Last night I said I thought the carol service sermon would be posted in a couple of days. Well I don’t know what happened, but here it is. I had some rough notes a day or two ago and this afternoon it all seemed to flow.

In the meantime I continue my slow, steady recovery from the virus (not as fast as I’d like – I thought I’d be out at an interesting meeting tonight but my legs said ‘no’). However this sermon is for the annual ecumenical village carol service in Broomfield and I shall not have my Anglican vicar colleague with me. He suffered a heart attack yesterday and we are waiting and praying for news of his condition.

Matthew
2:1-12

Introduction
A week before Christmas last year my wife saw a money-making
idea for this Christmas. She noticed that Woolworth’s
were selling off very cheaply all the nativity costumes they had failed to sell
in time for school and church nativity plays. Items previously around £10-15
were being sold off at 3 for £10. She bought nine, put them aside, and then at
the end of last month began auctioning them on eBay.
All but one of them sold, and for anything between £5 and £20.

One costume didn’t sell, and two or three had to be put on
the site twice before finding buyers. One of the harder costumes to sell was
that for one of the ‘wise men’ (or ‘magi’ as I prefer to call them). Shepherds
and Mary were far more popular.

I don’t know whether shepherds are that bit easier for us to
imagine, for the magi were certainly strange, mysterious characters. But tonight
I want to rehabilitate the magi. Although these curious characters seem very
remote from us, I want to suggest we might find some things in common with them
as they made their journey. Like them, we can be on a spiritual journey of
discovery, even if ours does not involve geography. Let me offer you three
descriptions of the magi to show you what I mean.

1. Seekers
Who were the magi? Traditionally, English-speaking people
have called them either ‘kings’ or ‘wise men’. But they were neither. Kings
would not bow down and offer homage to another king as the magi did: they would
be meeting an equal. And they are not regarded in the Gospel as wise men,
either: Matthew later says that God has hidden his wonders from ‘the wise and
the intelligent’ [11:25].

I prefer to see them as seekers after spiritual or mystical
truth. For without doubt they were astrologers. They studied the stars in order
to find meaning and significance in life. Astrology had started in Babylon, and that may
well be where they were from.

And although astrology has changed over the centuries, still
today many people use it to find guidance for their lives. These days it is
joined by many other practices as people seek to make sense of life. Maybe
you’ve felt a disharmony in your house and engaged a Feng Shui consultant to
reorganise your furniture. The disharmony might have been inside of you and you
could have tried an eastern meditation technique or yoga (which is much more
than physical exercise). Business executives can be offered techniques for
success that rest on using psychic powers.

This may be a society where, as Alistair Campbell put it,
‘We don’t do God’, but people are still searching for deep things in life.
There is the need for self-discipline that runs everywhere from the health club
to interests in ancient spiritual wisdom of all sorts and even of the monastic
life. Others are looking for an enthusiastic expression of spiritual things
that seeks to ‘send energy into the future’ or talk with angels. [Loosely adapted from John Drane, Do
Christians Know How To Be Spiritual?, pp
61-70.]

If you are a seeker tonight, welcome! My prayer for you
tonight is that this evening might be a helpful part of your journey, rather
than one of those times when the Christian Church has got in the way and become
part of the problem, rather than part of the answer.

2. Worshippers
When the magi see the star stop at Bethlehem ‘they were overwhelmed with joy’
[verse 10] and when they enter the house they kneel before the young Jesus in
homage and open their treasure-chests [verse 11]. Both these things – the joy
and the kneeling offering their treasures sound like a simple form of worship
to me.

And the hunger for worship hasn’t gone away, even in a ‘We
don’t do God’ society. In a week when we have seen the publication of Lord
Stevens’ report into the death of Princess Diana my mind can’t help but go
back to all those flowers and outpourings of grief, just as we now regularly
see wayside shrines at places where people have been killed in road accidents.

But we worship whatever we give our lives to. It can be
sport, health, money or possessions. Members of this congregation will know
that our next door neighbour worships the shared drive, which he owns. He
doesn’t like to look down his drive on a Sunday night and see our wheelie bin!
All these objects of worship will let us down.

So why do I think Jesus is worthy of the worship the magi
offered him? It’s not just that he is the Son of God, it’s the kind of God he
reveals to us. Leaving the glory of heaven for the smell of the manger; the
riches of heaven for a life of poverty; the power of heaven for a life
committed to serving people and bringing good news to the poor; conquering sin
by willingly dying for us; offering new life as he is raised from the dead.

And because Jesus is like this I believe his personality and
his actions show that he is trustworthy. You may have got burned in life wholly
giving yourself over to someone who then hurt you or let you down badly. May I
commend Jesus as being different from that?

Coming to the feet of Jesus won’t mean you’ve got all the
answers and it won’t always remove discomfort from life. But it is the place
where you know where you’ve fitted in to life as it was meant to be. And so
finding Jesus leads to the same joy that the magi had when they saw the star
indicating the climax of their journey.

But this worship will be costly. If Jesus is who I said he
is, then he is worth more than singing the odd hymn on a Sunday (and some of
those hymns are pretty odd!) or saying the odd prayer when we are in trouble.
He’s worth us opening up our treasures and offering them to him. We say
something like this, ‘Jesus, if you are what the Gospels show you to be, then
here is my life – all that I am and all that I have. I dedicate it all to you.’

In other words, never mind the beauty adverts for L’Oreal
that are paradoxically ugly – ‘Because I’m worth it’ and all that – seeking
turns to worshipping when we realise it’s ‘Because Jesus is worth it.’

3. Travellers
The final sentence about the magi is this, and then they
disappear into the mists of history:

And having been warned in a dream not
to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road.
[verse 12]

They seek and they worship. You would think they had
‘arrived’. In a sense they had, but in another sense no, they were still
travellers, still on a journey both spiritual and geographical.

Things have changed drastically. Having met Jesus they now
hear divine guidance in a dream, not astrology, and their lives are being
directed with a clear certainty. But again, it’s not the end, it’s only the end
of the beginning.

