Return – Remember – Reach Out

Our message today on Mothering Sunday.

• Return to the source of love.
• Remember the people and communities who have shaped you.
• Reach out with that same nurture to others, especially those who feel forgotten or excluded.

A few years ago, I met a young woman who told me that she had “three mothers.” One was her birth mother, who gave her life. Another was her godmother, who guided her faith. And the third was an older neighbour, who taught her how to cook, how to plant flowers, and how to stand tall in the world.

She told me, “Each one mothered me in a different way — and without them, I wouldn’t be who I am.”

Today, on Mothering Sunday, we celebrate not only biological mothers, but all who have mothered us — in love, in faith, in courage, and in hope.

In our holy scriptures, God’s love is often described in motherly terms. Remember in Isaiah 66:13, God says, “As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you.” AndJesus, in Matthew 23:37, laments over Jerusalem, longing to gather its people “as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings.”

On this special day, these images remind us that mothering is not limited to gender or biology — it is a divine quality, a way of being that reflects God’s own nature.

Mothering is something that you do, not just something that you are.

And so, today we recognise and encourage mothers who are fathers – men who have nurtured with tenderness, mothers who are friends – companions who have stood by us in hard times, mothers who are communities — churches, schools, and neighbourhoods that have given us roots to grow and wings to fly.

We remember the teacher who notices the child who always sits alone and draws them into the circle, the neighbour who cooks a meal for someone who is grieving, the congregation that welcomes the refugee family and calls them “ours”.

These, and so many more, are acts of mothering — and they are holy.

Way back in the middle ages, Mothering Sunday was the day when traditionally, you returned to your ‘mother church’ – the church in which you had been baptised, where you had been nurtured in faith and from where you were sent out into the world. Over time the tradition of keeping mothering Sunday in the UK had almost died out when, in 1913, a woman called Constance Penswick Smith led a call for its revival. Constance was the daughter of a clergyman and she wrote a play about Mothering Sunday and a History of Mothering Sunday. By the time of her death in 1938, Mothering Sunday was again celebrated all over what was then called the British Empire. Constance advocated for Mothering Sunday as a day for recognising Mother Church, ‘mothers of earthly homes’, Mary, mother of Jesus, and Mother Nature. So, in the UK, in church at least we try to retain a sense that ‘mother’ is a verb, as well as a noun.

And that’s so important because for a lot of people, Mothers’ Day can be a very painful day in the year.

Some people grieve that they are not mothers and that was not by choice. Some are grieving the loss of a mother, some are reminded of mothers who were less than ideal, some are reminded of their own shortcomings as parents or mothers. Constance Smith never married or had any children. She was never a mother. So, this morning let’s remind ourselves that you don’t have to be a mother to mother.

You may have heard of Mother Julian of Norwich – she thought of Jesus as our mother. She was the first woman (that we know of) to write a book in English –The Revelations of Divine Love, which is an account of the ‘shewings’ or visions that she had while seriously ill in 1373.

Mother Julian lived through the Black Death and the Peasants’ Revolt and spent much of her life as an anchoress – she was sealed up in a cell attached to a church in Norwich and her life was devoted to prayer. Her texts remained obscure until the 19th century and then, once they had been translated into readable, modern English, she was given the recognition that she deserved.

In her writings, Mother Julian reflects on the Holy Trinity and the visions she had of Jesus’ passion and she describes Jesus as Mother.

Nowadays people have strong views about the gender and pronouns we use when talking about God and Jesus, but Julian was describing Jesus as our mother back in the fourteenth century.

But what did she mean by that?

She uses images of breastfeeding and birth. Jesus births us into our spiritual or eternal life: in the same way that mothers suffer the pain of childbirth to bring a baby into the world, Jesus suffers to bring us into his kingdom. The blood of his wounds nourishes us like a mother’s milk.

Jesus mothers us by allowing us to learn from our mistakes but he is always there to love and protect. Julian writes, ‘If we fall, he catches us lovingly in his gracious embrace and swiftly raises us.’

Jesus wants us to do as a child does: ‘When it is in trouble or scared, it runs to mother as fast as it can.’ God’s love for us encompasses all the joys, heartache, pain and hope that we associate with mothering.

One of Julian’s most well-known revelations is that of the hazelnut.

“…a little thing, the size of a hazelnut, in the palm of my hand and round like a ball. I looked at it thoughtfully and wondered, ‘What is this?’

And the answer came, ‘It is all that is made… It exists, both now and forever, because God loves it. …everything owes its existence to the love of God. In this ‘little thing’ I saw three truths. The first is that God made it; the second is that God loves it; and the third is that God sustains it.”

Think of the vastness of the universe. Compared to the vastness of God’s love, it’s like a little nut in the palm of your hand.

Today is an opportunity to give thanks to the people in our lives who have mothered us in our faith, whoever they were and are. But also to reflect on our own calling to be mothers of faith to the next generation.

And so,

Return – Remember – Reach Out

• Return to the source of love.
• Remember the people and communities who have shaped you.
• Reach out with that same nurture to others, especially those who feel forgotten or excluded.

If God’s love is like a mother’s love, then our calling as we live in Her light is clear:

• To comfort those who are hurting.
• To protect those who are vulnerable.
• To nurture the gifts in others until they flourish.

And so who, in your life right now, needs to be mothered?

Who needs your patience or your encouragement?

Who is it that needs your fierce protection?

Return – Remember – Reach out!

Sermon John 4.5-42

When it comes to affairs of the heart and adherence to ‘accepted moral codes’, it’s very easy to see that throughout history women have been judged far more harshly than men by those around them. Sometimes when a man has moved on from relationship to relationship he is considered a ‘jack-the-lad’ or a bit of a cheeky rogue, but if a woman acts in the same way – well – we can be all too ready to label her a harlot, a jezebel or even worse!

Thankfully, attitudes seem to be changing, but there are times when judgement and condemnation still rear their ugly heads.

Sometimes there are people who seem to relish in the gossip about the breakdown of someone’s relationship.

“Well, what can you expect?”

“You know she’s been married before!”

“She put herself about a bit before she was wed you know!”

You can just hear the voices, can’t you!

And don’t we especially love it when it’s involves someone rich and famous!

Joan Collins – married five times, Elizabeth Taylor – married eight times (though twice to the same man of course), Zsa Zsa Gabor – married nine times!

Shocking we say, but what can you expect of women with their track record! Oh how we love to be able to judge and condemn the lives of others.

In our gospel today Jesus meets another woman.

She has a history. Things done and left undone, some good some not so good. Guilts and regrets. Fears. Wounds and sorrows. Secrets too. She is a woman with a past.

If you study the history of this passage, if you read the commentaries and listen to the interpretations, you will learn that her past is generally seen as one of promiscuity. The evidence base for this being that we are told she had five husbands and is now living unmarried with a sixth man. What a scandalous woman!

