First Sunday of Christmas

Colossians 3.12-17; Luke 2.41-52

This Sunday is commonly called the Sunday of the Holy Family as we read of Jesus and His parents taking their annual trip to the Passover celebration in Jerusalem. The reading from St. Paul's letter to the Colossians also contains what you might call instructions about how to get on in a Christian community, in what might be regarded and is thought of sometimes as the Christian 'family' and how we should conduct our relationships under God. Families come in all sorts of shapes and sizes these days and I don't think their is a stereotypical family now. Much is said from different individuals and groups and agencies about the demise of the family as we once knew it and the effect this has, especially on children. But however families are constituted these days, relationships still only flourish in an atmosphere of love, loving kindness, trust and forgiveness. And I think it's these 'values' and much more than values that we see and hear in Scripture passages such as we've heard this morning. And our relationship with God also depends upon these same values, values which are about ourselves as people, that make us what we are in life and how we get on with others. God Himself, as the Holy Trinity is a relationship of love into which we are drawn as we open up our minds and hearts to Him. And as we live in relationship with God and other people, our own character and personality is shaped, in a particular way; we 'become' a particular type of person. As we live in a relationship with God through Jesus Christ and in that way, get to know Him, to submit ourselves to His ways, we become Christ-like; our being is formed and shaped to be like His.

This is what Jesus himself did in His own earthly family. As we read of Him this morning He's causing His parents no little consternation. And it's three days before they find Him. A significant length of time that prefigures the three days of His death and resurrection. And when they do find Him and His mother remonstrates with Him He says that He's about His Father's business. In that response we see that He has a sense of God calling Him even at the age of 12 years. But then even so, He returns to His family and St. Luke tells us that He was obedient to Mary and Joseph. Other translations of the passage say that He submitted Himself to them. So, He has much to learn both from God and from His earthly parents. As a child, He does His heavenly Father's will and submits to His earthly parents. And it's that way with us too. God calls us to Him as our heavenly Father, to do His will and His work, and as followers of Christ to become Christ-like in this world. And He also places us in relationship to other people, in the first instance and in our most formative years, in a family, however that family is formed, and we have to submit to all that it means to be part of that family, it's rules and values.

As Christians, some of our most immediate relationships are with other members of the Church, other members of the Body of Christ. And it's from these others that St. Paul says we should learn as well; that we should learn about love and forgiveness and that we should encourage and admonish one another as together we learn and grow. He says that as we do this we should continually give thanks, that we should learn from one another's wisdom with a sense of gratitude. And all this too in a context of worship, in psalms, hymns and spiritual songs to God, as he says. So from St. Paul we learn that being part of the Body of Christ, being a member of the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church is essential to our nurture and upbringing as a Christian, because it's in that Body and being part of the Body of Christ that we learn the Truth of God and the reality of Christian discipleship. We can't do it on our own, we can't learn of Christ fully on our own, we must be part of the Church.

One of the things I tried to get across in my Christmas sermon is that as we read the story and look at the events of the birth of Jesus, and read of people's response to it at the time, and as we try to understand how God could become incarnate, could be born in human form and what that means for us, there comes a point where our mind cannot grasp the significance of what is going on; we reach the limits of human understanding. And it's at that point that we have to come to the story in faith, we have to come to the story with our heart and accept in faith what is happening and then live out the consequences in faith. We do that with lots of things in life, like falling in love which is beyond understanding, like coping with illness and tragedy and death. Very often, the extremities of life bring out qualities in people that cannot be explained with the human reason and that's because they are the response of the heart. The heart often takes over where the mind gives way. And so it is with God.

And I couldn't help noticing the link between the account of Jesus birth in St. Luke's gospel we read on Christmas Day and what we've read in his gospel today. He says that when the shepherds visited Jesus and told Mary and Joseph what they'd heard and seen of the angels, that Mary 'treasured all these things and pondered them in her heart.' And again also, after her difficult and possibly confusing conversation with her Son Jesus in the temple, after finding Him, St. Luke says that 'His mother treasured all these things in her heart.' The King James version actually repeats that she 'treasured and pondered all these things in her heart.'