Let me put it in terms of popular music. In 1969 The Carpenters sang ‘We’ve
Only Just Begun’. It was a wedding song, and here
is a flavour of the lyrics:

We’ve only just begun to live
White lace and promises
A kiss for luck and we’re on our way
We’ve only just begun

Before the rising sun we fly
So many roads to choose
We start our walking
And learn to run
And yes! We’ve only just begun

Sharing horizons that are new to us
Watching the signs along the way
Talking it over just the two of us
Working together day to day, together

And when the evening comes we smile
So much of life ahead
We’ll find a place where there’s room to grow
And yes! We’ve only just begun.

[Paul Williams/Roger Nichols; Copyright
© Irving Music, BMI]

A wedding can feel like an ending, but it is only the ending
of months of preparation. So too finding Jesus is not an ending but only the
end of the beginning.

Or put it another way in a vastly different style. Let’s go
from the Carpenters to U2. you may know they
mostly come from a Christian background, and so when in 1987 they released the
song ‘I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For’ it was quite a shock to many
Christians. And the reason was found in the lyrics to the final verse:

I believe in the kingdom come

Then all the colours will bleed into
one

But yes I’m still running

You broke the bonds

You loosed the chains

You carried the cross

And my shame

And my shame

You know I believe it

But I still haven’t found what I’m
looking for

But I still haven’t found what I’m
looking for

[Bono; Copyright © Blue Mountain Music
1987]

I now believe Bono was right. Even finding Jesus leaves you
on a spiritual journey of restlessness for the remainder of your life on this
planet. Just as the magi ‘left for their own country’ so we travel in the faith
and company of Christ, once we meet him.

And what might that mean? Well, here’s a bit of speculation.
Let me take you back to my earlier comment that astrology began in Babylon. It’s quite
likely the magi came from Babylon.
Where is Babylon
today? Modern-day Iraq.
And we know there has been a Christian community in Iraq since the first century AD.
(Today it is in terrible peril.)

I don’t know whether the magi had any hand in forming that
community, but let me at least say this: to enter onto a lifetime of travelling
in the company of Jesus is to open yourself up to all sorts of possible
accomplishments. You may become famous, more likely you will remain obscure.
But Jesus is waiting for partners who will share the challenge of his kingdom,
bringing good news to people who are materially poor, medically poor and
spiritually poor. It just requires that you’re willing to travel with him
throughout life. Are you up for the challenge?

Technorati Tags: carol+service, sermon, Broomfield, Woolworth’s, eBay, magi, nativity, spiritual+journey, astrology, Babylon, Feng+Shui, eastern+meditation, yoga, Alistair+Campbell, John+Drane, worship, Bethlehem, Lord+Stevens, Princess+Diana, L’Oreal, Carpenters, We’ve+Only+Just+Begun, U2, I+Still+Haven’t+Found+What+I’m+Looking+For, Paul+Williams, Roger+Nichols, Bono, Iraq

You may have noticed that I haven’t been posting very often on the blog in the last few weeks. At first it was pressure of pastoral work. In the last week or so it has been an acute viral infection that has included fierce headaches. In fact I didn’t preach last Sunday’s sermon, despite trying to do it sponsored by Lem-Sip!

Because of that (although I am on the up now) I cancelled a number of diary appointments this week and one bonus for me is that tonight I have managed to write Sunday morning’s ‘ordinary service’ sermon. The evening carol service sermon (which will be on the Magi) should follow in a couple of days’ time. So here goes:

John 1:6-8, 19-28 (Yes, Lectionary fans, I know: I mistakenly looked up the wrong column and this is last year’s Gospel reading for Advent 3 but it was too late to change track.)

Introduction

An evangelist and a pastor took a holiday together to go bear hunting in Canada. One evening the pastor was sitting in their log cabin when he heard cries for help. Looking out of the window he saw the evangelist rushing towards the hut, hotly pursued by a huge grizzly bear. The pastor jumped up to open the door to let his friend in but, at the last minute, the evangelist side-stepped the door while the grizzly bear plunged on in. as the evangelist pulled the door shut from the outside, he yelled, ‘You deal with that one – I’ll go and get some more!’

[Stephen Gaukroger and Nick Mercer, Double Cream, p 73.]

What image comes into your mind when you hear about evangelists or evangelism? Something scary? Maybe not to do with inflicting grizzly bears on others, but perhaps emotional messages and appeals, knocking on the doors of total strangers, or fraudulent types embezzling money out of naïve followers whilst conducting sexual liaisons with people to whom they are not married. Evangelists don’t have a good press, inside or outside the church, even though these are stereotypes of a minority.

Now if I told you I thought John the Baptist was a model evangelist you still might feel apprehensive. All that wilderness living and the diet of locusts and honey makes him sound like he’s been caught in a series of ‘I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here’. And then there is the fierce preaching. No thank you, I’d rather not have him as an example, is the reaction I imagine you having. Well, OK, just a pot of honey.

But indulge me for a few minutes this morning. John is an evangelist, because his entire intention is to point them to Jesus. And if you give me some time, I hope I can show that his example – whilst nevertheless being challenging – might also be an encouraging model for our call to share our faith in Jesus. Here are three models I see in the reading.

1. Witness
Witness – now there’s a word from the courtroom. And sometimes we feel like we’re on trial when talking about our faith. But let me give you a slightly different slant.

Some years ago when many of the bishops being appointed to office in the Church of England seemed to be men of rather sceptical faith, a lay member of the General Synod proposed a motion asking that all future appointees be men who clearly believed in the evidence of the Bible. She was roundly snorted on by various clergy and bishops, notably the Archbishop of York at the time who said that the New Testament was not about evidence, it was about witness.

Well, I couldn’t resist the challenge. I wrote a short letter to the Church Of England Newspaper in which I said something like this:

Dear Sir,

So the Archbishop of York thinks the New Testament is witness, not evidence. That’s funny: I thought witnesses gave evidence.

John the Baptist is a witness, and his witness points to Jesus:

There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light.
[verses 6-8]

John as witness says, ‘Here is the light: his name is Jesus. Believe in him.’ In other words, John simply speaks of Jesus. And this is the heart of our witness, too. It is simply to speak of what we know about Jesus and pray that the Holy Spirit will use that to draw people to Christ.

