Readings, Psalm 15, Micah 6:1-8, and Matthew 5:1-12
Image, William DeMorgan, The Good Samaritan (1860s)
 
Here’s the sermon in brief: the Christian life, is a life of creativity.
 
For when we come to respond to the graciousness of God, what are we to do:
Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams,
   with tens of thousands of rivers of oil?
Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression,
   the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?’
That is to ask: is there a patterned response, a predictable, repeatable response to the goodness of God which can be tallied and measured with simple, empirical methods? Copied and pasted from one Christian to the next, to the next, to the next?
God has told you, O mortal, what is good;
   and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
   and to walk humbly with your God?
Which is to say, no, no such patterned, predictable, and repeatable response ready to be tallied. The life we must live in response to the gospel is one that takes creativity, change, interpretation, improvisation, reflection, and growth. For to do justice here and now, is different than there and then. Loving kindness and walking humbly, these are, like any act of love and humility acts which need to be distinct and personal if they are to be authentic.  
 
Likewise, when we bring to mind the psalm, and consider its opening pondering:
O Lord, who may abide in your tent?
   Who may dwell on your holy hill?
The walk of one who is blameless is not walked in lock step. It must be discerned and explored to fit our own particular gait, and the paths which lie before us. To do what is right, in our own time, is not something that can be reduced to a tick box list of dos and don’ts. The psalm, yes, gives us an outline: those who do not slander, who do no evil to their friends, those who stand by their oath even to their hurt. But again, how this looks in our life is a creative, generative, contextual endeavour of discovery, of trial and error, of faith, hope, and love. Even those last two regulations: do not lend money at interest, and do not take a bribe against the innocent have an explicit meaning, but also need to be expanded and adapted into other aspects of our economic lives within our community.
 
So too the red words of Jesus defy a kind of cut and paste approach. These words also call for creative interpretation and improvisation. For we need to learn in our own time how to be peacemakers, what it looks like to hunger and thirst for righteousness. What it means to be salt and light, as the lesson goes on to commend, is hardly self-evident or an easily replicable phenomenon. Rather it is a path of discovery laid before the Church.
 
This is why Christianity was so quickly likened to the image of the way. It is a way of life, one might say a style of living, a manner of moving through the world. We have the scriptures to guide us, the Spirit to lead us, Christ to sustain us, the church to uphold us, but we do not have a simple equation to solve definitively and in detail the question: what does the Lord require. This is why we come week after week to church, why we have (as we explored some weeks ago) been given to each other. It is part of why we join voice in prayer and praise, why we open and proclaim the scriptures, and why we gather at the Lord’s table. These are sites of reorientation and rejuvenation in our faithful improvisation of the way. All sites which form a Christian imagination to resource us as we wonder what does it look like for me, for us, to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly, to do no evil, stand by our oaths, to not profit by interest, to hunger and thirst for righteousness and remain salty and light-filled.
 
But as much as this reorienting, rejuvenating, and learning happens in church, it occurs just as much in our discipleship beyond these walls. That is to say, we learn to answer the question what does the Lord require, what is good or who may dwell on God’s holy hill out there. We find it sent in love to serve the world. We become better improvisers and interpreters of the way in our attempts to do justice out in the world, our attempts to love mercy in our city, our desire to walk humbly with our God in our neighbourhoods, our determination not to slander at the café, to do no evil in our friendships, to take no bribe in our workplace, to hunger and thirst for righteousness in perpetuity.
 
The Christian life, is a life of creativity. We are not given the cheat sheet, we are not told ‘here, paint by numbers.’ We aren’t exactly given a blank canvas and told, ‘paint!’ But we are – through scripture, tradition, and the community – shown a way. Many have walked this way before us and alongside us and more will come and walk it in years to come until the age to come, but it is nonetheless a way which we must discern, interpret, and improvise our own way along. Vitally, we do this walk not to earn anything – but walk along the way to a promised end. That is to say, we walk under the umbrella of grace so that we cannot lose our way. For this reason, the creativity of the Christian life is a gift, it is the freedom of blessedness to discover what the Lord requires of me, now, because God has seen fit to choose to walk with us, choose to require something of us. This, we pursue in worship, this, we pursue as the church, and this we pursue in love and service of the world. Every moment a site to offer up in our life a creative response to the question: what does the Lord require.  

Readings, Isaiah 9:1-14 and 1 Cor 1:10-18
Image, Michael Galovic (Serbian Australian, 1949–), Ukraine Response, 2022. 
 
When I lived in Brisbane, in my early 20s, I lived near the biggest video rental place I’ve ever seen, which for an aspiring actor was paradisiacal. They not only had most movies sorted by director, but had a whole foreign director section as well. The best part was that, on Tuesdays, all weekly rentals were a dollar and if you could correctly answer a trivia question you got an extra rental for free… and folks, I know it is gauche to use a sermon illustration where you, as the preacher, come off all shiny and bright, but you need to know I got a lot of bonus rentals.
 
What was great about this, other than the price and the range, was that when you got home with your 7 or so movies (I had plenty of time in those halcyon days), that was - more or less - the options you had when it came to at-home entertainment for the week. When night came and you started to think, what should I watch, you could simply look at this list. In seven days the movies went back and you borrowed some more and this became the short list to draw from. And while you, certainly, can umm and ahh for a handful of minutes over a handful of movies, the decision necessarily eventuates without too much stress or sweat.
 
Now, however, when the kids are asleep and I want to watch a movie, it's disastrous. Because the short list is no longer those handful of films I rented, but is more or less the entire history of cinema stretched out over streaming platforms, YouTube, and the Internet Archive. And you can swipe and swipe and search and search and the short list simply doesn’t hit bottom (until of course you do strike upon an idea and then invariably discover it is not on the streaming service it was last month but on the one you cancelled when your seven day free trial ran out). The abundance of choice we have now - as has been fairly widely observed - does not make choice easier, and in many ways we watch less, despite having access to much more.
 
