Today's Advent Liturgy
in the New International Version reads, in part:
“He will stand and shepherd his flock in
the strength of the Lord, in the majesty
of the name of the Lord his God. And they will live securely, for
then his greatness will reach to the ends
of the earth.
And he will be our
peace when the Assyrians invade our land”
I don't know about you,
but I find that prophecy strangely comforting in these dark days!
“He will stand and
shepherd his flock in the strength of the Lord, in the majesty of the
name of the Lord his God.” “And he will be our peace when the
Assyrians invade our land.”
However, as we all
know, a text without a context is a pretext, so rather than just
taking the words as a lovely Christmas prophecy – which of course,
on one level, they are – let's look a bit deeper and find out a bit
more about Micah, and what he was talking about.
Micah was a prophet in 8th-century Judah, more or less a contemporary with
Isaiah, Amos and Hosea. As with so many of the prophets, the book
starts off with great doom and gloom.He prophesied
the destruction of Jerusalem,particularly because they were simply
dishonest and then expected God to cover for them: “Her leaders
judge for a bribe, her priests teach for a price, and her prophets
tell fortunes for money. Yet they lean upon the LORD and say, Is not
the LORD among us? No disaster will come upon us.” But Micah
said, “Well, actually....” As one modern paraphrase puts it: “The
fact is, that because of you lot, Jerusalem will be reduced to rubble
and cleared like a field; and the Temple hill will be nothing but a
tangled mass of weeds" An archaeologist called Roland de
Vaux has excavated village sites only a few miles from where Micah is
thought to have lived, and he has something very interesting to say:
“The houses of the tenth century B.C. are all of the same size and
arrangement. Each represents the dwelling of a family which lived in
the same way as its neighbours. The contrast is striking when we
pass to the eighth century houses on the same site: the rich houses
are bigger and better built and in a different quarter from that
where the poor houses are huddled together.”
During those
200 years, Israel and Judah had moved from a largely agricultural
society to one governed by a monarchy and with a Temple in Jerusalem.
The distinction between the “Haves” and the “Have nots” had
grown, as it does still today. But Micah tells the powerful ones –
the judges, the priests, the rulers – that God doesn't prop up any
so-called progress that is built on the backs of other people. For
God, justice and equality matter far more than progress or growth.
But God's people disagree, and they try to stop Micah, and other
prophets, telling them God's truth; they only want to hear
comforting, agreeable prophecies about how their crops will flourish
and there will be plenty of wine!
But when Jerusalem has
been destroyed, when her people have been carried off into exile,
then a day will come when a new leader will be born to them, a leader
who will “stand and shepherd his flock in the days of the Lord”,
and “who will be our peace when the Assyrians invade our land.”
I expect you realise
that these prophecies were often dual-purpose; they did and do refer
to the coming of Christ, of course, but they also often referred to a
local event, a local birth. We don't know who Micah was originally
referring to, who would be born in Bethlehem, but we do know that,
for us, these prophecies refer to Jesus.
“He will be our peace
when the Assyrians invade our land.” These days we worry rather
more about Syrians than about Assyrians – whether we are concerned
about the number of refugees seeking asylum here, or whether we are
more concerned, as we should be, about how relatively few our
government is allowing in. Some people, I know, worry that we
shouldn't allow them in in case they turn out to belong to Daesh and
want to commit acts of terrorism, but those are the tiniest of tiny
minorities among those fleeing Syria.
We call them
“migrants”, lumping them all under one umbrella. The term is
supposed to be neutral, less laden with emotional baggage than
“refugee” or “asylum seeker”. It isn't, of course, because
people then talk about “illegal immigrants” or “economic
migrants”. And it's noticeable that if we Brits go to live abroad
we aren't called migrants – I did the whole economic migrant thing
back in the 1970s, when I went to work in Paris for some years after
leaving school, but nobody called me a “migrant”, economic or
otherwise – I was an expatriate! And people talked about cultural
exchange, and our young people learning about different lifestyles,
and so on, and it was all considered a Good Thing.
And, of course, many of
your families, and perhaps some of you are the first generation who
did so, many of you came over here to work and contribute to our
society and learn about our way of life – and have enriched this
country beyond all measure! Maybe you can remember the bewilderment
of arriving here, not too sure of your welcome, not too sure what
life in this cold and rainy land was going to be like.