Put it another way, it is just a case of telling our story of Jesus in our lives. Think of the things we know Jesus has done in us and for us. Think of how we first came to know him. Think of what he has been up to recently. All these things constitute our witness.

But some of us face a problem at this point. We say, ‘I don’t have anything special or exciting to recount, I’m just an ordinary Christian who hasn’t had a colourful life. It won’t make for a compelling story.’

And of course much of this will be because we know the culture of the spectacular testimony: the person converted from a life of drugs and crime; the wealthy person who thought money was the answer to everything until encountering Christ; the celebrity who discovers that fame is not enough. Only a few days ago I was at a meeting where I heard a most moving testimony of someone who wrecked his family and his career in the city through alcoholism and became homeless, but who met Christ on a Salvation Army rehab course. The man was not arrogant and was careful to say that even now, many years later, he is still a recovering alcoholic.

If we feel that our witness is insignificant or even worthless when put alongside these exciting stories, then I need to say one thing: it is not the drama of the story that matters but the honesty. The stories that become page-turning paperbacks are helpful for many people (so long as they are not simply seduced by worldly glamour). But many others need to hear that this Jesus thing works in the ordinary life of someone like them. So tell your story – even the bits with the struggles, don’t airbrush them out. And pray that the Holy Spirit will make your witness into evidence for your conversation partners.

2. Voice
Go to a party or social gathering or some other event where you meet strangers and how does the typical conversation go? The introduction tends to include name, where you come from, family status and occupation. It might also include why you are at this place. People want to know who you are. Listen, then, to the religious delegation from Jerusalem that is sent to quiz John:

This is the testimony given by John when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, ‘Who are you?’ He confessed and did not deny it, but confessed, ‘I am not the Messiah.’ And they asked him, ‘What then? Are you Elijah?’ He said, ‘I am not.’ ‘Are you the prophet?’ He answered, ‘No.’ Then they said to him, ‘Who are you? Let us have an answer for those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?’ He said,
‘I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness,
“Make straight the way of the Lord” ’,
as the prophet Isaiah said.
[verses 19-23]

John doesn’t play the game. ‘Never mind me, I’m no big shot. I’m just a voice. And I’m calling you to get ready for the Lord.’

He was a voice, and we are voices too: voices given over to singing his praises.

But what we sing isn’t always a song that the world wants to hear, especially if the lyrics are, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord’. That could be uncomfortable. That means all that life-changing, repentance stuff, doesn’t it? Who wants to hear that? And – who wants to hear a song like that from yet more hypocritical Christians, who are saying one thing in public and doing something else in private? They’re all the same, aren’t they?

So let me suggest that the song is not merely voiced by our lips, but by our hands and feet, too. If our witness is that Jesus has changed us then the ‘voice’ of our lives needs to speak of that change and be the first challenge to people. I am not saying we should be silent about the need to leave sin behind, but I am saying that a consistent life will be an authentic voice. The call to the world to ‘straighten up’ will be more believable from people who are manifestly being straightened out themselves. Not perfect, but on the way.

John the Baptist had two basic reactions to his call for people to make straight the way of the Lord. The first was the vast queue of people who came for his baptism, professing repentance. He called them to ‘bear fruits worthy of repentance’ [Luke 3:8], that is, show their repentance by their new lifestyle. The second response was Herod imprisoning him for telling him his marriage to Herodias was immoral. That led, not to a pool of water but a pool of blood. John’s blood.

Nevertheless authentic Christian evangelism cannot avoid this. Jesus didn’t negotiate with the rich young ruler and say, ‘Come back, it doesn’t matter if you only give a little bit to the poor. Does that sound better?’ We have no mandate to massage the message. The Gospel message is both invitation and challenge. Faithful evangelism holds the two together.

3. Compère
Go back to the late Seventies and early Eighties when I was part of a group of young Christians at my home church. They formed a singing group. Yes, ‘they’, not ‘we’ – have you heard me sing? They called themselves Tapestry (glad I wasn’t in – too twee!) and became very popular for a few years in local church circles.

I have to say I didn’t always handle my exclusion from the gang well. I felt rejected and it showed. But occasionally they involved me. On one occasion in December they put on a big concert at our church. It was packed out and Tapestry had a packed programme of music. I was asked to introduce them at the beginning of the first and second halves of the show.

The next morning was the Third Sunday of Advent and our superintendent minister preached on John the Baptist. He hadn’t been there the night before but he said that he regarded John the Baptist as a compère for Jesus. The rôle of the compère is to introduce the main attraction and then get out of the way. You can imagine how it hit me after the previous evening when my job had been that of compère: I was to introduce Tapestry and get out of the way.

And my superintendent minister was right about John. Listen to verses 24 to 28 again:

Now they had been sent from the Pharisees. They asked him, ‘Why then are you baptizing if you are neither the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the prophet?’ John answered them, ‘I baptize with water. Among you stands one whom you do not know, the one who is coming after me; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandal.’ This took place in Bethany across the Jordan where John was baptizing.

When I talked about evangelism as ‘witness’ I said that our witness was the story of Jesus in our lives. And the emphasis is on Jesus, not us. We’re not here to big up anybody but Jesus.  To whom or what do we want to draw attention? Ourselves? Our church or religious club? Neither will do: the focus has to be Jesus. He is the centre and circumference of our evangelism.

Why? Because it is Jesus who changes people’s lives, not us. It is Jesus who comes in the humility of the Incarnation as the great rescuer. It is Jesus, not us, who has matchless teaching. It is Jesus who overturns the world’s preoccupation with power, wealth and fame with good news for the poor. It is Jesus who dies on a cross to redeem creation and who is raised from the dead to transform history. It’s not about showing how clever I am: that gets in front of Jesus. It’s not primarily about getting someone to join the Methodist Church, because believe me there are many times when the church gets in the way of Jesus, too.

No. it’s about saying something like this. Here is how Jesus has changed my life. I hope you can see the changes. He wants to change you, too. And he has already done and given everything to that end, two thousand years ago. You don’t need any additions to Jesus, no optional extras, no fancy trim. What he has done is completely sufficient.

And that’s why we are compères: because Jesus is more than enough, and because Jesus deserves the applause of his creation. Don’t try to grab any applause for yourself: just regale people with the wonder and beauty of Jesus. And then get out of the way.

