Category: Religion

Children At Communion

Yesterday morning’s Covenant Service contained an unexpected joy: one little girl took Holy Communion for the first time ever. She and her mother didn’t know the Methodist policy. As I came to people kneeling at the rail, I wasn’t sure whether she was holding out her hands for the bread or not. I asked her, ‘Would you like communion?’ She nodded. I gave her some bread. As with other young children, I dispensed with the words, ‘The Body of Christ keep you in eternal life’ (much as I love them). Instead, I said, ‘Eat this to remember how much Jesus loves you.’

Only afterwards, over coffee, did we discover it was her first time. She had the kind of radiant smile that every disciple should naturally display from time. Simple explanation – mostly by my wife – followed.

It wasn’t the only reason to smile at the sacrament, either. Rebekah, our four-year-old, announced in her usual loud voice that the wine ‘tastes like Cola’. If only it did. Not that I’m a big Coke fan, I just can’t believe how disgusting most communion wine is. Today I heard about an Anglican church in the south of France that serves claret. (Wrong region of France, I know, but I feel like driving there, even though I’m currently on tablets that are incompatible with alcohol.) I don’t see why communion has to be tasteless or foul on the tongue. Is that an unworthy thing to say? I see Holy Communion as an attractive thing, not an act of spiritual misery.

Then Mark, our three-year-old, told the wider congregation when everyone at the front had finished. No space for that quiet reflection on them knees before the I blessed them and they returned to their seat. Mark let everybody know time was up, and they should be off. Which is theologically apt, don’t you think? Communion services end not simply with a blessing but a call to mission – words such as ‘Go in peace to love and serve the Lord.’

Afterwards, Rebekah and Mark assisted the communion stewards in washing up. Well, no, they didn’t wash up, they downed the contents of unused wine glasses, enjoying more ‘Cola’. I’ve never understood those Christians who want to limit the amount of communion they have. I’ve seen that attitude in a few different ways. I have met some Christians who have one swig of the wine, and if any remains the glass, they don’t drink it. Others won’t take the sacrament more than once in the same day – oh, the sin I committed in my first circuit when I scheduled morning and evening communions on the same Sunday one month. Apparently you need to sleep between sacraments. Perhaps a siesta would suffice. Or there are those who think that weekly communion would make it less special. While I hold a pretty low church view of the sacraments, I have to say I can’t understand those who don’t want more Jesus. We can be greedy for more of him, can’t we?

Technorati Tags: , , ,

4

Covenant Service Sermon: The Good News Of The Covenant

Jeremiah
31:31-34

Introduction

1. What Is A
Covenant?
What comes to your mind when you hear the word ‘covenant’? In the days before
Gift Aid as a tax-efficient way of giving to charities, you made a covenant to
give a set amount for a period of seven (later, four) years. It was a
commitment you made and the Inland Revenue (as it was then called) blessed your
commitment when you proved you had fulfilled your promise.

Or covenants exist in other legal contexts. A piece of land
or property can be subject to a covenant.

It is personal, too – marriage is a covenant.

But, as our traditional reading for the Covenant Service
from Jeremiah shows, the covenant is an ancient idea. In biblical terms, it
goes back before conventional history. God made a covenant with Noah after the
flood not to repeat what he had done. He made a covenant with Abraham to make
his descendants a great nation who would bless the world. He made a covenant
with Israel at Sinai after he delivered them from Pharaoh, to bless them in the
Promised Land. They responded with obedience. If they disobeyed, God would
curse them.

And the Old Testament gives us several different images for
the covenant. It is pictured like that between a husband and a wife, as in this
passage. Elsewhere, it is likened to a father and a son – probably inferring a
father and an adopted son, where both parties take on specific commitments. And
it is compared implicitly to a treaty. That is, a treaty where a strong king
has delivered a weaker party from oppression (like God delivering Israel from
Egypt). The strong king promises continued protection and blessing, if the
weaker party willingly subjects itself to his rule. If it doesn’t, the
protection ceases.

So far, I haven’t answered the question, ‘What is a
covenant?’ I hope, however, that I have given some images that help. From them,
we can gain an idea of what a covenant is. It involves an initial unconditional
deed of love. It is followed by mutual commitment that leads to further
blessings. Lack of such commitment destroys the blessings. It is important and
serious. It captures powerfully the relationship between God and God’s people.

