morning’s Psalm, 36:5-10, remind us that God’s promise is never broken. But more than this, call us to remember the purpose of God’s promise: that we are blessed that we may be a source of blessing to all peoples. There are times in all of our lives when we run dry, when our resources are depleted like the empty wine jars. When we rely on our resources they will always run out. The world will never be fair enough, just enough, compassionate enough. We will never be generous enough, kind enough, good enough. We do not have to be. The faithful relationship God offers us also offers us a relationship with one another. When we lack, others around us will always have enough to share, when others are in need, we will be able to provide. We are blessed to be a blessing.

Today, as we celebrate the baptism of Christ, we renew our own baptismal vows. Water has great symbolic significance: in scripture it is both threatening and life-giving; a source of chaos and of renewal. For John, Luke 3: 15-17, 21-22, water is a sign of cleansing and restoration but for Isaiah, 43:1-7, water is dangerous, capable of overwhelming and destroying. When Jesus comes to John for baptism, John is reticent, Christ has no need of cleansing. But it is not Jesus who is being cleansed, it is the water itself. Just as the spirit of God moved over the waters of creation bring forth life, so Jesus consecrates the waters of the world to bring about a new creation. The epiphany season recognises that God makes Godself present in the ordinary, everyday stuff of life: flesh and blood, bread, wine, water these are the things God acts in and through to bring new life to God’s people. When we are baptised, the voice of God heard by Jesus at his baptism, speaks for us also: we are beloved, we are, in Isaiah’s words: formed, created, made, redeemed, precious, honoured, loved. We are reminded that we are called by name to join in God’s work as we too become the vehicles for God to renew the world around us.

Today we celebrate the feast of the Epiphany, the wise men from the East travelling far from home to find the Christ child.  Our readings are full of wonder: the gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh brought by the wise men in Matthew 2:1-12, echo the prophesy in Isaiah, 60:1-9, that the nations will be drawn to God’s light bringing with them, gold, frankincense, camels and rams.  For Isaiah these gifts are for the rebuilding of the city of Zion, God’s home on earth.  But in Matthew the gifts are offered to a child, a child soon to be made homeless by Herod’s genocide, a child who will grow up with no place to lay his head.  Both readings are resonant with the idea of home: Isaiah foresees the children returning home from far away; the wise men need to find another way home.   God’s home is no longer a fixed place but travels alongside those who flee injustice, those who are desperate to find a home.   We discover that, wherever we come from, our true home is to be found in travelling with God and that, finding ourselves at home in God, we are at home everywhere.  

This morning, we fast-forward from the manger to Luke 2:41-52 where we find 12-year-old Jesus backchatting his mother after getting left behind at the temple.  Mary asks: “Why have you treated us like this? your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety”.  In contrast Hannah, in 1 Samuel 2:18-26, is content to leave Samuel in the temple and make a gift of her child to the Lord.

These mothers symbolise for us those who give birth to the future.  When we participate in God’s creative work in the world we often struggle to relinquish control of what we have laboured to bring into being.  Yet our task is to work towards a future which is not just for us and for our families but for God and God’s people.

Christmas day asks us to say yes to the call to bring something new to birth.  Today we are asked to discern when to hold tight and when to let go and let God.

God is contrary: always choosing the least expected places and people.  Micah 5:1-5, tells us not to look for God amongst the great and the good but in the little and the overlooked.  God chooses Bethlehem, the littlest clan of Judah and he chooses Mary, the littlest of the littlest clan.  Today, in Luke 1:39-56, Mary is running for the hills, apparently unaccompanied.  When she arrives this unmarried, pregnant young girl finds welcome with an old, married woman from a well-respected family.   It is a meeting of opposites and yet Elizabeth finds something familiar in Mary: the child in her womb leaps for joy in recognition of the child Mary carries.  The word Greek word used to describe this leaping is only found in two other places in the Bible: both times to describe the joyful reception of the presence of God symbolised by the ark of the covenant. Mary may have no place to call home, but the Elizabeth’s baby recognises that God has made a home in her.  From the hills Mary will travel back to Nazareth and onto Bethlehem from where she will run away again, this time to Egypt.   On her journey Mary will struggle to find a safe place to be at home in the world, yet, when Elizabeth affirms it, she finds herself at home in God and God in her.  Together they, and their unborn children, create a community which will continue to grow, gathering in many who do not find themselves at home in the world but discover that God wishes to make them a home in them.  To find her true home, Mary makes a journey, she leaves the familiar and the everyday and risks the reception of others who are not like her.  Are we too prepared to journey outwards from ourselves, to discover others where God is making a home and allow our own lives and communities to become a dwelling place for the divine.