But how easily we forget that women of her day had very little choice or control over their own lives. If she is divorced it is because the men divorced her. She had no right of divorce. That was exclusively the man’s right. Of course, maybe it wasn’t divorce. If she’s not divorced then she has suffered the death of five husbands. Five times she has been left alone, five times nameless, faceless and of no value –  five times having to start over again. Maybe some divorced her. Maybe some died. We don’t know. Either one, divorce or death, is a tragedy for her life.

So, let’s not be too quick to judge. We don’t know the details of her past. Maybe we don’t need to. Maybe it is enough that she mirrors for us our own lives. We too are people with a past, people with a history. We are all in some sense the Samaritan woman.

People like her, people like us, people with a past, often live in fear of being found out. It is not just the fear that another will know the truth, the facts about us but that they will do so without ever really seeing us and without ever really knowing us.

We all thirst to be seen and to be known at a deep intimate level. We all want to pour our lives out to one who knows us, to let them drink from the depths of our very being. That is exactly what Jesus is asking of this woman with a past when he says, “Give me a drink.” It is the invitation to let herself be known. To be known is to be loved and to be loved is to be known.

To be found out, however, without being known leaves us dry and desolate. It leaves us to live a dehydrated life thirsting for something more, something different, but always returning to the same old wells.

We all go down to some well or another. For some, like the Samaritan woman, it is the well of marriage. For others it is the well of perfectionism. Some go to the well of hiding and isolation. Others will draw from the well of power and control. Too many will drink from the wells of addiction. Many live at the well of busyness and denial.

We could each name the wells from which we drink. Day after day, month after month, year after year we go to the same well to drink. We arrive hoping our thirst will be quenched. We leave as thirsty as when we arrived only to return the next day. For too long we have drunk from the well that never satisfies, the well that can never satisfy.

Husband after husband – this is the well to which the Samaritan woman has returned.

But of course, there is another well – the well of Jesus Christ. It is the well that washes us clean of our past. This is the well from which new life and new possibilities spring forth. It is the well that frees us from the patterns and habits that keep us living as thirsty people.

That is the well the Samaritan woman in today’s gospel has found. She intended to go to the same old well she had gone to for years, the well that her ancestors and their flocks drank from. Today is different. Jesus holds before her two realities of her life; the reality of what is and the reality of what might be. He brings her past to the light of the noon day. “You have had five husbands,” he says, “and the one you have now is not your husband.” It is not a statement of condemnation but simply a statement of what is. He tells her everything she has ever done. She has been found out.

But of course it doesn’t end there. Jesus is more interested in her future than her past. He wants to satisfy her thirst more than judge her history. Jesus knows her. He looks beyond her past and sees a woman dying of thirst; a woman thirsting to be loved, to be seen, to be accepted, to be included, to be forgiven, to be known. Her thirst will never be quenched by the external wells of life. Nor will ours. Jesus says so.

“Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty.” This is the living water of new life, new possibilities, and freedom from the past. This living water is Jesus’ own life. It became in the Samaritan woman “a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” She discovered within herself the interior well and left her water jar behind. She had now become the well in which Christ’s life flows.

It’s not enough, however, to hear her story or even believe her testimony.

Until we come to the well of Christ’s life within us, we will continue returning to the dry wells of our life. We will continue to live forever thirsty. We will continue to live in fear of being found out.

So, I wonder, from what wells do you drink? How much longer will you carry your water jars? There is another well, one that promises life, one by which we are known and loved. Come to a new well. Come to the well of Christ’s life, Christ’s love, Christ’s presence that is already in you. Come to the well that is Christ himself and then drink deeply. Drink deeply until you become one with the one you have drunk.

Amen

John 3.1-17

During the season of Lent, one of my favourite musical works to listen to (or even better to join in with) is John Stainer’s Crucifixion – a meditation on the sacred passion of Our Lord. Holy Redeemer. Some of you may not think you know any of it, but I’m sure you will recall at least the most well-known chorus – God, So loved the world.

God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that who so believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.

It’s a most beautiful piece of music through which Stainer cleverly captures the mood of these words of scripture.

The great Martin Luther called John 3:16 “the Gospel in a nutshell.”

John 3:16 is well-known and often-quoted, you can find it on posters and billboards, printed on T-shirts and hats, and even on car window stickers. But I wonder, how many of us could go on to quote John 3:17?

Who among us knows Nicodemus’ backstory by heart? And if we’re being honest, how many of us could have identified Nicodemus as the one to whom Jesus is speaking in John chapter 3?

While John 3:16 has rightly earned its place among the most memorable and hopeful verses in the New Testament, its larger context is actually a powerful witness to the love of the God we meet in Jesus.

Nicodemus, says John’s Gospel, was a leader among the Jews. In public, his loyalties were clearly devoted to the Jewish establishment. But in private, Nicodemus had his doubts. And so, he visits Jesus under the cover of nightfall. “Rabbi,” Nicodemus says, “we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.”

To put it another way, Nicodemus saw that Jesus was a good teacher and a knowledgeable interpreter of Torah, but Jesus was also filled with God’s life-giving Spirit, and Nicodemus wanted that kind of relationship with God, too.

Then, as Jesus so often does, he says something that utterly astounds everyone: “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” In other words, glimpsing the Kingdom of God isn’t a matter of praying a certain way or believing a certain way or following a certain set of liturgical customs; it’s about a complete rebirth of our entire existence!

On hearing this, Nicodemus asks an honest question that seems almost laughably quaint and naïve to our 21st-century ears: “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?”

But for as off-the-mark as Nicodemus’ question might seem to us, might it not also demonstrate something important about the way God tends to work?

Just think about Abraham and Sarah for example. God promises them a son. The ancient scribe matter-of-factly cues us into the dramatic irony surrounding this promise, writing flatly, “It had ceased to be with Sarah after the manner of women.” In fact, when she heard about the absurd promise of a child, Sarah laughed! Even the name of the promised child—Isaac—means “he laughs.”

And what about Moses? God speaks to him through a burning bush, proclaiming that he would be God’s agent in delivering the Hebrew people. Moses’ response: “Who, me? You must have the wrong guy! I don’t even know your name!”

Perhaps most astonishing of all is the moment God decided to convert the Apostle Paul. The Book of Acts recalls that Paul was “still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord” when God sent a dazzling bolt of light and called him to become an apostle. 

The same dynamic is at play here with Jesus and Nicodemus.

God is once again working around the edges, making possible what was long thought impossible. Nicodemus comes to Jesus under the cover of nightfall – the gospel writer’s code for uncertainty and apprehension. He’s well aware that Jesus is a capable, insightful teacher, and he’s demonstrated his knowledge of Torah. But there’s something else about him, something Nicodemus can’t quite put his finger on, so he takes a chance and asks Jesus about it face-to-face: “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.”

Jesus tells Nicodemus that in order to see the kingdom of God, we have to give our whole selves over to an entirely different way of being. We have to be “born from above.” Jesus is inviting Nicodemus into a deeper relationship with the Living God, and what’s Nicodemus’ response? Is it “Yes! Sign me up! What do I do first?”

No. He says, “So let me get the mechanics of this straight. I’m born from my mother, and you’re saying I have to be born again. That’s impossible!”