The critical point, then, about a covenant for today is
this: God saves and blesses first.
Our promises, obedience and faithfulness are a response to that. We do not make
commitments in order to win God around to us. We make our promises because God
has already acted in salvation. In a Christian sense, he has already sent his
Son to live, die and be raised again for us. He has already sent his Holy
Spirit. Because of all this, we respond with gratitude and love.

That is what today is about – the faithfulness of God, and
our gratitude. And I hope that puts into perspective the seriousness of what we
say today. A covenant is not about God putting us through the wringer, but
about God winning the devotion of our hearts.

2. What Went Wrong
With The Old Covenant?
Something went wrong with Israel. In the passage, God is making a new covenant
with his people (verse 31), because his people have broken the old one (verse
32). So what went wrong?

Put it like this: what happens when you tell a child not to
do something? Chances are, curiosity is aroused, and the child goes right
ahead, doing the very deed you warned them not to do. There seems to be an
inbuilt tendency to do what others tell us is wrong.

Elevated from the personal level to that of society, it
means that you can’t promote social change just by changing a nation’s laws. In
Jeremiah’s time, the righteous king Josiah had tried that. Although Jeremiah
admired Josiah (22:15-16), he realised that the king’s reforms ended up being
superficial:

Merely to destroy pagan cult shrines and forbid their cult
practices, merely to centralize and regularize worship in Jerusalem, merely to
reactivate the annual Passover and other formal aspects of worship did not
really touch the basic problem.[1]

In fact, it wasn’t that long after Josiah’s reign that
judgment fell on Judah. Changing the laws, even to conform to Scripture, was
not enough.

It’s rather like an elderly woman who spoke to me after a
service I took when I was a young Local Preacher: ‘If only this country would
get back to the Ten Commandments, everything would be all right,’ she said.

The problem is one of the human heart. Rebecca Manley Pippert, an evangelist who
has worked with students mostly in the United States, tells this story:

I was sitting next to a beautiful black law student on a bus
to Salem, Oregon. We were discussing our heroes when she told me Karl Marx was
her hero. When I asked why, she said, “Because of his passionate regard for the
oppressed.”

“I agree with that concern,” I responded, “but what is Marx’s
view of the universe? For example, I know he holds no belief in God.”

“Oh yes,” she replied, “Marx is very intelligent. He sees the
universe as godless, and we have meaning only in a corporate sense of class. We
are not significant as individuals.”

“Yet you admire his regard for the oppressed even though they
are ultimately insignificant. It seems strange to value them so highly when
they are random products of a universe. Why not manipulate them as you please?”
I asked.

“I couldn’t do that. I guess if my natural response is to
feel people are significant then I need a philosophic system that says the same
thing,” she astutely observed. “But I believe we are basically good. If we
could live in a classless society, we would be free of the things that weigh us
down. I really think on the basis of economic determinism we will be saved.”

“Do you really believe if we lived in the ideal Marxist
society our problem would be voted out?” I asked.

“Absolutely,” she said.

I took a deep breath and said, “Listen. I know a guy. He is
one of the worst racists I have ever met. If he lived with you for fifty years
in your classless society, every time he saw you he’d still think ‘nigger’. How
can Marx wipe out the ugliness and hatred of a bigot?”

She turned away from me, her eyes glaring, and, looking out
the window she said, “Right on. We’ve been trying to change that for centuries.
And all of the rules and laws in the world can’t change you. The laws curb behaviour,
they can force you to treat me more justly, but they can’t make you love me.”[2]

Rules and laws at best curb behaviour, but can’t make people
love one another. This raises a question: if God knew that a covenant based on
laws would fail, why introduce it? Paul supplies an answer in Galatians: the
law was like a tutor looking after children until Christ came. By showing our
failings, it demonstrated our need for faith in him.[3]

And that leads to our third and final question this morning:

3. What Is Different
About The New Covenant?
Let’s go back to the conversation between Rebecca Manley Pippert and the law
student. We pick it up where we left off, with the student’s insight that laws
can only curb behaviour, they cannot make people love one another. Pippert
writes:

I knew I had struck a raw nerve but I felt I had to. Anyone who
has suffered as blacks have in this society must know that an external change
does not mean an internal change. I said, “You tell me you know people are
significant, and you need a system that says so. Now you’re saying that the
real evil comes from within us. So you need a system that regards evil as
internal and a solution that transforms radically not curbs superficially.
Right?”

