Love came down at Christmas

by Sharon Marr

(Based on Matt 1:18-25)

Our way into the Nativity story on this fourth Sunday of Advent, when we light the candle for Love, is not Mary or Elizabeth or John the fiery Baptiser.  It is Joseph, a quiet carpenter who upends his good life for a dream.  Every third year our lectionary turns its spotlight away from Mary and gives us the perspective of her would-be husband – a quiet, unassuming descendant of the House of David.  

So, today we reflect on Joseph’s part in the world’s greatest love story.  A love story enacted by God, whose love for us was so outrageously extraordinary … overwhelmingly unreasonable … that into this very troubled world, in His fullness of time, he sent his Son, as a babe … to reconcile us to himself.  To restore us.  To make us whole.  To bring us eternal life.  To show us how to love, this costly love.

So when did you last feel truly loved?  When did someone do something for you that made you feel truly cherished?  My moment was just the other day.  Albie and I were having the yearly conversation about “what do you want for Christmas?”.  And my very dear husband … who when doing the lawn mowing really prefers neat straight lines, no overhangs or obstacles, said, “Would you like another tree for our front lawn?”  Now I suppose that doesn’t sound like a love declaration to you: certainly songs won’t be written about it. But to me it was a most loving and generous gift … offered because he knows I would love it, even though the gift will eventually cost him his equilibrium on lawn mowing days.  An insignificant example, I know, but it is an everyday-ish example of love, the love we are commanded to give, the giving of self, costly love. When we think of costly love, names like Mother Theresa, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela and Bonhoeffer usually spring to our mind along with the Saints, but the reading today reminds us that this love can come in the smallest most insignificant of packages, a babe, and change a world!

Don’t you find it surprising that, of all the ways in which God could have reached us – of all the ways in which God could have saved humanity – he chose, in his infinite wisdom, to send his son as a baby? Not a man. Not an obvious Messiah. Not a solider or a king. But an infant, helpless as any infant, vulnerable to all of the harms of the world.

How like God.  To do the exact opposite to how we would do things.  No victorious warrior, no vibrant CEO,  no charismatic leader, just a fragile teenage girl and a lowly carpenter … and God needs them to agree to be part of his planned love story.

So if we are tempted to think of Joseph as a minor character in the Christmas narrative, the Gospel of Matthew reminds us that, in fact, Joseph’s role in Jesus’s arrival is crucial, even though  he is only given a couple of mentions in the whole of the New Testament! It is his willingness to lean into the impossible, to embrace the scandalous, to abandon his notions of holiness in favour of God’s plan of salvation, that allows the miracle of Christmas to unfold.  What a gift of costly love Joseph gives. 

As Matthew tells the story, the God-fearing carpenter wakes up one morning to find that his world has shattered.  His fiancée is pregnant, and he knows for sure that he is not the father. Suddenly, he has no good options to choose from.  If he calls attention to Mary’s out-of-wedlock pregnancy, she might be stoned to death, as Levitical law proscribes.  If he divorces her quietly, she’ll be reduced to begging or prostitution to support herself and the child.  If, on the other hand, he marries her, her son will be Joseph’s heir, instead of his own biological child.  Moreover, Joseph will be tainted forever by the scandal of Mary’s illicit pregnancy, and by her ridiculous (blasphemous?) claim that the baby’s dad is somehow God.

The fact is, Joseph didn’t believe Mary’s story until the angel Gabriel told him to.  Why would he?  Why would anyone?
We make a grave mistake, I think, when we sanitize Joseph’s consent.  We distort his humanity when we assume that his acceptance of God’s plan came easily, without cost; when we hold at arm’s length his humiliation and doubt. In choosing Joseph to be Jesus’s earthly father, God led a “righteous” man with an impeccable reputation straight into doubt, shame, scandal, and controversy.  

God’s call required Joseph to reorder everything he thought he knew about fairness, justice, goodness and purity.  He would become the talk of the town — and not in a good way.  He would have to love a woman whose story he didn’t understand, to protect a baby he didn’t father, to accept an heir who was not his son.  In other words, God’s plan of salvation required Joseph — a quiet, cautious, status quo kind of guy — to choose precisely what he feared and dreaded most.  The fraught, the complicated, the suspicious, and the inexplicable.  So much for living a well-ordered life.  

No wonder that Gabriel’s first words to Joseph were, “Do not be afraid.”  If we want to enter into God’s story then perhaps these are the first words we need to hear too.  Do not be afraid.  Do not be afraid when God’s work in your life looks alarmingly different than what you thought it would. Do not be afraid when God asks you to love something or someone … more than your own spotless reputation … or your need for straight mowing lines.  Do not be afraid of the precarious, the fragile, the vulnerable, the impossible! 

