“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. Through him all things were made” (John chapter 1) This is one of the Gospels for Christmas Day, but we are being asked to look back past the birth of the baby Jesus to before the creation of the world. We are being asked to see Jesus Christ in the context of Genesis and the opening of Holy Scripture itself - “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” John is doing this deliberately. He wants us to understand the wonder that is Jesus Christ, the person who lived and died, and rose again, and ascended to the Father within (for him) living memory. He is probably writing around the turn of the century and people are still trying to get their heads around the meaning of Christ’s life and death. The only way John can put it into words is to give it as cosmic setting. While Luke and Matthew set the birth of Jesus in the context of human history - the census Augustus calls for or the reign of King Herod the Great - and Mark doesn’t even consider the circumstances of Jesus’ birth to be worth mentioning, John sees Jesus from the start of his Gospel as the Son of God, the Word. There is a lot of Greek philosophy here, but we remember also the beginning of Genesis, where God creates, not by making things, but by calling them into being with words - “and God said:’ Let there be light!’ and there was light; and God saw that it was good.” Right from the beginning Jesus Christ is the Word of God active in this world, bringing light to humanity, sharing the splendour of God with the human race. John’s Gospel is the story of the struggle between light and dark. John (notice in this whole passage of John chapter 1, verses 1-14 John refers to John the Baptist by name, but he does not refer to Jesus by name) reminds us of the rejection that the Word will receive - “his own received him not.” Remember the darkness around the Last Supper or the darkness in the crucifixion, and then remember the light of the Resurrection morning, the first day of the week, when Jesus has risen and the sun is shining brightly on the events of that glorious day, which we shall surely be able to celebrate this year in our churches. Our Gospel finishes with a promise for us all - “to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God… born of God”. And that, dear friends, is you and me! “The Word was made flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.” Truth is another theme of this Gospel. We remember Pilate’s question: “What is truth?” and it is standing in front of him! Jesus Christ is truth. Let us all, in our challenging lockdown, continue to rejoice in his light and believe in his truth. Almighty God, you have created the heavens and the earth and made us in your own image: teach us to discern your hand in all your works and your likeness in all your children; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who with you and the Holy Spirit reigns supreme over all things, now and for ever. Amen.
0 Comments
In your prayers please hold Susan, Liz's sister; Edna; my friend Clive Hayward, who has Covid19; Sue, an ex-colleague, who has cancer; Ann Gramlich, another ex-colleague, who has cancer and dementia; Jean Constable from Tillington, who has died and her husband Vic; all those in hospital or care homes and those who nurse and care for them.
The Feast of the Presentation (“Candlemas”)
2nd February marks the end of the forty days since the birth of Jesus. Mary and Joseph bring the baby to the Temple in Jerusalem The Law said that Mary should be ‘cleansed’ to complete her purification following the birth of a male child. I can remember my mother going to church after my younger brother’s birth in 1950. It was called the ‘churching’ of a woman. We don’t do it any more. It is a simple service of thanksgiving for safe delivery of a child; it includes the saying of a psalm, perhaps psalm 127 “Except the Lord build the house..”; the Lord’s Prayer is said and there is a short dialogue with the priest and the woman, which includes the Minister saying: ‘Be thou to her a strong tower,’ which was very appropriate for my mother who was called Barbara, whose symbol is a tower. After that my mother was allowed to go back to church, just as Mary would have been allowed into the Temple in Jerusalem after her purification. You can imagine the scene - the couple and their baby, perhaps overawed by the grandeur of Herod’s Temple and staring at the decoration. They are met by an old man Simeon, who takes the child in his arms, blesses him and says the words that we know as the Nunc Dimittis: ‘Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word. For mine eyes have seen thy salvation, which thou hast prepared before the face of all people. To be a light to lighten the Gentiles and to be the glory of thy people Israel.’ This sets out clearly Jesus’ mission - to bring light and glory to a darkened world - but Simeon then goes on to warn Mary that this will not be without cost to her personally. They are then joined by an even older figure, the prophet Anna. She rushes around the Temple telling everyone about this wonderful baby. This is yet another ‘manifestation’ of the baby Jesus. In this way the Feast of the Presentation acts as a bridge between Christmas and Holy Week. It is a celebration that is bitter-sweet, a flavour that is even stronger this year, as we look towards Holy Week and Easter and wonder what sort of Easter we shall have this year. We all need the light that streams from the face of the Christ child. Perhaps we might light a candle before we watch the video on our website or when we say our daily prayers. 2nd February was also called ‘Candlemas’, as the year’s supply of new candles was blessed on this day and indeed still is in some churches. May the light of Christ shine in our hearts now and always. Lord Jesus Christ, light of the nations and glory of Israel, make your home among us, and present us pure and holy to your heavenly Father, your God and our God. Amen.