“Yeah, well it’ll take more than a human attempt to change us
that much. But we need it,” she said.

“I couldn’t agree more. In fact, that’s the very kind of
system I’ve found,” I said.

“Really? Hey, what revolution are you into?”

When I told her I followed Jesus, I think I had better not
quote her exact words of response![4]

But this is the Gospel of the New Covenant. It is about an
inner transformation. Instead of an external law on tablets of stone or statute
books, God promises,

I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their
hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. (Verse 33)

This is the work of the Holy Spirit, working on our minds
and wills, not only telling us the will of God but also enabling us to follow
that will.

And

No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other,
‘Know the Lord’, for they shall all know me, from the
least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will
forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more. (Verse 34)

There is direct personal knowledge of God, not requiring a
priestly intermediary. Whatever your reasons for needing a minister, you don’t
need me as your means of access to God. In the New Covenant, you have that for
yourself. In an email newsletter I receive, the writer in his last bulletin
bemoaned the clergy/laity distinction in many churches, and said this:

Simply stated, the clergy is the
professional head of household for a family full of dependents.[5]

But you are not my dependents. Together
we all have knowledge of the Lord. Why? ‘For I will forgive their iniquity, and
remember their sin no more.’ The barrier was sin. But you do not have a priest
who offers the right sacrifices any more. One priest has made a sacrifice that
has covered all sin for all time. That priest is Jesus, and the sacrifice was
of himself. Nobody needs to be dependent upon anybody other than him for
knowledge of the Lord.

The New Covenant God forgives our
sins through the Cross of Christ. Therefore, we all have access to God. In
addition, God enables us to do his will by the presence of the Holy Spirit within
us, writing his ways on our lives.

Put that in the context of what a
covenant is. God has acted in salvation – he has sent Christ, who has died for
us and been raised for us. He calls us to respond by following his ways. Even then,
he blesses us with the gift of the Holy Spirit, whose ministry not only speaks
the Word of God but also shapes it within our lives. Our covenant response is a
response to salvation, and it is a response not made alone but in the power of
God. We respond out of love, because God has shown his amazing love to us. And that
same God makes our response possible.

I recall my parents telling me as
a boy that there were some people who took the Covenant Service promises so
seriously that they honestly thought they couldn’t make them, and so absented
themselves from church that Sunday of the year. Looking back on those comments,
I now find them tragic. It sounds like the absentees perceived God as condemning
and heavy-handed. However, I see the Covenant here as Good News through and
through. Let us renew our Covenant promises today, knowing that the God who
draws us here is full of love, mercy, grace and faithfulness.

[1] J
A Thompson, The
Book Of Jeremiah (New International Commentary on the Old Testament), p
62.

[3]
Galatians 3:24-26.

[4] Op.
cit., p 161f.

[5]
Fred Peatross, ‘Reverse Babel’, Abductive
Columns, 29th December 2007.

Technorati Tags: , , , , , , , ,

0

Scrpiture Union And Adultery

Yesterday, I signed up for Scripture Union‘s new WordLive service via email. The first one appeared in my inbox this morning. The opening words of the Bible study are rather unfortunate:

Matthew 5:21-32
‘You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.’

Go to this activity.

Come on SU, don’t lead us into temptation 🙂

Technorati Tags: , , , ,

0

Scalextric

When I was a child, our parents couldn’t afford much. But we
did have Scalextric. We only had a
modest track, but there was pure boyhood delight in racing with our Lotus or
our green Jaguar. Uncle Frank and my cousins might have filled an unused double
garage with a train set, but those trains couldn’t speed like racing cars.

Other families at church had bigger sets than us, and every
year we put them all together. We did so at the annual church bazaar. It was
our church’s way of keeping the kids happy while Mum and Dad spent money. We filled
a whole room with an amazing set-up. Who needs someone dressing up as Father
Christmas when you have Scalextric?

It lasted until my mid-teens. Dad and I got interested in
Proper Hi-Fi. We wanted to replace our music centre with something decent. We
sold the Scalextric to raise some money. I remember the night the advert
appeared in the free paper. Two families sped to get to our house first and buy
it. I haven’t played with Scalextric since.

