Presentation of Christ/Candlemas

Malachi 3.1-5; Hebrews 2.14-18; Luke 2.22-40

The Presentation of Christ in the Temple

This feast allocated to 2nd February, 40 days after Christmas is transferred to this the nearest Sunday. So today the seasons of Christmas and Epiphany come to a close. I suppose that you could say that today brings the first chapter of the story that will end at Ascension Day to a conclusion. The main character has been introduced, we have found out who he is. And after today we begin to delve further into the story and see how this character and the events that surround him unfold.

So this festival today, as it were, rounds off all that we have seen and heard up to now, beginning with the anticipation of what was going to happen, in Advent, through those awesome and joyful events of the birth of Jesus and His being seen as God among us, by us and by the whole world. These are amazing events, not without their darker side though, as Herod's ego and selfishness break in and he has children killed trying to get rid of this new King. And this prefigures what Simeon will allude to as he both welcomes Jesus in the temple and also gives out a warning. So what is ahead in this story is what happened right from the beginning - a strange and curious interweaving of joy and awe and wonder, together with hatred and bitterness, sorrow and death.

But we must go on with the story because only if we do go on will we come to the final glory that awaits. Because this is no mere adventure story, no mere tale of the battle of good with evil, with us as passive readers or bystanders. It's the story of God, seeking out lost humanity, lost since our ancestors Adam and Eve hid from God in the garden of Eden after they over reached themselves and tried to be gods. And it's the story of God, again taking the initiative out of His great love and mercy, and coming to save we lost humanity. And if we are to see the glory at the end of the story we must take our own part in it and see it through for ourselves.

So today, Mary and Joseph come to the temple to give their first born to God and offer the small sacrifice for sin as is customary. The temple is the dwelling place of God to the Jews. Didn't Jesus call it 'his Father's house?' So here we see God, in Jesus, coming to His own dwelling place. And he's met, not by a High Priest or a priest of any sort, but by a 'devout and righteous' Jew, an elder who has  been promised that he won't die until he sees what has been promised to the whole world - a light to the Gentiles and the glory of Israel. The Holy Spirit has been given to Simeon for this moment. And the prophet Anna also, a similarly devout and righteous widow who since her husband has died has spent her time fasting and praying, she also knew who this was; through her devotion to God, she could see God in this child. And both of them rejoice.

As we come to this moment there is a real sense of fulfilment. God is here at last, amongst His own people. Recognised and yet unrecognised. And despite all that has happened to them up to now, Mary and Joseph are still amazed at what is being said about their child. And along with the celebration there is the warning that the road ahead will be rough and dangerous. Because this child will be the greatest challenge that the world has ever met. He will be the 'falling and rising of many in Israel'; and that's because He will cause people to see themselves as they really are, maybe for the first time. For every one He saves and heals there will be another who will try to kill Him.

And isn't this the truth for us? When God shows up so does the real you and me. He sheds His light on us, right into all the dark places in us and we can see ourselves as we really are. And that's the toughest part. We don't have to get God to accept us, to accept our self. The hard part is our getting to accept our self. Because God offers the healing of forgiveness to all. He's here to take away our sin, not to rub it in. But it's the internal battle we have with our self that's the whole problem in our relationship with God. Often, we want rid of the light of Christ because we don't like what it shows up. And all of that we'll see in the story that unfolds as soon as Jesus steps out of the wilderness and into His ministry.

In being brought to the temple by His parents, Jesus places the stamp, the seal on all that has gone before in God's people. He comes to fulfil all their law and history as He will tell people in the years to come. That's why He is Israel's glory. And he also opens up the whole of their future to us as well. That relationship that God's people enjoyed with Him is open now to the whole world. Jesus is the glory of Israel and a Light to the Gentiles. And even though we know that the road ahead will be difficult for each of us living in that Light, for many different reasons; today we thank God, along with Simeon and Anna, that He has come to us, that He forgives us and redeems us. And in that Light and with thanksgiving we continue our journey into the world with Him.