Now, it is easy for me, as it can be for all of us, to look back on that period of video rental and pine. But that period has been gone for some time (how many of the youths around Forestway even know why that cafe is called The Old Civic?). But what’s more startling, or unnerving, is when we look back and remember, that not only has the period been gone for some time, it wasn’t even around for that long. The first video rental store opened in Australia in 1983, and by the mid 2010s they were basically all gone. A thirty-something year rise and fall. History is, after all, what was here today, but gone tomorrow.
 
We might think of less flippant examples. Earlier this week, the Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney made the following remarks in a speech: “Today, I’ll talk about the rupture in the world order, the end of a nice story, and the beginning of a brutal reality where geopolitics among the great powers is not subject to any constraints.” The post-war stability of the UN and deference to international law seems to be crumbling as a kind of de-globalised, multi-polar world comes into play. Wars being launched, cities being starved, leaders being snatched, threats against nations aired in public. US President Trump’s insistence that Denmark has no claim to Greenland just because they landed a boat there 500 years ago, is a statement Indigenous peoples across the world must be raising more than an eyebrow, but it is also striking because it flaunts the governing logic of the Western political order since the colonial period. All this points to the fraying of the assumed, the tearing of old orders, the disregarding of the established simply because it was established. And if we are on the collapse of one period of international relations, there will be a lot of us who feel that something permanent is being jettisoned, when once again, like video rentals, this period of international ‘stability,’ this era of international political order, is - at best - 75 years old (and it would be fraught to claim it was ever really as stable, pervasive, or good as it might seem here on the brink). Time is a funny phenomena, it bends with experience. It is very easy to think of timeless and eternal things that lasted little more than a blink of an eye.
 
The problem with stretching a period of history into the realm of eternity, is that it risks confusing the historical with the eternal, human with divine, the worldly with the heavenly, temporary with fixed. Many of the things we have always done, or the ways that have always been, are simply those that hovered around us or our parents at key points in our life. It is easy for me to think, oh, wouldn’t it be great for the girls to have the experience of going to the video store and picking out movies for the week (rather than them being able to jump from thing to thing to thing) and yeah, sure, I can long for that and there might be good to it. But that was my experience for a short time, I can hardly claim it as being something formative for the human race. But we can - and likely do this with all manner of things: perhaps it's a kind of memory of the church, or a certain political order, or a kind of manner or style of dress. We can even do it with commerce - people now, in the age of online shopping, are pining for the days of the mall. Not remembering perhaps the era of the mall’s villainy as it displaced local shops with their community and familiarity, or department stores with their style and glamour.
 
Because confusing the historical with the eternal, the earthly with the heavenly, is the root of idolatry. To make something material (a political figure, a nation state, a form of church, a moment in the culture) essential, immutable, perpetual, and fixed is to make that thing an idol, to claim for it what rightly belongs only to God.
 
Even the sacrament of baptism, it seems, can become a site of idolatry when the particular details of the historical moment - i.e. who did the baptising - is given eternal significance. Paul chides the church in Corinth for their quarrelling based (on all things) who it was that baptised them. The baptiser (be it Peter, Paul, or Apollos) is held up as high as Christ, and as such is splitting the community into factions. Paul admonishes them, asking: Has Christ been divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul? And then extends his argument for the insignificance of the one who did the baptising by admitting (or at least supposing to admit, as one might presume there is a little rhetorical flourish at work) that he can’t even remember who, if any, he baptised. Paul seeks to instill a proper distance between the earthly and the heavenly, the historical and eternal, the true God from the idol. It is this reminder of the difference between someone in time (an apostle) and the Lord of Time (Christ), that allows the community to properly enjoy and participate in the gift of heaven that is the sacrament of baptism.
 
So how do we avoid this confusion? How do we maintain the great chasm between the historical and eternal? For this is, in part, the way to avoid idolatry. First, and this goes to our prelude on video rental and international relations, is to recognise the changing, fluid, and brief nature of history. To recognise that an era in the culture, politics, or the church, is always fleeting. In part this is why we have the prayer of confession - not because Christ’s salvation needs to be constantly earnt through our petition, but to recognise our continual need for our lives to be reoriented on the path of his completed work. This is in part why we have the acknowledgment of country, to recognise that the history of this land has a much longer span than has been typically recognised. We recognise the changing, fluid, and unpredictable nature of history as a way of confessing it is not the rock on which we build the household of our faith, for it is always slipping like sand through an hourglass.
 
The second way we maintain the great chasm between the historical and eternal, is to be in community with and be learning from people who have experienced history differently than us. That could be people who have experienced more of history than us, who laugh at how quaint a thirty-something year old preacher’s examples of the changing nature of history sound. But that should also be those who lived through the same span of time but experienced it in a radically different manner. Those who lived through the same time but without the same vote, the same access, the same rights. Those who lived through the same supposed stability of international relations but in nations too often turned into pawns of a proxy war. Those who lived in the days of video rentals but without the infrastructure or expendable income to make it a weekly habit.
 
I think again of the church in Corinth. Specifically, Paul’s admonishment of the community for how they were practicing the Lord’s Supper. Those who were wealthy would come together and enjoy the love feast and have consumed everything before those forced to work could even arrive. It would be easy for the rich and independent in the community to look fondly on those days of the church, remembering the many hours spent at table with their fellow saints - unless they are made aware of how others are experiencing the same time, who because of material inequality are excluded and ostracised, denied and denigrated. It takes listening to and committing to be in community with those who are experiencing history differently, that allows them to properly enjoy and participate in the gift of heaven that is the sacrament of communion.       
 
The final way in which we avoid this confusion of the historical and eternal and so resist the impulse to idolatry is to recognise that changeless stability is not a prerequisite of divine activity. As the prophet said,
The people who walked in darkness
   have seen a great light;
those who lived in a land of deep darkness--
   on them light has shined.       
The child that is born for us, the son that is given to us, the Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace who is sent into the world in love is sent in the middle of changing and crumbling history. Christ comes, the Spirit moves, God acts in the turmoil of time. It is not because of an era of Egyptian imperial stability that God appeared before Moses and said, I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt… and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians. It was not because of an era of Roman imperial stability that Jesus was sent by God to bring good news to the poor… to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free. And the Spirit today, is not beholden to any supposed stability in church, culture, or politics, in order to move like the wind, stirring up great change and bringing to light a new thing that God is doing.
 