We can almost hear Sarah’s laughter and Moses’ hesitation and Paul’s seething rippling through the background. But the truth is, this happens all the time among people of faith, doesn’t it?

Jesus says, “Do unto others,” and we say, “Okay, as long as I know who they are and I get along okay with them.”

Jesus says, “Give your life to the work of the Kingdom,” and we say, “How about a monthly standing order?”

Jesus says, “Love one another and forgive one another as you are loved and forgiven,” and we say, “Well, define love. Set some ground rules for us around this whole forgiveness thing.”

And yet, Sarah gave birth to her son anyway, Moses found the grace to accept God’s call, Paul put away his old life and devoted himself to the Risen Christ.

The same is true for Nicodemus.

After he leaves Jesus, he returns to his position among the Jewish establishment. His conversion doesn’t happen with a bolt or a flash; there’s no really memorable story that gets passed down through the ages. But deep down, and ever so slightly, something begins to turn.

Nicodemus’ rebirth happens over the course of a long journey, which began under the cover of darkness when he took a chance on Jesus. He was an uncertain, fly-by-night sceptic. And the truth is, with the exception of one brief mention in John chapter 7, we never hear from Nicodemus again – that is, until the end of John’s Gospel. And it is here that Nicodemus’ birth from above is laid bare.

As Jesus hangs crucified, after all of the other disciples had fled for fear of persecution, there stands Nicodemus at the foot of the cross, armed with myrrh and aloes and the other provisions for Jewish burial, ready to bear the broken and lifeless body of the crucified Lord to its grave.

Jesus said, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”

We can never fully know what Nicodemus was thinking as he departed Jesus’ company after hearing these words. But we can be sure that something within him was changed. And little by little, his heart was broken open and he was born anew, finding his way through darkness and doubt, to the cross. I pray that we would be willing to meet him there.

Amen.

Sermon Matthew 4.1-11

One day when Jesus was relaxing in Heaven, He happened to notice a familiar-looking old man. Wondering if the old man was His earthly father Joseph, Jesus asked him, “Did you, by any chance, ever have a son?”

“Yes,” said the old man, “but he wasn’t my biological son. He was born by a miracle, through the intervention of a magical being from the heavens.”

“Very interesting,” said Jesus. “Did this boy ever have to fight temptation?”

“Oh, yes, many times,” answered the old man. “But he eventually won. Sadly, he died heroically at one point, but he came back to life shortly afterwards.”

Jesus couldn’t believe it. Could this actually be HIS father? “One last question,” He said. “Were you a carpenter?”

“Why yes,” replied the old man. “Yes I was!”

Jesus rubbed His eyes and said, “Dad?”

The old man rubbed tears from his eyes and said, “Pinocchio?”

I do apologise for making such a jokey start to our sermon this week, but I just could not resist the temptation!

It’s not very often that our lectionary provides us with such richness in scripture on the same day. Two of the most powerful and evocative stories in the Bible all about temptation.

And when it comes to stories about temptation, the readings we’ve heard cover just about everything.

Firstly, we have the wonderful account of Adam and Eve and their problems in the garden. There they are, in paradise; everything’s going just great, and along comes this snake with a smooth tongue and some new ideas. The next thing you know, temptation triumphs, paradise is history, all is lost and the man and the woman are left with shame, regret and a couple of fig leaves!

Then, in a powerful contrast, our gospel reading describes Jesus being driven from his baptism into the wilderness – which is just about as far from paradise as you can get. There, unlike Adam and Eve who were surrounded by ease and plenty, Jesus becomes exhausted – starving and alone as he struggles with his time of temptation and challenge.

The two stories form such an obvious contrast that it’s impossible not to compare them and to look for what emerges when they are taken together.

On one level, it looks simple enough – Jesus is the winner and Adam and Eve are the losers; they are weak and he is strong. So, we learn that it’s better to be like Jesus than like Adam and Eve.

What’s more, since today is the First Sunday in Lent, there is the added point that Lent is supposed to make us stronger so that we will be more like Jesus than like Adam and Eve, at least as far as such things as temptations are concerned.

And all of this is almost right.

Now some of you might remember the Green Goddess or perhaps Mr Motivator – two television fitness fanatics that tried to encourage us up from our armchairs and help us get in shape.

Well, as well as being physically in shape, there really is such a thing as being more or less ‘in shape’ spiritually – as being more or less prepared to handle the demands of a serious Christian life.

This has to do with our Christian character and with the development of particular virtues or habits. Getting into shape spiritually has some clear parallels with getting into shape physically or intellectually. There is no doubt that the disciplined rigour of a holy Lent can take us several important steps in the right direction, and the spiritual muscles or habits we develop with disciplines like a Lenten rule are exactly the same ones we use in real life – when the decisions we make can have vastly more important and immediate consequences.

Over the years many learned scholars and worthy theologians have debated whether or not the story of Adam and Eve in the garden is true. But what makes the story of Adam and Eve a true story for me is not that it describes accurately something that happened somewhere else a long time ago but that it describes exactly what life is like here and now – it tells the truth, not just about them, but about us.

Over and over again, we find ourselves just like them – forced to decide what to do with something which, on the one hand, looks really good, seems useful and popular, and that just might teach us a thing or two – but which, on the other hand, we strongly suspect is not what God thinks best for us.

And we have to choose. When that happens, it’s better to be stronger and to have developed some of our spiritual habits. So, there is a real value to the notion that we need to ‘buff up a bit’, and that Lent is a good opportunity to do a bit more of this – or at least to begin doing it.

But how exactly do we go about getting in shape? Well let’s just take a closer look at what was happening with Jesus in the wilderness.

He has fasted and prayed for a long time – for as long as it takes – that’s what “40 days” means – and he’s famished. He’s absolutely exhausted and just think of the loneliness and the effort it takes to sustain something like this. He’s not at his best. He’s not bursting with physical or spiritual or any other sort of strength. He’s used all that up in just making it to where he is – in just being faithful to the fast.

This is when the temptations hit Jesus.

Now, I suspect that if the tempter had caught him on a good day, Jesus would have had all sorts of answers of his own to the questions – to the temptations – he was given. He might have told wonderful parables or asked clever and insightful questions right back at him and put the devil on the spot.

But strength and energy and cleverness were all gone – there wasn’t anything left. And we know about this, too – this is a different sort of temptation from the one Adam and Eve faced.

This is when we face strong, or compelling, or addicting, or beautiful, or just plain hard temptations and we have run out of resources. No matter how strong we were to start with, we simply can’t any longer move in the direction we have chosen to move, and we are pulled instead along lines that are against our will but defined by our appetites and our ego.

Sometimes it’s not a matter of not being strong enough, it’s a matter of being empty. That’s where Jesus was – he was out of energy, out of fuel and he was tempted, really tempted.

But just look at what happens. Jesus does not say one word of his own. Instead, he quotes scripture in a simple and straightforward way that is unlike how he uses scripture virtually anywhere else in the Gospels. Jesus has no words, no resistance, no strength of his own – he’s simply holding on to the Father, and letting the Father’s words and the Father’s mind come through him. Jesus’ response to the tempter is not a victory of personal, spiritual strength in some sort of holy temptation-lifting Olympics. Instead, his victory is the gift that comes from surrender.