Dear family, may our lives mirror that of Joseph, may we too be willing to say yes when we hear a call from God, and join with him in being part of the great love story, the story of costly love, the story in which God calls us to be bearers of the Good News to our broken world today.
We are reconciled, we are restored, and we are loved.

The Ugly Game

Look, this blog is about football, so apologies to any sportophobes. But there’s a big competition going on in Qatar between 32 teams who’ve won the right (out of 120 countries) to fight play for the Football World Cup.

There’s a lot not to like about football, eh.  (‘Soccer’ in our enlightened land.)  (And this from one who couldn’t be a bigger sports fan.)  This blog rarely spotlights sport, but for once sport must be spotted.

Because, how can it be called the ‘beautiful game’ when

  • every few moments a player goes down clutching an ankle, grimacing and writhing in pain?
  • referees regularly award free kicks and (worse) penalties to players who have dived to the ground without having been touched?
  • players gang-bush a ref who’s made a decision they don’t like (or hasn’t made a decision they think he should have made)?
  • a player who scores a goal then careers around like a child, shirt off, claiming wild acclaim?
  • after a goal, players mob by the corner flag and do a childish, inflammatory, unsporting little hornpipe?
  • penalty goals scored are lauded with all the same over-reaction, even though it was only a point-blank shot which the goalie had no chance saving?
  • commentators use epithets like “sumptuous” and “miraculous” and “glorious” to describe unremarkable goals?
  • players like Messi and Kane and Beckham and Maradona are lionised as miracle players when most of the time they’re ordinary and even anonymous?

And don’t let me start on penalty shoot-outs to decide a drawn match after extra time.  Why should one team, having played to an exhausting, heroic impasse, end up a random loser?  (Sorry, I did start.)

Football players – even the nice ones – become cheats, hollywoods and prima donnas on the pitch; referees become random and easily deceived officials; VAR takes up so much time, to produce wrong decisions, and disrupt any flow the game had; Harry Kane is lauded as top goal scorer of all time when half his goals were from penalties, and only about three players on any given pitch at any given time get chances to shoot at goal anyway.  It’s so unlaudable a record.

And then there’s the whole corrupt politics behind the game … and not the least by the current World Cup hosts.

“Beautiful” game?  I don’t think so.  That’s like calling Chinese gooseberries “kiwifruit”, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea “democratic”, or New Zealand “Godzone”.

Yet … what a comp!  What a Cup.  What a spectacle it’s been!

Despite the ugliness of it all, it’s been beautiful to watch.  The drama!  The exquisitely crafted goals.  The competitiveness.  The melting pot of peoples.  The commentaries.  (“Morocco have the wind in their sails!”  “Destiny lies at the feet of Luka Modric!”  “A wave of Dutch orange rose to meet him!”)
I hate the cheating and the unsportingness, despise the pretentious antics, scorn the gasconade.  But damned if the drama don’t just trump it all.

Give us more of the ugly game.

Questioning, Towards Hope

by Terry Hall and Pat Lee

(Based on Matt 11:2-11; James 5:7-12)

Pat has adapted and updated this sermon, written around 1988 by American Terry Hall, and presents it here for your reflection.

Christianity is essentially a faith walk of hope – not a ‘hope-so religion’ or ‘just hoping’ – but a new, stupendous hope born of the Incarnation of Jesus Christ and creating a tidal wave of hope and joy to revive a world as tired, troubled and as chaotic as ours. But how does the gospel of Jesus Christ transmit to our lives in the midst of seemingly hopeless situations? The poor, the homeless and those struggling with the cost of living remain with us, with almost no opportunity to climb out of their condition, with little chance of bettering themselves or the world around them.

World and national events that are taking place today make us stop and reflect upon the fleetingness of peace and the real inability of humankind to establish “peace on earth, goodwill toward all”. The good seem to get the ‘wrong end of the stick’, while evil continues to prosper. It is to these and other pertinent issues that the gospel of Jesus Christ addresses itself. It is to the hopeless that Jesus gives hope. It is to us that find ourselves doubting our faith in our faith pilgrimage that this text finds its most pointed application.

There are moments that cause our faith to quiver, circumstances that challenge our foundations to the depths. Some of us may have even questioned our personal faith in time of crisis. Is faith real? Is Jesus Christ really the person portrayed in the Scriptures or is he someone imagined out of our contemporary feelings, belief and literature? More specifically, can my God support me in a time of personal crisis? Our prayer becomes, “Lord, give me hope; give me meaning and direction to my life. Help me to find answers to my complex questions that plague me daily.”