Even if someone does
make it across the Channel, their problems aren't yet over. They
aren't allowed to work while their claim for asylum is being
processed, and although they do get an allowance, it really isn't
very much. Not really enough to live on, and certainly not enough for
a comfortable lifestyle. And if they are found not to be in imminent
danger of death back home, they are thrown out again, and if that's
on their records they can't really go and try their luck somewhere
else in Europe.
I don't know what the
answer long-term is. The politicians will have to work that one out
between them. But we need to pray for all migrants, and do what we
can to help. That may be only donating a few pounds to the Unicef
appeals that we see daily on our televisions, or we may be called to
do something more “hands-on”. Whatever, though, we mustn't think
of it as someone else's problem!
Because Jesus will be
our peace, so Micah tells us. If we believe Matthew's account, he was
himself a refugee for awhile, when they fled to Egypt to avoid
Herod's troops. As I understand it, God won't necessarily keep the
bad times from us, or protect us from what lies ahead, but Jesus will
be there with us in the midst of it all. And I, personally, find
that reassuring.
Our Gospel reading,
too, told of someone who badly needed reassurance. Mary has just met
the angel and been told that, if she will, she is the one who will
bear God's son, and she has said “Yes”. But it's early days yet
– there aren't any physical signs that she is pregnant, she has
never slept with a man, what is it all about? But one thing the
angel had told her, that she hadn't already known, was that her
cousin Elisabeth, surely far too old to be having babies, was six
months gone. So Mary goes off to see Elisabeth – incidentally
this, for me, is one of the pointers that she was living in the
Jerusalem area at the time, whether at Bethlehem or Jerusalem itself
– tradition has it that she was one of the temple servants –
because she would never have been able to travel all that way between
Nazareth and Jerusalem on her own.
Anyway, she arrives at
Elisabeth's front door, and there is Elisabeth with a large bump, and
Elisabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit, confirms all that the angel
had said. And Mary bubbles over into love and joy and praise, and
even if the words of the Magnificat are what St Luke thought she
ought to have said – rather like Henry the Fifth's speech at
Agincourt being what Shakespeare thought he ought to have said,
rather than what he actually did say – even if they are not
authentic, they are probably very close to reality! We sung a
metrical version of her song just a few minutes ago. And it reminds
us that God is turning accepted values upside-down by having His Son
born to a virgin mother in a small town in an occupied land.
“Tell out, my soul,
the greatness of his might! Powers and dominions lay their glory
by. Proud hearts and stubborn wills are put to flight, the
hungry fed, the humble lifted high.”
In the culture of the
day – as in ours – it was thought that prosperity was a sign of
God's blessing, and poverty rather the reverse. But no, that was not
what Jesus was, or is, all about. Instead, he himself was born to an
ordinary family that, within a couple of years, was fleeing for its
life into exile, and when they did dare go home, they didn't dare go
back so near Jerusalem, but moved up to the provinces.
Mary was so brave,
saying “Yes” to God. I don't know how much she understood, but
of course Joseph could – and seriously considered doing so – have
refused to marry her, and then where would she have been? But the
angel reassured Joseph, and Elisabeth reassured Mary. All was not
totally well, but God was with them.
And that's the message
to take into this Christmas, isn't it, as we stand on the brink of
another war, against an enemy we cannot defeat – for even if we
destroy Daesh, as we destroyed Al Quaeda, there will be another
group, and another.... all may not be totally well, but God is with
us. And God's son, Jesus, will be our peace when the Assyrians
invade our land. Amen.
This is similar, but not identical, to the sermon preached on this Sunday three years ago. In view of the tragic events in Paris which took place on Friday, 13 November, it did change a bit.
I also unexpectedly preached a children's sermon, which I didn't record. I asked them to tell me the story of the Good Samaritan, which one of them did, very efficiently, and then I reminded them that a Samaritan was a person of a different race and often Jewish people hadn't wanted to know about them. But I said the point was, he had helped, and when they saw upsetting news stories on television or in the papers, always to look for the helpers - the police, the fire service, the ambulances, and the ordinary people, like you and me, who are helping - because that's what Jesus would do.