ANOTHER REVELATION
Today’s Gospel is very familiar. There is a danger in that - we overlook what it is telling us about how we respond to this revelation of Jesus’ glory, this cause to believe in him. Jesus chooses to reveal himself to his new disciples at a wedding. Throughout the Hebrew Scriptures and in many of the sayings and parables of Jesus the wedding feast features as the setting, with Jesus often as the bridegroom. It is quite natural that he would launch himself on his mission at such a feast. Heaven, the Jews had been told, was like a wedding feast, a place of joy and happiness, of closeness to your loved ones and to God. What happens at Cana is a foretaste of the heavenly banquet and Jesus is the source of the joy. There are lots of incidental details that it is hard to ignore, even though we don’t fully understand why they are there. Why are we told this is ‘after three days’? Is this a pre-echo of our Lord’s resurrection? Then there are the water jars. Why are there six? Is this an incomplete number? They are empty. Why? Are they waiting for their real function, to change water into wine? Are we like those jars? Waiting for Jesus to fill us with his Spirit, like new wine? That is one thing I take away from this story. Or are we like the servants? They do whatever Jesus wants, and they keep their knowledge to themselves. Are we being called upon to be like them, ready to do whatever Jesus instructs us to do? That is certainly one thing that I take away from this passage. I should be ready at all times to follow our Lord’s commands. That is one message that comes from some of the ‘bridegroom’ sayings of Jesus in Luke’s Gospel. We are called on to be ready to receive our Lord at any time of the day or the night. Why so much wine? Six jars of twenty or thirty gallons each! This is going to be some party, and it is the best wine too. Of course it is! Clearly the rules of heavenly feasts are different from those of earthly feasts. Never give God less than the best - is that what this is saying? There are so many questions in what is, on the surface, a simple story of one neighbour helping another out in a very embarrassing situation, even if neither the steward or the bridegroom actually know the source of the new wine. Then there is the role of Jesus’ mother Mary. She doesn’t occur much in John’s Gospel, but here she is at the start of Jesus’ ministry and she nudges the action forward, even if she gets a dusty answer for her pains. She is there again at the foot of the cross in John’s Gospel, and some of Jesus’ last words are reserved for her - ‘Woman, behold your son.’ As is typical with this Gospel writer, there is a lot going on under the surface of a simple incident. It is called a ‘sign’, not a ‘miracle’, and I think that is because it reveals something about our Lord, it shows his ‘glory’ and, as a result, his disciples believe in him. So should we. Almighty Father, whose Son our Saviour Jesus Christ is the light of the world: may your people, illumined by your word and sacraments, shine with the radiance of his glory, that he may be known, worshipped, and obeyed to the ends of the earth; for he is alive and reigns now and for ever. Amen
For a change we have two readings this Sunday, one from John’s Gospel and the Old Testament reading from the Book of Genesis. They are linked most obviously by the vision of angels, ascending and descending, and also by the acknowledgements both Jesus and Joseph receive.