There is no doubt that his time in the wilderness gave Jesus a stronger and more disciplined relationship with the Father; and as a fully-human being, he had to pay attention to such matters, just like we do. But it also gave him something else, something more, something we see in his story of temptations. His time in the wilderness gave Jesus the insight and the courage to surrender, and so to depend, not on his own best efforts, but on an emptiness that can only be filled by the Father, and that can only be filled by a gift of grace.

Several months after this all happened, Jesus said to his disciples: when you are handed over to your enemies, “Do not worry about how you are to speak or what you are to say, for what you are to say will be given to you at that time.” Imagine that Jesus could taste the dust of the desert and hear again the voice of the tempter and remember that hunger that reached out even to the stones around him. He knew what he was talking about. At the end of the day, the spiritual life is never about us, about what we can and cannot do. At the end of the day, it is always about God and about God’s gifts – gifts of grace, gifts that do not fail.

Luke 9.28-36

“Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?”

I’m sure you will remember this question from the fairytale Snow White – the question that the wicked and vain Queen puts to her magic mirror, expecting the mirror to proclaim that she, the Queen herself, is the fairest in all the land.

I wonder who you think is the fairest in the land?

According to a popular survey, women such as Audrey Hepburn, Raquel Welch and Grace Kelly would stand a good chance at such a title.

And on the men’s side, what about Marlon Brando, Clint Eastwood or James Dean?

Of course, the make-up artists, personal trainers, and designer outfits gave them all a helping hand, as did the glamourous lights of Hollywood.

But were any of these really the fairest in the land?

We’ve heard this morning the story of the Transfiguration. And I wonder, when Jesus was transfigured before his disciples, was he truly the fairest? Was his, in that fleeting yet indelible moment, the most beautiful of all bodies?

For many of us, steeped in the artistic images and songs of the western church tradition, the intuitive answer would seem to be, “yes, of course, He must be.” Jesus is God Incarnate, after all. Surely his glorious body, infused with blazing light on the mountaintop, is the loveliest of all imaginable sights.

Or is it?

Beauty is a complex thing, and we, in our time are challenged to consider how we talk about the aesthetic dimensions of the holy.

Sometimes, the way we speak about the worth and dignity of certain bodies over others reveals the pervasive influence of our unspoken assumptions about what is beautiful and what is not. It might even be said that in the west, we live in a society burdened by the tyranny of beauty—a worldview that equates physical perfection with being the best that a human being can be.

And we don’t have to look far to find evidence of this. Open up the pages of a glossy magazine or scroll through the airbrushed cavalcade of images on social media, each one showing a person claiming to be just a little bit more accomplished or happy or appealing than you are. Note all of the promises of modern marketing that you will be satisfied, that you will be whole, if only you will buy this thing, achieve this status or correct this physical flaw.

All around us, in ways subtle and not-so-subtle, value is focussed on certain physical standards of “beauty.” Some of these are personal, about our own physical bodies: skin colour, body shape and size, ability, age, gender identity, nationality. Others, though, are institutional: membership numbers, average Sunday attendance, followers, financial accounts, cultural influence, political power etc etc.

And of course, the church is not immune from these tendencies. Indeed, the main stream church denominations longing for their former wealth and prestige is but one manifestation of this servitude to the aesthetic, a single-minded fixation on the mighty Jesus of the mountaintop rather than the humbler manifestations of his day-to-day existence in the valleys and backstreets where he was most often found.

In all of this, there is the tacit acceptance of a certain standard of perfection that is wielded against the different, the marginal, and the vulnerable.

That which is beautiful is seen as more “real” and thus as having more value than the squalid and the broken realities of our lives. In the personal and the corporate experiences of this tyranny of the beautiful, there is an underlying assumption that up there, enshrouded in the clouds, a perfected version of our presently imperfect, unacceptable body is tantalisingly within grasp, if only we would reach a little higher.

And so, if we say yes, in the Transfiguration, Jesus was indeed “fairest,” we unwittingly subjugate ourselves and others to the idea that Christ’s glory is the same as an imaginary physical perfection—a body that is bright and pure and unmarred by the messiness of life. But then, when we look at our own scars; at our own tender, hidden, mottled places; at our own sometimes intolerably plain reflections in the mirror, we can see only insufficiency. And we begin to believe that God is as far from us as the bright lights of a city we will never visit. And so God’s beauty becomes our despair.

But thankfully, this is not the Jesus we are actually given in the good news, even if it is the one we’ve spent centuries imagining.

If we listen carefully, we will notice that, in fact, “beautiful” is not a word any of the gospel writers use to describe the Transfiguration. “The appearance of his face changed,” Luke simply tells us in today’s passage, “and his clothes became dazzling white.” If anything, it is brightness, not beauty, that characterises the nature of the Transfiguration, and it is terror and confusion, not pleasure or jubilation, that characterises the reactions of those present. So however we might describe Jesus at that moment, imagining a sort of physical beauty is not an adequate approach. Thinking of him as overwhelming, or perhaps even frightening, is probably closer to the truth—like a person staring directly into the noonday sun.

Terror in the face of divine glory is, in fact, quite consistent in the Biblical tradition. And we might even go so far as to consider that divine presence is not meant to be experienced directly by the senses. It is not adequate to call it beautiful, because it is not aesthetic—it is beyond our ability to receive or comprehend.

The Transfiguration, important as it is, is an incomplete revealing of God in Christ because ours is also the God of the Crucifixion and Resurrection and Ascension. One cannot understand Christ without all of these facets: Jesus’ nature as Lord of all creation has not, in fact, been fully revealed until he bears the hideous marks of Calvary, until he has inhabited and conquered the stifling tomb, and until he has poured out his Spirit upon all of our bruised, imperfect mortal flesh.

In the strange, inconceivable totality of Divine love, God is shown as the One who embraces ugliness and pain even more closely than majesty or beauty—if only to free us from the delusion that we are ruled by any of it.

And so perhaps it is freedom, more than anything—more than beauty or terror—that we should receive from the account of the Transfiguration: how free God is to be more than we can understand; how free God is to shatter our categories of what is worthy and what is not; how free God desires us to be within the dazzling radiance of all-encompassing love, no matter how broken our bodies and our hearts.

Such freedom is startling, to be sure, and we are still learning how to bear it, how to trust in it. But it is also the gateway to true life—a life not reserved for the fairest and most beautiful alone, but for everything and everyone, reconciled at the last, beyond our imagining, by God’s unfailing mercy.

Matthew 5.13-20

Back in the 1990s, when I was at university, during the long summer holidays I volunteered as a leader at Christian Youth camps in the Lake District. And it was there that I discovered that one of the skills that you needed to develop to be a good youth leader was to be able to think up games and activities that could sometimes leave those taking part with a bit of a surprise – after all we often hear that God is full of surprises don’t we?