But three Christmases ago, I told Debbie it would be great
to have a set for when our children (then 21 months and four months) were
older. She thought I was dropping a hint, and so my Christmas present in 2004
was a Micro
Scalextric kit. But I wasn’t hint dropping. We stored it until the children
were old enough.

Two days ago, I got it in from the garage. Last night,
before bedtime, I assembled it. As if to enhance the retro/nostalgia mood,
Debbie had tuned into UKTV
Gold, who were showing highlights of Morecambe
and Wise. I was having my own retro moment, though. It was not so much that
I was a five-year-old again. I was my father. I was doing something he had done
for me.

In the nearly five years since Rebekah had to be prised out of
Debbie’s womb by emergency Caesarean (she was enjoying the Cadbury’s Crème Eggs
too much), I have done many things for her and Mark that my father did for me. Buying
groceries, paying utility bills, washing and bathing, changing Technicolor nappies,
reading. You name it, I’ve done it. I’ve eschewed superintendent ministry,
partly because I don’t want to be an absentee Dad, having become a father later
than most.

But last night I was
my father. Last night, I lived within my skin the fatherly love he showed for
me as a child. I felt the satisfaction of putting the track together. And since
I am the world’s most impractical man, that achievement was a real pleasure. I felt
the frustration as crash barriers on the bends refused to clip on properly. (That’s
more like me.) I felt the anticipation of knowing that two little monkeys would
come downstairs this morning and see the track, the cars and the controllers. I
prepared for them sending the cars too fast, so that they unintentionally flew
off at corners.

I wasn’t disappointed. Rebekah was up before any of us. We didn’t
hear her creep downstairs in her pyjamas. Where did she learn creeping, then? But
we did hear her call up to us her delight at seeing the track. The cars did fly
off sometimes, but not as frequently as I had expected. She and Mark successfully
drove the cars around the circuit at a far greater speed than I expected them
to manage. (What will they be like when we finally cave into a gaming console?)
I had to solve problems when the cars refused to work. To my surprise, I was
successful. I guess Dad was, too, when something went wrong all those years
ago.

To walk this small way in my Dad’s shoes is a great
privilege. It’s a spiritual discipline, too, to walk in someone else’s shoes. There
are several analogies. We do so in empathy for the hurting. We use holy
imagination in spiritual exercises such as Ignatian Bible reading. We risk joy
and pain in wanting a small glimpse of the
Father’s ways. Last night, it was enough to feel like (my now 80-year-old) Dad.

Technorati Tags: , , , ,

1

New Year Resolutions

New Year’s Resolutions frustrate me. I never make them. Here are helpful thoughts from two authors on this subject:

So let’s make our annual, New Year’s “to do” lists. Desire, and even ambition, will lead the way. But if you want anything on your list to happen, add a good dose of discipline. Which means that along with your “to do” list, you’ll make a list of another kind. A “stop doing” list.(James Emery White)

You can know the reality of God if you like, for God will rejoice to assist and infinitely over-reward whatever effort you make. Resolution is the crucial point … From your prayers form simple resolutions – not, like the absurd resolutions of New Year’s Day, resolutions for the next 12 months, but for the next 12 hours. Make them few enough to be practicable, and obey them for the sake of God himself.(Austin Farrer)

Technorati Tags: , ,

0

Intuition?

It happened at the end of December 2006. Bill had been taken
into hospital. He was not expected to live. I spent time with him on a Thursday
morning, while he was unconscious. I said my goodbyes to him. But he didn’t
pass away.

The next day, therefore, was Friday – which is usually my
day off. After dinner, we were about to take the children up for their bath
when Debbie said, ‘I think you ought to visit Bill again. I’ll bath the kids.’
I went. Bill’s wife, daughter and son-in-law were present. After a while, they
left, and I had a wonderful time alone with Bill. He had rallied that morning,
and held forth on some favourite topics: faith, politics and cricket. We read
the Prologue to John’s Gospel, which he said he wanted read at his funeral. Not
only did we read it, we turned it into a prayer.

On the Saturday morning, a nurse took Bill’s breakfast
order, but by the time she returned with it, he had slipped away quietly to
glory. I was the last person apart from medical professionals to see him. And I
wouldn’t have been, had it not been for Debbie’s instinct that I should go.