“So, friends, we can now –
without hesitation –
walk right up to God, into “the Holy
Place.”
Jesus has cleared the way by the blood
of his sacrifice, acting as our priest before God.
The “curtain” into God’s presence
is his body.
So let’s do it –
full of belief, confident that we’re
presentable inside and out.
Let’s keep a firm grip on the
promises that keep us going.
He always keeps his word.”
That's a modern translation of part of
our first reading today,
from the letter to the Hebrews.
I don't know how much you know about
this letter;
it's thought to date from around the
year 63 or 64 AD,
before the Temple in Jerusalem was
destroyed
and before the Eucharist became a
widespread form of Christian worship.
Nobody knows who wrote it, either;
arguments about its authorship go back
to at least the 4th century AD!
Probably one of Paul's pupils, but
nobody actually knows who.
The Temple in Jerusalem is still
standing when this letter is written.
The author uses it to contrast what
used to be –
in the olden days only the High Priest
could go into God's presence,
and he had to take blood with him to
atone for the people's sins and his own.
Nowadays, it is only Christ, the great
High Priest, who can go into God's presence –
but he can and does take us with him.
We can go with Jesus into the very
presence of God himself, confidently,
just like you'd walk into your own
front room.
The thing is, of course, that it's all
because of what Jesus has done for us.
We can't go into God's presence, as the
prayer says,
“trusting in our own righteousness”.
If we are to go in with any degree of
confidence,
it is because of what Jesus has done
for us,
arguably whether or not we recognise
this.
The author of the Letter to the Hebrews
tells us that Christ takes us in there in his own body.
I don't know about you, but for me that
rather helps clarify what St Paul said about our being part of the
Body of Christ –
and in that Body, we can go into God's
presence.
There is nothing we can do to make it
any easier or any more difficult;
it is all down to Jesus.
We are made right with God by what
Jesus has done, end of.
It isn't about whether we have
confessed our sins –
although I hope we have faced up to
where we have gone wrong.
It isn't about whether we have accepted
Jesus as our Saviour and our Lord –
although I very much hope we have done
so.
Neither of those things will save us.
Only God will save us –
and as soon as we reach out a tentative
finger to him,
and sometimes even before, he is there,
reassuring us that we are loved,
we are saved,
we are forgiven.
The trouble is, all too often we focus
on sin as though that were what Christianity were all about.
We even tend to think the Good News
goes
“You are a sinner and God will
condemn you to hell unless you believe the right things about him.”
Erm, no.
Just no.
We do things like that.
We are quick to condemn, especially
people in public life.
Just read any newspaper, any day.
We are slow to forgive –
we don't believe people can change, we
keep on bringing up episodes in the lives of our nearest and dearest
that might have happened a quarter of a century ago!
But God is not like that.
God is love.
God is salvation.
We don't have to do anything, only God
can save us.
Yes, following Jesus is not an easy
option, we know that.
If we are Jesus' person, we are Jesus'
person in every part of our lives –
it isn't just something we do here in
Church on Sundays.
It affects who we are when we are at
work,
or at home with our families,
or going to the supermarket.
It affects what we choose to do with
our free time,
who we choose to spend it with –
not, I hope, exclusively people who
think the same way as we do.
You see, the thing is, you never know
exactly what God's going to do.
An acquaintance of mine is a fairly
well-known author whose books have been published both here and in
the USA.
She is just a little older than I am,
and three years ago she announced on
her blog that she had met Jesus and was
now a Christian.
You don't really expect people to
become Christians just before their 60th birthday, but it
happened to her.
God reached out to her and, as she put
it, everything changed.
Yet she was still herself.
Another
fairly well-known author –
well,
well-known to me, anyway,
but
if you don't read science fiction or fantasy you'll not have heard of
either of these lovely women –
confirmed
in the comments on this blog that she, too, is a believer,
although
you couldn't have actually read some of her books and not realised
that.
And
one of her comments read, in part:
“I'm
still who I was, probably more so. . . . I was scared of the other –
of
becoming the cookie fresh from the cutter, just like every other
cookie.
But
individuality and diversity appears to be built in to the design
concept.”
Individuality
and diversity appear to be built into the design concept.
Yes.