For the great danger of idolatry is not only misplaced worship, but it is that in being misplaced, we are so determined to hold onto and prop up what is timebound and thus destined to crumble that we miss seeing and recognising what God is doing, or is about to do, in our time. To go back to that speech by Prime Minister Carney, his closing caution was: “The old order is not coming back. We should not mourn it. Nostalgia is not a strategy.” This is in part why we open the scriptures and hear them proclaimed each week, because this is not only a source of comfort but interruption, not only about what occurred, but pointing toward the always occurring. This is good news - and not only for avoiding the trapfalls of idolatry - but also as a source of strength and hope. In times of turmoil, when we are struck with fear over the fraying of the edges of the world, unsettled by the cracking of the age, we recall our foundation is built on something deeper, firmer. As our Basis of Union proclaims, the church is able to live and endure through the changes of history because our Lord comes, addresses, and deals with people in and through the news of his completed work.
 
The present is aptly named, it is a gift. And there is much in time to point us to and draw us near the wonders of eternity, much on earth that is as it is in heaven. But the present order is always, already fading away, and like the garment of the resurrected Christ, it must not be clung to out of fear that the next moment, and the next, and the one to come after that will not also be infused with the gifts and graces of our God. This is also, finally, in part why we are sent out into the world, even our worship services don’t last forever. Because it is to and for the world that Christ is sent and already present and active, and it is there we shall find and follow him into eternal life. For it is in holding loosely that we hold faithfully and maintain the chasm between time and eternity. It is in stepping out in trust that we find our feet on the path of Christ which time cannot ravage, nor history deplete, but is where his authority shall grow continually, and there shall be endless peace

Readings, Jeremiah 31:7-14 and Ephesians 1:3-14
Image, Lee Krasner (1908–1984) Through Blue, 1963 

There are some pleasurable phrases out there you love to hear: “all inclusive,” “take your pick,” “I got both kinds,” “it’s all free!” Undoubtedly others come to mind. Characteristic of these is a freedom from imposition or limit, freedom from any concession or compromise, freedom from only if or only after. In hearing these phrases our decision is governed not by any consideration of external factors or tit-for-tat, but solely by the good pleasure of our will. 
 
Though it is not the good pleasure of our will that I want to focus on today. Instead, it is the good pleasure of God’s will that will occupy us, as we heard in today’s reading: God destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace that he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.
 
Why does Christmas happen? Why is the Son sent? At a foundational level, the Christian confession is that all this happens… according to the good pleasure of God’s will.
 
This doesn’t disqualify any other reason we might want to rightly ascribe to the why of Christmas and the impact of Christ’s sending. We might still say that Christmas happens so that we might know God is with us. Still say that Jesus is sent into the world in love so that the world might be saved through him. Still confess that Christmas signifies the beginning of the reconciling union of divinity and humanity which through cross, resurrection, and eventual return is the power which makes us children of God. All these effects can be rightly ascribed to the why of Christmas, the why of Christ’s sending.
 
But all these reasons come after, are subordinate to, and result from the good pleasure of God’s will. It is important to stress this. Because if it wasn’t out of the good pleasure of God’s will, we risk providing an explanation for Christmas, for the sending of the Son, for the spirit of adoption that is somehow external to God, to a force or need which forces God’s hand. These could range from human sin and disobedience, the tyranny of the devil, the encroachment of death. All of these would place an emphasis on the historical, the human act, on some creaturely decision, need, or situation that God is forced to respond to in order to right the rails. And yet, as the reading from Ephesians states with clarity: God chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world. Such a statement, particularly when heightened with the emphases on what God destined according to God’s good pleasure, leaves no room for something in time or history to force God’s hand, to cause God’s reaction. God, unlike creatures, is pure action, not reaction, and God can only be pure action when what God does is solely in accordance with God’s own good pleasure.
 
We might say this in short: In total freedom (free of compromise, free of concession, free of cajoling) God acts for us. And this action for us is not secondary to who God is, it is not an afterthought or plan b in the grand relation of God to the world. To speak of who God is, to answer that eternal question: what is God, is to say God is the one who destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ. God is the one who made Christmas happen by sending the Son in love, according to the good pleasure of God’s own will. Christmas is thus a true and perfect gift. Not a gift given in response to obligation or exchange, but pure gift given out of God’s divine disposition to be for us and our salvation.
 
Therefore it’s great that when we come to Christmas – and more specifically to Epiphany – that a star shines at the centre. I was explaining to the girls that when we look up to the stars we are looking back in time. That the starlight we see, which feels newly arrived with the night, has actually already been travelling toward us for days, centuries, millennia. This light which guides the way has been pulsing to us across time. So that even as it meets us in this moment, its origin belongs to a moment much older, long before we even thought to stop and look.
 
It is this ancient, primordial, elemental light which draws shepherd and magi alike to the Christ child. And perhaps a star was chosen as this symbol since it is one of the few things we can see that feels ancient enough to signify a time before the foundation of the earth. To place a star as the symbol of something new signifies that it is also something very old, something long coming – moving toward the scene before any of the players thought to look. In this way the star signifies that what is happening here at the birth of Christ is not something slapped together last minute, no price tag hastily ripped off, no birthday wrapping paper ham-fistedly repurposed as Christmas paper, no ‘quick we’ll just regift this.’ No, what is happening at Christmas is what God destined to happen according to the good pleasure of God’s own will. Christmas happened because God wanted it to happen, God willed it to be, God delighted that it be so. This is the founding, undergirding ‘why’ of Christmas, the why of the sending of the Son. All that Christmas means, all the incarnation achieves, all that Christ is for us, is the result of God’s free and perfect action, God’s pure and true gift, God’s uncompromising, uncajoled will, God’s good pleasure. We, as Christians, as those adopted as children of God through Jesus Christ, are these adopted children because God freely delighted that it be so. The light of the star shows that the way has always been the way.

