Readings Gen 1:1-5 and Luke 3:10-22
Image, JMW Turner, Study of Sea and Sky (1823–6) The baptism of Jesus occurs against a backdrop of injustice, amidst calls to redistribute wealth, lay aside profit, and fight corruption, and within a growing sense of religious fervour and political hope. The people were filled with expectation and hopes that John might be the messiah, and yet he is violently swept off the scene. This is a stark difference to the peaceful quiet beginning, when the Spirit of God hovered over the waters. When God, uncontested and unrivalled, slowly and sublimely spoke the world into being. Where God once looked on creation and saw that all was good… now, Christ walks among this creation looking upon despots and desperation. Toward the end of that first account of creation human beings are created in the image of God. We bear God’s image and in doing so are called to live as God’s emissaries on earth. Like still waters our lives should reflect the image of the Holy One, on earth as it is in heaven… and yet generations of struggle and strife have muddied the waters, the reflection is disrupted as rough tides occlude the vision of the sky above. So Christ comes to the river. The eternal Word, through whom all things came into being, comes to be with us. Jesus comes as the image of the invisible God so that if we should struggle to reflect that image, or fail to see it in another’s visage, we can look to Christ. In an act of new creation, Christ plunges into the waters of our worries and woe and emerges in glory. He sees the Spirit that hovered from the first, hovering once more, hears the voice which first spoke all things into life, speaking once more. This scene, taking place in waters marked by human yearning and imperial violence, shows that God remains committed to the goodness of creation, inviting us still into the great work of love and life. The world may no longer be formless, the waters might not be so resplendent, but God is with us and for us. Jesus plunges into the waters of human struggle and frailty, sharing the burden of all that distracts us from the way of God, all which distorts our ability to behold the image of God in our neighbour and ourself. In his baptism Jesus stills the waters. He is the reflective pool in whom we see the invisible God and understand the gift and responsibility of image-bearing. Jesus shares in our baptism so we may share in his life. So that the divine pronouncement of belovedness offered over him, should be offered over all of us as well. He goes down into the waters with all of us sinners, and draws us up siblings. And as siblings we not only share what is Christ’s by grace, but are called to what is Christ’s by nature. We who share Christ’s righteousness now share in Christ’s commission. A commission to proclaim and pursue the justice of the kingdom of God. For just as John’s teaching before the baptism of Jesus concerned the material requirements of justice and community, the teaching of Jesus following his baptism takes up the same: ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.’ Baptism leads us into action, leads us into a particular way of living together, where we pursue justice and equity in our material relations. We behold the invisible God in the image of Christ, and are led forth with renewed sight into the wilderness of the world to proclaim with Christ the things that make for peace, and to perform with the Spirit, the works of justice and mercy that unbind, raise up, and restore. We are called to become part of Christ’s body the church so we may live together in such a way that stills the waters around us. So that we might better reflect who it was that made us, and who we are made to be.
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Readings Isaiah 62:1-3 and Luke 2:22-40
Image, Severino Blanco, Simeon Blessing the Christ Child, 1980s. Following the account of Jesus’ birth, Luke includes a brief section devoted to the infant Jesus. At one level, this section demonstrates that Mary and Joseph fulfil all righteousness under the law, drawing the reader’s attention to the way Jesus is part of his people and their covenant with God. At another level, the section demonstrates how, in being part of his people, Jesus’ birth is very much a response to their longing. That the arrival of Christ as the awaited messiah is an answer to prayer. Despite only gracing the pages of Luke’s gospel for a handful of verses Simeon and Anna are rich characters. Both have lived long lives devoted to God, shaped by hope, and open to the movement of the Spirit. Simeon was righteous and devout, looking forward to the consolation of Israel, holding onto the promise that death should not take him before he had laid his eyes on the messiah. The Spirit draws him to the temple to see the Christ child, letting him gaze upon the consolation of the people, the light of revelation, the salvation God has prepared. The prophet Anna never leaves the temple, passing day and night in prayer and fasting. Anna been widowed 60 years, committing those many decades to a life of religious devotion. She too is drawn to the child; she too is led to praise. Both Simeon and Anna respond to the presence of the Christ child and the long-awaited promise of God. Simeon, having given thanks, turns to Mary with a word of preparation: and a sword will pierce your own soul too. Out of deep compassion for what the Spirit has led him to see, Simeon’s gaze moves swiftly from the child, to the one who birthed him, who shall know much suffering. Anna follows her praise not with a word to the family, but to the city. She spoke about the child to all who were looking for redemption in Jerusalem. What’s interesting to consider is, does this imply she, who never left the temple, went out with the good news of great joy that the longed-for redemption had arrived? She might not have needed to, for many looking for redemption would be coming to the temple, but either way, her gaze moves swiftly from the child to those the child was born for, who have known much suffering. The angels announced to the shepherds that they bring good news of great joy for all the people. Simeon and Anna are such people. They stand in for the many in Israel who live lives of devotion and hope. The righteous and devout, the praying and fasting, those who walk with the spirit and exercise the gifts of God. They are those who are steeped in the words of the prophets, awaiting the vindication of the people and the glorification of God’s name. Those who know that despite the fear and frustration of living under tyranny, God’s people will be a crown of beauty in the hand of God. Simeon and Anna are those who know they shall not perish before they have seen salvation. Simeon and Anna, like Mary and Joseph, like so many others come to this temple in faith and hope. This temple, which just 160 years before this story (and only 75 years before Anna’s birth) was attacked and occupied by the Romans. This temple that, in an act of anti-Jewish suppression, was transformed into a temple of a pagan religion. 