Epiphany 3

Isaiah 9.1-4; 1 Corinthians 1.10-18; Matthew 4.12-23

In this season of Epiphany we've been looking at how Jesus has been shown to us as being God come among us in human form. The events preceding and surrounding His birth and His baptism showed us this. We've also been thinking about how Jesus is shown to the wider world as being God and we saw this in the visit of the Magi to the infant Jesus. And in our readings we are beginnng to pick up from them now the idea that Jesus is the 'light of the world'. And we shall discover more about what that means as we continue in coming weeks and months to read about and think about the person and work of Jesus. As we come to consider all these things we are also led by the gospel writers and those who wrote the letters we find in the New Testament especially St. Paul, to think about what sort of response we make to the fact that God is amongst us in the person of Jesus Christ. And both last week in St. John's gospel and this week in St. Matthew's gospel we've read of the encounter with Jesus of the first disciples notably the brothers Andrew and Peter.

In the gospels, we read that when the disciples come into contact with Jesus and He calls them to follow Him, that their response is immediate. Twice in the same paragraph we have it today. When Jesus approaches first Peter and Andrew, St. Matthew writes that 'immediately they left their nets and followed him. And then right after that Jesus meets James and John and again St. Matthew writes 'immediately they left the boat and their father, and followed him'.  There are three things that occur to me here and all hang together. And they are all to do with the call of God to us and the sort of response that the disciples have and that gives us food for thought about how we respond to God's prompting and call.

Firstly, both sets of brothers respond in a positive way to Jesus' call to follow Him. And both sets of brothers leave behind their livelihood. Peter and Andrew put down their nets. They lay down that which gives them their living and leave that behind. All that gives them security, a roof over their heads, food on their table, a source of health and wellbeing. They put down all that provides them with those things and leave it behind, for the sake of who knows what? They certainly didn't know what the future held for them. It was a great unknown. They hadn't a clue what was in front of them, yet they to followed without hesitation.

Then secondly, James and John, as well as leaving their livelihood behind in just the same way, by leaving their boat; St. Matthew tells us that they left their father as well to follow Jesus. So not only did the disciples leave their livelihood they left their families too. They broke the ties of love that bound them to their families and others whom they loved also. No doubt they still loved the members of their families but they seem to not feel obligated by that love towards them, not bound in any way, save to love them. Love they couldn't leave behind because it was Love they were following, or so they would find out later. And I think this is important too for us to note because it reinforces the demand that God makes upon each and everyone of us when He calls. Because He calls us to do the same; in a way. Maybe not exactly as the disciples but with much the same sort of heart and mind.

And then the third thing I think we should note follows on or is raised by these first two. Throughout my Christian upbringing I've always had it in my mind when I've read of the immediacy of the response of the disciples and this cutting themselves off from their past life, that they must have had previous encounters with Jesus. I've always thought that they must have seen and heard Him prior to what we read here. They must have had time to consider well what they were doing. That is until I read again last Sunday in one of our Church of England books of daily readings, (Celebrating the Seasons) what the great Protestant theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer said about this call of Jesus' disciples. He says in his book, 'The Cost of Discipleship (chapter 2) that to think that the disciples must have had time to think about their response to Jesus call is 'stupid'; yes, he does use that word; and he goes on to remind us that the gospel writers say nothing of anything happening beforehand, and I quote 'for the simple reason that the cause behind the immediate following of call by response is Jesus Christ himself. It is Jesus who calls, and because it is Jesus, the disciples follow at once. This encounter is testimony to the absolute, direct, and unaccountable authority of Jesus. There is no need of any preliminaries, and no other consequence but obedience to the call. Because Jesus is the Christ, he has the authority to call and to demand obedience by his word. Jesus summons men to follow him not as a teacher or a pattern of the good life, but as the Christ, the Son of God.'

So, the only reason the disciples leave everything behind and follow Jesus is because it is God who is calling. Simply because it is God. And that makes sense because when God calls we don't know what He has in store for us. If we did know, being human, we wouldn't do it. This is a call that the disciples answered in faith. It wasn't a set of criteria to be considered. There was no choice in that sense. There was a choice yes, but it was simply a choice to follow or not to follow.

And it's important to make this distinction because it's something that we need to remember, something right at the very heart of the Christian life. Being a Christian isn't about adhering to a set of principles or values. It isn't about following rules and regulations. It isn't about modelling our own lives on the good example of a good man who lived 2,000 years ago. It's about following a person, the Christ, the anointed One of God. It's about following God Himself. We are called to a Person, not to a way of life, even though the earliest Christians called it 'the Way'.