Take for example, the good old Christian youth camp toffee apple bobbing. Just like regular apple bobbing – toffee apples in a bowl of water, and the first contestant with hands behind their backs to take a bite out of an apple is the winner. Except, of course, with Christian youth camp toffee apple bobbing, the apple is replaced by a toffee covered raw onion! Oh My!

And then of course, during the breaktime between activities, orange squash and custard creams. Or should I say, orange squash and custard creams where the custard filling has been carefully removed and replaced with toothpaste?

Or maybe you would have preferred a fresh cream iced finger? Yes, we did once get to those as well, putting a layer of mayonnaise under the layer of squirty cream – although that did rather backfire when the Bishop of Penrith who was visiting us for the day decided he would quite enjoy a cream cake!

Now I’m not telling you about all this just to make you disgusted at the goings on of youth camp leaders, or to make your stomach turn. All these gross activities were actually carefully planned in an attempt to teach young people about how appearances can be deceiving and about the importance of gaining a deep understanding of situations so that we don’t just jump into moral and mortal danger.

In our society today, we are all searching for authenticity, aren’t we? We warn each other to look out for ‘fake news’ or to take a ‘deep dive’ into information in order to check it has been BBC verified. We all want the inside to match the outside. When promised a toffee apple, who wants to bite into an onion? Nobody delights in a toothpaste custard cream to say nothing of a mayo-iced finger.  The inside should match the outside.

Sugar and salt look almost identical to the naked eye but they operate very differently on the tongue. Which one is which? Only a full tasting will be able to help us finally decide.

Today Jesus has a lot to say about salt and the importance of salt being salt and not something else, “You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled underfoot.” Well, what does that mean?

Firstly, it’s important to remember that Jesus is talking to his disciples: it’s these people that he is describing as the salt of the earth. That is good and bad news for them, and for us in our generation today.

We see that Jesus has a vision in mind, a standard by which we disciples should live in the world. We are meant to be the salt of the earth, a sort of leaven or spice for the world. It’s interesting that Jesus uses this metaphor of salt.

Salt, in a dish, is not just salty, but since it is such a fundamental flavour it highlights all the others. In a word, we followers of Jesus are meant to enchant the world, to draw out the flavours of all the world, all that is in existence, absolutely everything!

For too long Christians have been the people who want to somehow run away from the earth, to escape into an abstract spiritual existence. But here we see that Jesus would have his followers deeply engage with the world, indeed to act as a spice that enlivens all the rest. With this spice, the world feels things more deeply, the highs are higher, the lows are lower. With this spice of Jesus’ disciples the world feels, thinks, and acts more profoundly.

Now, before all this, Jesus says that we are the salt. The key word here is are. He doesn’t say, “You will someday be the salt of the earth,” or “Continue to work at becoming the salt of the earth,” no, “You are, the salt of the earth.” For Jesus, we disciples are indeed already the salt of the earth, this is a spiritual reality, we are already the salt of the earth, it is a state of being that is already in place. This calls to mind the great saint Evelyn Underhill who said that spirituality is more about reminding and remembering than learning something new. We are this salt of the earth, if you don’t believe me, ask Jesus.

So, with this reminder that Jesus has a clear idea of what we are to be in the world, this enlivening spice, and that we are indeed that spice, we come face-to-face with the prospect of how we are doing in the light of Jesus’ statement. In other words: how are we doing in living with the standard that Jesus has laid out? Are you living as the salt of the earth? Are you enchanting and enlivening the flavours of life, are you feeling, thinking, and living deeply in the pain and joy of the world or are you living in another way that Jesus doesn’t describe? He is pretty harsh too when considering the prospect of salt without saltiness: “If salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled underfoot.”

It seems to me that a life of saltiness that Jesus is getting at here is one that, without fear, moves into the world in love and affection. We salty ones shouldn’t allow ourselves to be bowled-over by the tragedies and disappointments of the world, but we also shouldn’t allow ourselves to fall into quiet resignation over situations of injustice. We followers of Jesus, we salty ones, should walk a brave line of love into the deepest experiences of life, neither being swept away nor disengaged. This brave walk of course happens only because we are empowered by the Holy Spirit which, in my experience, is more about granting patience and tenacity more than anything.

But what does this salty life look like anyway? To me it seems that a salty life of following Jesus is one where, first and foremost, the disciple has begun to make peace with themselves. Where in your life have you shied away from the cold facts of life? Which relationships have you let grow cold because the truth is just too awkward? Which aspect of your personality and habits are hindering a zest of life, what needs the salt of Jesus?

Next, I suppose, is that the salty ones begin to move beyond themselves and gently offer themselves to others; hopefully simply as presence, as an ally, as a friend, but not as an overpowering fixer. We are salt, not pepper. Salt allows the flavours of others to shine. Pepper insists on being forward and in your face. Being salt means that we listen, we notice, and we don’t have to have our way.

Being salt for the earth means to remind the world of what God created it to be: a loving commonwealth that is created for the flourishing of all and that anything other than that is not living in accordance with how God desired things to be.

You are the salt of the earth, called so by Jesus himself, and so be salt and nothing else, not sugar, or an onion, or a toothpaste Custard Cream.

Walk bravely into the world and know that we walk together empowered by the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

Acts 26.9-23

Of the many towering figures among the disciples of Jesus in the New Testament, St Paul stands head and shoulders above them all.

Energetic, bright, well connected and a great communicator it is not surprising that at almost every service worship serice there is a reading from one of his letters – usually the 2nd reading during our Holy Eucharist for us Episcopalians. His finger-prints are to be found in almost every discussion about what Christians believe. Yet despite that, St Paul had one big hang-up: however much he despaired at the qualities and abilities of the other Apostles, at least they could all say they had met Jesus: they been called by him, been transfixed by him; and of course many of them had seen him die before becoming witnesses of his Resurrection.

Paul’s encounter with Jesus took a very different form. So, the story that dominates today’s readings – one of four re-tellings of Paul’s conversion story that we find in the earliest history of the Church (the book of Acts) – starts with this very self-confident Greek educated Pharisee putting himself at the disposal of the Jewish authorities in order to eradicate all trace of this heretical upstart, Jesus.

In our story then, he is on horse-back, on his way from Jerusalem to Damascus, in order to lead a mass round-up of known Jesus sympathisers. Rather like the SS in occupied Europe during the second world war, people would have been genuinely scared to death of him.

And at some point on that journey the horse rears, Saul (to use his pre-Christian name) is thrown to the ground and he hears the voice of the man he had never met saying to him: Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?

And so overwhelming was this experience that he finds himself completely incapable of doing anything. In modern parlance he was ‘as weak as a kitten’ – blinded and completely disorientated. And as we know, from then on his life took a completely different course as he used his considerable abilities to carry the Christian Gospel to the far flung corners of the Roman Empire – to Corinth, Thessalonica, Ephesus … all the names we recognise from hearing the readings on Sundays … until he was finally beheaded in Rome during one of Nero’s frequent persecutions, sometime around 60AD.

Today, we concentrate on just those few minutes on the road, those few days of what we call ‘his conversion’.