Notice Mary's great faith. St. Luke says that she first treasures both joyful and difficult words and events, for both are mysterious in the Godly sense, that is, beyond human reason. She knows these words and events have meaning and so rather than dismissing them or trying to forget them as we often try to do with difficult things, Mary, in faith, treasures them, gives them the highest order of importance in her life. Perhaps that's natural for a mother when it comes to her son but it's an example for all of us. And then she pondered the words and events. If you look up the word 'ponder' in the dictionary you'll see that it has to do, not just with thinking something over, but is about weight and solemnity. I think we can see here that Mary is seriously contemplating these words and events, she gives them the seriousness they deserve, and she isn't just trying to rationalise things but she lets their significance draw itself out over time.

All of this is typical of our Christian formation and nurture, of our living in relationship with God and as part of the Church, the Body of Christ. We don't necessarily understand what God does with us and says and asks of us but we are called, like Mary, to act in faith, to treasure God's word to us no matter what, whether we understand or not and then to ponder it as Mary does over what can be a lifetime. And we might never work out the significance of things where God is concerned because being called into a relationship with God is being called into participating in a mystery. We are simply called to live in relationship with God and one another, in faith and when we do that then in a real sense, God's Spirit lives and works in us and God in Christ is born in us not just at Christmas but in every new day.

The Nativity of the Lord

Isaiah 9.2-7; Titus 2.11-14; Luke 2.1-20

First of all I'd like to take this opportunity to wish each and every one of you a very happy and peaceful Christmas. This is my thirteenth Christmas sermon at St. Andrew's; not that I'm counting, but I just thought that it was a significant number not an unlucky number but it just happens to be the number of men sat around the table at the last supper. And I say that not to cast us ahead of time, time passes quickly enough, but just as a gentle reminder that what we celebrate tonight (today) is just the start of the whole drama of what theologians might call the 'Salvation event', of the incarnation, death and resurrection of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. And so tonight we hear the beginning of the story again. It's the same story, told in the same way, surrounded by the same music and same words. And we repeat it all year after year, unchangingly. In these days of choice and variety and relentless change, it can feel a bit strange to do that and you might ask why we keep on doing this thing, telling this story in the same way time after time after time, year in, year out? Why don't we change it, perhaps to make it more interesting, make it more attractive to people? Make it 'edgy'? I think that's the terminology used these days to describe grabbing attention and provoking peoples' interest.

Well there are a number of reasons why we don't change the way we tell the story. One of them is because we are doing it in a way commanded by Jesus and interpreted by the Church, and reaffirmed as such repeatedly down the centuries as the best way of telling the story. It's the best way because it contains all that we need to know. In that sense we do it according to our Tradition, according to the Holy Tradition, the Tradition of the Church and not the tradition of men. We stick to Holy Tradition and do it that way because it's a sacred story telling us of the fact of God's coming to humankind for our salvation. And it's not open to any other interpretation, but the Church's interpretation, because the Church is the place where the story resides and is played out in time. It belongs to the Church because the Church is the Body of Christ and it's Christ's story. It's not open for individuals to come and decide what the story of Christmas means to them. It's for us to take on what the story means to the Church and as part of the Church, part of the Body of Christ, what it means for us.

The story contains everlasting truth about God, to be handed down generation to generation in this same way, because it is sacred and contains the Truth of God. And if we've lost the sense of anything in the Western world these days it's the sense of the sacred, of what is sacred. And that's because we seem to have to bring everything down to our own human level and make it understandable to our human reason. The trouble is that when we use our reason in this way, when we try to make everything understandable, when we subject everything to the 'light of reason', we tend to also reduce everything to ordinariness and everything has a similar value. And if we have difficulty understanding something with our rational mind we do our best to reinterpret it and reframe it so that we can give meaning to it, give our meaning to it and lose its own meaning in the process. And always when we do that we devalue whatever it is we are trying to understand. And when we do that with the Christmas story especially, not only have we missed the point we've missed the power of the story and the glory that could be ours.

God doesn't change. God is as He has always been, is now and always will be. We affirm that truth time and time again. It's we that change, you and I. In the thirteen different sermons I've preached, I've said something different every time, not because God has changed but only because I've changed. My own understanding of God has changed. My mind has seen Him in different ways and different lights, like a kaleidoscope if you like, slowly turning with the years giving different colours and patterns. And you know, because of that there's a sense in which it gets harder all the time. It gets harder to accept, with my rational mind that what I was told as a boy about God is the Truth. And no matter how much I change and my understanding changes, the Truth never does.