As we see Jesus, the incarnate Son of God, as we see that He has come as the Redeemer of the world, we see that He comes with the authority to call us to follow Him for no other reason than that He is the Son of God, the anointed One, the Redeemer. And as we lay down all that ties us, and all that secures us, and follow in faith, as those first disciples did, so we follow Him into all Truth, we follow Him into Life, life in all it's fullness. That is His promise.

Epiphany 2

Isaiah 49.1-7; 1 Corinthians 1.1-9; John 1.29-42

This week we hear of the baptism of Jesus again, but this time from St. John's gospel. And as I hinted at last week, St. John adds to what we are told about Jesus. He fills out the picture of Him. You may recall that last week we could see that in the baptism of Jesus we discover Him part of the Trinity. And using the word 'part' is inappropriate because we discovered that in being part of the Holy Trinity, Jesus is God in all His fullness; revealed to us, as we say, in the 'person' of Jesus. So we have that revelation, if we'd doubted it at His birth, affirmed here at Jesus' baptism. We see here 'who' Jesus is. He is God with us, God amonst us and we praise and glorify Him for that.

But why? Why is He here? What need was there for Him to come? What is He here to do? Well, again, if at the birth of Jesus we were in any doubt as to why God is here amongst us in the person of Jesus, John the Baptist tells us right away. As John sees Jesus coming towards him he announces; 'Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!' Exclamation mark in the Bible at the end of that sentence. This is important. This is vital. It says in St. John's gospel that John the Baptist 'declared' this. And that word 'declare' means, we read in our dictionaries - to make known formally or officially; to state emphatically or authoratitively; to reveal or make manifest, to show. So here St. John who wrote the gospel, is telling us through St. John the Baptist, the prophet and forerunner of Jesus, telling us unequivocally, who Jesus is and what He is about.' Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world - and you'd better believe it!'

For thousands of years, people believed, that since Adam ate that forbidden fruit, and tried to be like God, humankind had been estranged from God. The history and exploits of God's chosen people in the Bible, tell us that God, time and time again made a new covenant with the people, a new agreement that despite Adam's sin and the sins of people ever since that He would still be their God and they would be His people. But ever and always, despite God's loving kindness towards them they drifted away from Him. They drifted away from His way of life, the way of life that God had ordained for them. And because of their continual drifting away and turning away from God, they grew diseased, aged and died, physically, emotionally, spiritually. God, in His goodness and out of His love gave them the choice. You choose; you choose either My way, leading to life, or your own way, leading to death. But always, they chose their own. And so always and ever the people were estranged from God, eventually forgetting Him. And their forgetting God was the worst sin of all.

This estrangement from God was felt very keenly by the people despite their waywardness, and that estrangement was highlighted very vigorously by the prophets who spoke in the name of God. An elaborate system of sacrifices was devised or demanded by God, with the intention of restoring that lost relationship with God. Complicated rituals were put together to appease God, to get Him back on side so that the people would feel safe again and confident of their relationship with God, confident that their relationship was in fact, in the end, good. Many of these sacrifices and rituals were designed to free people from their sins, to take away the guilt they felt about their estrangement from God with the resulting sin against and towards one another. One particular day of the year, the Day of Atonement was set aside for that purpose where the scapegoat was sent into the wilderness with the sins of Israel on its head and the people could begin again, refreshed, renewed and take on this new life that God had offered them.

But always history would repeat itself and the people would fall away, fall away from the love of God. Until Jesus came along that is. John declares Jesus to be the sacrificial lamb that takes away not just the sin of a particular people, of privileged individuals, but of the whole world. Jesus is here not just for one nation but for every nation. And as time went by it became clear, from what Jesus went on to say, that His sacrifice, made out of love, would be for the whole world and not only that, but for all time. No more sacrifices would be necessary. His sacrifice would be the last and the door to God would ever be open afterwards, to those who came to God with sorrow for their sins and with the intention of doing whatever was necessary to love God all the more. And it's though Jesus Christ that we come to God, in that way, day by day. Because of that great, once and for all sacrifice of Jesus out of love for us, our relationship with God is for ever renewed. We simply have to come to Him, as we say every time we meet in worship, 'in penitence and faith' and our relationship with God is renewed then and there.

So this baptism of Jesus shows us God in His fullness and a God who loves us so much He is prepared to give His all for us, to give everything He is for us. Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. How wonderful it is to know how great is God's love for us shown in Jesus.