We can so easily take the mickey out of those who say they can remember the very moment and the place when they ‘gave their lives to Christ.’ That’s because, for most people in Church, the realisation that ‘being a friend of Jesus makes so much more sense than being without him’ takes a little more time before the penny drops. But we do recognise that more dramatic changes of heart do occur and the story of the conversion of a young Canadian by the name of Jean Vanier is one such.

Jean Vanier’s father was Governor General of Canada and the young Vanier found himself in Paris just after the liberation in 1945. There, one morning, he and his mother were taken to meet some of the prisoners returning from various concentration camps in Poland. He wrote later of his amazement that any of them could still walk, so emaciated were they from disease and starvation. He recalls their faces twisted with fear and anguish. It was a life-changing event.

Despite his initial plans for a career in the military, he completed just five years in the Canadian naval service before hearing the strongest imaginable inner spiritual calling “to do something else”.

Jean Vanier was the man who went on to set up the first L’Arche house, inviting two men from a local institution, both with quite severe learning difficulties, to share his simple domestic life. I’m sure many of you will have heard of L’Arche communities. There are now something like 1,800 such communities in 80 countries (and we are fortunate to have our own L’Arche Highland community based in Inverness) where the able bodied and the disabled live in community together, learning from one another and caring for one another.

And that might have been a quite remarkable life and a hugely Christian ministry in it’s own right. But it is out of his practical experience that Jean Vanier was able to speak into situations of extreme tension, when the leaders of the nations were simply not able to listen to or accept the point of view of others, resulting in the breakdown of former peaceful friendships between allies.

Here is something Vanier said,

‘I know just how painful it can be to listen to other people as they express their innermost feelings. But to meet people at this level is not to argue with them or tell them what to do. When we are clothed with humility we begin, to our surprise, to find things in the other person of real value. When those with great skills and those with fewer come together in this way, something happens. There is a spark – and both groups change’.

And isn’t this something that some of those in authority over us today need to think about so very carefully.

When we are clothed with humility we begin, to our surprise, to find things in the other person of real value.

Who can say what would have happened if Jean Vanier had not met those emaciated prisoners in Paris in 1945? Certainly, founding the L’Arche community was not how he imagined he would spend his life!

So our keeping this day in honour of the Conversion of St Paul is a response to the truth that God – perhaps more frequently than we give credit for – does knock at the door of our hearts, does throw people off their metaphorical horses, their carefully planned and organised fast tracks … and does offer them an alternative reason for living.

And what we see emerging are new ways of working, new truths – and new forms of happiness. In the lives of St Paul and Jean Vanier, there is also one vital parallel. Of all the passages in the Bible that many of us can quote from memory, is that from St Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, chapter 13, verse 4.

How does it go?

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices in the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.

Oh that world leaders would hearken to that voice of love right now!

When Jean Vanier stood at the station in Paris, when St Paul was bundled off his horse on the road to Damascus, they learned the same lesson. And either of them could have written those words – which both stem from the insight that the ways of God and his love for us are rooted … in patience.

Conversion is what happens when we are able to wait for others, wait upon others, wait with others. It is the over-turning of the ego and the openhanded desire to make community out of the bricks that are there – not the bricks we would, ideally, like to have to hand.

I’d like to finish our sermon today by offering two short quotes from Vanier’s wonderful little book Becoming Human.

The first is this –

‘One of the marvelous things about community is that it enables us to welcome and help people in a way we couldn’t as individuals. When we pool our strength and share the work and responsibility, we can welcome many people, even those in deep distress, and perhaps help them find self-confidence and inner healing’.

And the second –

‘Every child, every person needs to know that they are a source of joy; every child, every person, needs to be celebrated. Only when all of our weaknesses are accepted as part of our humanity can our negative, broken selves be transformed’.

That is what Church is about, that is what we are here for: and we must learn to be patient as we edge our way forward, allowing that converting process to be ours also, doing in our context, what Jesus did for St Paul and for Jean Vanier.

Amen

Incidently, if you might be interested in supporting our local L’Arche community, they are looking for volunteers right now! Take a look below –

Today begins the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity and our online sermon leads us into this week.

I’m sure most of us will be aware of the parable of The Good Samaritanh, a story which Jesus tells as part of his response to a lawyer’s questions. A lawyer approaches Jesus. But he wasn’t the kind of lawyer we think of today. He was an expert in the Old Testament laws and interpreted how they should be applied to society.

I like to picture him with a professorial grey beard and a flashy red tunic. We learn later in the story that he cares about how he appears to others. He was a bit of a showoff and so we can imagine him all dressed up in fancy clothes.

The scene is a confrontation. The lawyer has plenty of reasons to think Jesus is what young people today call, “sus” or suspicious. In nearly every page of Luke’s gospel leading up to this encounter, Jesus had violated Old Testament laws. He cured on the Sabbath, he proclaimed forgiveness of sins. He shared fellowship at the table with sinners, tax collectors, and prostitutes. He let the disciples pick grain on the Sabbath and didn’t make them follow the prescribed ritual washings. And most curious of all, was how he hang out with and cured people outside of the faith.

The lawyer comes to set Jesus straight. Jesus’ followers must have held their breath in anxiety, wondering how this conversation was going to turn out.

The lawyer asks, “Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” He wasn’t asking about how to go to heaven because that wasn’t a very developed notion until long after Jesus’ resurrection. No, eternal life had to do with a quality of life in this world. How do you have meaning beyond the present moment? How do you live a life that adheres to God, one saturated by grace? In other words, how does one live a good life?

Jesus does the typical rabbi thing by doing something they still teach clergy to do. He answers a question with a question. “What does the law say, and how do you interpret it?” Jesus recognises that its not helpful to simply quote lines from the Bible; you have to figure out a reasonable way to apply them to life.

Now this was actually an easy question. Every Jewish child had this answer memorised by the time they were five years old. “You shall love the Lord your God will all your heart, soul, strength, and mind. And you shall love your neighbour as yourself.”

Jesus says, “You have answered correctly. Do this, and you will live.”

The crowd exhales. That was easy. Everyone agrees! But the lawyer hadn’t had his Hercule Poirot moment yet. So he baits the trap, “And who is my neighbour?”

To us it sounds like he throws an easy question back to Jesus. Everyone knew the passage from Leviticus about loving one’s neighbour. The context is about taking care of your people. Your people. The people who are like you, those with whom you have things in common. When we think of our neighbours, we think the same. Neighbours are people we share a post code with, a socio-economic demographic, maybe a similar culture and worldview.

The trap the lawyer set was to get Jesus to say that neighbours are like you. Share love with the ones who are like you, your people the ones around you. These are the people you are responsible for. If Jesus had given that kind of answer the lawyer could have said, “Then stay inside your circle Jesus. Don’t be messing with tax collectors, sinners, prostitutes, foreigners, and especially the stinking Samaritans!

Instead of giving the lawyer the answer he expected, Jesus did another typical rabbi thing. Answer a direct question with a story and more questions.

Jesus tells the familiar story about a man on his way from Jerusalem to Jericho – the story of the Good Samaritan.

