The Second Sunday of Advent

Here is the transcript of my podcast for the Second Sunday of Advent.

The Second Sunday of Advent

Reading: Luke 3:1-6

Our Gospel reading sounds like it could itself be the beginning of St Luke’s Gospel. It is, in fact, the beginning of the second section of the Gospel. The first section has described the births of both John the Baptist and Jesus and also Jesus’ growth in favour with God and man. We are going to be reading extensively from this first section over the next few weeks!

St Luke’s Gospel is itself going to be the main source of our Gospel reading each week for this coming year, year C in the lectionary. To begin, then, a few words about St Luke’s Gospel.

St Luke’s Gospel is the first volume of a two-volume work. The second volume is the book of Acts. You will sometimes see them both referred to as Luke-Acts, that is, with a hyphen between them to show they are linked. Both volumes are dedicated to someone called ‘Theophilus’, which means ‘friend of God’. We don’t know anything about Theophilus, but he was probably a believer who acted as St Luke’s patron, which is to say that he paid for the volumes to be produced!

If this is the case, then he certainly got his money’s worth[1]. St Luke’s Gospel is the longest of the four Gospels with over 19,000 words in Greek (19,482). Matthew has over 18,000 (18,345); Mark over 11,000 (11,304), and John over 15,000 (15,635). Acts, the second volume has over 18,000 words (18,451) and is slightly longer than St Matthew’s Gospel. This means that St Luke not only wrote the two longest books in the New Testament, he also is the New Testament author who wrote the most. Out of a total of about 138,020 words in Greek, St Luke wrote 27% of them; St Paul 23%; and St John, 20%.

There are those who think, given the way Acts ends, that it may have been St Luke’s intention to write a third volume. I am one of them, but that is a story for another time! Suffice it to say that the length of each of St Luke’s volumes roughly corresponds to the length of a standard size papyrus scroll. The English word, ‘volume’ comes from the Latin word, ‘volumen’, meaning a papyrus scroll. The fact, however, that the Gospel and Acts were on separate scrolls has led to them being read and studied separately and not together as they should be.

In his actual opening to the Gospel, St Luke acknowledges his debt to the others who have written before him. It is worth quoting St Luke’s introduction in full:

‘Since many have undertaken to set down an orderly account of the events that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed on to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word, I too decided, after investigating everything carefully from the very first, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the truth concerning the things about which you have been instructed.’ (Luke 1:1-4)

St Luke’s Gospel has a lot of material in common with both Matthew and Luke. Matthew and Luke have about 20% of their content in common; Luke and Mark, 40%. St Luke says there were ‘many’ others who had written before him, so we don’t where exactly he got the 40% that is unique to him, although that doesn’t stop scholars from speculating!

Who, then, was St Luke?

We don’t know for certain, but from the earliest days most people have thought that it is the Luke who is described as a companion and co-worker of St Paul (Philemon 1:24; Colossians 4:14; 2 Timothy 4:11). In Acts, there are passages where the author writes in the first person suggesting he is part of the events he is describing (Acts 16:10–17; 20:5–15; 21:1–18; 27:1–28:16). Not all agree with this identification, but I see no reason to doubt it. In Colossians 4:14, St Luke is referred to as the Beloved Physician. St John’s Gospel was written by the ‘Beloved Disciple’; St Luke’s Gospel by the ‘Beloved Doctor’!

You will often hear or read that St Luke was a Gentile. This, however, is far less certain than people make it sound. St Luke is certainly concerned with the spread of the Gospel to the Gentiles, but whether he was himself a Gentile is another matter altogether. Jew or Gentile, he is concerned with what happened, with the ‘events that have been fulfilled amongst us’ (Luke 1:1), as he himself puts it in the words he addresses to Theophilus.

Which brings us to our Gospel reading.

St Luke begins this second section of his Gospel with a series of people who are all historical figures. Some of the names you may recognize. Tiberias Caesar was the Roman Emperor from AD 14-37. Tiberias was the adopted son of Caesar Augustus, the great Roman Emperor who was Emperor when Jesus was born. Pontius Pilate everyone has also heard of. He was the ‘Governor of Judea’ from AD 26 -36, a period which covers the whole of Jesus’ ministry.