The theme of the Season of Epiphany is manifestations of Jesus to the world, hence our first hymn, which lists the different ways that Jesus is shown to the world - first to the Wise Men, then in the Baptism by John, then in the Miracle at Cana in Galilee, then in the healing of the sick and diseased, finally at the end of time. Today’s ‘manifestation’ is to Philip and Nathaniel, who are among his first disciples. They are swept away by his knowledge of them, even though they have never seen him before. This encounter with Jesus spurs the pair on to want to find out more and to follow him. It is hard for us at this distance to experience the magnetism of Jesus to those whom he met, but it is clearly there even in John’s mystical prose. Nathaniel is captivated by Jesus. Somehow we have to recapture that power and strengthen our link to Jesus, the ‘King of Israel’. What Nathaniel sees in Jesus holds him to the end. Some writers have even suggested that Nathaniel is the Beloved Disciple and not John the Evangelist. Who knows? What is important for us is to seek to develop our relationship with Jesus even over the two thousand years the have passed since this meeting took place. The reading from Genesis also shows a chance meeting. This time it is with God and the heavenly host, while Jacob is running away from the consequences of his actions in cheating his brother of his inheritance and his father’s blessing. His story will be a long tale of Jacob learning what it feels like to be cheated himself and to be tricked into marriage with the wrong sister! He learns to find his way through the politics of his extended family to the point where he can face his cheated brother once more and be forgiven. Genesis is a book full of family issues and conflict. Through it all God is there, supporting and encouraging, even though the humans he favours cannot always see it. What we can take away from the story of Jacob is that God uses some pretty poor material to form one of the Patriarchs, one of Jesus’ ancestors. Jacob is a pivotal figure in the history of the Jewish people, Jesus’ people. He is an encouragement to us all, even if he is a pretty slippery character for a lot of the time. Jesus alludes to that when he describes Nathaniel as an ‘Israelite without guile’. In both these readings we have a sense of the supernatural that is just a little way away from us. Jacob sees God in a dream and responds to it. He sets up and altar with the stone he has been using as a pillar. In John’s Gospel, we always have the sense that Jesus sees more than we see, that he is in touch with God in a way that we cannot really understand. God sees into Jacob’s heart and knows that, given time and experience, he will be able to make a Patriarch of him. It is the same with Jesus - he sees into Nathaniel’s heart and sees what he will be able to do with him. Let us pray that Jesus will continue to take our lives and make something beautiful with them for God. Eternal God, our beginning and our end: bring us with the whole creation to your glory, hidden through past ages and made known in Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
A baptism is an event for the family, for the baby or young person of course, and for the Christian community. The font is usually near the door to the church, often at the back of the church, in a place where it is difficult for the congregation to see. Why is this? Because the font is the way into the faith, baptism being the pathway to join the Church of God, the Body of Christ.
When I did my first baptism in 1993, I had a training incumbent who saw that I would enjoy doing baptisms more than he did. As a result, in my three years in Tadworth I did more than 100 baptisms, baptisms on a Sunday afternoon, sometimes three in a row; or baptisms for regular church families as part of the morning service. I usually baptised babies or young children. Once I baptised a 90 year old, as a preparation for confirmation. That was a real privilege. They all were. Baptisms have three actions - the marking of the child’s forehead with the sign of the cross, usually using oil - to surround the child with the grace of God. This anointing is similar to what happens to kings and queens at their coronations or confirmands at their confirmation. The ancient Greeks used oil for wrestling - I used to tell families that the oil at baptism meant that the babies would slip through the devil’s grasp! Oil in the Bible signifies rejoicing. The second action is the sprinkling with water, blessed by the Holy Spirit. Water is such a powerful symbol - we are mostly made up of water; water washes, water refreshes, water brings life in desert places; water is so powerful it can drown us - think of the Red Sea! Jesus passes through the waters of death to his resurrection life. So powerful. At Easter we renew our baptism vows and are sprinkled with water to remind us of the event. Alas, we weren’t able to do that last year. Will we this year on 4th April? I pray so. The final act in the service is the giving of a lighted candle, lit of course from the Easter candle. It symbolises the light of the risen Christ we are passing on. Light out of dark is one Easter theme - ‘Shine as a light in the world to the glory of God the Father. Amen.’ In Jesus’ baptism he was anointed with the Holy Spirit, after John had sprinkled him with water - or was he plunged under the waves, as Robert Powell was in ‘Jesus of Nazareth’? We all share baptism with Our Lord. Now that is a thought worth meditating on. Let us all pray that we shall soon be able to celebrate baptisms with all the splashing of water and pouring of oil we are not allowed to do at the moment. Pray for that day, brothers and sisters. Pray fervently and remember the waters of your baptism that bring refreshment and new life in the desert we are going through at the moment.