160 years since this temple became the focus of the Maccabean revolt, and was reclaimed and cleansed as a sign of the righteousness of the guerrilla resistance and the faithfulness of God. This is the site of Christ’s presentation. The place that Anna never left. The place the Spirit drew Simeon. This is the place where Christ has come, for Christ comes to the needy and long-afflicted. To those who have fought tyranny and held onto their identity amidst oppression. To those who long for deliverance, salvation, and redemption. To those clinging to life in the face of death because they know that with God they will be vindicated. That with God they shall find again their jewel set in God’s own diadem. The Christ child was not born into a fairy tale kingdom, but a world of trial and woe. Simeon knew that the empire which ransacked God’s temple would employ similar violence against God’s messiah, and warned Mary of the sword aimed at her soul. The Christ child was not born to a land of plenty. Anna knew this and rushed to tell the people that God had once again heard their cries and had acted with beautiful impossibility for their redemption. So too the Christ child is born today in the homes and hearts of those who have known the brutality of worldly tyranny and imperial disregard. The Christ child is born today in the heats and homes of those who long for deliverance and cry out for justice. The Christ child is born today into the bombed homes and broken hearts of his birthplace. The Christ child is born today in the homes and hearts of those who gather faithfully before the promise of God with hopes that shall not be vanquished. The Christ child is born today in the homes and hearts of all who know they shall not perish before they see the salvation God has prepared. Today we join with all of those, then and now, to receive the coming of Christ into the world, proclaiming good news of great joy to all who look for redemption. Readings Isaiah 26:16-19 and Luke 2:1-20
Image, Stone Nativity by Juan Manuel Cisneros, Ventura, California, December 2016 Earlier in the month I was listening to a discussion on the radio about which not-explicitly-Christmas-music, do people nonetheless associate with Christmas. Time and again listeners justified their choices not by appealing to the content of the song, but because, to them, the song felt like the feeling of Christmas. Christmas is a deeply feeling holiday. We have a sense of the temperature Christmas ought to feel. The feelings evoked by Christmas lights, shopping, and foods. The feelings of being with a particular group of people. We know the feeling of coming to church on Christmas, both like and unlike a service on any other Sunday. That Christmas is such a feeling holiday is what makes it all the harder, when things feel different. When those dear to us have departed, or our table needs a more modest setting, or time together grows increasingly sparse. And while the feelings of Christmas unsurprisingly result from the startling connection of sense and memory, the gospel accounts are themselves full of feeling. The shepherds were fearful on a fearful scale before hearing the good news of great joy. And everyone is amazed by their account. Even before this, the story of Joseph and Mary being forced by bureaucratic whim to uproot their lives has a certain feeling known to those who spent a morning at Services NSW. So too the feeling of Mary placing her swaddled child in a feeding trough, because there was no other place is comprehensible to all who have held or beheld a tiny new-born and all of a sudden gasped at how large the world feels. At its heart though, Christmas is centred on feeling because we feel like we need Christmas. We walk into Christmas through the season of Advent, honouring the woe of our world while lighting candles for hope, peace, joy, and love. If our hearts are stirred by the good news of great joy, it because we yearn for good news! Because we feel that the restoration of the world requires nothing short of the impossible arrival of the God with us and for us. In this way we share much with those in Isaiah’s day, who are likened to expectant mothers, writhing-in-labour and crying for deliverance but who cannot bring it about on their own. We feel their honest to God yearning for the radiant dew which brings new life, their palpable hope that those who dwell in the dust will, Awake and sing for joy! So when the expectant mother, writhing-in-labour in a borrowed room, brings forth Emmanuel we are more than ready to receive good news of great joy. For the scent of the morning dew no less than the sound of the heavenly choir blows the dust off and proclaims a saviour has been born. At Christmas we awake and sing, joyful and triumphant, pushing ourselves into the story to greet the child born then in Bethlehem and today in our hearts. Christmas is brimming with feeling because in this story (both familiar and strange) we get the sense that something is answered. As the song teaches, he appeared, and the soul felt its worth. The disquiet we feel about the state of the world and the hope we hold for its restoration, finds its response in the vulnerable infant swaddled in a feeding trough. Here lies love: love incarnate, love divine, love to shake and shatter sin. Let us open our hearts to the feeling of Christmas and may it transform us day by day into those ready to rise and meet a weary and worried world with peace, hope, joy, and love. Readings 1 Corinthians 13:8-13 and Luke 1:26-38
Image, Nativity, Paul Gauguin (1896). Oil on Canvas This Advent we have lit candles for hope, peace, and joy. We reflected on what it means to hold onto hope even now, to confess that even now after so much historical inequity and present injustice Jesus can call life from death. We committed to be people of peace, drawing strength in the wilderness from Christ who appears on the stage of human struggle in full sprint, bearing our burdens and leading us into the kingdom. And last week we not only experienced a great deal of joy, but we reflected on where we might find the joy in our lives today that leads us back to the angelic pronouncement of good news of great joy. Advent ends with love, because everything ends in love. Paul reminds us that even when everything else comes to an end, when all else fades away, love never ends. Even faith and hope fade in the age to come. For when we see God face to face, and live before the enteral and undiminished light of Christ, only love remains, because God is love. The writers of scripture tend to excel when they are writing about love. Love is patient, love is kind, it bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Not