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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.
On Sunday 22nd December at 6.30pm, make a bee line for church for a traditional service of lessons and carols.
There is no better way to be reminded of the importance of the Nativity than through this familiar selection of readings and music.
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.