It happened again ten days ago. Ruth had been in hospital.
She kept getting thinner, even when we thought she could lose no more weight.
The hospital didn’t wash her every day, nor did they always check whether she
had eaten her meals. Her family discharged her to home on the Monday. I
couldn’t visit until the Thursday, due to sinusitis. That day, she coped with
five minutes from me.

On the Saturday, someone rang to say she wasn’t good. Debbie
said, ‘You must go today.’ I hadn’t wanted to go that day: it was Ruth’s
husband’s eightieth birthday, and I didn’t want to interrupt the family
celebrations. But go I did. We had ten minutes that afternoon. She was
confused, but I read her some of the great verses at the end of Romans 8. At
half past midnight, so just thirty minutes after her husband’s birthday ended,
she stopped breathing. I take the funeral this Friday. Again, I wouldn’t have
made that final visit were it not for Debbie’s prompting.

It’s a prompting I don’t understand. For someone like me
whose learning
style is that of a theorist, I can’t see how my wife can have such
uncannily accurate instincts. I can understand it to some extent as a spiritual
gift. It is explicable that the Holy Spirit leads her in this particular way.
What cannot be done is to fit it neatly into a category. It doesn’t easily fit
any of the gifts listed in the New Testament. Then I believe those lists are
examples, rather than exhaustively prescriptive. If it is anything, it is a
form of the prophetic word. I am happy to recognise it as being from the Holy
Spirit, because the fruit of it is good and kingdom-like. Further, as a gift I
don’t have, I see it within Paul’s metaphor of the Body of Christ in 1
Corinthians 12.

But at the same time, ‘intuition’ is something we talk about
generally, not just in the church. In addition, of course, we often associate
it more with women than men (which may mean that women are more open to
recognising it). We see it as a way of knowing, or a talent. Could it therefore
be that when used in the service of Christ, intuition is a natural talent
consecrated to God? Does that make it some kind of spiritual gift? If so, it
would not be that dissimilar from some other gifts we recognise in the church. ‘Worship
leaders’ in charismatic churches need a natural talent with music, but they
also need a call from God and the ‘anointing’ of the Holy Spirit. Preachers may
possess and develop natural abilities in public speaking and something akin to speech
writing, but there is a divine ‘more’ that turns these things into a spiritual
gift for the Body of Christ. To stay with that example, some preachers don’t
even realise they have the speaking and composing gifts before they are called.

Therefore, I suggest there is a wide range of gifts we need
to recognise, welcome and encourage. Intuition pressed into Christian service
is one of many.

Technorati Tags: , , ,

6

Tomorrow’s Sermon, The Slaughter Of The Innocents

Matthew
2:13-23

Introduction
How did you spend Christmas? I spent Boxing Day and the twenty-seventh a
hundred miles away, helping my eighty-year-old father care for my mother. She
had had a fall ten days before Christmas. I got back to my wife, who had been
running a temperature all week. Our son had gone down ill that evening. The
next night, our daughter did.

However, that was nothing to Christmas Day. My first duty in
the Christmas morning service at Broomfield this year was to announce the
arrangements for a funeral. One of our elderly members had died in the early
hours of the twenty-third. Her husband, one of her daughters and sons-in-law,
and three grandchildren were in the congregation. I can’t imagine they felt
much like being there.

Then you come to our Lectionary Gospel reading for today,
‘the slaughter of the innocents.’ We’d like to pretend it wasn’t in the story.
But in the midst of Christmas joy is this tale of an ancient Saddam Hussein or
Robert Mugabe. It reminds me of the Dunblane massacre in
1996. The Sunday following that horrific crime was Mothering Sunday, and I
remember saying I ought to preach about it in the service, because people would
be talking about it and asking big questions of faith. One of my church
stewards was horrified. He wanted it reduced to a line in the prayers. I’m
ashamed to say I gave in to him.

This story forces us to confront the dark side of Christmas
and of life. It makes us face the very reasons God sent his Son into the world.

But how to preach about it? One of the keys to Matthew’s
interpretation of the story is in the three times he relates it to the
fulfilment of prophecy. The flight into Egypt is to fulfil the words of Hosea,
‘Out of Egypt I called my son’ (verse 15). The weeping of mothers for their
infant sons is connected to Jeremiah’s words (verses 17-18). And Jesus’
upbringing in Nazareth is said to be linked to prophecy (verse 23).