Just you wait! Today John the Baptist, (Luke 3:14-20) and Zephaniah (Zephaniah 3:14-20) are keen to let us know that the day of Lord IS coming and when it does it will be a day of calling to account. 

They each offer their share of doom: For Zephaniah that day “will be a day of wrath … distress and anguish … ruin and devastation (Zephaniah 1:15–16);

and for John, “the wrath to come” will involve: “axes”, “winnowing forks” and “unquenchable fire”.

But we don’t need them to prophesy doom, we’re pretty good at it ourselves: we despair about whether global warming can be halted;

whether there can be peace in Ukraine without it ceding territory; whether there will be peace in the Middle East and so on and so on. 

We don’t need the prophets to tell us we’re in mess.

What we do need them for is hope.  Not the passive kind but an active hope that we can put into action, hope that might actually change our world.

Zephaniah (in what is stark change of tone to the rest of his book) foresees a time when judgement will be lifted and we will no longer fear disaster. 

John offers more practical advice: live justly, love mercy, act with integrity.  If we want a different outcome, do things differently.

The day of the Lord is not to be feared: the day of the Lord is today and every day. 

Whenever and wherever people live generously and courageously, offering reconciliation, working for justice, there is God in the midst of them. 

Judgement is not a punishment: it is the inevitable consequence of living lives that separate us from God and others.

And hope is not empty optimism: it is a discipline.  When we live this hope we prepare the way for God to dwell among us.  

In this morning’s readings three different prophets promise us a new future: one in which God’s glory, healing and wholeness will be offered to all people and the world will be reordered and renewed.  The promise comes with a task: we are ones who are to prepare for this future and the work will be hard to endure.  Malachi 3:1-4 describes it as a refiner’s fire, that will burn away everything unnecessary, everything that hinders the coming of God’s kingdom.  All that is crooked and rough, both in the world around us and within ourselves, is to be set straight.  In Luke 3:1-6 we hear John repeating the promise made by Isaiah but he gets the grammar slightly wrong:  Luke tells us of “The voice of one calling in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord.”  Whereas Isaiah has “The voice of one calling, in the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord”.  The little comma makes a big difference: is the wilderness the place where the voice cries out from? Or is it the place where we are to prepare God’s way? Are we just to hear those calling from the margins of our society or are we to head out into the margins?  Luke makes a point of comparing John in the wilderness to those who are at the centre of things: Tiberias the emperor, Pilate the governor and Annas and Caiphas the high priests represent earthly authority: they are the holders of financial, political, military, religious and cultural power.  John, in the wilderness, has no such power but it is he who hears the voice of God. Each of the prophets ask us a question: whether, in the midst of the busyness of this season, we will take time to listen to the voices of those living on the margins of our world and whether we will respond to the call to join them there and prepare the way for God?

We’re all doomed! Or are we?