height or depths nor anything else in all creation can separate us from the love of God. Perfect love casts out fear. Cloth yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. For God so loved the world… it is fitting that some of the most stirring passages in all of Scripture should be those that orbit most closely the nature of God. Advent ends with love because we are at the precipice of Emmanuel, God with us. Christmas celebrates that out of infinite compassion and steadfast kindness, God elected to be with and for us so that we should never doubt that we are loved such a great deal. The good news of great joy is that we are loved enough that Christ would not exploit his equality with God but was born into human likeness. Humbling himself to share in our suffering and death so that as he is exalted, so we shall be exalted, as he is raised so we shall be raised, as he shall triumph, we shall triumph. In the first Advent of Christ, the light of the world stepped onto the stage of human struggle. In his love Jesus conquered death, swallowed sin, and issued forth a spirit of adoption so that we should be called siblings of Christ, children of God. Because he lived a life of perfect love, all that is his by righteousness is ours by grace. And for this reason, we trust that until and beyond Christ’s second Advent our lives, like our death, will be held in love. It's time of year where we are want to revisit favourite films and books. The act of rewatching a film or rereading a book is a dramatically different experience than reading for the first time. Because all the various character decisions are shaped by our knowledge of their end. We rue all the more a father’s decision not to tell their child the family secret before departing on that streamliner because we know they do not return. We tear out our hair at the protagonist’s impatiently rash decision to take the stairs rather than wait for the elevator because it means they miss their beloved and thus remain estranged for 236 more pages. The knowledge of a character’s end, exposes the virtue or folly of all the little actions and attitudes that lead them there. Advent is a season which asks us to reflect on our lives in light of the horizons between which they are lived. To consider the way in which the shape of our life conforms to its end. The knowledge of the location of our end (in love) affords us the capacity to almost reread our lives as we live them, searching our actions and attitudes for the ways in which they befit our end. And because our end is love, so too the shape of our life is love. Our lives of love do not procure us this end, rather, like opening a present on Christmas Eve they celebrate it in advance! We live lives of joyful, abundant, prodigal love, because it is satisfying when an ending is foreshadowed throughout the narrative. Mary knew she could trust God’s love. When the angel asks her to do the impossible, she responds, Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word. Mary might not know all the chapters of the story she embarks upon, but she knows that with God, it will end with the glorious triumph of love. Mary exemplifies the faithful life shaped by love. She knows that the tumult of the present is given perspective by the promise of the end. Her soul magnifies the Lord and her spirit rejoices in God her saviour, because the Divine Love does not abhor her womb. The Divine Love does not abhor the suffering of the people nor the lowliness of the manger. The Divine Love does not abhor the crown of thorns nor the ugliness of the cross. The Divine Love comes swaddled in humility and will return dazzling in glory, because it is God’s nature to love. It is who God is. It is because of love that God abides with us in our struggle, confronts oppression, and acts for justice. Because of love that God makes a way through the impossible to restore and redeem all creation. Mary knows, that she can declare herself ready, because God gifts us hope, peace, and joy, until we find our end in the perfection of love that is God’s very being. And as she does, so can we, because we too have beheld the great truth: nothing is impossible with God who is love. Readings, Isaiah 40:1-11 and Mark 1:1-13
Image, Christ in the Wilderness - The Hen, Stanley Spencer (1954) Peace is central to the seasons of Advent and Christmas. Christ is the heavenly born Prince of Peace, God with us in a world of worry and woe, violence and fear. A world shouting out for comfort, longing for a highway through the wilderness to reveal the glory of God. In the Gospel of Mark, of course, such a path appears with a bang! We do not wade into the story through genealogy, we are not serenaded by an overture of creation, no births are foretold, no maternal songs sung. Mark, steeped in Isaiah, heard the voice say Cry out! and the desperate response, What shall I cry? And decided to begin at full steam, The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ the Son of God. This is the comfort that God speaks tenderly to the people, this the Word of our God which will stand forever. Christ bursts onto the scene of repentance and trouble, of yearning and resistance and goes straight into those waters with his people. As soon as he does the heavens are torn apart, the Spirit descends, and the voice from heaven announces: You are my Son, the beloved. We remember last week the longing in Isaiah for God to tear the heavens open and come down. Now the presence of Jesus, bursting onto the scene of human struggle, opens those very heavens. Here I am, the great I Am, joining you in the waters of repentance, ready to baptise with the Holy Spirit. In Jesus shall the glory of God be revealed. He is the shepherd come to gather the lambs in his arms, to carry them in his bosom. But not of course, before the Spirit drives Christ into the wilderness. It is this immediate move to the wilderness that is so essential to the comfort that God speaks through the eternal Word, the peace God provides through the Advent of Christ. For it was in the wilderness that the voice cried out for the coming of God, and thus it is to the wilderness that Christ is driven. Christ goes to the wilderness of our lives to face the temptation we all suffer, the erosion of peace we all endure, the evil of the world under which we all grow weary. Christ faces it with the angels and the beasts, and returns to proclaim: The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near, repent and believe in the good news. Advent is an anticipatory season where we hasten and wait for the eschatological coming of Christ, by recollecting his historical arrival. Usually this recollection centres Christ’s birth, but as today’s readings remind us, Christ bursts upon the scenes of human drama in various ways. What is consistent, of course, is the announcement of his identity as the beloved son of God, his sharing in our struggle, and his overcoming of that struggle as the good shepherd who gathers us up with a word of comfort and peace. Mark’s account speaks, I think, most acutely to those of us who, when we hear Cry out, very much identify with the responding question What shall I cry? Those of us who (whether this year or all years) feel so deep in the wilderness that we cannot see any straight paths (let alone highways). Those of us who aren’t even aware of how much we need that word of comfort right now! Those of us who want to say, ‘God, I don’t have time for the impossibly docile child sleeping through the night in the manger. I don’t have time for the shepherds and the magi, the beginning and the word, the precocious boy and his temple escapades.’ For those who want to say ‘God, the wilderness has grown so thick I can’t see the sky let alone your star.’ For those who want to say, ‘God the temptations are overwhelming, I don’t see any angels, and these wild beasts are baring their teeth.’ It is to we who need nothing short of the precise immediacy of God’s saving action to whom the Gospel of Mark comforts this Advent. The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Here he is, already on the scene. In less than half a page Jesus has been baptised by John, anointed by the Spirit, named beloved from the heavens, and rushed into the wilderness to be with you. Peace isn’t only silent nights. Peace bursts into the wilderness with machete and torch. The peace which surpasses all understanding doesn’t always need the paths to be made straight. For Jesus is the shepherd sent by God to seek, search and save. Jesus finds us in the wilderness and says (in a tender voice) comfort, and (in a mighty voice) here is your God. Jesus shows up in the wilderness to share its burdens and to provide the way out. Let we who long for peace, look ahead and back to the coming of Christ. Let us find peace in those advents. Whether that be the quiet, poignant, and stirring stories of the infant who upturns the world and rewrites the skies, or be that the man running through the story at full sprint arriving as the world’s redeemer without a second to waste. Readings, Isaiah 64:1-9 and Mark 13:24-37
Image, Henry Ossawa Tanner, Resurrection of Lazarus, 1896 Let’s consider for a moment, the story of Lazarus. Lazarus grows ill. His concerned sisters, Martha and Mary, send a message to Jesus, Lord, the one whom you love is ill. Then they wait. They look to the horizon awaiting the coming of the Son of God. And yet, he does not come. Unbeknownst to them Jesus chooses to remain where he was for two days. The sisters wait. Lazarus declines. The sisters hope. Lazarus dies. By the time Jesus arrives in Bethany, Lazarus has been entombed four days. Martha approaches Jesus, Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. Soon after Jesus is approached by Mary, Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. Advent is the season where we hasten and wait for the return of Christ by reflecting on his on his arrival incarnate some two thousand years ago. Advent is reflective, Christ has come, and anticipatory, Christ will come again. Both these horizons serve as sites of hope. And yet, when we take up the Advent injunction to keep awake, watching for Christ to bring the peace and restoration of the new creation, we can certainly relate to the feelings of Mary and Martha, Lord, if you had been here. Just as we can relate to the sentiments expressed by the prophet Isaiah, O that you would tear open the heavens and come down! For the world is awash with violence and misery. We lament the thousands of children killed in Gaza, we await the release of more hostages, we grieve the war waged against Ukraine, we long for the freedom of West Papua, we are weighed down by the refugee crisis in Artsakh, we despair at rates of incarceration for Indigenous folks in these lands. Beyond the cruelty humans impose on one another, the climate crisis gives us the sense that the world is fraying at the edges as whole communities risk of losing homes to rising tides. Then there are the intimate worries and woes of our lives and the lives of those we love, the times we have called out, Lord, the one whom you love is ill, only to be met with silence. O that you would tear open the heavens and come down. Lord, if you had been here. There are many in history, as there are many today, who felt as though the time was ripe for Christ to come again. We could likely look at the long line of human history and find several points at which to say, Lord, if you had been here of all this suffering could have been avoided. The day and the hour no one knows, but many have hoped it would be their own. Let’s return to the story of Lazarus. Martha comes to Jesus with her complaint, but then adds, even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him. Even now… even now, despite the seemingly inescapable finality of death, even now after the long history of human cruelty, even now in the face of catastrophe and conflict, even now after the prayers seem unanswered and the return of our Lord interminably delayed. Even now… This is the posture of the Christian; the posture of Advent. In such a posture we do not deny the presence of death and loss in our world. Nor hide from present injustice and historical inequity. We know the world is not as it should be and would be different were the heavens torn open and the Lord was here. And yet in this posture we say even now. In this posture we hold onto hope, hold on past hope, hold on to the promise that despite everything feeling lost, Jesus is the resurrection and the life. Even now, with so much harm that can no longer be repaired, and so much hurt that yet needs to be healed, even now God will give to Jesus whatever he asks. And what Jesus asks is that Lazarus should come out of his grave. What Jesus asks is that those who die, will live. What this will mean or look like when Christ returns is as mysterious as the day and the hour at which it will break into history. What awaits us when the present age fades away is a great mystery. But God’s eternity means God’s relation to time is otherwise. The one who arrives too late to Bethany is not too late to raise the dead. History will yet be redeemed, its wounds healed and its path transfigured. The glory of God will be revealed in the infinite compassion of the one who looks and weeps at the world’s loss and calls us from our graves. For we are all God’s people; we are the clay as God is our potter. We shall all be remade by the one who calls us to be unbound from our sorrows and released from death’s grip. So much injustice and loss has occurred, that we who are human cannot retrieve or repair. And thus we look to the Advent of Christ, holding out hope that even now Jesus Christ, the resurrection and the life, stands ready to come in glory and gather up all of creation - from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven - and restore all things in love. Readings, 1 Samuel 8:4-18 and Luke 19:28-40