Technorati Tags: Lem-Sip, Advent, John+The+Baptist, Stephen+Gaukroger, Nick+Mercer, evangelists, evangelism, I’m+A+Celebrity+Get+Me+Out+Of+Here, witness, testimony, evidence, Church+of+England, Archbishop+of+York, Church+Of+England+Newspaper, Holy+Spirit, voice, wilderness, status, Jesus, repentance, compere

You may have noticed that I haven’t been posting very often on the blog in the last few weeks. At first it was pressure of pastoral work. In the last week or so it has been an acute viral infection that has included fierce headaches. In fact I didn’t preach last Sunday’s sermon, despite trying to do it sponsored by Lem-Sip!

Because of that (although I am on the up now) I cancelled a number of diary appointments this week and one bonus for me is that tonight I have managed to write Sunday morning’s ‘ordinary service’ sermon. The evening carol service sermon (which will be on the Magi) should follow in a couple of days’ time. So here goes:

John 1:6-8, 19-28 (Yes, Lectionary fans, I know: I mistakenly looked up the wrong column and this is last year’s Gospel reading for Advent 3 but it was too late to change track.)

Introduction

An evangelist and a pastor took a holiday together to go bear hunting in Canada. One evening the pastor was sitting in their log cabin when he heard cries for help. Looking out of the window he saw the evangelist rushing towards the hut, hotly pursued by a huge grizzly bear. The pastor jumped up to open the door to let his friend in but, at the last minute, the evangelist side-stepped the door while the grizzly bear plunged on in. as the evangelist pulled the door shut from the outside, he yelled, ‘You deal with that one – I’ll go and get some more!’

[Stephen Gaukroger and Nick Mercer, Double Cream, p 73.]

What image comes into your mind when you hear about evangelists or evangelism? Something scary? Maybe not to do with inflicting grizzly bears on others, but perhaps emotional messages and appeals, knocking on the doors of total strangers, or fraudulent types embezzling money out of naïve followers whilst conducting sexual liaisons with people to whom they are not married. Evangelists don’t have a good press, inside or outside the church, even though these are stereotypes of a minority.

Now if I told you I thought John the Baptist was a model evangelist you still might feel apprehensive. All that wilderness living and the diet of locusts and honey makes him sound like he’s been caught in a series of ‘I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here’. And then there is the fierce preaching. No thank you, I’d rather not have him as an example, is the reaction I imagine you having. Well, OK, just a pot of honey.

But indulge me for a few minutes this morning. John is an evangelist, because his entire intention is to point them to Jesus. And if you give me some time, I hope I can show that his example – whilst nevertheless being challenging – might also be an encouraging model for our call to share our faith in Jesus. Here are three models I see in the reading.

1. Witness
Witness – now there’s a word from the courtroom. And sometimes we feel like we’re on trial when talking about our faith. But let me give you a slightly different slant.

Some years ago when many of the bishops being appointed to office in the Church of England seemed to be men of rather sceptical faith, a lay member of the General Synod proposed a motion asking that all future appointees be men who clearly believed in the evidence of the Bible. She was roundly snorted on by various clergy and bishops, notably the Archbishop of York at the time who said that the New Testament was not about evidence, it was about witness.

Well, I couldn’t resist the challenge. I wrote a short letter to the Church Of England Newspaper in which I said something like this:

Dear Sir,

So the Archbishop of York thinks the New Testament is witness, not evidence. That’s funny: I thought witnesses gave evidence.

John the Baptist is a witness, and his witness points to Jesus:

There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light.
[verses 6-8]

John as witness says, ‘Here is the light: his name is Jesus. Believe in him.’ In other words, John simply speaks of Jesus. And this is the heart of our witness, too. It is simply to speak of what we know about Jesus and pray that the Holy Spirit will use that to draw people to Christ.

Put it another way, it is just a case of telling our story of Jesus in our lives. Think of the things we know Jesus has done in us and for us. Think of how we first came to know him. Think of what he has been up to recently. All these things constitute our witness.

But some of us face a problem at this point. We say, ‘I don’t have anything special or exciting to recount, I’m just an ordinary Christian who hasn’t had a colourful life. It won’t make for a compelling story.’

And of course much of this will be because we know the culture of the spectacular testimony: the person converted from a life of drugs and crime; the wealthy person who thought money was the answer to everything until encountering Christ; the celebrity who discovers that fame is not enough. Only a few days ago I was at a meeting where I heard a most moving testimony of someone who wrecked his family and his career in the city through alcoholism and became homeless, but who met Christ on a Salvation Army rehab course. The man was not arrogant and was careful to say that even now, many years later, he is still a recovering alcoholic.

If we feel that our witness is insignificant or even worthless when put alongside these exciting stories, then I need to say one thing: it is not the drama of the story that matters but the honesty. The stories that become page-turning paperbacks are helpful for many people (so long as they are not simply seduced by worldly glamour). But many others need to hear that this Jesus thing works in the ordinary life of someone like them. So tell your story – even the bits with the struggles, don’t airbrush them out. And pray that the Holy Spirit will make your witness into evidence for your conversation partners.

2. Voice
Go to a party or social gathering or some other event where you meet strangers and how does the typical conversation go? The introduction tends to include name, where you come from, family status and occupation. It might also include why you are at this place. People want to know who you are. Listen, then, to the religious delegation from Jerusalem that is sent to quiz John:

This is the testimony given by John when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, ‘Who are you?’ He confessed and did not deny it, but confessed, ‘I am not the Messiah.’ And they asked him, ‘What then? Are you Elijah?’ He said, ‘I am not.’ ‘Are you the prophet?’ He answered, ‘No.’ Then they said to him, ‘Who are you? Let us have an answer for those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?’ He said,
‘I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness,
“Make straight the way of the Lord” ’,
as the prophet Isaiah said.
[verses 19-23]

John doesn’t play the game. ‘Never mind me, I’m no big shot. I’m just a voice. And I’m calling you to get ready for the Lord.’

He was a voice, and we are voices too: voices given over to singing his praises.