And at the end of the story Jesus asked the lawyer, which of these three was a neighbour to the man in the ditch.

“The one who showed mercy.”

“Go and do likewise.”

The lawyer wanted to know what he had to do to have eternal life, a life worth living, a life that connects you with the Eternal One. The answer is love God with your whole self and love your neighbour but neighbour includes enemies, people in need, people who’ve made mistakes.

Our Christian ethic is rooted in this story. We are people who help. We are people who get involved to improve our neighbourhood. We also respond to Jesus’ invitation to expand the circle of who we consider our neighbour. Sometimes when we give money to people overseas, people will ask, “Why should we send our money to help those people when there are people who are hurting right here?” Part of the answer is that we remind ourselves that Jesus challenges us to widen the circles of our care. Our neighbours are those in need anywhere in the world.

We are connected to them in God’s eyes. When God looks at the world, our divisions and national boundaries are as nothing. It’s one world and if we are going to sense God, it means to love our neighbours. To help even those who aren’t like us, any who are in need.

Who has been passed by and left in the ditches today? Who can we help? I learned that over the past two years there has been a huge spike in the number of senior citizens living in fuel poverty and even becoming homeless. I think of children lost in the foster care system, those who have fallen into the cycle of addiction, those we have written off simply because their lifestyle, spending priorities or world view isn’t as we think it should be. We have each one of us, left someone in the ditch and walked on by.

Martin Luther King Jr. in his last sermon talked about this parable and said we should always be asking not, what will happen to me if I don’t help, but what will happen to them if I don’t help.

Over the years, I’ve often felt guilty and sometimes even lost sleep over not being able to help more people. With so much need in the world around us, how can we respond to all of it. There is after all only so much we can do. Taken too far the story might seem that we should hop out of our car every time we see a homeless person and give them our credit card.

There were times when Jesus had to walk away from healing people to go and care for himself.

And so we must do what we can.

As the Christian family in our part of the world, we must open our hearts and saturate Sutherland and beyond with the grace of God. No questions asked, no provisos, no catches – as the people of God who worship Him in His majesty and splendour, in our joyfully diverse ways, together we are called in Christian Unity to love and serve each and every one of our neighbours – to be an agent for positive change in people’s lives. Are you ready for that? Are you ready to serve? Or will you pass by on the other side?

Matthew 3.13-17

Last Sunday morning, we saw the three magi visit the infant Jesus – in the course of a week, we have fast forward about 30 years and we meet the adult Jesus as he emerges on the edges of the river Jordan to be baptised by his cousin, John.

It is a peculiar story. Jesus enters the scene not as a valiant king or leader we might expect from the way Matthew starts the gospel, but instead comes in the most humble way possible, alongside sinners coming to repent and receive cleansing waters from the River.

Here, though, Matthew is very intentional in his telling. He takes on what one commentator notes as the tone of the “apologetics,” those who engage in the theological or philosophical practice of explaining or defending a point with careful justification and strong conviction.

His retelling of some stories and events is intended not simply to act as a historical record, but also (and maybe more pointedly) to provide a response or defence to his audience concerning certain implications that others, and maybe they, have drawn

In the case of the birth narrative, Matthew wanted to be clear that this child born was not some ordinary baby born out of wedlock to a teenage mother, but a child conceived by the Holy Spirit – one that God had planned for in a unique and miraculous way.

Similarly, in the telling of Jesus’ baptism, Matthew takes time to include a conversation between John and Jesus that answers the inevitable question believers would have – if Jesus was without sin, why did he need to be baptised?

The answer fits neatly into Matthew’s ongoing perspective that Jesus Christ was the fulfilment of what had been promised. Matthew liked things to be done decently and in good order. In his gospel, Jesus’ baptism is a reflection of that, as a part of fulfilling a plan set into motion long ago. His approach to this moment is pivotal, and illustrates the kind of leader and messiah Christ will be – one who truly walks alongside the people and is a servant of all. Such humility echoes prophets like Isaiah, and foreshadows the events that are to come.

But back to the riverside where we discover more about who exactly Jesus is.

After he convinces John to actually baptise him, the heavens break open. The Spirit of God descends like a dove in what I imagine to be a Hollywood inspired cinematic glory, and the voice of God speaks to all who have gathered.

This is another unique feature of Matthew’s telling – in Luke and Mark this voice is heard only by Jesus, but in Matthew it is a public proclamation: “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” In this proclamation, God claims and affirms Jesus’ identity and commissions him to carry out his purpose on earth.

It is from this text, along with the Great Commission (see Matthew 28:18-20) that we draw our understanding of the sacrament of Baptism.

Along with communion, we identify it as something Christ participated in and instructed us to do in the same way. The concluding words of our passage from today celebrate God’s claiming of Christ as his beloved Son. In the same way, in baptism we affirm God’s love for us, and proclaim for the one being baptised, whether a sweet and squirmy infant, a tenacious and talented teen or a weathered and wise adult, that they belong to God. Baptism gives us a new label to wear – “child of God.”

To understand this new label, we first should unpack a bit more about what baptism does and means. Baptism is “a sign and seal of incorporation into Christ .” In it, we are connected in a tangible way to Jesus and reminded of the grace and love extended to us by God. We believe that the Holy Spirit binds us in covenant to God in this sacrament, which is a symbol of inclusion in the church universal.

As we begin a new year together, it is particularly appropriate to think about these things, and the new life given to us in Christ. Baptism reminds us of that reality which has already happened, and is a way that we can respond. It enacts and seals what the Word of God proclaims: God’s redeeming grace is offered to all people . There are numerous other explanations for what happens in Baptism, all with rich symbolism that ties into the totality of the gospel narrative and speaks to the breadth and depth of this symbol. But, for today, I encourage you to hold in your mind that Baptism is a sacrament that reminds us we are “claimed” as Christ’s own forever. Now, this is a claim that has happened well before the water hits our head. It is a promise as old as God, but in Baptism we write it on a label for all the world to see.

Baptism reminds us of the best versions of ourselves, our core identity that was woven into our beings by a compassionate creator.

Theologian and former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams says the Church has come to view baptism as “a kind of restoration of what it is to be truly human. To be baptised is to recover the humanity that God first intended.”

Baptism is the mark of a new creation. Reminding ourselves of this assures us that God wants, above all else, to be in a loving relationship with us, God’s beloved children.

This is the root of our identity as Christians – that we belong to God. This is true from the very beginning. It is not something we have earned because we are particularly attractive or talented. It is because God created us to be in relationship, going so far as to send Jesus to make sure we knew just how much He loved us. In order to truly be faithful disciples, we have to allow this name, this label, to be the one that transcends all of the other labels we take on. Above all else, we have to remember that we are children of God.

Of course, that is quickly tested. In our lives we juggle many different names and roles. Some of them fit in well with the idea of being a child of God, others? Not so much. And sometimes, instead of letting God proclaim who we are, beloved, we allow the world around us to define us.