ADVENT 2020
I have always looked on Advent as a sort of mini-Lent, and it shares with Lent that sense of waiting and anticipation. It is not as long as Lent, of course; but, just as Lent prepares us for Holy Week and Easter, so Advent prepares us for the coming of Christ in his birth in Bethlehem, his incarnation, as the theologians put it. But it also looks forward to Christ’s final advent at the end of time. What we do in church in Advent in our readings, our sermons and our prayers points us towards Christ’s birth. We are also challenged to confront the theme of divine judgement, as our reading from Mark’s Gospel does this Sunday. ‘Lo he comes with clouds descending’, writes Charles Wesley in a great Advent hymn. I goes on to conclude - ‘Every eye shall now behold him robed in dreadful majesty.’ That is an element of Advent we are reluctant to acknowledge perhaps today, but it is still there. In our uncertain times, it is a useful reminder of our dependence upon God in every thing. When I was a choir-boy in the 50s, I remember the Reverend Druett preaching on the Four Last Things - Death, Judgement, Heaven and Hell - every single Advent. These are the traditional themes for Advent meditation. This made much harder for all of us under commercial pressure. As I write this, my email box is full of encouragements to get ahead of my Christmas shopping by taking advantage of Black Friday offers from (almost) all and sundry! I find it really difficult to concentrate on Advent and sustain the appropriate sense of alert watchfulness when the surrounding atmosphere is trying to tell me Christmas has already started. It hasn’t. But the underlying prayer of Advent remains ‘Maranatha’ - ‘Our Lord, come.’ Let us pray it every hour of every day in Advent, and let us prepare ourselves for Our Lord’s birth on 25th December. Church decorations in Advent are simple and spare. Purple is the liturgical colour. We are lucky in the northern hemisphere as Advent deals at the darkest time of the year. The natural symbols of darkness and light are powerfully at work throughout Advent, Christmas and Epiphany. We light candles on our Advent wreath, a custom that came into our country in the nineteenth century. Christingle, which we shall be unable to hold this year because of the Covid19 regulations, comes originally from Moravia. We shall hold our Christingle later next year, when the regulations are relaxed. So much will be different once that happens, won’t it? The third Sunday of Advent was observed in mediaeval times as a splash of colour, rather like Mothering or Refreshment Sunday in Lent. We light a pink candle, hence the name ‘Rose Sunday’ and the chant for that Sunday started with the Latin word for ‘Rejoice’, ‘Gaudete’. It is known as Gaudete Sunday. Finally, in the last days of Advent the Church has the sequence of Great ‘O’ Antiphons, which we recall in the hymn ‘O come, o come, Emmanuel.’ When will we be able to sing again? I wish you all a thoughtful and prayerful Advent, full of expectation and anticipation of Our Lord’s first coming in Bethlehem and his Second Coming at the end of time. We shall be back in church on 6th December. I cannot wait! John
We have come to the end of the Church’s Year. Next Sunday is Advent Sunday, when the colour of our hangings in our churches will be sombre, purple or violet, to catch the mood of the season, one of thoughtfulness and reflection. It is right, then, that the Year should go out with a bang, and it does! This Sunday is the Festival of Christ the King. The hangings in our churches are joyful and celebratory, gold or ivory, or even gold and ivory, worthy of a King. They are there to lift the heart, and, God knows, we need our hearts lifting this year!
