Author: reverendally

Human, parent, priest, (hymn)writer, painter, vegan, amateur. She/they. Chaplain @catz_Cambridge (views my own). Trying to do justly, love mercy & walk humbly.

The Baptism of Christ (Luke 3.15-17,21-22)

sermons

John the baptist’s job – his entire vocation – was to prepare people for Jesus’ arrival, to sow the seeds about baptism, about repentance, and about the coming kingdom.  I read the verses 15-17, and think, on Jesus’ behalf, “So, no pressure then?”

Four verses later, Jesus is there, and his first act is to submit to John’s baptism. Not because he has sinned, but because it’s the right way to start his ministry.  All that pressure, all that expectation. All that taking on the identity of the Messiah, but knowing that you’re not going to be quite what everyone’s hoping for.  All that promise. All that that work to do. No wonder Jesus needs to be baptised before he starts doing it all.

And he would be glad that he did.  Because when Jesus left the water, he heard the most wonderful words:

“You are my son, my beloved, and with you I am well pleased.”

If you’re the Messiah, if you’re confronted by all that pressure, all that expectation, all that promise, all that work to do, what you need most in the whole world is to know that you are loved, not because of what you have achieved, nor even because of what you will go on to achieve, but simply because you exist.

Every child needs to hear those words. And I tell every parent that as they bring their children for baptism.

And Jesus needed them too.

In the strength of those words, he faced temptation in the wilderness, beating the Devil hands down.

In the strength of those words, he emerged from his ordinary family to embrace Isaiah’s prophecy and announce the manifesto for his mission – to bring release to captives, recovery of sight to the blind, and proclamation of the year of the Lord’s favour.

In the strength of those words, he went three years of ceaseless ministry, healing, teaching, embracing, arguing, challenging, and bringing life and love to those who needed it most.

In the strength of those words he walked the Way of the Cross, and accepted the suffering that was God’s love for the world, written in blood.

If anyone needed to hear those words, it was Jesus.

You are my son, I love you, and I am pleased with you.

But those words were not just for him. They are for all of us. We are not the Messiah. We do not have to face the Devil in person, we do not have to work miracles, we do not have to bring the dead to life.  But whatever we do face today, this week, over these next months, we need a safe place to stand, something to hang on to that is utterly reliable.

Today, we can put our own name on the front of God’s affirmation.  Because, like Jesus, we’ve lived half a lifetime or more, but today is the first day of the rest of our life. And we have God’s affirmation not because of what we have done, nor because of what we will do, but as a free gift, in the strength of which we can face whatever life will bring us.

 

Quiet Christmas 2012

sermons

Our Quiet Christmas service is for all those who find the festive spirit hard to come by. This is my talk/reflection for it.

It’s good that we’re here tonight.

Because tonight is about us, about you. Each of us has our own burdens that we carry on our hearts: for some it is physical pain, of illness or injury; for others it is grief, as we miss the presence of someone dear to us who has died; for others it is anxiety at what the future may bring for us, and for those we love and for the world. For still others, it may be a sense of disconnection with the festivities of the season, and we may not even know why; or an urge to get back to the heart of things, without the tinsel.

Whatever burden you bring tonight – and we will have each brought something – this service is for us, this service is for you.

But this is one of those services that we’d still do even if nobody came.

But it’s also about everyone who isn’t here: those who were too tired, or too sad, or too shy, to come.  Those stuck in hospitals and hospices and prisons and at home.  Those afraid to come out in the dark, those who don’t feel that church is for them.  Those for whom some hurt or grief is so recent or so painful that they daren’t re-open the wound. Some of those people you may know, and think ‘if only so-and-so had thought to come to this’.  For some, their burdens are known only to God. We bring their burdens too.

Every candle we light, every note we sing, every prayer we say, every silence spent in reflection, is for ourselves, for our loved ones, and for the countless multitudes who know their need but feel that they have nobody to care or pray for them.

So it can seem as if this service is more about absence than anything else: the people who could be here but did not come; the people who we are separated from by distance, by conflict and disagreement, or by death. And in a way, it is.

But tonight is more about presence.

Not our presence here, coming to find God, but his presence in the world, already coming to find us. When we feel lost or alone, remember that God is the great seeker after souls.  He is the one who came to us, and who chose to come into what is still one of the earth’s darkest most difficult places, because when you are the light of the world, the darkness is where you are needed most.

Into all our emptinesses, all our absences, all our lostness, may the presence of God come and dwell and settle.  The hopes and fears of all the years, and our own hopes and fears, can indeed be met in him tonight.