Readings, Isaiah 63:7-9 and Hebrews 2:10-18
Image, Laura Lasworth, Lily Among the Thistles, 2001.

Let's take a moment first up to reflect: What did Christmas mean to you this year? How did the story of the nativity speak to you? What does it feel like to hear God with us right now… where is that with for you?
 
The Hebrews reading leads us into something of a part two to the sermon on Christmas Day. The writer seeks to stress the very humanness of Jesus. Christ, they insist (against those who found the idea of God taking on flesh absurd or abhorrent) shared the same flesh and blood as all of us. The Word of God really did take on flesh, really did unite humanity and divinity, creaturely life with the Creator. But, as we noted at Christmas, it is also emphasised that such things were done for us: so that he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by the fear of death.
 
There is a theological tradition which holds that the fear of death is the root of all sin. We sin, in this account, because gripped by the fear of death we cannot find true peace or experience pure love, and this leads us into vice. We covet our neighbour’s property because we feel that one extra product, or one more room would fix the hole in our heart and keep thoughts of death at bay. We become greedy thinking we might live on through our wealth and influence. We hate our mother or father because gripped by our own mortality we wish to strike out beyond them seeking to taste a fuller life. We refuse justice and mercy to the poor and refugee because the fear of death makes life an economy of scarcity where what is provided to another must have been denied to us. We worship false idols because in the murky waters of fear we do not pay proper attention to what we are grabbing for relief. The fear of death wraps around us like chains, warping our experience of life, leading ourselves and others into suffering.
 
Therefore Christ had to become like his siblings in every respect, so that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make a sacrifice of atonement for the sins of the people. Because he himself was tested by what he suffered, he is able to help those who are being tested.
 
On Christmas I said the confession that The Word became flesh and lived among us, means that Christ not only experienced life’s hilltops and valleys, but the plains and plateaus of everyday life. This living among us makes the mundane and ordinary sites in which we might see the glory of God, and experience the truth and grace of Christ. Today, the emphasis shifts to the valleys, the reading from Hebrews stresses that not only did Christ take on flesh and become fully human, but that within that taking on, as part of that becoming, Christ was tested, Christ suffered, Christ experienced the valleys of death that fill us with fear. It is only on this foundation that we might cling to the promise that this was done so that he is able to help those who are being tested, so that he is able to destroy the power of death and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by the fear of death.  
 
That Christ was born among us, that Christ lived among us on hilltop, plain, and valley is the foundation of our hope that in Christ we do indeed have a High Priest who is familiar with our struggles, acquainted with our fears, fluent in our griefs, and is thus able to help those who are being tested, is able to intercede in mercy for those who falter, is able to meet out grace upon grace for all of us weighed down by fear, jumpy in the valley of death.
 
This is why the writer of Hebrews so emphatically argues against the idea that Jesus could have merely been an angel (even one of unparalleled significance) or that Jesus could have somehow been God with us, without actually taking on flesh. It is the same reason why the lectionary links up that little passage from Isaiah with today’s reading, when the promised saviour sent by God is proclaimed to be:
no messenger or angel
   but his presence that saved them;
in his love and in his pity he redeemed them;
   he lifted them up and carried them all the days of old.
 
The incarnation of Christ, the uniting of divinity and humanity, is thus not only about our salvation as we are united with God through Christ’s perfection. It is also a matter of our sanctification; it inspires our trust in God. Professing Christ’s full humanity expands our capacity to live free from the fear of death by reminding us that the one who calls us into such freedom, who leads us into such a life, is not ignorant of the fears, trials, and suffering that mark the human condition. No, Christ beckons as one who suffered but triumphed, who was tested but overcame, who does not abhor the affliction of the afflicted but went down to the depths of the valley of death only to destroy the one who had the power of death.
 
Christmas is thus not only the time we celebrate that the Word taking on flesh is the power to make us children of God. It is not only the time we celebrate that by living among us the ordinary moments of our common days become infused with potential to see God’s glory and feel Christ’s grace and truth. It is also the time when we give thanks that because the pioneer of our salvation was himself tested by what he suffered, he is able to help those who are being tested. Because the eternal Word of God did indeed share our flesh and blood he might destroy that which is the root of all sin, and in so doing free those who all their lives were held in slavery by the fear of death. Christmas is the time that we give thanks that the one whose perfect life we seek to emulate, understood intimately and compassionately all the many things that make us imperfect, and calls us his siblings anyway.

Readings, Isaiah 52:7-10 and John 1:1-14
Image, Mystic Nativity, Sandro Botticelli (1501)
 
At the end of that gospel reading, we hear the meaning of Christmas in brief: And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. Jesus, the eternal word of God, through whom all things came into being has come as a human being. Jesus, the light and life of all people, has been born among the people. Jesus, beginningless, now born, has a common beginning. Jesus, who held the world’s potential within him, is now in the world.
 
Christmas represents the loving convergence of divinity and humanity in the person of Christ. Christ united these two natures within himself, but he did not do it for himself, he did it for us, all of us, the great us of humanity (indeed, we might go further and say the great us of creation). Because in the Incarnation, the uniting of God and man, Christ takes up all of humanity, all creation, and unites it with God. It is this union, achieved by Christ, which inspire the wondrous words of Paul: nothing can separate us from the love of God.
 
All this is true, and serves as the bedrock of the Christian faith, but there is something more to emphasise here. And the Word became flesh and lived among us – as we have said this is the binding of humanity and divinity, the opening of salvation, the power by which we become children of God. But let us contend momentarily with all that living among implies. Because this is not only what happens at Christmas – serving symbolic and salvific ends. Christ lived among us for thirty something years, and what we get in the gospels is only a slither of that. This is not to imply that there is some secret additional knowledge squirreled away out of sight of the gospel writers; their accounts provide what is needed to see Christ’s glory. What it does mean is quite the opposite really. What is not recorded of the lived among us is not the special or monumental, but the ordinary, mundane, and everyday. The feedings, the bath times, the toothaches. The learning to walk, learning to talk, learning to look both ways. The laughter with friends, the frustration with family, the contemplation of solitude. The common meals of common days, that accrue across the slow passage of time unremembered that makes up a human life. The Word became flesh and lived these kinds of days and moments among us too.
 