The human psyche is designed to look for danger and to be suspicious of change; so it is not surprising that, in every age, some have believed that the world is going to hell in a handcart.  In Christ’s day, as in ours, there is evidence to support this view: distress among the nations, people living in fear and foreboding.                                                                                                                      

 It was the same for Jeremiah, his writing is packed full of warnings but in today’s passage, 33:14-16, we glimpse the hope of a fresh start: The tree of Jesse, representing the family tree of the rulers of Israel, is now a mere stump, having been cut off by Babylonians and Assyrians.  Yet Jeremiah speaks of a shoot, springing up from the stump, offering hope.                                                                                   

And, in Luke 21:25-36, Jesus also sees signs of growth and newness, as he points to the new leaves on the fig tree.                                                                                                                                 

Advent is about endings but it is also about beginnings: inviting us to ponder what needs to end if something new is to spring forth.                                                                                                              

In the midst of change, Christ tells us not to be weighed down with worries but to stand straight and raise our heads; to be alert for the signs of God’s reign, signs of generosity and understanding, signs of justice and reconciliation.  In encouraging these signs to flourish, we too become a sign of God’s reign, a sign that a new world is possible.   

Today is the feast of Christ the King, a time to reflect on leadership, authority and power. This is a relatively new feast, instituted in 1925 in the face of rising nationalism in Europe.  It affirms that our primary allegiance is to Christ which means that we, like him, are called to stand in solidarity with all peoples.

In our Gospel, John 18:33-37, Pilate believes that he is the one with authority, he holds the power of life or death, but Jesus does not submit to his authority, only to God’s. 

At the heart of their interaction is a fundamental disagreement about the true nature of power: Jesus tells Pilate that if his power “were from this world my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over”.  Pilate’s role in the crucifixion reveals the truth about the misuse of power.  For him, leadership is about exerting power over people, for Jesus it is about using power to serve and liberate people. 

At our baptism we are all anointed with the sign of the cross, claimed as Christ’s own. We are all called to be leaders in the kingdom of God, refusing to use our power over others but instead employing it to set them free.   

As we head towards Advent, the beginning, our readings look to the end.  Today we are treated to two apocalyptic visions of the end times, when all that had seemed secure suddenly seemed fragile. 

Both Daniel 12:1-3 and Mark 13:1-8 were written for people who had witnessed the destruction of their temple and were experiencing upheaval and uncertainty.  They provide hope in a bleak time that the future will be better; that what has been destroyed will be rebuilt.  But hope is not passive, it is an act of radical resistance that commits to a new and better world.

This week, with the publication of the Makin report and the resignation of the Archbishop, there is great strength to be drawn from the metaphors that Jesus uses: the temple being torn down to be rebuilt; the labour pains before new birth; because they speak of renewal.

If we want a church, if we want a world, in which the weak are protected, the voiceless are given a voice, and needs of the vulnerable are not ignored to protect the powerful, we need to believe that such a world is possible but, more than this, we need to be the ones whose lives and actions bring that world into being.  Our task is not to wait for the signs, it is to BE the signs.

This Sunday is Remembrance Sunday when we gather at the war memorial to honour those whose lives have been given and taken away in wars and conflicts past and present. It is a day of deep reflection, a time for sorrow and penitence. 

This month, as the Christian year draws towards its celebration of the reign of Christ, the Feast of Christ the King, our readings today reflect on what it means to live under Christ’s rule.  Today they focus on the need for repentance, to turn from all that is not life-giving. In Jonah 3.1-5,10 we hear Jonah call the people of Nineveh to change, to turn to God and live.  In our Gospel reading, Mark 1.14-20, Jesus proclaims that ‘the kingdom of God has come near’; all we need to enter is to ‘repent, and believe in the good news’.

Our news today is filled with stories of conflict and suffering – sadly the wars of the last century did not bring the lasting peace that was hoped for.  In our personal lives we are called to examine our own beliefs and actions, and repent of all that may get in the way of walking in the way of peace. What does the Lord require of us, but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with our God. (Micah 6.8)

Sunday 3rd November 6:30pm.

The service provides a time and place for quiet prayer and reflection, so that we can remember before God all those we have loved who have died.

There is a list at the back of church for you to add the names of the loved ones you would like to be remembered.

Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength and love your neighbour as yourself”, this, Jesus tells us, in Mark 12:28-34, is the greatest commandment.  The words are as familiar to us as they would have been to his first listeners.  They come as no surprise.  What is surprising is that this is a story of resounding agreement between Jesus and those who seem to be his enemies.  In the lead up to today’s encounter Jesus has been engaged in series of escalating rows with the scribes and the pharisees, deliberately provoking confrontation and causing offence, to the extent that some try to have him arrested.  What is beautiful in Mark’s telling of this story is that this moment of concord is initiated, not by Jesus, but by one of the scribes.  In the midst of the “dispute” with his colleagues, he listens and hears that Jesus answers well.  His is not a trick question, asked to trip up an opponent, it is an attempt to uncover shared values.  In our public discourse we are not used to opponents agreeing, trying to discover common ground, in fact, we are not used to opponents listening to one another.  But Jesus answers him with the Shema: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one.”  There is a oneness, a unity, which underlines all our experiences.  This unity does not mean that we all agree or that we are all the same but that we all are made by the same God for one thing and one thing only, to love.   The second commandment “to love our neighbour as ourselves” flows inevitably from the first, the love of God.  Today, as we welcome a new member of the family of God in baptism, we celebrate our unity, our shared kinship in God.  Our identity and our purpose in life is given to us by this kindship, a kinship with God that cannot be separated from our kinship from one another.  To love our neighbour as ourselves requires listening, demands genuine curiosity about their experiences and a commitment to understanding in order that we see and hear all that unites us and not just what divides us.

“Today, as we celebrate the feast of All Saints, we are offered a glimpse a future feast of all the saints in Isaiah 25:6-9.  This feast will come once God has destroyed “the shroud that is cast over all peoples”, when suffering, conflict and poverty are ended and the whole of creation can celebrate together.  In Isaiah’s vision, the saints of God wait for God to bring salvation but in John 11:32-44, Jesus calls to participate, inviting us to unbind the grave clothes from his friend Lazarus.  Unbinding ourselves, one another and our world from all that is not life-giving is a task for the community to undertake together.  In the gospel, those gathered must contend with the weight of the stone and the stench of decay to free Lazarus but most of all they must hold onto hope.  Lazarus is raised on the fourth day, a symbol that all hope is lost (resurrection and salvation in scripture always comes on the third day).  We are all saints, made in the image of God, set aside for God to use.  Our saintly calling requires courage to speak out about all that constrains and oppresses, all that keeps us shrouded from fullness of life and to play our part in removing that shroud but most of all we are required to practise the discipline of hope, that nothing and no one is beyond redemption. 

“The secret to becoming the greatest in God’s eyes is to become the servant of all.  In Mark 10:35-45 Jesus once more intervenes as his disciples squabble over who is the best, reminding them that they like him, were sent to serve.  Christians have often seen Jesus as the embodiment of the suffering servant we encounter in Isaiah 53:4-12; the one who suffers willingly for the sake of God’s people.  But, whereas Isaiah sees sin and suffering as some big cosmic transaction where one person’s suffering can cancel out another’s sin, Jesus offers something radically different: the only way to end suffering is if all of us take responsibility for ending it.  Like Isaiah, he insists that God is on the side of the oppressed but not because they are cancelling out sin but because God doesn’t want anyone to suffer, God wants everyone to flourish.   We are not called to bear suffering stoically but to fight to end suffering not just for ourselves and our people but for all people.   In the kingdom of God everyone’s needs are served because everyone is committed to service.  Jesus replaces a transactional view of the world with a relational one: if one suffers, we all suffer.  We are in it together.