Image, Justin O’Brien (Australian, 1917–1996), Palm Sunday, 1962. Oil on canvas. Over the last four weeks, we have explored the way Jesus embodies various roles in the life of his people: prophet, priest, judge, and now king. Jesus the king, a fitting topic for Christ the King Sunday, but perhaps, a less fitting theme for the beginning of the UN’s 16 Days Against Gender Based Violence, which began yesterday. I say less fitting for as we know gender-based violence is rooted in gender inequality, rooted – so often – in the desire of men to rule over their homes and those in them as a king. So much violence is rooted in a misdirected response to perceived powerlessness or loss of control. And if this is the case, then is the image of Christ as king tarnished? Does it lack sufficient pastoral compassion to assert that the greatest good, the greatest hope, the culminative crescendo of our year of worship is found in a King? The problems of a king, of one man placed atop a system of government to rule absolutely is not a new phenomenon. The Bible contains accounts of the virtue and blessing of a good king, who can lead the people in holiness. However, there is also present across scripture a deep ambivalence and suspicion toward the monarchy. Today’s reading shows that the provision of a king for Israel is a concession. God deems it a testament to the people’s lack of trust and lack of understanding of their commission as a nation set apart. Indeed, so that the point not be missed, God tells Samuel to warn Israel of all the awful things a king will mean for them (he will take your sons to keep his fields and make his implements of war. He will take your daughters to be his perfumers and cooks. He will take the best of your vineyards for himself, and a tenth of your grain for his courtiers. He will take and take and take… such will be your lot with a king). And yet, while the critique of monarchy present in the scriptures is based in part on the old adage that absolute power corrupts absolutely, the fundamental opposition to a worldly king is based in preserving the unique and unparalleled supremacy of God. When God speaks to Samuel, God likens the request of the people for a king to the earlier decisions of the people to run after other gods. The real heart of God’s opposition to a worldly king is idolatry. God should be the people’s only king. For only God has both the wisdom to judge in equity and righteousness, only God has the love and mercy to bear the people’s missteps with grace and patience. Only a holy and eternal God (who is entirely sufficient and infinitely perfect) is able to wear the crown of glory and thorns without it becoming heavy. And yet we still might protest. Despite this distinction between corruptible earthly kings and a perfect heavenly king, isn’t there still a problem? Isn’t the very reason we proclaim Christ the King (and preserve God’s kingship) because there were earthly kings? Said differently, isn’t Christ the king an act of projection based in a bygone age where kings were normative? We all know what a king is and so we call Christ the king because Christ is just a more powerful version of that? Isn’t this just trying to place another triangle atop a pyramid, which admits that there is something above our earthly king, but does nothing to subvert the hierarchical system of God-King-People (which is not unlike some church’s teaching God-Husband-Wife). Can we hold onto kingship without this baggage, or should we who live in a democratic world, well-versed in institutional suspicion lay down this way of speaking of God, lay aside language of King and kingdom, and find a new way of speaking about the unique otherness of God and the authority and power of Christ? In some ways, yes. It is vital to delve into Scripture and allow our language for God to be nourished and expanded. For God is described as king but also mountain, nursing mother, wellspring of life, fire of Sinai, womb of creation, and the rock who birthed us. And so too, we explore the way Christ – heralded as king – is also a prophet of God, our great High Priest, and judge hidden amongst the least. Christ likens himself to a mother hen and is likened by others to the figure of Woman Wisdom from the book of Proverbs. Christ may be king but he is also brother, elevating us to a radical equality through the spirit of adoption. There are many ways in which we understand Christ and there are many ways in which we speak of our allegiance to God. And it is good to seek those out to complement the limitations of kingly language. And yet I wonder, is it all limitation? Could there still be potential for a full-throated proclamation of the unrivalled sovereign kingship of Christ that does not contribute to the inequality producing gender-based violence, but serves as a bulwark against it? Because while we know longer live in the age of kings, those feelings of insecurity and entitlement that lead man to forge their personal kingdoms have not disappeared. There may be democracy in the nation, but monarchies abound in the suburbs. And while we do not lack for means to critique the way men enthrone themselves in the home through intimidation, control, and violence, Christ the King provides us a distinctly Christian grounding on which to confront such sin. For to make oneself a king in the home is an act of idolatry. To establish oneself as a king in any pocket of one’s life in order to be made great by the service of others, is not only abhorrent for worldly reasons, but is an affront on heaven. It is an attempt to claim the throne of the one to whom all authority on heaven and earth has been given. No king but Christ goes all the way down. No king but Christ exposes gender-based violence as not only a sin against humanity, but a sin against God. Christ the King is most properly claimed not as any endorsement of human kingdoms or hierarchies but as the judgment upon and upending of all human attempts to rule over another. For God shall suffer no rival, and Christ shall share no authority, and we are made radically equal beneath such a confession, driven to stridently oppose the all-too-common attempts to dominate others that occur in the large and small of human history. For this is why we have Christ the King Sunday. The celebration began in 1925 (making it a recent addition to our church calendar), as a means of countering the nationalism and worldly political allegiances which had contributed so direly to the catastrophe of World War I. It was further established in the hopes of checking the ascendent rise of nationalism and fascism in the interwar period. The church staked its claim to say, no King but Christ, our own true sovereign, the Prince of Peace. It is Christ alone we ally ourselves as king, because no human bound by mortality and sin could ever hope to create a kingdom (much less reign over it) in the way that Love incarnate could. It is Christ and his kingdom in which we place our hope, for it is this kingdom alone in which all violence shall cease, all swords be beaten into ploughshares, all tears be wiped away, and all things made new. Hail the heaven-born Prince of Peace! Hail the Sun of righteousness! Readings, Judges 2:16-19 and Matthew 25: 31-46