And in doing so, in not just dropping in full grown, incorporating human nature and then zipping off again, the uniting of humanity with divinity means that the very ordinariness of human life is made holy, is given significance, is experienced by and taken up into divine life. It is often said of life that it is made up of hills and valleys – and Christ certainly experienced plenty of those extremities. But life has a lot of plains and plateaus, and while we don’t spend much time with them in the gospels, we know Christ lived these as well. It is not only the highpoints and low ebbs of human life that are taken up into God’s own, but the great mass of ordinary days.
 
Which means that it is not only the celebratory joy of Christmas and Easter where we may encounter Christ’s glory, but all through our years. The unremarkable stuff of life holds the same potential to be full of grace and truth. All moments carry the potential to reveal Christ’s glory, because Christ, as true light enlightens every moment, because he has lived among us in these moments.
 
So as we come to another Christmas, and soon a new year (at least as the Gregorians would have it) we might resolve to seek in the plains and plateaus of the everyday to receive the grace and truth of God, to receive a little bit of the light and life of all people, to receive a little of the promise that our humanity is united with Christ’s divinity. The feedings, the bath times, the toothaches. The learning to walk, learning to talk, learning to look both ways. The laughter with friends, the frustration with family, the contemplation of solitude. The common meals of common days, that accrue across the slow passage of time unremembered that makes up a human life. The Word who became flesh and lived these kinds of days and moments among us, is with us in these moments still. And the more we come to receive his grace and truth in these ordinary days, the more easily we shall hear, when we need it most, the good news of great joy that we have become children of God.  

Readings, Isaiah 7:10-16 and Matthew 1:18-25
Image, Elizabeth Catlett, Mother and Child, 1956. 

Matthew commences his gospel with a very intentional genealogy leading up to the birth of Jesus. Mirroring the kind found in Genesis, he tracks fourteen generations from Abraham to David, David to the Exile, Exile to the Messiah. It is, for the most part, a patrilineal line concerning fathers causing sons to be born, which is why it naturally comes to a close on Joseph. However, at this moment, something less natural happens. Listen to this little run up and see when you hear the pattern break: Zadok the father of Achim, and Achim the father of Eliud, and Eliud the father of Eleazar, and Eleazar the father of Matthan, and Matthan the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called the Messiah.
 
There’s a common form of journalistic laziness or malpractice which will list couples where one (predominately the man) will be named, while the other (regardless of their own achievement) will be referred to simply as “and wife.” Strangely enough, it is the reverse that occurs here in Matthew’s account. When we get to Joseph the pattern of father to son breaks, for Joseph is the husband of Mary. Because it is of Mary, not of Joseph, that Jesus was born. As we heard: Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. ­­
 
But this insistent detail of whom Jesus was born, raises some perplexing questions. Because, while the genealogy Matthew provides seems to be intended to link Jesus to the line of David, and from David all the way back to Abraham, this ending wipes that lineage away. By insisting that Joseph makes no biological contribution, that he does not father the one to be called Jesus, Jesus is not the next link in the chain stretching back 42 generations. Jesus, indeed, Matthew’s account stresses, has no father’s father. Born instead, of Mary, who does not know Joseph, but was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit.
 
With this bait and switch, Matthew undercuts the presumed story of Jesus’ birth as the typical begetting of fathers to sons, with the reveal that God done something totally new and surprising, something unparalleled and unprecedented… though not, we should note, having heard also that reading from Isaiah, unpromised.
Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son,
And they shall name him Emmanuel.
 
However, given this, we might wonder: wouldn’t it have been more important to establish that Mary belongs to the line of David? That if Jesus should be the son of David, the son of Abraham, it should be done through the grand reveal that Mary, the only human involved in his birth, belongs to this line? Let’s hold those questions just over here a moment. I want to say a little word on the question of word choice.
 
A lot of attention has been paid over the years to whether the word parthenos in Greek, or almah in Hebrew should be translated as young woman or as virgin. Some camps stress that both words explicitly refer to a young woman (and almah in particular can even be a married young woman), and that neither word stipulates virginity. Others will suppose that the venn diagram could be almost a circle and so both words remain valid choices – particularly when, in Matthew’s case, he takes pains in the narrative to stress Mary had no marital relations with Joseph until she had borne a son (although in the more patriarchal tone of the account, the emphasis is on him having none with her).
 
But such debates can miss the mark on two diverging fronts. At one level, emphatically overriding the reality that the word may indeed mean young woman and not imply virginity doesn’t obfuscate or blur the point Matthew is making – Jesus is born of Mary and the Holy Spirit, he is not fathered by Joseph, he does not descend as others do. His birth is something outside of the usual order of things and by this we may trust that as fully divine and fully human he is able to fully unite humanity with divinity. At another level, the increasingly complex attempts in some corners of the church to construct a Mariology where even she is immaculately conceived, where even she is born without paternal ancestry (and so without sin), and where she never has marital relations, also misses the point that Matthew is making: that with Jesus something radically new, something altogether unique, something tremendously mysterious is happening. Both views – that Jesus could be fathered by Joseph but nonetheless made holy, and that Mary must be fatherless, are both based on particular views of the genealogy and sin which generate a set of logical and philosophical rules that are presumed to bind God – but God is boundless! God is not beholden to any system or quandary of human logic. The emphasis of the prophecy of Isaiah that is repeated here in Matthew, lies not in the descriptor of the young woman, but on the one she bears: Emmanuel, God is with us.
 
The very claim that God takes on flesh, that God is born of woman (in some backwater manger, with dubious lineage no less) is all we need to recognise that no human rules or expectations apply to what God is doing to rescue humanity.
 