Today’s Gospel is the last great parable in Matthew’s Gospel (chapter 25, verses 31-46). It teaches us about the end of time, when the Son of Man, that is, Our Lord himself, ‘comes in all his glory, and all his angels with him.’ He is going to separate the sheep from the goats, the good from the bad, the just from the wicked, the saints from the less saintly. In my last church we had a version of this scene on our chancel arch. It dated from the Middle Ages and was rather faded. However, it was there and did its job - to remind us of the end of time and the Last Judgement, as it had done since the thirteenth century. We were meant to be frightened into being good! I don’t think this parable is there to do that. Yes, there is a warning, but there is also an encouragement. The sheep, among whom of course we count ourselves, have been doing their Christian duty all along. They are a little surprised when Our Lord commends them for feeding him, giving him cool, refreshing water to drink, clothing him, visiting him in prison or when he was sick. But he was there all along. St Francis had a similar experience in his own life. He loved God and followed him as best he could, but one thing bothered him - he dreaded lepers, who were common in Umbria, and in fact there was a leper colony outside Assisi. One day the very thing he dreaded happened. He saw coming towards him a leper and there was no way of avoiding him. Against his will Francis felt himself compelled to embrace the leper. When Francis had gone a few steps, he turned round and the leper had vanished. It had been Jesus in the form of the leper. Francis’s fear of lepers had gone, and he went and worked for some time in the colony. ‘When I was sick, you visited me… When did we see you sick and visited you?.. When you did it to the least of these, you did it to me.’ This parable is also a challenge to us, but it is one we willingly take up. Even though we cannot see Our Lord, we know he is present in the hungry and thirsty, the sick, those in prison, strangers and refugees, and we act accordingly. Sometimes, God allows us to see the figure of Christ in those we are helping, and that gives us new energy and courage to go on. Our Jesus is the Lord of all time and space, the Ruler of the Universe, ‘Pantocrator’. He is the just judge who loves the whole of creation and brings peace, justice and truth. That is what we are celebrating this Sunday.
Today’s Gospel is Matthew 25.14-30. It comes from the end of Matthew’s description of Jesus’ ministry and just before his arrest and suffering. There is an air of apocalyptic about it. There is a sense of judgement and the end of time. It is beautifully told and is unsettling for some.
Bishop Ruth, our new bishop of Horsham, recently talked about the figure of the man who is about to go away as an image of God. It is a God who is generous to an extreme, a God who is very rich. He gives one servant two and a half years’ wages (five talents), another a year’s wages (two talents) and the last six months’ wages. They are large sums. God is generous to us all in different ways. The talents we receive from God are not monetary of course, but they are real nonetheless. We are called upon to develop our talents to the best of our ability. God does not ask for anything more from us. Notice that the man, on his return, commends the first two servants with the same words - ‘Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful in a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!’ Imagine the joy and wonder at hearing those words uttered by God at the end of the age. Both servants receive the same commendation. Both of them - those words are for all of us. The problem for the third servant is his total lack of trust in the fairness and justice of his master. He is totally unwilling to use what talents he has and develop them. His talents remain buried. There is no development, no growth. He does nothing, just waits for the return of his master with fear and dread. That is the picture of a person who is spiritually dead, unable to understand the generosity of God and unwilling to try to grasp it. His fate is horrible, and it gives Jesus an opportunity to use one of his favourite phrases - ‘where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth’, a fate literally worse than death and a stern warning to his disciples. We notice the warning at the end of the parable - ‘Whoever does not have, even what he does have will be taken from him.’ It is indeed no laughing matter. What about us in November 2020? We are all in a very strange situation, where we find ourselves constrained by the lockdown and unable to live our lives as we feel God wants us to. I think this parable warns us to use what opportunities we have - with the God-given talents we certainly do have - to continue our mission of working for God’s Kingdom by whatever means we can. It is easy to take what God has given us and just bury it until the present situation passes. We cannot do that. We do not have, of course, our usual freedoms, but God has showered us with talents which we should try to use, even in the lockdown. The rewards have been promised to us. ‘Enter into the joy of your master!’ Yes, there is judgement here, but there is also great joy and a love more generous than we can ever imagine. We have only to try and to trust in the generosity and the justice of God. For those who cannot come to Sutton at 1040, The Remembrance Day Cenotaph service will be shown on BBC1 from 1015. Or Click here to see the Royal British Legion's suggestions of how to honour Remembrance Day |
AuthorCanon John Green Archives
May 2021
Categories |