Image, Yalim Yildirim, Inside Outside. Ecoline on paper 25 x 25 cm The book of Judges takes a pattern, foreshadowed in the reading from today. A judge arises, reforms Israel and leads them in battle, bringing victory and deliverance. Then the judge dies, and Israel would relapse and behave worse than their ancestors, doing what is evil in the sight of the Lord, which usually leads to them being made captive or overrun in battle, until a new judge is raised up by God to reform and deliver the people once more. The difficulty to maintain the integrity and ethics of a community across the generations is perhaps a fairly typical pattern across much of human history. People are forgetful and distractible. Increasingly so after the loss of a central figure who kept a community, movement, or institution focused on a common goal. We can understand this at a micro-level. Following a conference, a scare, or a testimonial, many of us have had the experience of being motivated to make a change (a new fitness regime, a creative endeavour, or a desire to live out our faith with renewed rigour). We start strong, only to miss a day, a day which turns into a week, which turns into changing the goal, which turns into life as we knew it before. This is not to shame any of us, but to acknowledge that what was occurring in Israel following the death of each judge, while not laudable, was something we as humans and humans in religious communities are prone to. Jesus speaks to his disciples as he draws ever closer to his death. And while his death will be unlike the judges of the past (for Jesus’ death will be met with resurrection and ascension), the question remains: will his followers simply repeat the same mistakes as the people of God in the age of judges? Will the lack of the immediate presence of the judge as compass and leader of the people, lead to a relapse? And so Jesus speaks of the judgment the Son of Man will mediate when he comes in glory. Here the judge – raised up by God from the people to be their reformer and deliverer – returns to the people; hidden in their midst, as the least and last. Jesus, the judge, does not depart upon his death, but will be found (or ignored) within the people as they seek to maintain their integrity and ethics across the generations to come. Christ – the church’s final judge – is hidden amongst the hungry, the stranger, and the imprisoned, as the living litmus test, as to whether we shall relapse, or rise to meet the day. Now the anonymous expansion of Christ into the least of these is not akin to an elf on the shelf… watching over us all from the hidden corners, filling out Santa’s naughty or nice list. This is not some undercover boss situation aimed to ascertain how the workers act when unsupervised. Christ does not come to us in the presence of the least to catch us out, or to perform some great ironic reversal where we get our poetic just-desserts. For the judgment of Christ is never punitive or carceral; it is restorative. Christ’s justice emerges from his grace and love, an extension of God’s steadfast mercy and kindness. Christ tells us up front that he shall be found in the least of these, and thus the lesson serves to do three things: centre our ethics and compassion in the margins of society, remind us that our fidelity to Christ is better indicated by the love and welcome of people than saying all the right things about God, and serves as a continued and intimate source of motivation and accountability as we seek to live in the way of God, from generation to generation. Were Christ encountered only in monuments (or even only in Scripture) the forgetfulness and distraction that can come upon us in the wake of his death would be far greater. Instead, Christ comes to us as neighbours and strangers in need, an ever-present reminder that the greatest of these is love, an ever-present reminder that the world is too full of woes and inequity for us to relapse in our commission to love others as Christ first loved us. Christ is the great judge of the church: raised up by God to deliver the people, to draw us from idolatry and stubborn ways, and lead us back to the way of life. And yet Christ is the judge who is found not in halls of power, but in the hungry, the stranger, the prisoner. And as such he becomes the judge who reveals our own judgment. As the judge who comes to us hidden amongst the least, Christ exposes who we judge as worthy of attention, worthy of care, worthy of understanding, and worthy of love. From below, from powerlessness and vulnerability, Christ exposes our false equivalencies, exposes the hypocrisy in our systems of compassion, the stereotypes that weasel into our minds and harden our hearts, exposes the easy comfort of factionalism and favouritism, exposes how readily we accept the reasonableness of violence and dispossession, exposes how quickly we can blame the least for their own hunger, sickness, isolation, or incarceration. Christ exposes this, not so that we might be condemned, but so that we might be saved. So that our hearts may be softened, our lives transformed, and our communities redeemed. Christ, the judge, hidden in the world, draws near to us time and again so that we might be stripped of our false judgments and be made ready for the Kingdom of God. So that that we might come to know that the last is not only first, but the site where what it means to be a Christian is truly judged. Readings, Leviticus 13: 1-3, 45-46, 14:1-9 and Mark 1:40-45