“O children of Zion, be glad and rejoice in Lord your God” the prophet Joel exhorts us, for the rains have come, there will be grain, there will be wine and oil.  Will there though? After all, Joel 2:21-27 is addressing a people in the midst of famine.  Why should they believe that the future will be any different?  And then there is Jesus telling us not to worry in Matthew 6:25-33, do we worry? You can bet your life we worry.  There are floods, there are hurricanes, food prices are rising, there are over 7 million people in the UK suffering from food poverty, which is peanuts compared to the 27 million and counting at risk of starvation in Sudan.  As for the lilies of the field and the birds of the air, they are doing so well either. There is much to worry about and precious little, it seems, to rejoice in.  Do we worry? Damn right we worry.  But are we worrying about the right things and, more importantly, are we striving for the right things?  Jesus is not telling us that food, water, clothing and shelter are unimportant, he assures us that “God knows you need these things”.  And, like Joel, he promises that these things will be provided but not by some random act of God or providence but by building the kingdom of God: “strive first for the kingdom of God … and all these things will be given to you as well.”  We do not lack God given resources.  What we lack is justice and peace, equity and courage.  What we lack is belief in our God given ability to make a difference.  Do we worry? Of course we worry, we worry about climate change, energy security, sustainable food supply, we worry about the equitable distribution of resources and access to health and housing.  I am not suggesting that we stop worrying but that we start striving.  That we start believing, as Jesus did, that we can make a difference, that we each have a part to play in building the kingdom of God.

At first glance our readings today seem to be all about marriage and divorce but they are about so much more than that.  Genesis 2:18-24 gives us part of the second creation story.  I tend to prefer the first (Genesis 1) in which all humanity (and all genders) are created at the same time, whereas here the woman seems to be created only after the man to help him out.  But perhaps we are creating gender distinctions were there are none: as men and women appear at the same time in today’s reading too, both being formed out of one ha-adam or earth creature.  The creation of gender divisions is something that Jesus comments on too in Mark 10:2-16.  Divorce, as the Pharisees make clear, was something only a man could avail himself of whereas Jesus refers to both men and women divorcing their spouses as if they had equal rights.  It is the inequality that Jesus wants to draw our attention to. Once divorced, a woman risked destitution and death, as did her children.  The law is less important than the people affected by it.  Both our readings centre on dependency: our need for one another, for God and for the whole of creation.  Jesus does not condemn us for breaking any laws but for our hardness of heart; our refusal to take care of each other and our world.  When we do so, we forget that we too are dependant, created as part of one flesh and one earth.  As Jesus takes the child into his arms to honour and bless it, he invites us to do likewise: when every creature of earth, together with the earth from which we were formed, is honoured and cherished, we enter again the kingdom of God.

Today is the feast of St Michael and All Angels.  Angels are heavenly beings not earthly one but they carry messages from one place to the other.  Both of our readings this morning show angels moving between heaven and earth. In Genesis 28:10-19, Jacob stops to rest for the night after running away.  As he sleeps, he dreams of a ladder used by the angels.  Although God promises Jacob that God will be with him wherever he goes, Jacob thinks that God’s presence is linked to this particular place.  He consecrates it, naming it the gate of heaven and then goes on his way.  When Jesus meets Nathaniel in John 1:47-51, he describes himself as the ladder that joins heaven and earth.  The place where heaven and earth meet is not a holy place as envisaged by Jacob but is a living, breathing human being.  We, who follow Christ, are also called to be like Jacob’s ladder: connecting things earthly and heavenly; showing that there need be no division between the divine and the human, we are the place where God chooses to dwell on earth as in heaven. 

In our readings today both Jeremiah (Jeremiah 11:18-21) and Jesus (Mark 9:30-37) speak about the violence they are facing.  A violence provoked by them speaking about power from the perspective of those who are powerless.  They question the way we live now and offer a way of living in which no one is prioritised at another’s expense. The disciples lack of understanding is demonstrated in their fights over who among them is the greatest.  In response, Jesus places a child (who had no legal status being the property of its father) in the centre, in the place of status, the place of importance.  Jesus asks us to do more than care for the needy and powerless, he asks us to learn from them; the centre is also the place of teaching.  The disciples were ignorant because they were afraid to ask.  It is only when we ask that we discover what those who experience life at the bottom of the heap have to teach us.  Inequality and poverty damage all of us, not just the ones at the sharp end.   When farmers get poorer, the food they produce costs us more, when war ravages nations, the displaced end up on our borders.  Jesus is inviting us to work for a world in which power is not used for our own benefit but to serve others.  In such a world no one would be the greatest and no one would be the least.