Which brings us back to that parked question from earlier. If Matthew is so determined to demonstrate Jesus as a child of David, should not Mary be the one at the end of the genealogy? Remember a couple of weeks ago when we read John the Baptist warned the people not to presume too much just because they had Abraham for an ancestor – because God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. Well, so too we might say, God is able to raise up from this young woman a child of Abraham. After all, from the calling of Abraham, through the favouring of David, and all the way to the promised return from Babylon, God has been in covenant with the people of Israel (I will be your God, and you will be my people). And so Jesus does not need Joseph to be his father in order to be child of Abraham. Because the father of Jesus is the Father, who is the God this whole line – the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob – and the God of the whole people: and so Jesus would be of this line no matter of whom he was born.     
 
What I love about all these strange twists and turns, particularly when we start to consider what it means for our part in this story, is that what makes Mary and Joseph exemplary or venerable, is not bloodline or ancestry. It doesn’t end up mattering that Joseph comes from this long and illustrious line: what counts is that he listens and obeys, that he does not expose nor even dismiss Mary, but hears the word of the Spirit and takes her as his wife, and Jesus as his son. He does not fall prey to pride or crumble under societal expectations, but does what the Lord requires of him. So too Mary: her brilliance is not based in being some figure of purity, but is because she is an exemplary disciple. We’ve talked about this previously, so I won’t go into it much now, but Mary’s veneration should be based in her great faith to hear the word of God and say let it be so.
 
And so we do not need to presume that because we lack any particular ancestry, or great lineage, we are somewhat precluded from playing meaningful and joyful roles in this ongoing story of Emmanuel. We don’t need to be able to trace our own lineage to David (and indeed as Gentiles we cannot) but nor do we need to be able to trace it to Peter, or James, or John, nor to any towering figure of the faith, nor even to someone whose name is on a plaque around the church, nor even to someone who crossed the threshold of one. Because the same Spirit who was responsible for Mary’s conceiving of Jesus, is the Spirit of adoption we have received. This same Spirit which makes us co-heirs with Christ, children of God. This is the proper ancestry of the Christian – indeed this is why Jesus did no begetting himself (no father but the Father, no bride but the church, no child but humanity). As John writes in his gospel, Jesus gives those who believe power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God. It is this shared ancestry of adoption in faith which makes us siblings to each other, members of Christ’s body, and faithful disciples of the Living God.

Readings Isaiah 11: 1-10 and Matthew 3:1-12
Image, Joseph Stella, Tree, Cactus, Moon, ca. 1928. 

In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea. The wilderness held important religious significance for John’s people. It was in the wilderness they wandered the forty years between the Exodus from Egypt and the Conquest of the Promised Land. The wilderness where the people grumbled and disobeyed, where the first generation who crossed out of Egypt were buried. At the same time, the wilderness was where the people were fed from God’s hand, led by God’s visible presence and for this reason the wilderness takes on ongoing symbolic power both as the place of nation’s trial and woe, of exile and loss, of God’s judgment and wrath, and as an inner place of trial, fallowness, and encounter.
 
So, what does it mean then, for John to appear in the wilderness? What does it mean for the people of Jerusalem and Judea to go out to him? Because if anything the wilderness is the antipathy to Jerusalem and Judea – the antithesis of these holy places. It was the arrival in the promised land that spelt the long-awaited end of the wilderness wandering, it is the Temple and the City which so often provide refuge from the threat and trial of the wilderness. And yet, it is from the wilderness that the voice of the last of the prophets, cries out. Here, clothed in camel hair and sustained by locusts he stands in wait for the people.
 
Here, in the wilderness, the making straight of Christ’s paths begins. Here, in the wilderness, the way is prepared… is this not counterintuitive? Was not the point of the wilderness that it was something overcome? A test triumphed over by the faithfulness of the people and the fidelity of God? The long-awaited promise given to Abraham is finally fulfilled in the Joshua generation and the promised land becomes the people’s home… and yes, there have been exiles, and yes, there have been catastrophes, and yes, they are now occupied, but nonetheless it is the city, the temple, the land that has provided time and again the bedrock of the people’s identity, their hope in troubled times, the burning furnace of their trust in God. Why then, in those days, does John the Baptist appear in the wilderness? Why are the people called to go out to him to be baptised in the Jordan – the last landmark they passed through to reach the land awaited?
 
Matthew, of all the gospel writers, takes the most pains to stress that Jesus, while being the world’s saviour, is Israel’s Messiah; locating Jesus within the story of God and God’s people. And so the work of John, to prepare the way of Lord, make his paths straight, is not just something that concerns the Messiah, but the whole people. The story of Jesus (like all stories of God) is a communal one, one of relationship and covenant. And so the ways cannot be prepared, the paths cannot be straightened solely for Jesus – you can’t just build a highway, the whole city’s infrastructure needs to be adjusted to accommodate it.
 
It is typical of the prophets of Israel to amplify their message with theatrics. Ezekiel lay on his right side for 390 days and his left for 40 to represent the sin of Israel and Judah respectively. Jeremiah bought a plot of land mid-siege to signify the eventual return of the people following exile. Isaiah walked naked for three years as a sign against Egypt and Cush. John’s dress and diet certainly fit in this tradition, but so too his location, so too his demand that the people come out of the places of stability and religiosity and into the wilderness.
 
Seen this way, the people are drawn to the wilderness as an act of prophetic reminder and preparation. They are reminded that while the wilderness was a time of trial and woe, it was also a place in which the people knew the nearness of God and the immediacy of God’s provision. The wilderness was a place of preparation where the people we trained for their task of witnessing to the nations the particular way of God. The call to the wilderness is a reminder that while the land serves as a testament to the faithfulness of God, it should not obscure their continued reliance on God. Do not presume to say to yourselves ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor,’ John warns the brood of vipers, and likewise do not presume that just because you have Moses and the wilderness generation, Joshua and the conquering generation as ancestors that somehow your story is done: God is able from these stones (these wilderness stones no less) to raise up children to Abraham. Come to the wilderness, John teaches the people, to remember the need to repent and depend, to remember that the story is not settled, and be prepared for God is about to do something new.
 