Image, Byzantine Mosiac I owe many of the insights in this sermon to Matthew Thiessen's Jesus and the Forces of Death (MI: Baker Academic, 2020). Specific page references in text. If you'd like to know more you can listen to an interview I did with Matthew here. We have a raft of rules (legal, societal, religious) about what can mix. When you go to a restaurant, a living animal cannot sit at the table where a dead animal is being served. At home, the toilet needs a room independent from a kitchen. Here at church, we don’t serve the remaining communion elements at the morning tea table, or the morning tea from the communion table. There are things that are not permitted to mix, and if they do it impacts the cleanliness, appropriateness, and safety of all involved. Fundamental to Israel’s understanding of the structure of God’s world were two binaries: the holy and the profane, and the pure and the impure. Now we might hear profane and (given the connection with profanity) think that it means sinful, or wicked. But this is not the case. Most of the world is profane. The Sabbath, for instance is holy, which means the other six days of the week are profane. The Temple is holy, so a house is profane. A thing is either holy or profane, but this doesn’t mean the latter is in opposition to God’s will. Now in the same way, the impure is not equivalent with sin or wickedness. Something could become impure for any number of reasons; ritual, moral, or naturally occurring. And indeed, while pure and impure are distinct categories, you will have gleaned from the readings a person may move between pure and impure at different points in their life. The importance of developing these religious and communal distinctions is not to categorise people as saint or sinner, but – and primarily – to preserve and protect the holiness of God who dwelt with the people. The boundaries are intended to keep impurity from the camp, the tabernacle, or the Temple - to “safeguard God’s presence and protect God’s people from the consequences of wrongly approaching God” (11). It is compassion then, that animates the Jewish concern for purity, for (as scripture will testify) while God is infinitely loving and merciful, God is a powerful (dangerous) and holy force. The final thing to say in this preamble is that impurity (though again, not equivalent with sin) is intimately related to death, to the forces of death, which stand in contrast to the living God of creation. Naturally we can see why corpses (and the touching of corpses) would be connected to impurity, but this connection extends to cases of lepros or haemorrhaging – all of which signal the encroachment of the forces of death, and thus all of which must be dealt with before one might come into the presence of holiness. Why establish all this? It is unlikely to appear in any local pub trivia question? We need to understand the nature of impurity, and the underlying compassion of the system of purity and holiness, in order to properly enter a discussion on Jesus’ relationship with the priesthood of Israel in his day, and Jesus’ own embodiment of the priestly role. Because contrary to a many popular claims, Jesus does not oppose the ritual impurity system, he does not dismiss the necessity of such a system, and Jesus does not treat these categories of pure/impure, holy/profane as non-existent or incorrect. Rather, “Jesus desires to rid people of the conditions that create ritual impurity” (7). He wants to cut the cause off at the pass, pull it up by the root. For Jesus confronts and overcomes the forces of death! In other words, Jesus’ ministry operates with an affirmation that ritual impurity exists and that he needs to deal with it. And deal with it he will, both as priest and as prophet. Today’s reading from the Mark is the first time a ritually impure person confronts Jesus. Now there’s a little translations scuffle. It is often translated that at the request to be made clean Jesus was moved with “pity,” however (as most Bible’s will note) early manuscripts say, Jesus was moved with “anger.” Quite the difference. I note the discrepancy because the anger illuminates that Jesus takes the man’s request as being about whether Jesus wants to make him clean, not whether he is able. (60) In other words, is this a condition that should be treated? I do choose. Be made clean! The Gospels make clear, Jesus is concerned with ritual impurity and has the power to deal with it. In the Old Testament it is only prophets (such as Elisha) who are able – by the power of God – to make someone clean. Priests are those who judge whether someone is pure or impure and carry out the rituals to re-establish the newly clean to the community. This priestly role is unchallenged by Jesus (not only here, but elsewhere). Jesus makes the man clean, but does not take upon himself the prerogative of declaring him clean. Jesus commands the man to report to the priests and bring the offering of purification (60-61). The system is intact, but we nonetheless bear witness to Jesus’ compassion, power, desire and mission to confront the forces of death that lead to impurity. Another story further displays Jesus’ powerful, potent, and personal opposition to ritual impurity. When the haemorrhaging woman approaches Jesus, and reaches out to touch his cloak, the power to make her clean and restore her to life simply bursts forth from Jesus. Without any intention the immense (at times dangerous) power of God is on full display – the hem of Jesus’ garment holds enough power to destroy impurity’s forces (96). And thus, it should be of no surprise to us then, that even when Jesus is subjected to his own death, even when the forces of death stake a claim directly upon his body on the cross and in the tomb, even when the forces of death seem to have prevailed – it is of no surprise that the body of Christ swallows up those forces of death and emerges in resurrected life. Jesus’ confrontation with what makes us impure, his ultimate confrontation with death is not fought from a distance – through the command of his voice or the hem of his garment – Jesus confronts (and by God overcomes) the forces of death through death. Just as he who knew no sin, became sin so that we might become the righteousness of God, so too he who knew no death, became death so that we might share in the life of God. Jesus went down into that tomb, and indeed went down deeper still, to pull death up from the roots so that nothing should be able to cast us from the camp of God. Jesus went down into death and swallowed it up, and now we say, O death, where is your sting! Jesus took the forces of impurity and death so seriously that they were written on his own body, only for the eternal word of resurrection and life to be written over them and so over each and every one of us. I do choose. What more holy words could there be? I do choose. This Jesus says over each and every one of us so that all the many things that might make it impossible or improper for us to approach a holy God might be overcome, so that we might never be separated from the love of God. Jesus does not scorn the system, Jesus does not dismiss the priestly role of Israel, Jesus does not tear those pages from our Bible. Jesus takes seriously the forces of death at work in the world and the boundaries set in place to safeguard the holiness of God and the life of the people. And at the same time, Jesus chooses to address the problem, Jesus chooses to make the impure clean, as Jesus chooses to heal the sick, as Jesus chooses to raise the dead, as Jesus chooses the way of cross and resurrection so that the forces of death would be undone and so that we all may live in the presence of God. Jesus takes up the charge of prophet and priest, affirming and overcoming the forces of impurity and death in and through his own life, struggle, death, and resurrection. It is for this reason we celebrate with the writer of Hebrews that we have a high priest able to sympathise with our weaknesses, who in every respect has been tested as we are, and yet without sin. Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. For when we approach, we are met with the words: I do choose! Readings, Amos 5:1-2, 10-15 and Luke 4:14-30