But what we sing isn’t always a song that the world wants to hear, especially if the lyrics are, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord’. That could be uncomfortable. That means all that life-changing, repentance stuff, doesn’t it? Who wants to hear that? And – who wants to hear a song like that from yet more hypocritical Christians, who are saying one thing in public and doing something else in private? They’re all the same, aren’t they?

So let me suggest that the song is not merely voiced by our lips, but by our hands and feet, too. If our witness is that Jesus has changed us then the ‘voice’ of our lives needs to speak of that change and be the first challenge to people. I am not saying we should be silent about the need to leave sin behind, but I am saying that a consistent life will be an authentic voice. The call to the world to ‘straighten up’ will be more believable from people who are manifestly being straightened out themselves. Not perfect, but on the way.

John the Baptist had two basic reactions to his call for people to make straight the way of the Lord. The first was the vast queue of people who came for his baptism, professing repentance. He called them to ‘bear fruits worthy of repentance’ [Luke 3:8], that is, show their repentance by their new lifestyle. The second response was Herod imprisoning him for telling him his marriage to Herodias was immoral. That led, not to a pool of water but a pool of blood. John’s blood.

Nevertheless authentic Christian evangelism cannot avoid this. Jesus didn’t negotiate with the rich young ruler and say, ‘Come back, it doesn’t matter if you only give a little bit to the poor. Does that sound better?’ We have no mandate to massage the message. The Gospel message is both invitation and challenge. Faithful evangelism holds the two together.

3. Compère
Go back to the late Seventies and early Eighties when I was part of a group of young Christians at my home church. They formed a singing group. Yes, ‘they’, not ‘we’ – have you heard me sing? They called themselves Tapestry (glad I wasn’t in – too twee!) and became very popular for a few years in local church circles.

I have to say I didn’t always handle my exclusion from the gang well. I felt rejected and it showed. But occasionally they involved me. On one occasion in December they put on a big concert at our church. It was packed out and Tapestry had a packed programme of music. I was asked to introduce them at the beginning of the first and second halves of the show.

The next morning was the Third Sunday of Advent and our superintendent minister preached on John the Baptist. He hadn’t been there the night before but he said that he regarded John the Baptist as a compère for Jesus. The rôle of the compère is to introduce the main attraction and then get out of the way. You can imagine how it hit me after the previous evening when my job had been that of compère: I was to introduce Tapestry and get out of the way.

And my superintendent minister was right about John. Listen to verses 24 to 28 again:

Now they had been sent from the Pharisees. They asked him, ‘Why then are you baptizing if you are neither the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the prophet?’ John answered them, ‘I baptize with water. Among you stands one whom you do not know, the one who is coming after me; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandal.’ This took place in Bethany across the Jordan where John was baptizing.

When I talked about evangelism as ‘witness’ I said that our witness was the story of Jesus in our lives. And the emphasis is on Jesus, not us. We’re not here to big up anybody but Jesus.  To whom or what do we want to draw attention? Ourselves? Our church or religious club? Neither will do: the focus has to be Jesus. He is the centre and circumference of our evangelism.

Why? Because it is Jesus who changes people’s lives, not us. It is Jesus who comes in the humility of the Incarnation as the great rescuer. It is Jesus, not us, who has matchless teaching. It is Jesus who overturns the world’s preoccupation with power, wealth and fame with good news for the poor. It is Jesus who dies on a cross to redeem creation and who is raised from the dead to transform history. It’s not about showing how clever I am: that gets in front of Jesus. It’s not primarily about getting someone to join the Methodist Church, because believe me there are many times when the church gets in the way of Jesus, too.

No. it’s about saying something like this. Here is how Jesus has changed my life. I hope you can see the changes. He wants to change you, too. And he has already done and given everything to that end, two thousand years ago. You don’t need any additions to Jesus, no optional extras, no fancy trim. What he has done is completely sufficient.

And that’s why we are compères: because Jesus is more than enough, and because Jesus deserves the applause of his creation. Don’t try to grab any applause for yourself: just regale people with the wonder and beauty of Jesus. And then get out of the way.

Technorati Tags: Lem-Sip, Advent, John+The+Baptist, Stephen+Gaukroger, Nick+Mercer, evangelists, evangelism, I’m+A+Celebrity+Get+Me+Out+Of+Here, witness, testimony, evidence, Church+of+England, Archbishop+of+York, Church+Of+England+Newspaper, Holy+Spirit, voice, wilderness, status, Jesus, repentance, compere

Luke 3:1-6

Introduction
Look outside and what do you see? The early signs of
building expansion by the Catholic community here? Housing in one of the
fastest-growing parts of Chelmsford?
Cars? Bored local youths loitering with vague intent?

Let me tell you what I see. I see a wilderness. And when I
look out at Broomfield
I see a wilderness there. I see another one at Hatfield Peverel. Moving to Chelmsford has been a
wilderness experience for me. I often feel out of step with the churches I
serve: here I am rather more conservative and low church; at Broomfield and Hatfield Peverel I am rather
more contemporary in the expression of my faith than many church members! Yet
God clearly led us here and so I serve as faithfully as I know how.

I wonder whether any of you are in a ‘wilderness’. Work,
family, church and many other aspects of our lives can feel like a desert
sometimes. At its most extreme some of the spiritual giants have
referred to the ‘dark
night of the soul’. In the dark night of the soul, prayer as you know it
becomes impossible, but in the long run it is a blessing in disguise as God
leads you through to new forms of prayer.

And the wilderness is a blessing in disguise, too. As the
hot sun beats down and as you struggle for water to quench your parched soul,
God is using the wilderness for good. And so we turn to John the Baptist’s
wilderness ministry in preparation for the coming Messiah. What is special
about the wilderness for our spiritual life? Two things strike me, and I hope
they help you, too.

1. The Word In The
Wilderness
 The word of God comes
upon John (exactly how we don’t know) in the wilderness (verse 2) and he then
proclaims that word in the wilderness (verse 4, adapting Isaiah’s context).
What? In this place? This barren desert? Yes: here is where God speaks his word
and his followers learn to recognise it and to share it with others.

How can this be so? The wilderness is the place where God
strips us of all the accoutrements that weigh us down. It is a place where we
cannot take anything other than that which is necessary for life. It is not
somewhere that we can become obsessed with our luxuries. We are brought into
stark encounter with God. And with nothing else to pamper us, he gets our
attention.