The Baptism of Christ

Isaiah 42.1-9; Acts 10.34-43; Matthew 3.13-17

The Epiphany season is all about the ways in which Jesus Christ is shown to the world. In our Book of Common Prayer, the feast of the Epiphany is subtitled 'The Manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles', which gives away the meaning of Epiphany for us in the Church of England. There are three main events in the life of Jesus which we use to think about or celebrate this showing forth of Jesus, of God with us, to the World.

From the start of this season the 'world' is symbolised by the Magi, who were Gentiles, visiting and worshipping the infant Jesus. The next event we pick up on is as Jesus comes to prepare for his ministry and is baptised by John in the river Jordan. And then the third event in which we think about this theme is when Jesus is present at the wedding in Cana and turns water into wine. And all of these are summed up nicely in what we call the 'Extended Preface' for the Epiphany season that we can use at the beginning of the eucharistic prayer. It says this: '...for at this time we celebrate your glory made present in our midst. In the coming of the Magi the King of all the world was revealed to the nations. In the waters of baptism Jesus was revealed as the Christ, the Saviour sent to redeem us. In the water made wine the new creation was revealed at the wedding feast'.

I was talking last week about our paying attention to what we hear and say and sing in our worship. It's how we come to know God and love Him, amongst other ways. And we see the glory of our Church of England liturgy here in this preface to the eucharistic prayer. It's glorious because it not only teaches us the gospel but also proclaims what we believe. Listen to it again; '...for as at this time we celebrate your glory made present in our midst. In the coming of the Magi the King of all the world was revealed to the nations. In the waters of baptism Jesus was revealed as the Christ, the Saviour sent to redeem us. In the water made wine the new creation was revealed at the wedding feast.' And it's this sort of thing that keeps us together in the Faith, this joining in affirming like this what we believe. And it also forms the Faith within us and firms up our own personal faith. That's why we really do need to come to church to worship. I keep saying that we can't be authentically Christian without coming to church to worship and we see here the reason why I and others say that. You are fooling yourself if you think you can go it alone as a Chrisitan, picking up a few ideas and basing a faith on those ideas without any continuing reference to the fullness of the faith as expressed in the worship of the Church.

So Jesus comes to John to be baptised, and we shall look again at this next week in St. John's gospel too for it says things in addition to what we hear in St. Matthew's gospel today. So we have what we read in the gospels, encapsulated in our eucharistic prayer. Firstly, Jesus was revealed as the Christ. Jesus is the anointed one of one God. As Jesus comes up out of the water, the Spirit of God rests on him, descending we are told, like a dove alighting upon Him. And then a voice from heaven saying 'This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.'

Here we go right to the heart of our Faith, right to the very heart of what we believe about God; that God is a Trinity. Three in One and One in Three. We have here in this baptism of Jesus a trinitarian act. The Spirit comes upon the Son who the Father proclaims - His Beloved. Father, Son and Holy Spirit here in this baptism. If we had any doubts about who the child was in the manger, now we know, now it is revealed to us all.

The Baptism of Christ - Francesco Albani

And there is more, as our eucharistic prayer tells us; Jesus was revealed as the Christ, the Saviour sent to redeem us. And this is what St. John will tell us about next week. Jesus is not only the anointed one of God, but He has a task, He has a mission, He has a purpose in being in this world, in being in our world. And that is to be the world's and our own personal Saviour and Redeemer. He is the one who will finally, once and for all time, restore our lost relationship with God the Father, lost in the Garden of Eden when Adam tried to over reach himself, tried to be God, and as a consequence fell from grace, seemingly for all time. But the Christ is the Saviour and Redeemer, come to turn around Adam's sin for the good of all, for the love of all.

This is the evangelical faith, this is the catholic faith seen in this baptism of Jesus, focussed here in this one act in which the whole Trinity participates and into which we are all drawn. And we are all drawn into it in a very real way in our own baptism, in our own baptism into Christ, into His body. In our baptism God's Spirit comes upon us and we are anointed into Christ's life and into his mission, which goes on. After His baptism Jesus spent some time thinking about what all of that meant to Him, as He wandered in the wilderness being tried and tested by the devil. And we have the opportunity to rethink the implications of our own baptism when we arrive at our season of Lent in a few weeks time. But for now let us just bask in the glory of this scene here at the Jordan, because here we see God, in His fullness, living and breathing amonst us, come specially for us, specially for you and me and the whole world, to bring us back to Himself, to love us back into life with Him, to bless us and the whole of creation anew.