Yet Hosea, Jeremiah and the Nazarene prophecy (which
probably relates to Isaiah) would not have had these meanings in mind when they
first preached them. However, Matthew sees a deeper meaning in their words,
which can only be seen in the light of Christ’s coming. With that in mind, I
want to explore this troubling story, using the fulfilment of prophecy in
Christ as a way into some meaning.

1. Hosea
The first prophecy Matthew quotes is in verse 15, and comes from Hosea 11:1:
‘Out of Egypt I called my son.’ But he puts it in a strange place in the story.
At this point Jesus hasn’t come out of Egypt – he’s just gone there. Why make
this association with the Exodus?

I believe the answer is because Matthew is telling us he
sees several parallels between the experience of Jesus and that of Moses and
the Israelites. Jesus is having a Moses experience. There are many echoes of
Moses here. Both are rescued from a ruler intent on murdering infants. In both
cases, their deliverance is to some extent based on the actions of parents.
Jesus returns once Herod is dead, and Moses returned once Pharaoh had died.
Moses led his people to deliverance from slavery to the Egyptians; Jesus was so
named, because he would save his people from their sins.

And Jesus is the fulfilment of Israel’s story. When Hosea
originally said, ‘Out of Egypt I called my son,’ he meant Israel by ‘my son’.
Israel was called the son of God in the Old Testament. Jesus enters Israel’s
sufferings and victories. But unlike her, he will be fully obedient to the
Father’s will. He will therefore properly deserve the title ‘son of God’, on
grounds of that obedience as well as his conception.

What do I learn from all of this? I learn that Jesus is the
fulfilment of the Father’s plans. He is the climax of all God has done (and is
doing) in history. If you want the summit of the mountain, look at Jesus. We
see everything in the light of him. Even the bad stuff, like a cruel ruler
sending the death squads to take out toddlers, and the need to escape – look to
Jesus. Because Jesus is a threat to the unjust rulers of this world. They are
uncomfortable and frightened by him. They will lash out. But Jesus will win.
Let’s remember that next time we turn on the news and see atrocities, whether
it is

2. Jeremiah
Now we get closer to the pain of the story. We read of the slaughter. Scholars
reckon that given the likely population of Bethlehem in those days, Herod’s
henchmen probably murdered about twenty young boys. It’s entirely consistent
with Herod’s character: he had his wife and three of his sons killed, because
he felt threatened. However, by his standards, the death of only twenty boys
was small fry. That’s probably why the historians of his day don’t record the
incident. Nevertheless, that is twenty lives cut short, without flourishing and
fulfilling their potential. It is twenty families plunged into unimaginable
grief.

And in this context, Matthew quotes Jeremiah 31:15, where
Rachel is imagined weeping for those being taken into exile by the Babylonian
forces. It is a time of heartbreak, desperation and loss of hope from Israel’s
history. How the mothers of Bethlehem must have felt like that. No wonder
Matthew alights on this text about the weeping and wailing without consolation
in Ramah.

Coming to this story with our ears, we have questions about
why a God of love would allow this, especially to ‘innocent’ children. Alternatively,
we think of Christian testimonies where somebody explains how God delivered them
from a terrible tragedy. There was one
in last Thursday’s Essex Chronicle, about a man who survived the 9/11
attacks. Thankfully, he didn’t claim that he survived because of his faith and
others died because they didn’t share his faith. He simply said it made him
realise how important it was in life to have God, family and friends. I’m sure
he knew that other Christians perished on that terrible day.

So what is Matthew telling us? I think it might be something
like this. The scripture from Jeremiah 31 about the wailing of the exile is one
dark moment set in two chapters (30 and 31) that have traditionally been called
‘The Book of Consolation’ in Jeremiah. They are the short-term darkness in the
middle of long-term hope, just as the slaughter of the innocents occurs within
the joy of the nativity story. Moreover, although God delivers Jesus here, he
will not always be safe from harm. He will die a terrible death as an innocent
man on the cross.