Midnight Mass 2012

sermons

Lord Jesus Christ, your birth at Bethlehem
Draws us to kneel in wonder at heaven touching earth:
Accept our heartfelt praise as we worship you,
Our Saviour and our eternal God.  Amen.

We celebrate the coming of God into the world in so many ways: every household has its own habits, every church its own patterns of services, every nation and community its own traditions. I was sent an e-card the other day with a cartoon on the front depticting a domestic Christmas day scene. The caption read, “Christmas is strange. It’s the only day when we sit in the living room staring at a dead tree and eating sweets out of our socks.”

In the words of John Betjeman:

We raise the price of things in shops,
We give plain boxes fancy tops
And lines which traders cannot sell
Thus parcell’d go extremely well.
Some ways indeed are very odd
By which we hail the birth of God.

But this is not going to be one of those sermons that tells everyone off for bowing to the commercial pressure of Christmas and missing the heart of it.  Why not?

Because you’re here.  Because it’s taken you time, will, energy, and in some cases, I know, real courage to step through that door just to be here. You’ve seen the burning bush and stepped towards it to have a closer look, you’ve paused the conveyer belt so that you can truly enjoy the moment, you’ve walked through the dark, just as the shepherds did, answering the call of the carolling angels.

And because you’ve brought tributes – gifts (not gold, frankincense and myrrh, and I’m not talking about what you’re intending to put in the collection plate either, though that’s part of it, too) – you’ve brought the finest tribute that you can, that of your very selves, together with all the ‘stuff’ that you carry with you, your motivations, your thoughts, the hopes and fears of all your years, as you come to meet the Christ child tonight. You have brought who you really are, and that is the greatest gift any of us has to offer.

But mostly it’s because Christmas isn’t primarily about what we have done, it’s about what God has done. Because Christmas is the great divine ambush, the ultimate proof that it is not so much that we seek God, but that he seeks us. He is not the precious pearl or the buried treasure that we spend a lifetime seeking, we are the precious pearl and buried treasure that spend a lifetime being found by God.

The epic journey of the Magi, and the chaotic scrambling of the shepherds down the dark Bethlehem hillside are only possible because God had already made the leap from heaven to earth to come among them.  The first move is God’s, and always was.

Our being here in church tonight – however long and arduous, or short and effortless our journey – is only possible because God had already got here ahead of us, reaching out all over again so that heaven could touch earth for us, right here, tonight. ‘The Word became flesh and dwelt among us’ – or, more literally, ‘he pitched his tent with ours,’ threw in his lot with us.

Because Christmas is the ultimate proof God can find his way into anything and everything, and if we are alert to it, we can see the heart of what Christmas is about wherever we look.  For the heart of Christmas is Emmanuel: God with us. The heart of Christmas is Light in darkness. The heart of Christmas is heaven touching earth.

Yes, indeed, some ways are very odd by which we hail the birth of God, but even in the glitz and bling he is there.  In every shiny Christmas bauble we see the reflection of our own face – and it is a reflection of someone who is made in the very image of God – a human being, the crown of God’s creation, in which he is pleased to dwell. “Pleased as man with man to dwell: Jesus our Emmanuel.”

And if we look a little deeper in that reflection, we see not only ourselves, but those around us, our little corner of God’s world. We do not have to look beyond the material world to catch a glimpse of heaven: because of heaven touching earth we can find those glimpses of heaven right here and right now, everywhere we look. For when God came to earth 2000 years ago, he never left.

Yes, if we look for him, we can see Christ even in the shiny stuff and in the trimmings.

And even in the darkest corners of the world, God is already there. Jesus called himself the Light of the World, and if you’re the light of the world, you go first to the places that need light the most: the places of deepest darkness. If you enjoyed the sight of the candles and the tree lights and the stable as this service started, then you know something about light in darkness, that no matter how dark a place is, even the smallest light brings such hope and warmth.  If you’ve driven up the A1 and seen the stars on the church spire and thought “I’m nearly home,” then you know something of light in darkness.

And if you’ve ever been blessed with the miracle of forgiveness, or an act of unexpected kindness, or a much-needed word of comfort or guidance, then you also know something of what it means for heaven to touch earth.  If you’ve ever found the grace to offer those words, or that kindness, or that forgiveness, to someone else, then you know something of heaven touching earth. If you’ve ever sung ‘Be near me Lord Jesus, I ask thee to stay close by me for ever’ and meant every word, then you know something of heaven touching earth.