As we move further into Advent, as the star and the cradle edge closer to our minds, as we begin to hum hark and holy in the supermarket, might we also hear this call from and to the wilderness? A call out beyond the safe and the stable, out beyond the geographies that signal arrival, out beyond the walled familiar, to hear anew the message of the kingdom’s nearing, hear anew the message of repent, hear anew the good news of great joy. Where and from whom might we hear this? What strange form and action might it take? How might we be prepared for the way of the Lord? How might our paths be made straight to meet his? How might our own presumptions be upturned so that the threshing floor of our faith might be swept again by the Holy Spirit; made ready to be gathered again to the granary of Christ? 
 
Because our hope is found in nothing short of the power of God to meet us in the wilderness and lead us into new life. In nothing short of God’s power to breathe life into dry bones and raise up children from stone. This is why we come again and again to the table of Christ, to be fed not as those who have arrived, but as pilgrim people on the way toward a promised end. We come, again and again in repentance, recognising the at-handness of the kingdom. In this we prepare our hearts, make straight our paths, and turn to the one who comes in the name of the Lord to see him already here – arms outstretched feeding us with own his body and blood, which he shall do with gladness and mercy, until the earth is full of the knowledge of the Living God as the waters cover the sea.

Readings, Colossians 1:11-20 and Luke 1:68-79
Image, Matthias Grünewald, The Crucifixion (part of Isenheim Altarpiece), 1512-1516
 
There’s a famous painting on an altar in Isenheim. It’s a crucifixion scene painted by Matthias Grünewald, which anachronistically places John the Baptist at the foot of the cross pointing to Christ. The painting was a favourite of C20th Swiss theologian, Karl Barth, in part because the role of Christian as witness – the Christian as the one who points to Christ – was pivotal to his work. Those words in the painting over John’s gesture, record that immortal and vital motto not only of John, but of the Christian witness: He must increase, but I must decrease. The role of John the Baptist, the painting (and Barth) implies, is thus not a one-off.
 
John was distinct in that he was called by God to prepare the way before the first advent of Jesus. But all of us are now called to this office, to prepare the way of the arrival of Christ in hearts and minds through pointing to Christ’s completed work on the cross and his awaited advent when he comes again in glory. John the Baptist, as the one who points to Christ, thus prefigures the Christian witness – John is, who we are to be.
 
And so what is said of him (or more specifically, what is said of him in relation to Christ) applies also to us. What Zechariah sings over him in his infancy, is thus sung over us in baptism: go and prepare his ways, give knowledge of salvation, point to the One who comes in the name of the Lord. What the immanent advent of Christ means for John and his life’s purpose and commission, it means too for us and our life’s purpose and commission. For the tender mercy of God dawns anew for us as well, the light of the gospel shines too on us, to guide our feet into the way of peace.
 
What better reminder to prepare us for Advent; the season by which we learn again what it means to be set apart to hasten and wait for the coming of Christ by reflecting on that first coming that John was set apart to prepare. A reminder that we have been called into service of Christ, in whom all things hold together. A reminder that we have been rescued from death so as to serve without fear the one in whom the fullness of God was pleased to dwell. A reminder that we have been sent as ambassadors by the one through whom God was pleased to reconcile all things. A reminder that we point to the act of God who made peace on the cross, and so guides our feet in the way of peace.
 
It is also a reminder that helps us prepare to observe and engage with these 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Based Violence. I’ve preached in the past about what Christ the King offers this convergence of dates. That the confession of Christ’s sovereignty can serve to subvert and dismantle the desires of those to set up their own little kingdoms in their homes, to rule and control those around them. The authority of Christ brings judgment upon all earthly claims to authority, reminding us of their provisionally and requiring them to conform to Christ’s own particular way.
 
But today’s focus on the response of the witness, which is the call of the disciple, also reminds us that pointing to the cross is not only a gesture, but a path of peace which we walk. A path we find in the light of the tender mercy of God, dawning on us from on high. This is part of what the kingly language of Christ (for all its limits) still offers, that allegiance shapes a certain kind of life, a particular way of walking through the world.
 
This way of peace should not only inform our own relations as individual Christians, but how our community, as a community of Christ’s witnesses, engages the world. For the one through whom God reconciled the world charged us to be ambassadors of reconciliation, the one through whom God made peace by the cross, called us to be a people of peace, the one who God sent to rescue us from sin did so that we might serve him without fear. And one way we serve God is to be restless with the current state, and agitate for something else. Because this points – by way of the cross – to what the cross promises: the coming again of Christ and with him the fullness of God’s kingdom which will be free of violence, exploitation, tyranny, and indignity. In such restless agitation we walk the way of peace in pursuit of the Prince of Peace through whom and for whom all things have been created.
 
It is perhaps significant for our own purposes that the main story we have of John the Baptist, besides the one by which he earnt his moniker, is that which resulted in his death. That is to say, what we know of John’s ministry from the gospels – besides is most explicit pointing to Christ at the banks of the Jordan – is his ardent commitment to speaking out against Herod for taking his brother’s wife. The risk John took to insist on justice in all spheres, public and domestic (for the two are not so inseparable as might sometimes be asserted). Walking the way of peace, of making straight the paths, of pointing to the one who was sent by God, led John to also point out sin and injustice. Once more, we might say, John here prefigures the task of the Christian.
 
Christ is King, and in a moment we will celebrate this day and with it the end of the liturgical year, by standing to affirm our faith, our allegiance to this king. As we do, we remember that, as for John, the coming of this king gives us a task and a purpose, a call and commission. We live, like that anachronistic John on the Isenheim altarpiece, to point to Christ in word, witness, and service, guided by the tender mercy of our God, which dawns from on high to guide our feet into the way of peace.     

Readings, Exodus 17:8-13 and Isaiah 65:17-25
Image,  John Everett Millais, Victory, O Lord! (detail), 1871
 
The story we heard from Exodus follows shortly after the miraculous crossing of the Red Sea. The people, recently freed, are beginning what they hope will be a short pilgrimage through the wilderness on the way to the mountain of God and then the promised land. Cracks, though, are already showing. Despite having witnessed the plagues in Egypt, and the parting and crashing of the sea, the people have begun to grumble: Is the Lord among us or not?
 