The role and relationships of the next characters perhaps needs a word of explanation. Rome ruled its conquered territories in a variety of ways. Some parts came under a directly appointed Roman governor. Others were ruled on Rome’s behalf by people who were approved by Rome, but who had greater independence. Herod the Great was one such, and he ruled as King over the whole of Palestine. Herod the Great was still King at the time of Jesus' birth.

After his death in about 4 BC, Herod the Great’s Kingdom was divided between his sister, Salome, and three of his surviving sons.

Salome received an area to rule known as a toparchy, which included the three cities of Yavne, Azotus, and Phasaelis. Herod Antipas was appointed ‘tetrarch’ of Galilee and Perea (‘tetrarch’ means ruler of a fourth) and ruled from 4 BC to AD 39; Philip was appointed tetrarch of the territory to the north-east of the Sea of Galilee and ruled from 4 BC to AD 34; and Archelaus was made ‘ethnarch’ of Samaria, Judea, and Idumea. Archelaus’ title was ‘ethnarch’, which means ‘ruler of a nation’, and he was told he would eventually get the title ‘king’. Archelaus was, however, a disaster, and Rome removed him in AD 6 and brought his territory under direct rule by a ‘prefect’ responsible to the governor of the Roman province of Syria.

Not related to the Herod dynasty, Lysanias was the tetrarch of a small area on the western slopes of Mount Hermon in the north near to Damascus, centred on the city of Abila.

Although under direct Roman rule, Judea, centred on the city of Jerusalem, enjoyed a measure of autonomy, at least in religious matters. Local rule was provided by the high priest who presided over a governing council, the Sanhedrin, which had 71 members.

Annas (or Annanias) was the high priest from AD 6 to about AD 14-15 when he fell out with Rome. His influence continued, however, with the appointment, after a brief spell, of his son-in-law, Caiaphas, as high priest. Caiaphas held office from AD 18 to AD 36. Subsequently, Annas’ five sons were also in turn to become high priest.

Having, then, assembled this cast of historical characters, St Luke writes about the appearance in the wilderness of John the Baptist, whom St Luke describes as the son of Zechariah, who was himself a priest.

All of which is doubtless really interesting, if you are interested in history, which, let’s face it, many of us are not! But by introducing the ministry of John the Baptist, and with it the ministry of Jesus, in this way, St Luke is making a very important theological and spiritual point, and one that we need to take seriously.

Over the next few weeks, we are going to be hearing the story of the birth of Jesus a lot. At our Carol Service, we will hear it read to us in nine lessons. We will also sing of it and hear it sung to us. But it will not just be in church; we will, for example, hear Christmas carols being played in the shops and the malls and many other places besides.

The story of Jesus will have a fairy tale quality to it and that is how many will hear the Christmas story this Christmas - as a fairy story. As a magical and much-loved story certainly, but as a story much like many other stories that are also popular at Christmas, whether that be the Nutcracker, a Christmas Carol, or the Gringe Stole Christmas! Not, that is, as a historical account of something that really happened.

One reason for this is the way we celebrate the story of the birth of Jesus. We don’t celebrate it as the birth of a real person. We have added all sorts of traditions and embellishments to it that only emphasize its fairy-story like nature. In addition to the story of Jesus’ birth, there will be loads of other additions: decorations, cards, Christmas trees, presents, pictures of Father Christmas, and much more, all of which have little to do with the story of Jesus himself.

It’s not helped by how we tell the story in Church itself. We don’t even bother to get our facts right. For example, Jesus wasn’t born in a stable as such. The Wise Men after all, St Matthew tells us, when they found the place where the holy family were staying entered the ‘house’ (Matthew 2:11), which certainly wouldn’t have had a Christmas tree and wouldn’t have been covered in snow. There would not have been shepherds in the fields keeping sheep if it had been snowing. And we don’t know how many wise men there were just that they brought three types of gifts!

The traditional nativity is great fun and the traditions and the way we tell the story all add to its magical character. And we like it because there is so little magic in our lives. Christmas is a time for children especially, we say, but we say that because we don’t think it’s real. The fairy tale elements often blunt the reality of the story and result in us missing its message.