But what I have learned in all these years is that there comes a point where we have to put our rational mind to one side and then just look, look into the mystery of God. Because God is a mystery. He can never be understood with the rational mind. And isn't that the biggest stumbling block for we sophisticated 21st century affluent, rational, wise men? We don't like to admit that our mind lets us down. But if we do admit it then we can see that what we have to bring to God from that point onward is our heart, that centre of our Being that's been described down the centuries as the heart. And with the heart we move into a different kind of understanding, into the kind of understanding that is about love and faith. And it's here that we start to make real progress with God. An unknown English Priest of the 14th century wrote a little book which was given the title 'The Cloud of Unknowing' and in it he wrote on this very point we've come to now. He said that 'God can be known through love, but with our understanding, never.' And so it's the heart that we have to bring to this unchanging story that we hear again tonight (today) because we can only glean the story's real meaning and depth of meaning with the heart. We make that real and living connection with the God in this story, not with the mind but with the heart. And with the heart we bring our love and our faith. It's a totally different way of living, never mind, understanding. And one that we find so very very difficult in this day and age. It's always been difficult and never more so than now. So when we bring our heart to this never changing story, to this eternal, everlastin and unchanging God, what do we find?

I've been trying to encourage people here at church over the weeks of Advent to look beyond the busyness, present giving, and partying, to look beyond even the school nativity presentations to what is within and beyond them. All of those things, the present giving and partying and the children doing their nativity presentations are delightful and bring us a sense of joy. But it's what's within them and beyond them is what we are meant to be giving our heart to at Christmas. And that is what those things point us toward - God being born as a baby in a stable in Bethlehem; the uncreated God, becoming a creature; the immortal becoming mortal; and not for Himself, but for us; so that we might have salvation, that is, His healing and peace, now in this life; so that we might have the life Adam had before he and Eve fell from grace. And what it means is that God becomes man and earth is lifted up to heaven. And THAT, when we bring our heart to it is where and when we find the real joy of Christmas, because our heart has at last found God. It was the great St. Augustine that said 'our hearts are restless till they find their rest in God.' And that is Truth.

One of the biggest delusions of the Christmas season and one reason why people, most of whom have been so disappointed by it in the past, why they try to take Christmas from us is that real joy isn't to be found in the family coming together, eating together, exchanging gifts, having a party. Very often those things just lead to more frustration, disappointment and heartache, that's why there are more divorces and suicides at Christmas than any other time of year. Those things tend to enhance or raise what has been buried before and all the emotion that goes with it. No, the REAL joy of Christmas is to be found in the REAL meaning of the Christmas story, which we can only understand with the heart and then live in faith.

God comes to meet us at Christmas and offers us the blessing of new life, of salvation, of resurrection so that even though the body dies, we know by faith that that isn't the end of the story, that like what we celebrate tonight (today) it's just the beginning. And we can't know and understand this with the mind, but the heart leads us into the joy of knowing this to be true, so that with St. Paul we can say 'I know whom I have believed'. Not, I understand, but 'I know.'

And this is as true for us now as it was 2,000 years ago, so much so that tonight is as if there has never been a Christmas before, as though this is the first time that God comes to us as and in the baby in the stable. God comes to meet us now, at this moment. Will you bring the understanding of your heart to him tonight (today)? Will you lay aside your reason, make that sacrifice and in faith bring your heart to him tonight (today)? And give yourself a real chance of finding and experiencing some real joy?

I'd like to conclude by recounting some words of St. Gregory of Nazianzus, one of of the great Fathers of the Church. This is what he said about the meaning of Christmas some 1700 years ago:

'Christ is born: let us glorify Him. Christ comes down from heaven; let us go out to meet him. Christ descends to earth: let us be raised on high. Let all the world sing to the Lord: let the heavens rejoice and let the earth be glad, for his sake who was first in heaven and then on earth. Christ is here in the flesh: let us exult with fear and joy - with fear, because of our sins; with joy, because of the hope that He brings us.... This is the solemnity we are celebrating today: the arrival of God among us, so that we might go to God - or more precisely, return to God. So that stripping of our old humanity we might put on the new; for as in Adam we were dead, son in Christ we become alive: we are born with Him, and we rise again with Him....For this is the feast of my being made whole, my returning to the condition God designed for me, to the original Adam. So let us revere the nativity which releases us from the chains of evil. Let us honour this tiny Bethlehem which restores us to paradise. Let us reverence this crib because from it, we who were deprived of self-understanding, are fed by the divine understanding, the Word of God himself,'

Christ is born, glorify him, find your joy the Lord this Christmas.