Thankfully for them, the Lord is among them, and the Lord provides. Bread and quails have fallen from heaven, water has been struck from a rock. The people are being fed from the hand of God; their daily necessities provided by the one who has promised to be theirs.
 
Then Amalek came and fought with Israel. To ensure that beleaguered and belittled Israel might survive, Moses stands atop the hill with the staff of God in hand – the very staff by which he bested Pharaoh, the staff which touched the sea and made it part, touched the rock and drew water. The staff given to Moses as a sign that God is with him and the people, about to reach out with a mighty hand to free them. This Moses shall hold aloft, so that once again God will act to secure the fledgling nation.
 
But here the story takes a fascinating turn. Because essential to this story of God’s extraordinary power, is the very ordinariness of human weakness. Mixed in with the seemingly supernatural ability of this gesture is the question of human limit. We simply cannot keep our hands above our head all day. Moses’ aged body will not allow it… it doesn’t matter how profound the moment, the human body is a vulnerable one.
 
Moses’ hands grew weary; so they took a stone and put it under him, and he sat on it. Aaron and Hur held up his hands, one on one side, and the other on the other side; so his hands were steady until the sun set.
 
I love this image, the failing Moses, exhausted and aching, propped up by a rock, arms held in place by those in his trust. It’s one of those beautifully paradoxical Bible stories. One of those stories which defy the heroic, the epic, and instead casts a picture of vulnerability, limit, weakness, and care.
 
Because there’s a more glorious way to tell this story. Where Moses, the intrepid, singular hero, stands alone aloft the mountain, and, with steely grit and rippling muscles seals the fate of the war. Channelling the very strength of his God, he triumphs with maybe just a few dramatic beads of sweat crossing his handsome brow.
 
Instead, we have another addition to the strange and uncharacterizable picture of Moses, of biblical heroism, and of godly leadership. For Moses, we know already from Exodus is a paradoxical figure – the baby saved from death who grew up in a palace, but also the murderer who was forced into decades of hiding. The man called forth by the blazing bush, but also the one whose doubt in his own speaking abilities was so entrenched that God had to relent and let him take Aaron to do the talking. The one who stood arms aloft and parted the Red Sea to bring his people to freedom, is now here requiring his own arms to be held in place to secure their safety. In the very next chapter this will continue. Moses’ father-in-law comes to visit and watches how Moses is stuck all day solving every petty squabble and has to tell Moses to teach the people to solve their own problems, and appoint judges to share the burden: What you are doing is not good. You will surely wear yourself out, both you and these people with you. For the task is too heavy for you; you cannot do it alone.      
 
The Torah proclaims Moses as a prophet without rival: Never since, the closing words of Deuteronomy ring out, has there arisen a prophet in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face. He was unequalled for all the signs and wonders that the Lord sent him to perform. But what today’s story teaches us, alongside all those nifty paradoxes, is that even a man such as Moses has limits, limits which require not only the goodness of God, but the care of community. Moses’ health, his thriving, his survival resembles our own in its contingency. Moses is great, and he is vulnerable and dependent.
 
This is a vital message on a day such as today where we are thinking about men’s health and care, and in the coming weeks as we enter the 16 Days Against Gender Based Violence. The crisis of gender-based violence, the so-called epidemic of male loneliness, the increasing and concerning radicalisation of young men, the lack of dialogue about men’s health physical and mental, so much of this stems from rigid gendered expectations and stereotypes. Stems, that is, from expectations of what it means to be a man, to be masculine. Expectations that are rigid, restrictive, and ultimately destructive (not only for the self, but for others). Sadly, these kind of rigid expectations and aspirations take root in the church as well; where a kind of godly masculinity is espoused, touting the supremacy of men as leaders who are strong and controlled (and perhaps controlling). And yet, as with Moses, time and again the Bible defies a kind of heroic masculinity that is self-sufficient, strong, and stoic, invulnerable and individualist. In its place is the valorisation of service, the requiring of humility, the glorifying of weakness, the celebration of compassion, the commending of vulnerability, and the recognition of our reliance not only on God, but others. To be human, and in particular to be human within the church is to be given to others in mutual dependence and care, to be both giver and receiver of grace and gifts, to be a helpmeet to one another and the earth.    
 
And we needn’t solely glean this lesson from the figure of Moses, or other human leaders in Scripture. Because we find the same example in Christ, the exemplar of the human. Limit and vulnerability mark the life of Jesus. Jesus is entrusted to the care of others. Jesus’ body grows weary, and others will come along (whether it be to anoint his head or carry his cross) to care for and sustain him. Indeed, one of the great, dismaying failures that Jesus experiences is when he is facing an approaching battle and asks his friends to stay awake and pray with him, but – unlike Aaron and Hur – they fail, and sleep through his agony.
 
Jesus’ heroics, such as they are, also fit more in the mode of Moses’. His wonders are hardly herculean, but are acts of healing, feeding, compassion, stillness and peace. For God’s vision of flourishing, of future shalom and abundance – as we heard in today’s reading from Isaiah – is communal. In the new creation, far from being enforced, the so-called natural divisions and boundaries fade away, as wolf and lamb feed together. The picture of heavenly glory and peaceful new creation is not one where we become more self-sufficient, but more harmoniously intertwined with one another, creation, and God.  
 
The reminder then, whenever we start to think about health and flourishing, is to remember that in the Christian picture of the world, we are never called to be self-sufficient, never asked for individual heroics, never taught to hide or shun vulnerability. We are never asked to go it alone. We are made a body with one another, called to fold one another to our hearts, and hold each other up – weep with those who weep, rejoice with those who rejoice. Even when Moses possessed the staff of God, this incredible symbol of divine power - this is shown to be too heavy to hold on his own. Here on the battle field, as with the broader governing of Israel, his task will only be accomplished if it is shared. His greatness is contingent on hearing the words of wisdom: you cannot do it alone. Like Moses, all of us have God, an ever-present help in times of trouble, but we need to also have each other, particularly if we are to live into the vision of God’s flourishing kingdom where we shall know full and fruitful lives in community before God.