It might be the sort of thing that can happen to us when we
deliberately choose to go on a silent retreat. The silence can be a wilderness
– it is utterly frightening to many people today. But in that silence God does
not allow us the luxury of other words even getting in the way. We can feel
naked and exposed before him, and wonder whether we can survive the ordeal. Yet
the stripping can be for new clothing, the clothing of Christ.

For many of us, though, the wilderness experience is not one
we seek for noble spiritual reasons. It is one that seeks us out and catches us
unawares. Redundancy, divorce or other crises make us career off the road we
were on. We are unsettled and in shock.

A spiritual writer whom I greatly admire, Ken Gire, tells of one such
wilderness experience in his book ‘Windows
Of The Soul’. He graduated with a master’s degree in Theology, written on
the theme of the wilderness in the Old and New Testaments. He began as a
pastor, but packed that in after two years, because the writing bug got hold of
him. So he decided to become a full-time writer. And that was when the problems
began. For two years he wrote, but no-one would buy his work. He and his family
had to sell their house and some furniture to make ends meet. Sometimes he
worked hanging wallpaper just to earn a crust for his wife and children. All he
experienced of God was his absence:

Where was God in all this? Why wasn’t
He helping me? I needed His help, wanted His help, asked for His help. Didn’t
He hear the words I prayed, see the tears I cried, understand the confusion I
felt? Didn’t He care?
[p 101]

A turning point came when a stray mother cat and her three
kittens sought refuge under the pier-and-beam foundation of the house where
they were living. The Gires left food and milk out for them every night, which
the cats approached with fear and trepidation. Then one day they caught one of
the kittens in a cardboard box and brought it indoors, so that it could
experience warmth and comfort. But the kitten went motionless. Then it arched
its back and hissed. It scratched when Gire tried to hold it and feed it.

And then it struck him. He was that kitten. Scared stiff one
moment, spitting mad the next – towards God. All God wanted to do was hold him
safe. Yet he ‘wanted the security of a job, not the security of His arms’ [p
103]. Later he concluded:

When I first listened to the call of
God to write, little did I realize it was a call to the wilderness. But it was
there, not seminary, that God prepared me to be a writer. The wilderness was a
place of pain, of humiliation, of uncertainty, of loneliness and desperation.
All of which were necessary for me to experience if I was to be the writer I
needed to be, wanted to be, prayed to be. How could I know the feelings of the
desperate if I had not been desperate myself? How could I know the feelings of
the poor if I had not been poor myself? How could I know the feelings of the
confused if I had not been confused myself? Or depressed myself? Or abandoned?
[p 104]

God speaks through the stark and painful experiences of the
wilderness and shapes us into the people he wants us to be. My most similar
experience occurred in 1987. Three times in the summer of 1983 my left lung had
collapsed. I should have had surgery on the third occasion but the consultant
was on holiday. I then went three and a half years, to January 1987, before it
recurred. I was at theological college
and had just returned from an evening of humping around heavy equipment from
the college radio studio and was playing table tennis when I felt a familiar
pain. I knew what it was, but went to bed in the hope that I would wake up
without it. I didn’t. I ended up at Casualty
the next morning. They said I would almost certainly need surgery now. I
returned to college, knowing that a friend of mine’s father was visiting that
day. This father had a renowned healing ministry. But by the time I returned
this man had gone. On the Monday the surgery was confirmed, and by Wednesday I
was in Frenchay
Hospital, being readied for an operation the next day.

Why had I missed the visit of my friend’s father with the
healing ministry? I was as upset about that as anything else. Only later as my
life took further shape was I to realise that my experience of major surgery
with eleven days in hospital and more than a month’s convalescence (three
months before I was truly fit) was my wilderness experience for the sake of
others. So often that time in my life is before me when I visit people in
hospital as a minister. I have at least some idea of what I think is helpful
and what isn’t when you are in a hospital bed. It was God’s silent word of
preparation, speaking through the pain of a wilderness experience. The
wilderness is a place to hear the word of God, but that word may come in ways
quite unexpected that we may even start to know God in a new way. As Ken Gire
puts it:

The God who now held me in the clutches
of His hand was so foreign to the God I had once held in mine. Was it His face
I was scratching at, His hand I was biting?
[p 103]

2. A Way Through The Wilderness
The Gospel writers see John the Baptist as fulfilling the
prophecy of Isaiah 40 in a new way. The text probably originally spoke to
exiled Judeans in Babylon, and encouraged them
to believe that the highway of God for them would lead through the wilderness
back from Babylon to Jerusalem. This is the royal highway. God has
not exempted himself from the wilderness, and his people do not have a get-out
clause, either. And even though the Gospel writers change the emphasis to the
voice in the wilderness from the original ‘In the wilderness prepare the way of
the Lord’, nevertheless that pathway can only be one that comes through the
desert to the final destination.

But the highway of the Lord needs some work:

“Prepare the way of the Lord,
   make his paths straight.
⁵Every valley shall be filled,
   and every mountain and hill shall be made low,
and the crooked shall be made straight,
   and the rough ways made smooth;
⁶and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.”
[verses 4b-6]

Paths need to be straightened, the lows of valleys need to
be brought up to road level, the mountains need to be brought down, we don’t
want crooked paths but straight ones and the rough roads need to be smoothed.
Quite a feat of civil engineering is in view here!

During the three years I trained for the ministry in Manchester the
authorities were putting back a tram
system. One friend of mine commented waggishly, ‘Manchester will be a nice place when they
finish it.’ Similarly, before coming here, when we were in Kent, it was
nothing unusual to travel the A2 up to the M25. Always there were roadworks
somewhere, usually due to the work associated with the Channel Tunnel Rail Link.

Things are not as they should be. Preparing any highway
requires huge effort and the willingness to put up with much disruption.
Preparing God’s highway in the wilderness requires some long-term corrective
work. For there is no doubt how John the Baptist saw the call to prepare a
straight, level, smooth highway for the Lord in the wilderness, and that was
repentance. To be in the wilderness can be to discover where our paths are not
straight or level, and where we are crooked and rough. It may take a severe
experience such as a spiritual wilderness to expose these things and see our
need for a certain kind of civil engineering in our lives.