God is not just here.  Here, in church, that is. God is wherever we find ourselves, God is where the angels sing with joy, and we join in; God is where it is dark, and difficult, and dangerous.  God is here, and God is in our hospitals and hospices, our prisons, and on our streets. And God is in every dark and dusty street in Afghanistan and in every conflict zone on this battered world.  For there is no place on earth that’s too dark for the light of God to shine there.

Because Christmas is the great divine ambush, you do not have to travel far to find the heart of Christmas.  But through these days ahead – whatever they bring for you, and whether you approach them with excitement, or anxiety, or dread, or hope – keep half an eye open for God at Work, and you will see him, and know that he really has got there ahead of you.  You will see him in the good stuff, you will find him in the profound moments. You can see him in the trivial ordinariness, and he is there just as surely in the moments of greatest stress or sadness.

So as heaven reaches out to us tonight, along with so many others, scattered across the globe, let us dare to clasp the hand of the tiny child in the manger, and so find that our little bit of earth has been touched, and changed, by a little bit of heaven.

The Visitation – a very random thought

random thoughts

The visitation of Mary to Elizabeth: a metaphor of the incarnation and/or a reality of which worship is the metaphor?

That’s all.

Advent 4: duty and joy

sermons

Some thoughts on Advent 4 and the visitation of Mary to Elizabeth (Luke 1.39-45)

God asks a great deal of Mary.

He asks her to turn her life upside down for him. And he had presumably selected her because she had the faith to be obedient even to this most demanding of vocations. Either that, or he had already tried many, many other young women and had been turned down because he asked too much…

Mary has obedience in abundance. Her question is not ‘why me?’ but ‘how me?’ ‘How can such a thing be possible?’ And when the angel reassures her that with God, indeed all things are possible, she readily assents. God will make it happen. And she is his vessel, his means to come into the world.  An honour, a privilege.

But our gospel reading today picks up where the obedience leaves off, and tells us what happens next.  Mary visits her cousin, Elizabeth – the angel had already told her that Elizabeth, too, was pregnant, against all the odds, and unsurprisingly, Mary seeks her out – the older, wiser, woman in the family, someone she can trust to understand what has happened, and to confide in.  After all, it’s not as if she can talk to just anyone about this pregnancy.

But Mary’s visit to Elizabeth gives her much more than that. In fact, it gives both women much more. The moment when they greet each other – and the babies that they are carrying inside them also greet each other – that is a moment of heaven touching earth.  That is the moment for Mary when duty turns to joy. That is the moment when Mary realises that God has not just asked a great thing of her, he has also given her a great thing.

Through the gift of solidarity with her cousin, through the sharing of a common vocation, a common journey, God has given Mary and Elizabeth real, profound joy, as well as responsibility.

God asks a great deal of us. But he also gives us a great deal.

Our burdens are ours, but none of us is entirely alone in bearing them, even when it seems as though we are. One of the greatest gifts that God gives to us is each other. And it is so often the case that we can only truly find joy, or at least, fulfillment, in our responsibilities when we share those burdens that weigh heavily on us.

‘Take my yoke upon you,’ offers Christ, ‘for my yoke is easy and my burden is light’.  ‘And he shareth in our gladdness, and he feeleth for out sadness’ we are reassured in the enduringly popular Christmas carol, and again, ‘Be near me, Lord Jesus, I ask thee to stay close by me for ever’.

The incarnation is the ultimate coming-alongside of God with his people. What we see here today in Mary and Elizabeth’s joyful meeting is a microcosm of what happens with the coming of Jesus into the world.  Our own solidarity with one another, our own sharing of burdens, and sharing of journeys, our own meeting with one another for worship, is likewise a microcosm of the incarnation.  In this way, our relationship with God does not have to be only about obedience, but can turn to joy.

Mary’s life was turned upside down, because she said yes to God. From the start she accepted that her life would never be the same again. But it was not until she came to Elizabeth that she truly embraced and enjoyed what God had given her – so much so that right after our reading finishes, she bursts into the song that we know as the Magnificat, the ultimate celebration of God’s promise to turn everything upside down and then make us question whether in fact things were really the right way up in the first place.

May the incarnation of Jesus be real this Christmas, in our lives.  May we, in turn, by our solidarity, our common journeys, our care for one another bring the reality of Christ’s presence to those we meet, turning duty into joy, turning ordinary into extraordinary, and turning back the right way up all those things that have been too long topsy turvey in our lives and in the life of the world.