God
has created and designed each one of us to be uniquely ourselves.
When
we are told that we will become more Christ-like as we go on with
Jesus,
it
doesn't mean we'll all grow to resemble a first-century Jewish
carpenter!
We
will, in fact, become more and more ourselves, more and more who we
were intended to be.
Incidentally,
my friend is now in urgent need of our prayers as her husband,
another fantasy and mystery author, who is a very great deal older
than she is, has had a stroke and is now in a care home.
So
we will remember Robin and Peter in our intercessions later.
Salvation
comes from God, through nothing you or I can do, although we are, of
course, at liberty to say “No thank you!”
But
if we say “Yes please”, as I suspect most of us here have said,
at one time or another, then everything changes.
I've
spoken before, although not, I think here, about the consequences of
healing.
For
make no mistake, my friends, when God touches our lives, things
change.
Sometimes
it is our behaviour which changes –
perhaps
we used to get drunk, but now we find ourselves switching to soft
drinks after a couple of glasses.
Perhaps
we used to gamble,
but
suddenly realise we haven't so much as bought a Lottery ticket for
weeks, never mind visiting a bookie!
Perhaps
we used to be less than scrupulous about what belongs to us, and what
belongs to our employer,
but
now we find ourselves asking permission to use an office
envelope.
Very often these sorts of changes happen without our
even noticing them. Others take more struggle –
sometimes
it is many years before we can finally let go of an addiction, or a
bad habit.
But
as I've said before, the more open we are to God,
the
more we can allow God to change us.
Sometimes,
of course, we cling on to the familiar bad habits,
as
we don't know how to replace them with healthier ways of acting and
thinking, and that's scary.
But the point is, when God
touches our lives, things change.
They
changed for my friend, I know they changed for me,
and
they will have changed for many of you, if not all of you, too.
So
where does this leave our reading?
Jesus,
in our gospel reading, reminded us that we mustn't go running this
way and that way,
convinced
of doomsday scenarios every time we hear a news bulletin.
Yes,
the world as we know it is going to end some day –
it
wasn't built to be permanent, just ask the dinosaurs!
We
don't know how and why it will end;
in
my youth, I would have assumed it would end in a nuclear war that
would destroy all living things.
These
days that is less probable,
but
what about runaway global warming or an asteroid strike?
Or
just simply running out of fossil fuels and unable to replace them?
The
answer is that we simply don't know.
Unlike
the first Christians,
we
don't really expect Jesus to return any minute now –
although
I suppose that is possible.
We
do, however, accept and appreciate that this world is finite and that
one day humanity will no longer exist here.
And
we mustn't be scared all the time, either.
Yes,
our news headlines can be very scary –
but
isn't God greater than terrorists?
Isn't
God greater than Islamic State?
And
we musn't get bogged down in details, either.
There
has been such a silly row in the USA this week because Starbucks
haven't put Christmas symbols –
not
Christian ones, but snowflakes and so on –
on
their red cups this year.
Too
silly – the God we worship is so very much bigger than whether or
not a corporation has decorations on its cups.
There
are many good reasons not to go to Starbucks, but that really isn't
one of them!
And
what about the rows in this country about people who chose not to
wear a poppy, or how deep the Labour leader bowed when he laid his
wreath.....
It
is all so unimportant when we are also taught that we will be raised
from death and go on Somewhere Else.
We
don't know what that Somewhere Else will be like,
nor
who we'll be when we get there –
although
I imagine we'll still be recognisably ourselves.
But
we do know that Jesus will be there with us,
and
that we will see Him face to face.
But
eternal life isn't just pie in the sky when you die, as it is so
often caricatured.
If
we are Christians, we have eternal life here and now;
so
often, it's living it that's the problem.
So
I'm going to conclude with part of the quote from Hebrews with which
I began:
“Jesus
has cleared the way by the blood of his sacrifice,
acting
as our priest before God.
The
“curtain” into God’s presence is his body.
So
let’s do
it –
full
of belief, confident that we’re presentable inside and out.”
Welcome! I am a Methodist Local Preacher, and preach roughly once a month, or thereabouts. If you wish to take a RSS feed, or become a follower, so that you know when a new sermon has been uploaded, please feel free to do so.
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