Here in the wilderness, on the spiritual wild frontier, far
from the comfortable suburbia where we anaesthetise anything uncomfortable, we
discover the ways in which our lives need to be straightened out to make them a
fit highway for our God. The stripping away that happens in the wilderness
means we have nothing left with which to hide or mask our sins. The desert sun
shines brightly on them and we cannot ignore them or explain them away. We feel
trapped and much as we want to justify ourselves in a defensive manner, we know
we can’t get away with it.

In all this we may think that God is being severe, even
cruel to us. Who is this monster consistently pointing out our failings?
Couldn’t we do with a bit of encouragement in the desert? Wouldn’t it be nice
to be built up rather than ripped apart for once? You may feel like God has
your number and he’s out to get you.

But that is never the whole story with the God revealed in
Jesus Christ. Our crookedness is straightened out for positive, holy purposes.
Soon we shall be singing Christmas carols with words such as, ‘And fit us for
heaven to live with thee there.’

The straightening out and
smoothing is to ‘fit us for heaven’. And it is also to fit us for kingdom life
now. It is how we ‘Make way for the king of kings’, not only when he returns
but also because he has already come in the humility of a Bethlehem manger. We are unlikely to enjoy
this straightening out and smoothing but it is for a Gospel purpose. It makes
us people who can proclaim that the king is coming on his highway and be
believable in that proclamation, because there is evidence in our lives of
being conformed – straightened and smoothed – to his character.

Conclusion
The wilderness is an uninviting
place to be, but often it is the only place to be. A man called Howard R Macy
in a book entitled ‘Rhythms
Of The Inner Life’ said this:

The spiritual world … cannot be made
suburban. It is always frontier, and if we would live in it, we must accept and
even rejoice that it remains untamed.

[Gire, p 95]

Technorati Tags: wilderness, John+The+Baptist, dark+night+of+the+soul, Ken+Gire, Windows+Of+The+Soul, Manchester, trams, Channel+Tunnel+Rail+Link, repentance, Howard+R+Macy, Rhythms+Of+The+Inner+Life

Luke 3:1-6

Introduction
Look outside and what do you see? The early signs of
building expansion by the Catholic community here? Housing in one of the
fastest-growing parts of Chelmsford?
Cars? Bored local youths loitering with vague intent?

Let me tell you what I see. I see a wilderness. And when I
look out at Broomfield
I see a wilderness there. I see another one at Hatfield Peverel. Moving to Chelmsford has been a
wilderness experience for me. I often feel out of step with the churches I
serve: here I am rather more conservative and low church; at Broomfield and Hatfield Peverel I am rather
more contemporary in the expression of my faith than many church members! Yet
God clearly led us here and so I serve as faithfully as I know how.

I wonder whether any of you are in a ‘wilderness’. Work,
family, church and many other aspects of our lives can feel like a desert
sometimes. At its most extreme some of the spiritual giants have
referred to the ‘dark
night of the soul’. In the dark night of the soul, prayer as you know it
becomes impossible, but in the long run it is a blessing in disguise as God
leads you through to new forms of prayer.

And the wilderness is a blessing in disguise, too. As the
hot sun beats down and as you struggle for water to quench your parched soul,
God is using the wilderness for good. And so we turn to John the Baptist’s
wilderness ministry in preparation for the coming Messiah. What is special
about the wilderness for our spiritual life? Two things strike me, and I hope
they help you, too.

1. The Word In The
Wilderness
 The word of God comes
upon John (exactly how we don’t know) in the wilderness (verse 2) and he then
proclaims that word in the wilderness (verse 4, adapting Isaiah’s context).
What? In this place? This barren desert? Yes: here is where God speaks his word
and his followers learn to recognise it and to share it with others.

How can this be so? The wilderness is the place where God
strips us of all the accoutrements that weigh us down. It is a place where we
cannot take anything other than that which is necessary for life. It is not
somewhere that we can become obsessed with our luxuries. We are brought into
stark encounter with God. And with nothing else to pamper us, he gets our
attention.

It might be the sort of thing that can happen to us when we
deliberately choose to go on a silent retreat. The silence can be a wilderness
– it is utterly frightening to many people today. But in that silence God does
not allow us the luxury of other words even getting in the way. We can feel
naked and exposed before him, and wonder whether we can survive the ordeal. Yet
the stripping can be for new clothing, the clothing of Christ.

For many of us, though, the wilderness experience is not one
we seek for noble spiritual reasons. It is one that seeks us out and catches us
unawares. Redundancy, divorce or other crises make us career off the road we
were on. We are unsettled and in shock.

A spiritual writer whom I greatly admire, Ken Gire, tells of one such
wilderness experience in his book ‘Windows
Of The Soul’. He graduated with a master’s degree in Theology, written on
the theme of the wilderness in the Old and New Testaments. He began as a
pastor, but packed that in after two years, because the writing bug got hold of
him. So he decided to become a full-time writer. And that was when the problems
began. For two years he wrote, but no-one would buy his work. He and his family
had to sell their house and some furniture to make ends meet. Sometimes he
worked hanging wallpaper just to earn a crust for his wife and children. All he
experienced of God was his absence:

Where was God in all this? Why wasn’t
He helping me? I needed His help, wanted His help, asked for His help. Didn’t
He hear the words I prayed, see the tears I cried, understand the confusion I
felt? Didn’t He care?
[p 101]

A turning point came when a stray mother cat and her three
kittens sought refuge under the pier-and-beam foundation of the house where
they were living. The Gires left food and milk out for them every night, which
the cats approached with fear and trepidation. Then one day they caught one of
the kittens in a cardboard box and brought it indoors, so that it could
experience warmth and comfort. But the kitten went motionless. Then it arched
its back and hissed. It scratched when Gire tried to hold it and feed it.