Third Sunday of Advent

Philippians 4.4-7; Luke 3.7-18

We continue with St. John the Baptist this week following on from last week. His message we see now it uncompromising and the challenge fierce - 'You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruits worthy of repentance.' St. John goes right to the heart of the matter with a question. What's driving you? Is it something somebody said? Has somebody or something pricked your conscience? What's made you head in this direction, in St. John's direction and ultimately in the direction of the Messiah; in the direction of God? St. John says we are a brood of vipers. He pulls no punches. I think by that, he's saying we are filled with poison and no better than crawling on our bellies. And we are all in it together, a 'brood', he says. We could all take offence because surely we are better than that? But he makes his point quite clearly then issues his challenge. If we are repentant and that's why we've come to him, why we've come to God then we should show it by bearing the 'fruit of repentance', he says. We should show we are serious by turning our hearts and minds to God again in real ways, so that it shows in our lives.

And we can't claim descent from Abraham as some sort of protection from the 'wrath to come' as he puts it. We can't claim some belonging to the Church as giving us some sort of salvation, that we've been born and brought up in the Church. That won't do, he says. God works in everybody if and when He wants to and can make us members, but more is needed, a response on our part. It's not good enough that we've been baptised and confirmed. So very many have, millions upon millions. But it hasn't done them any good and won't do because there's been no response to God's grace in their heart. There hasn't been the fruit of repentance.

And St. John says these things, makes us think so hard, gives us so great a challenge, because it's no less than God we've come looking for whether we knew it or not. And if we think we've come to someone less than God then we've got a rude awakening. Repentance will prepare us to meet with Him and St. John tells us what we should do to show the fruits of repentance. And here we have, prefigured, the Sermon on the Mount. St. John preaches much the same as Jesus, so much so that people think he's the Messiah. But he's simply helping people get ready for their meeting with God, from whom comes all grace and truth. Because that meeting will be their salvation. And that's the difference. That's why it needs repentance. The Saviour of the world is coming to meet with us and we need to be ready.

I think we tend to forget that at Christmas time, that Christmas is solely about God, about who and what He is. We forget because everything around it takes our minds and hearts away from Him. We see a baby in a manger but that's about as far as it goes. We forget that the baby is God. And we forget that Christmas is about His great love for His creation about His coming to us for our 'health and salvation'; which as far as the Church is concerned, is the same thing. And we forget that God comes down to us so that we can ascend to Him, so that having been made in His image we can take on His likeness also. His coming to us makes that possible. Had He not done so it would not be possible. He would be for ever distant. When people say that Christmas is for children they have truly 'lost the plot' because Christmas is for the whole of mankind.

And this is why St. Paul can exhort the Philippians and so we as well to 'Rejoice in the Lord always', not to worry about anything and to thank God in our requests to Him. This is why St. Paul can say that the peace of God will guard our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. It's because He knows what the incarnation means, He knows what the presence of Christ means and not just to himself but to the whole of the Church and the whole of mankind. Repentance brings that change of heart and mind that tunes us in to God so that we are able to give thanks to God in all things because our health and salvation are in Him and not in earthly and human things.

So we see that baby in the manger and we see God and see our salvation. Christmas is no less than that and that's the image we need to have in front of us if we are to make the most of Christmas. And for such great a thing is it not right to prepare properly, to turn the heart and mind to God in repentance and to show the fruit of that turning? We can do no less for such a great thing that has happened for us.