Matthew, then, doesn’t tell us of a God who suddenly makes
everything right. He tells us of a God who works for good in the long term. He
tells us of a God who enters human suffering in order to redeem creation. He is
beginning a story that will embrace affliction but not end there. It will end
with resurrection and the command for the disciples of Jesus to preach this
good news. Our story today is part of a larger story: one of crib, cross and
empty tomb. And it is that story which gives hope and purpose to all who embrace
the central character, Jesus. If there were a deliverance from exile for the
people of Judah, there is a greater deliverance for humankind and even creation
brought by him.

3. Isaiah?
The last quotation is the difficult one. Difficult to identify, that is.
Matthew says that Jesus’ upbringing in Nazareth fulfils the word, ‘He will be
called a Nazorean’ (verse 23). The problem is this: there is no such verse in
the Old Testament. Even Matthew sounds a little coy. He doesn’t say it is the
word of a particular prophet, in the way he names Jeremiah. Nor does he say,
‘what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet’, as he does when he
introduces the citation from Hosea. He says instead, ‘what had been spoken
through the prophets’, a rather general statement.

There are two popular theories here. One is that Matthew
thinks Jesus will be an Old Testament Nazirite. However, Jesus never keeps
Nazirite vows, such as refusing to touch alcohol or a dead body. So that’s
unlikely.

The better theory is that Jesus will be a neser, the Hebrew word for ‘branch’,
which is used in a prophecy of the Messiah in Isaiah 11:1. If that is the case,
then Matthew gives us a pun on Nazareth to say that this vulnerable infant who
escaped the clutches of Herod the Great is the one in whom ‘the hopes and fears
of all the years are met’.

But here’s the thing. He is Messiah. However, he is Messiah
from an unpromising, obscure northern town. He isn’t from Jerusalem, the
metropolis. God works his salvation from the margins. He doesn’t go for the
bright lights, the power, the flash and all that so routinely impresses our
society. He starts not at the centre, but at the edges. He begins not in
Herod’s palace but a manger in Bethlehem. His favour falls on an obscure
carpenter and his teenage bride, not princes and celebrities.

It isn’t what a modern-day publicist like Max Clifford would
advocate at all. Yet it is from this place of weakness, not human power, that
the climax of God’s great plan is set into motion. ‘Can anything good come out
of Nazareth?’ Absolutely. Nazareth, in Galilee – ‘Galilee of the Gentiles’ –
will be the location. From here, God’s salvation will reach not only his chosen
people but also the Gentiles, the entire world.

Therefore, if you feel like you’re not in the limelight and
not earning the reputation you’d like in this world, rejoice! You are just the kind
of person God loves to work with! If you think Coggeshall is a small,
out-of-the-way backwater village drowned by Colchester, Chelmsford and worst of
all, London, be happy! This is the very sort of location where God sets up camp
and gets to work with his beautiful plans of grace. It’s what he did in the
sending of his Son to set down roots in Nazareth, in Galilee of the Gentiles. Thrill
to the ways of God, instead of being in thrall to the ways of the world.

Conclusion
Let’s summarise and then ponder what we’re going to do about all this. Firstly,
I suggested that Jesus is the fulfilment of the Father’s plans, and is a threat
to the tyrants of the world. Secondly, I offered the thought that God’s work in
Jesus shows how he is at work long term even in the suffering of the world, to
bring long-term resurrection hope. Finally, I argued that God places Jesus his
Messiah in what the world would consider an unlikely, unworthy locality to
begin the revolution of his kingdom, and that is cause for joy.

Frankly, it’s all a reason for celebration, isn’t it? But it’s
also a reason for something else. Three times in the first two chapters of Matthew,
including twice in our reading today, an angel of the Lord appears in a dream
to Joseph. Joseph’s reaction is consistent. When he hears the word of the Lord,
he obeys.

So what have you heard today? Is it a voice of challenge –
that Jesus, the fulfilment of the Father’s plans, makes evil powerful people
scared, and that he calls his followers to share in his ways? Is it a voice of
hope and comfort (for yourself or others), that God in Christ is at work even
in the suffering of the world to bring hope? Is it a word of encouragement
(again, for yourself or others) that just as God placed his Messiah in a little
known town, so he still enjoys using people on the margins for his sovereign
will?

Whatever kind of word we have heard today, will we – like Joseph
– obey?

Technorati Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

3

Create a website or blog at WordPress.com

Up ↑