And then it struck him. He was that kitten. Scared stiff one
moment, spitting mad the next – towards God. All God wanted to do was hold him
safe. Yet he ‘wanted the security of a job, not the security of His arms’ [p
103]. Later he concluded:

When I first listened to the call of
God to write, little did I realize it was a call to the wilderness. But it was
there, not seminary, that God prepared me to be a writer. The wilderness was a
place of pain, of humiliation, of uncertainty, of loneliness and desperation.
All of which were necessary for me to experience if I was to be the writer I
needed to be, wanted to be, prayed to be. How could I know the feelings of the
desperate if I had not been desperate myself? How could I know the feelings of
the poor if I had not been poor myself? How could I know the feelings of the
confused if I had not been confused myself? Or depressed myself? Or abandoned?
[p 104]

God speaks through the stark and painful experiences of the
wilderness and shapes us into the people he wants us to be. My most similar
experience occurred in 1987. Three times in the summer of 1983 my left lung had
collapsed. I should have had surgery on the third occasion but the consultant
was on holiday. I then went three and a half years, to January 1987, before it
recurred. I was at theological college
and had just returned from an evening of humping around heavy equipment from
the college radio studio and was playing table tennis when I felt a familiar
pain. I knew what it was, but went to bed in the hope that I would wake up
without it. I didn’t. I ended up at Casualty
the next morning. They said I would almost certainly need surgery now. I
returned to college, knowing that a friend of mine’s father was visiting that
day. This father had a renowned healing ministry. But by the time I returned
this man had gone. On the Monday the surgery was confirmed, and by Wednesday I
was in Frenchay
Hospital, being readied for an operation the next day.

Why had I missed the visit of my friend’s father with the
healing ministry? I was as upset about that as anything else. Only later as my
life took further shape was I to realise that my experience of major surgery
with eleven days in hospital and more than a month’s convalescence (three
months before I was truly fit) was my wilderness experience for the sake of
others. So often that time in my life is before me when I visit people in
hospital as a minister. I have at least some idea of what I think is helpful
and what isn’t when you are in a hospital bed. It was God’s silent word of
preparation, speaking through the pain of a wilderness experience. The
wilderness is a place to hear the word of God, but that word may come in ways
quite unexpected that we may even start to know God in a new way. As Ken Gire
puts it:

The God who now held me in the clutches
of His hand was so foreign to the God I had once held in mine. Was it His face
I was scratching at, His hand I was biting?
[p 103]

2. A Way Through The Wilderness
The Gospel writers see John the Baptist as fulfilling the
prophecy of Isaiah 40 in a new way. The text probably originally spoke to
exiled Judeans in Babylon, and encouraged them
to believe that the highway of God for them would lead through the wilderness
back from Babylon to Jerusalem. This is the royal highway. God has
not exempted himself from the wilderness, and his people do not have a get-out
clause, either. And even though the Gospel writers change the emphasis to the
voice in the wilderness from the original ‘In the wilderness prepare the way of
the Lord’, nevertheless that pathway can only be one that comes through the
desert to the final destination.

But the highway of the Lord needs some work:

“Prepare the way of the Lord,
   make his paths straight.
⁵Every valley shall be filled,
   and every mountain and hill shall be made low,
and the crooked shall be made straight,
   and the rough ways made smooth;
⁶and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.”
[verses 4b-6]

Paths need to be straightened, the lows of valleys need to
be brought up to road level, the mountains need to be brought down, we don’t
want crooked paths but straight ones and the rough roads need to be smoothed.
Quite a feat of civil engineering is in view here!

During the three years I trained for the ministry in Manchester the
authorities were putting back a tram
system. One friend of mine commented waggishly, ‘Manchester will be a nice place when they
finish it.’ Similarly, before coming here, when we were in Kent, it was
nothing unusual to travel the A2 up to the M25. Always there were roadworks
somewhere, usually due to the work associated with the Channel Tunnel Rail Link.

Things are not as they should be. Preparing any highway
requires huge effort and the willingness to put up with much disruption.
Preparing God’s highway in the wilderness requires some long-term corrective
work. For there is no doubt how John the Baptist saw the call to prepare a
straight, level, smooth highway for the Lord in the wilderness, and that was
repentance. To be in the wilderness can be to discover where our paths are not
straight or level, and where we are crooked and rough. It may take a severe
experience such as a spiritual wilderness to expose these things and see our
need for a certain kind of civil engineering in our lives.

Here in the wilderness, on the spiritual wild frontier, far
from the comfortable suburbia where we anaesthetise anything uncomfortable, we
discover the ways in which our lives need to be straightened out to make them a
fit highway for our God. The stripping away that happens in the wilderness
means we have nothing left with which to hide or mask our sins. The desert sun
shines brightly on them and we cannot ignore them or explain them away. We feel
trapped and much as we want to justify ourselves in a defensive manner, we know
we can’t get away with it.

In all this we may think that God is being severe, even
cruel to us. Who is this monster consistently pointing out our failings?
Couldn’t we do with a bit of encouragement in the desert? Wouldn’t it be nice
to be built up rather than ripped apart for once? You may feel like God has
your number and he’s out to get you.

But that is never the whole story with the God revealed in
Jesus Christ. Our crookedness is straightened out for positive, holy purposes.
Soon we shall be singing Christmas carols with words such as, ‘And fit us for
heaven to live with thee there.’

The straightening out and
smoothing is to ‘fit us for heaven’. And it is also to fit us for kingdom life
now. It is how we ‘Make way for the king of kings’, not only when he returns
but also because he has already come in the humility of a Bethlehem manger. We are unlikely to enjoy
this straightening out and smoothing but it is for a Gospel purpose. It makes
us people who can proclaim that the king is coming on his highway and be
believable in that proclamation, because there is evidence in our lives of
being conformed – straightened and smoothed – to his character.

Conclusion
The wilderness is an uninviting
place to be, but often it is the only place to be. A man called Howard R Macy
in a book entitled ‘Rhythms
Of The Inner Life’ said this:

The spiritual world … cannot be made
suburban. It is always frontier, and if we would live in it, we must accept and
even rejoice that it remains untamed.

[Gire, p 95]

Technorati Tags: wilderness, John+The+Baptist, dark+night+of+the+soul, Ken+Gire, Windows+Of+The+Soul, Manchester, trams, Channel+Tunnel+Rail+Link, repentance, Howard+R+Macy, Rhythms+Of+The+Inner+Life