Life isn’t fair.  But is God fair?  Jeremiah thinks so, he tells us, in Jeremiah 17:510, “I the Lord test the mind and search the heart, to give to all according to their ways, according to the fruit of their doings.”  This belief underlies a persistent idea that people get what they deserve: that those who are healthy and prosperous must be doing something right and those who are not must be at fault in some way. 

Jesus refutes this idea, in Luke 6:17-26, when he refers to the poor, the hungry and the despised as “blessed” and those who rich, full and joyful as “woeful”.   In the beatitudes Jesus separates success from virtue. The poor are no longer blamed or shamed for their predicament.  More than this, for Jesus, blessing is something transformational: the hungry will be blessed “for they will be filled” and those who weep “for they will laugh”.  When God first chose a people to bless it was in order that they might be a blessing. 

At times, we are the ones who are empty and grieving and in need of blessing and sometimes we are the ones who have blessings to share. Whatever our situation, we are to understand that no blessing is earned; that all blessings are a gift from God; and we are only blessed in order to be a blessing to others.

The start of Jesus’ ministry in John’s gospel begins with an excess of wine and in Luke 5:1-11, with an excess of fish.  The characters in both stories begin with a fear of scarcity and move to a place of abundance.  What causes them to move, to act on Jesus’ words, when all he has done is talk?: “we have worked all night and caught nothing,” says Simon, “yet if you say so we will let down our nets.”  

The power of words is also explored in Isaiah 6:1-8.  At the start of his ministry Isaiah is afraid because “I am a man of unclean lips and live among a people of unclean lips.”  He does believe that he has the words to convey the promises of God and yet he is willing to try “here I am, send me.”

In today’s world we know the power of words, we have seen social media posts lead to violence and government announcements lead to market faltering.  Each week we gather and declare our belief in the power of God, in the abundance of grace, in the excessive nature of God’s creative mercy but do we live as if we truly believed them? And, if we did, would it make a difference to ourselves and the world around us?  Isaiah believed that God had given him “the tongue of a prophet, that I may sustain the weary with a word.” Words matter, let’s make ours count.

Today is the last day out for Nativity figures, tomorrow they will be packed away, until next Christmas. Since Christmas we have been celebrating those moments when Christ was revealed as the light of the world: at Cana, at the Jordan, to the Magi and today, to Anna and Simeon in the temple. When Mary and Joseph brought Jesus to the temple, Luke 2:22-40, they were doing what the parent of every child would do. Yet Simeon and Anna see in him something unlike every other child, in him they see God was fully present, they see the human and the divine united. This moment of realization comes only when they all meet together: Anna, Simeon, Mary, Joseph: the rich and the poor, the male and the female, the old and the young. We too are chosen as God’s children, mere human beings who, nevertheless, have the capacity to be more than the sum of our human circumstances. We have the capacity to be enlightened and changed by others who are not like us and yet share with us the calling to shine God’s light in the world.

If Christmas celebrates God coming to dwell with us in the world, Epiphany marks those moments when we see it, those moments of sudden clarity and understanding when the reality of the divine presence shines out of the ordinary and every day. The book of Nehemiah records such an epiphany. This book is largely a cry to “build the wall”, to erect, both physically, culturally, socially and spiritually, a divide between those who are insiders and those who are outsiders. But chapter 8 is different. It is a glimpse of the kingdom outside the wall. Here, in Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10, the people who want to hear God’s word gather in the open square: male and female, young and old, insider and outsider. And the word of the Lord changes them; they weep, they shout out, they bow down. At the end of the reading (6 hours long) the people are told to rejoice, to celebrate and to include in those celebrations those who have nothing. It is a moment of inclusion and generosity in an otherwise exclusionary book. When Jesus reads from the word of the Lord in Luke 4:14-21 he too proclaims a vision of inclusion and generosity: for the poor, the blind, the prisoner, the oppressed. What is more, he tells us, that TODAY, this scripture is fulfilled in our hearing. The promise of God’s kingdom becomes a reality when we are ready to hear it and be changed by it. We too can be a people who create a place of inclusion and generosity in an otherwise exclusionary world.

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.