I sensed a frustrated prophet in John the Baptist. In today’s New Testament reading, James was telling us about waiting and not grumbling. Well, John was now in prison. Jesus had attained a healthy level of popularity, a level experienced once by John. John, Jesus’s cousin by the way, appears to be on the way out, his star falling. So, here is our main character – confused about the present and uncertain about the future – searching for the right answer.

John was in a period of transition in his life. He was the one that stood at the end of a long line of Old Testament prophets and was the forerunner of the Messiah foretold by the prophet Malachi. John was a lot like Moses who saw the Promised Land but never entered it. John was on the outside looking in. He had witnessed God breaking into history, in Jesus Christ, and he had faithfully served as a catalyst for the plan of God, but now doubts and questions reigned in his mind. Jesus had failed to conform to popular ideas about the Messiah who was to bring about political, social and economic deliverance. Jesus was assuming a very humble role, while John was expecting him to take a more direct and outward charge of the world about him. No wonder he was confused! The entire system of belief on which he had based his life and work was now being inwardly questioned.

It is amidst this uncertainty and confusion that John found certainty, stability and assurance. And he did this by questioning, through doubting. Yes, doubting.

One person has said that “to believe with certainty, we must begin by doubting”. My gut feeling is that this is true, because only by inquiring, by questioning the correct source, and even doubting, do we grow. So John doubted! Good on him! The truth is, he really wanted to know.  He desired not to take a fact at face value, but to investigate the truth and ask the source of knowledge.

John sent his envoys to Jesus to find the right answer. He instructed them to ask Jesus, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” His question amounts to a challenge and a call to action. “If you are the Messiah, manifest your overwhelming power.”

What courage, dedication and sincerity! He simply wanted Jesus to do the right thing with his life as he saw it. He wanted to know the truth, not just in his heart, but also in his mind. John affirms that no one should accept simple statements out of the air, just because they are made by someone in authority or with a claim to power or greatness. There must be evidence of some sort to support it or some reason for accepting it. This evidence must be personally confirmed and not just hearsay.

John the Baptist is like Thomas, the disciple who has unfortunately been named Doubting Thomas. Like Thomas, John was perceptive enough to know the difference between truth and desire; humble enough to acknowledge his ignorance and to ask for help; thorough enough to base what he believed on evidence that was personally authenticated; and honest enough to change his mind in the light of new truth.

So Jesus replies, “Tell John this. All that is taking place is actually in accordance with God’s plan, of which you are a part. The blind see; the lame walk; the deaf hear; the dead are raised; and the good news is preached.”
Jesus does not criticize John’s confusion and uncertainty. He does not reply, “Oh, you of little faith.” He simply replies in the affirmative: “Let the record speak for itself. Continue your examination, John. Search me diligently; do not take what is being said about me on speculation, but truly search for yourself. Gather the facts and then decide.”
Had Jesus replied, “Yes, I am the One,” John would have accepted the statement blindly but would have spent the rest of his life in uncertainty.

This is where John finds new hope in the midst of his uncertainty. He learned that Jesus was more than just a good man who had found his way to God, but it was God himself who had found his way to humankind, the entire human family. It is this Incarnation that we celebrate. It is this Christ that comes into our lives, makes himself known to us, and becomes our Lord. John questioned the right source, and from that answer found new hope for living, giving him joy.

There are many things in our lives which cause us confusion and doubt – things that seem impossible to mend, both spiritually and mentally. We hear grumblings and see rash judgements and are guilty of the same.
It is in the midst of this chaos and confusion that Christ comes to give us hope and joy in the practical management of daily life, during those in-between times when we are confused, doubtful, tempted to compromise, and to lose heart. Martin Luther said that “everything that is done in the world is done by the hopeful”. So if Jesus is our hope in the midst of doubt and confusion, we have nowhere to go but up.

The ‘Why’ of Repentance

by Joan Fanshawe

(Based on Matt 3:1-12; Isa 11:1-10; Ro 15:4-13)

Last weekend Alison and I sang in the performance of the Messiah in Thames. It was great that a good number of you were able to come over and share that too. We had practised in segments over the months but when it all came together with the soloists, I found it a very moving experience to hear those words within the whole sequence of experience so familiar to our faith.