Image, Paulo Medina, Ecce Homo, 2006. Acrylic on canvas, 70 x 60 cm. Having completed our journey through Genesis, we have found ourselves approaching the end of the church’s liturgical year. Christ the King Sunday is four weeks away, followed by Advent, which leads us into Christmas. This short series explores important roles in the life and religion of Ancient Israel, and considers the way it is embodied by Jesus. Today, we consider Jesus as a prophet of God. The gospels are deliberate in positioning Jesus as a prophet (though, of course, not only as prophet), sent by God to the people with a purpose. A prophet in the line of Miriam and Moses, Elijah and Elisha, Amos and Isaiah. A prophet sent – as prophets tend to be – with a message of hope and judgment, reform and redemption, designed to draw the people back to their calling as God’s own. We heard a snippet of Amos, which is typical of many of the prophets. The prophet delivers a message from God where the people are charged with neglecting their worship (this time through their mistreatment of the poor). The people are then called to repent, so that they might be redeemed. And then, despite their words of warning and woe, the prophet ends with the promise of God, who will not abandon the people, but establish peace and justice. Jesus follows in this line. In today’s reading Jesus proclaims himself as the fulfilment of that promise which the prophet Isaiah delivered. He has come to bring good news to the poor, release to the captives, the recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and announce the year of the Lord’s favour. The hoped for restitution and redemption, the establishment of justice, the overturning of the worldly powers of captivity and exploitation are announced by Jesus and in announcing them fulfilled. Jesus signals to the assembly that such things are no longer anticipated, but arrive in his very life and ministry. Across this life and ministry, Jesus regularly steps into what resembles a prophetic office. For example, his condemnation of the gap between what is confessed and carried out by those who hold religious and material power. Indeed, much of Jesus’ teaching centres a return to the law, to the heart of Torah found in the commands to uplift the lowly, love the least, and let justice roll like a river. In addition to this reformist rhetoric, Jesus also resembles the prophet in his apocalyptic teachings on the coming terror and trials to be faced by the people, and his woe and lament at those who will suffer greatly, accompanied of course by the promise of restoration for the people in a new, peaceable kingdom. But prophets are more than words. Across the Old Testament prophets engage prophetic acts. Some of these acts illuminate or emphasise a message, seeking to draw the attention that their words have failed to muster. An example of this is Jeremiah buying a plot of land in soon to be ransacked and exiled Israel to emphasise the promise of later return, or Ezekiel who took brick and sticks to make a miniature of the city and lay down next to it for three hundred and ninety days to signal the punishment coming to the house of Israel. Another kind of prophetic act, is that which demonstrate the power of God and the position of the prophet as one charged with that power. Moses turning his staff into a serpent, or Elijah producing the unceasing portion of meal for the widow who offered him welcome. Jesus performs both kinds of activities in his ministry. Sometimes, as in the case of the Gerasene Demoniac at the same time. For here Jesus demonstrates wields divine power in the confrontation with evil, and illustrates his confrontation with empire (the demons sharing the name of a Roman military grouping and liberation coming with them being cast from the land). And so, Jesus the Prophet comes bearing a message of God. A familiar prophetic message of hope and justice, of repent and reform, of redemption and restoration, of the faithfulness of God to draw all people back to the way of life. And accompanying these messages, Jesus engages familiar prophetic actions, both aimed at emphasising and illuminating his message, and demonstrating his power as an emissary of God. The question then is what does this mean for us who have been sent by this emissary, sent by Christ the prophet? Because, as we will soon proclaim at this table, we are the body of Christ. We are charged as disciples to follow after Christ, continuing his ministry in the world. We too are anointed to bring good news to the poor, proclaim release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour. Such things are fulfilled in the hearing of those standing around Christ in Nazareth, and they are carried on by the church in the world today. And so, what does it look like for us to take up and live out the prophetic office of Christ as his disciples today? Naturally our minds might go to those heroes of the faith whose actions we have recognised as prophetic. Those who advocated abolition, who opposed dispossession, who put their bodies on the line for their civil rights long before these campaigns gained mainstream approval. But while these are exemplary, might living out the prophetic office of Christ also take more everyday forms? Might it also look like holding onto and holding out good news stories in an age of despair? Might it also take the form of small changes to our everyday rhythms and choices to lessen our impact on God’s good creation? Might it also be witnessed to in the small interruptions of the callous words of those around us? Might it be seen in kids finding humour in ghouls and ghosts reminding us in costumes and face paint that death has no sting? Might it also be heard in voices joined together in song to proclaim the goodness of God? Might it be found in the faithful act of retuning, month by month, to the table of grace, proclaiming that by eating a little bread and drinking a little juice, we both receive and become the body of Christ, sent to love and serve the world? For all these acts, as mundane as they might appear, look back and point forward to the dazzling figure of Christ, who was sent in love to bring good news to the poor, proclaim release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour. |
SermonsPlease enjoy a collection of sermons preached in recent months at the Kirk. If you have questions about the sermons, or attending a service reach out using the Contact Page. Categories |