Second Sunday of Advent

Philippians 1.3-11; Luke 3.1-6

I said last week that during this season of Advent we aren't thinking so much about the traditional themes of Death, Judgement, Heaven and Hell, as about Who it is we are preparing to celebrate and What it is we are preparing to celebrate on the 25th December. I made the point that there is so much around us that has the potential of drawing us away from concentrating on what the Nativity of the Lord is all about, and we really ought to do our best to step aside from it all and make every effort to make a proper preparation for the celebration, a preparation of mind, heart, soul and spirit. The focus of our readings in the season help us to do that.

Today, we are challenged directly by no less that John the Baptist, and that challenge will continue in the gospel reading next week also. And the first thing we are challenged about is the historicity of the event, of the St. John's call to people. St. Luke is at pains to locate St. John's ministry at a particular time and place in history. He does the same at the beginning of the previous chapter when he tells of the registration that took place, which Joseph and Mary were caught up in. Historians do cast doubt on the accuracy of St. Luke's facts. But I think the point that St. Luke is trying to make is that for him there is no doubt as the actuality of these events and that is why he's doing his best to 'pin them down' as it were in a time and place. So we too are called right away to cast our doubt aside and go right into the story. We are being asked to believe, to take St. Luke at his word.

And isn't God Himself like that? The journey of faith is one of banishing doubt, of putting doubt aside and taking God at His word. We don't get anywhere at all with God unless we are prepared to believe. We are being called, in a way, to test God out although He says, in scripture 'do not put the Lord your God to the test'. How else are we to come to believe unless we do just that? We have to take what we are told, be it request or commandment and, in a way, put it to the test. Only then will we know if what we read and hear is the Truth. All through the Bible we read that people are only healed and saved when they actually do what God is telling them to do. And time and time again we hear God and Jesus being angry and disappointed because people wouldn't put their trust in them, wouldn't have faith in them. So, the first step, and maybe the most important step in preparation for our celebration of the Lord's Nativity is to bring our faith to it, bring our best powers of belief to it.

Then we listen to what St. John has to say. His message, St. Luke says is a 'baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.' St. John is calling people to repentance. He's calling them to a change of mind, heart and soul. He's calling people to turn their hearts from themselves and the world, to God. He's calling them to receive the sign and seal of that in repentance. And that's because it's only in and through the act of repentance that God will work in us. God may bring us to the point of wanting to have that change of mind and heart but it's for us to do the work of turning to him. That's because God gives each and every one of us, free will. We get to choose. God has given us responsibility for our own destiny. He's given us the ability to choose between life and death. We can do what God calls us to do or we can go our own way. And we recall His words to the Hebrews in the Old Testament in the book of Deuteronomy 'I put before you today a choice, between life and death'; and you may recall also God's encouragement of the people to 'choose life.' And that's because, even though He's given us free will, he still wants us to use it wisely. But he's gifted us with the ability forge our own destiny. And having done that He continues to walk with us by giving us the way to come back to Him at any time through repentance.

And so we hear St. John's words again; 'Prepare the way of the Lord, make His paths straight'. St. John is encouraging us at this time to repentance, to make a way for the Lord in heart and mind. He says what it looks and feels like to make that repentance and to prepare the way for God; 'every valley shall be filled, every mountain and hill made low, the crooked made straight, the rough ways made smooth.' And the result? 'All flesh shall see the salvation of God. What St. John is saying is that the pathway of repentance is the avenue to salvation. And salvation of course, in spiritual terms has connotations of healing and health. The way of repentance leads to our spiritual healing with God taking His place in our lives. We recover the relationship we had with God before the fall of Adam; and that through the person and work of Jesus Christ. His sacrifice, once and for all has made this possible. And John, the forerunner of Jesus is the forerunner of our salvation, of the healing of our relationship with God, which began with the birth of Jesus himself.

So we can either heed St. John's call today or we can ignore it. We can believe that, because he was a real person at a real time in a real place, sent by God to be the forerunner of Christ, our salvation is a reality, and that we CAN turn again in heart and mind to God and receive His blessing; or we can keep on doubting. We can keep on asking did it really happen? Are these real people we read of in the Bible? Does what unbelievers say have some sort of credence? Or we can be quietly and slowly but surely, by all the commercialism and dumbing down, be drawn away from the real message being given to us at Christmas time.

The choice is ours. But the call is clear. Take the opportunity to believe and answer the call this Christmas, to turn your heart and mind to God in repentance and receive the salvation held out for you.