Speaking of familiarity, on this second Sunday of Advent we find ourselves once again on the banks of the River Jordan with John the Baptist. We should be used to it by now, but that wild  prophet John still jars as a bit of a party-pooper as we look toward Christmas.
It’s tempting to reduce the image of this provocative wild man dressed in a rough garments to a cartoon character on a street corner with a placard saying “Get ready – the end is near!”  However, all four Gospel writers agree that there is no good news – no Gospel of Jesus – without John the Baptist. He has to be included in the story.

Jesus himself describes John as the greatest of prophets. A prophet, we remember, is not one who foretells the future but one who speaks as mouthpiece of God. John took his mission, which was to declare the imminent arrival of the coming Messiah, very seriously and feared no one, not even Herod or Herod’s wife, who in the end arranged to have John’s head. He was totally devoted to the One for whom he came to prepare the way, saying to his followers, “I baptise you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals.”
When John proclaims, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near,” crowds from Jerusalem and the surrounding regions come out to hear him and to be baptised in the Jordan.

So why do they flock to hear John?

It helps to remember here, the Biblical understanding of the term ‘repent’ is deeply shaped by the Jewish experience of exile. To repent, to return, is to follow the prepared way of the Lord that leads out of separation and back into reconnection.
Reconnection with the God who made us and loves us beyond our understanding.

John is out in the wilderness – far away from the places of power. He sees the world through the lens of wilderness experience and reminds us, then and now, that God’s people endured the wilderness – with all its confusions, ill-will, and foolishness – as they fled from the Egyptian Pharaoh’s tyranny. For years they struggled with God’s call on their lives, often abusing it with their disobedience.

Perhaps venturing into the wilderness to be with John reminds the crowd of their ancestors’ struggles, allowing them to hear John’s call to repent, more as invitation than judgment – as an invitation to come home.

To repent doesn’t mean simply to be sorry. In the New Testament, to repent means to begin seeing differently, to begin thinking differently, both of which lead to acting and living differently. To repent is to change, but not for the sake of change itself. Rather, when we change we start to live differently, and as we develop a new way of seeing, we become aware that our actions are out of step with God’s dream for all creation.

What then is God’s dream for all creation? The answer to that question can be found throughout Scripture. One illustration can be found in today’s reading from Isaiah: God’s dream is for the world to be a place in which peace and equity – rather than fear and hatred – rule the day. God dreams for the world to be a place where we view each other with compassion and with love, where all of creation is full of the mercy and the peace of God.

God dreams of community … wherein we love one another, as neighbours, with all our heart, soul and mind, and that God calls us to live into this dream, not next year, not ten years from today, but right now.
It is a desire that John himself expresses with the phrase that always comes after the verb ‘repent’. He doesn’t just shout, “Repent!” and stop there. He links the call to repentance with the ‘why’: “the kingdom of heaven has come near.”

For those of us who follow God in the Way of Love, it is Jesus who defines our new way of seeing, our new mindset, and our way back to God. Deciding to try to live and love like Jesus is what Christian repentance is all about.

Dear friends, what if we choose to hear this prophet’s call – “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near” – not as an ominous threat of impending judgment, but as an invitation to live into God’s dream?

Even now, there are prophets rising up in our midst. We cannot ignore our young people who dream of having a future in which they can enjoy God’s creation, but often feel that their dreams are threatened because of climate change, economic unfairness and violence. They are demanding change to protect their lives and God’s creation so they and their children may enjoy the abundant life God desires for them – “and a little child shall lead them,” says Isaiah.

Advent invites us all to dream of something beyond what we can presently see – injustice, inequality, prejudice, ignorance, poverty, hunger, illiteracy, powerlessness, and hopelessness? Can we let John invade our indifference by asking what part we play in these dis-eases? How will we live knowing the hardship of the homeless and the hungry, the suffering of migrants, refugees, seemingly increased acts of violence and, especially, pointless war?
These are dreams by which to set a course. God does not ask us if we are there yet, but rather whether we are headed in the right direction. We as children of God need to heed the voice of the one crying out in the wilderness – the voice that reminds us of God’s dream.

We need to take the time to seek God’s vision for ourselves; to ask, “What does God want us to be and to do?”
Could we choose one element of our lives – just one, for now – where we see the need for repentance, and take advantage of the opportunity to change direction?

And, following Paul’s counsel, we who have glimpsed God’s dream must now share that hope. Like John, we must strive to renew the hopes of an exhausted world. “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”

“Repent, live into God’s Dream.” This is John the Baptist’s invitation for us to come home and to be the people God has created us to be.

Prepare the way of the Holy One,
           make a straight path.
                           — Matthew 3.3

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” – Romans 15:13