As we grow, we sometimes forget the heavenly voice, and we begin to listen to other voices that confuse us. Perhaps we hear voices when we are children through report cards that tell us that we are not clever enough or don’t sing nicely enough to be in the choir. As teenagers, we hear voices through the callous comments of other teens who tell us that we are not cool enough, not the right size or shape. As adults, we hear voices that tell us we are not successful enough or that we do not have enough money. Somehow, as God’s voice gets drowned out, we listen to these other voices, and we are tempted to forget who we are. We are tempted to forget that a congregation of Christians and God himself have claimed us as beloved children of God .

God’s promise to us is a promise sealed in the waters of Baptism, and God will continue to repeat it to us as many times as it takes for us to believe it.

Matthew 2.1-12

There can be few passages of the Bible that have become as misrepresented as this one has throughout history. Not misrepresented in a bad way – but the story has become so mythologised that it is hard to sometimes focus in on what the story says rather than what we think it says.

The picture that many of us have of this story is so different from the real thing. We sing a carol, don’t we?: “We three kings of Orient are”. But they weren’t kings – they were astrologers. You might know the names these kings have been given – Caspar, Melchior and Balthasar. But there’s no mention of that in the original story.

And the story gets embellished even further. Melchior is represented in pictures and paintings as an old man, grey haired with a long beard and he brings the gold. Caspar is young and hasn’t yet got a beard and he carries the frankincense. Balthasar is represented as having African origins with a newly grown beard on him and he brings the myrrh.

It’s a nice image – but it’s all embellishment on the story. None of it is recorded in the Bible.

And so what we need to do is avoid the pitfall of romanticising this story too much in case we begin to miss the point of what we can learn about God, our own spiritual journey and our response to Jesus – the Christ-child.

As I re-read this passage this year, for me, it is speaking of the response we can make to Jesus in our own lives. There are 3 very different responses to Jesus in this passage. Let’s have a look at them…

The first response we see is in King Herod a response of anger and rejection

Herod has reigned as King in Palestine for nearly forty years and he wasn’t called Herod the Great for nothing. He was the only ruler in Palestine ever to have kept peace and stability in that region. He was a brilliant architect and builder; a man of great vision.

Not only that – but he could be very generous too.

In difficult times, he had been known to stop taxing people in order to give them a chance to survive. And during one particular tough famine, he even melted some of his own gold to buy corn for the starving people.

But there was one deep flaw in his character: he could be very suspicious and couldn’t tolerate others rivalling his power and he was paranoid about people plotting against him.

He murdered his wife and mother-in-law. He assassinated three of his sons. Anyone who got close to claiming power from him were dealt with.

So, when the three visitors from the East arrive looking for the King of the Jews, we can just imagine his reaction.

There’s only one King of the Jews! No-one is taking that title from Herod! So, in his anger and paranoia, he decides to get rid of all the babies aged 2 and younger in the area of Bethlehem.

The very thought of Jesus Christ, the Messiah, made him angry. He rejected any notion that another person could have power and dominion over him.

And it is not so unusual for the mention of the name ‘Jesus’ to make people angry. Perhaps you have mentioned Jesus in a conversation and been taken aback by the over-reaction of hostility you then faced. And, often, that hostility and anger stems from a bad experience someone has had of the church or Christians in the past, which then gets projected onto their view of Jesus.

For us, too, maybe there have been occasions in our own lives when we have felt angry at Jesus. Perhaps when events in our lives have taken a turn for the worst. Or someone we love has become seriously ill or died. The pain in our lives has been so intense that we have doubted our experience of God and have rejected the very idea of faith in him.

So, like King Herod, one response to Jesus is to feel angry and to reject him; reject the claim of Lordship that he makes over our lives.

The second response to Jesus is that of the chief priests and teachers of the law. And their response is one of apathy and non-committal.

King Herod goes to the chief priests and teachers of the law for advice. “Where will the Messiah be born?” he asks them. And they know the answer. They’ve studied the Scriptures. They’ve asked the questions. It’s all there in their heads: The Messiah will be born in the town of Bethlehem in Judea. They can even quote the verse to the King which backs up their theory.

But that’s what is so sad – because that’s all it is for them: theory. What would you expect from these great religious leaders? You would expect, in the next verse, to read of them all hurrying off to Bethlehem themselves to greet the Messiah they had been waiting for. But no. There’s nothing of the sort. They give Herod the answer he needs and then they get back on with their own lives, untroubled and unconcerned with the news they’ve received.

How many people do we know who know the facts about Jesus in their heads but don’t recognise him as King in their hearts? How often do we know in our heads what God wants from us but we become apathetic in delivering the goods and refuse to sit under his Lordship over us?

Apathy and being unprepared to make a commitment to God is a very real spiritual malaise. At the beginning of a New Year, it is always a good opportunity for us to look back and reflect on that which has gone before and look forward to how we can be more committed and passionate in faith for the future.

Herod rejected Jesus. The teachers of the law remained apathetic about Jesus. But there is a third way, which is the way of the visitors from the East. And that way is to accept Jesus and to worship God as a result.

This is such an intriguing story – and it is only recorded in Matthew’s Gospel, of course. But it seems to me that this is a beautiful parable of the journey of faith that we all go through as we move into a deeper experience of God as Christians.

The story of the visitors from the East is a four-stage journey: from the head to the heart.

First, they study the facts. Their journey of faith begins with them asking questions. They are astrologers – they study the stars – and when they see a strange star in the sky, they ask themselves questions about it.

Second, they know that the only way to get an answer is to set out on a journey. But that journey involves risk. They have to come to the court of the king and risk their lives to find out about Jesus. But their desire for truth is stronger than their fear.

Third, they come into the presence of Jesus and they worship. And part of their worship is to offer him gifts: their’s is a sacrificial worship that is prepared to give as well as to receive.

And then finally, they make their way back home; back to their everyday lives, not leaving Jesus behind, but taking the experience of their encounter with them.

And there’s that lovely touch in verse 12 which says that they went back by another road, inspired by God in a dream.

And it’s true for all of us that once we meet with Jesus, we do take another road, life is never the same again. And it’s true too, that it is under the guidance of God that our route is chosen.

So, in the response of the Eastern visitors to Jesus, we see our very own journey of faith. Starting with questions in the mind. Setting out on a journey, which will inevitably involve risk and vulnerability. But a journey that leads us to the Christ-child, where we give him all that we have to offer. And then God sends us out, inspiring us and guiding us in which way we should go; a new journey with the experience of Christ in our hearts. The way of worship and adoration.

And so, in this remarkable story, stripped of the tinsel and the imaginary names and the made up characters, we find the most basic of Christian truths. Every one of us is confronted with the Christ-child this morning and we need to make a response. Will we be like King Herod and reject Jesus? Will we be like the chief priests and teachers of the law and remain lost in apathy? Or will we be like the visitors from the East and step out on a journey of faith? A difficult journey, not without questions and doubts, not without personal difficulties, not without sacrificial actions – but a journey that leads to Jesus Christ, God’s Son, our Saviour. A journey that takes us on a new road; a new direction under God’s guidance and within his grace and love and compassion.