It is because of this that some church people get very negative about it all. In the parish where I served my curacy, my clerical colleague used to get very upset when lots of people turned up for church at Christmas who didn’t normally come to church, and he used to tell them off at some length for not coming during the rest of the year.

The Puritans in the 17th century tried to ban Christmas altogether and, in Scotland, for example, there were churches that, until relatively recently, didn’t celebrate Christmas at all. They saw the way Christmas was generally celebrated as all very pagan. Christmas Day in parts of Scotland was just another day.

Others took, and take, a different approach. You will hear talk at this time of year of putting Christ back into Christmas. The minister of the Church I belonged to before being ordained used to preach about Easter and tell people it was Jesus’ death and not his birth they should be focusing on.

Interestingly, the early Church doesn’t seem to have celebrated the birth of Jesus at all. They saw celebrating someone’s birth as something the pagans did and they wanted no part of it.

Well, as you know, I am not one of those who thinks we shouldn’t celebrate Christmas. I love Christmas, and I love all the traditions associated with it. But I love them not because they are a way of escaping reality into a mythical, fairy-tale world, but because they are a way of celebrating Jesus entering this world and becoming part of the reality of human life.

There is a real challenge to us here as a Church and as believers. We have to be careful not to let the magical take over from the historical and, in the process, silence the message that Jesus came to bring.

But what is the message he came to bring?

When Jesus was just a month old, his parents took him to the Temple in Jerusalem, where it was said of him:

‘This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed …’ (Luke 2:34-35)

If you ask people what the message of Christmas is, many will tell you that it is, ‘peace on earth, goodwill to all people’, which is strange as Jesus himself said:

‘I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed! Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!’ (Luke 12:49-51)

In St Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus says he came to bring not peace but a sword (Matthew 10:34). Mary herself was told that a sword would pierce her own soul too (Luke 2:35).

Yes, the Christmas story is a good news story, and it will have a happy ending, but not for everyone and not without pain, suffering, and death.

On Christmas Night, at Midnight, I will light the Christmas candle; I will read the Christmas Gospel and the famous words, ‘In the beginning was Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God’ (John 1:1). But the amazing thing, St John tells us, is that the ‘Word became flesh and dwelt among us’ (John 1:14).

Unlike the Christmas decorations and traditions, this isn’t an addition to the Christmas story: it is the Christmas story. If it isn’t true, if the baby in the manger isn’t the God who made us and through whom we continue to exist, then there is no Christmas story.

St Peter writes:

‘For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ …’ (2 Peter 1:16)

St Luke tells Theophilus that he is writing so that Theophilus may know the truth concerning the things about which he has been instructed (Luke 1:4).

This is real. It is not a fairy story. It is not a metaphor or a type of parable. It happened. Jesus was born, as St Luke puts it, ‘in the days of King Herod of Judea’ (Luke 1:5). He began his ministry by being baptized by John, the son of Zechariah, to whom the word of God came in the wilderness:

‘In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas …’ (Luke 3:1-2)

We don’t have to be against Christmas as the Puritans were or tell people off as my colleague when I was a curate did, but we do need to guard against telling the story in such a way that makes it seem unreal and irrelevant to people’s lives the rest of the year. It is important that we as a Church this Christmas communicate the reality of the Nativity of our Lord.

St Luke will begin his account of Jesus’ ministry with the visit of Jesus to the synagogue in his hometown of Nazareth. Jesus will quote from the prophet Isaiah:

‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.’ (Luke 4:18-19)

Today, people may not feel poor materially, although there is still plenty of poverty around, but many do feel poor in spirit. Many feel they don’t have the strength and inner resources to go on. They are captive to habits and impulses they can’t control. They feel trapped by unhappy relationships, jobs they hate, or situations they can’t escape. They are blind and unable to see the way out of their depression and despair.

This Christmas, it is to people in these bad news situations that our Lord came. The good news of Jesus is not a fairy story to cheer us up once a year, but a message that can transform our lives all the year round.

We will know we are telling the Christmas story the way it should be told when what we are saying is important to people, when they react to it and divide over it, because that’s what happens when something matters. The story of Jesus is not a story people can remain neutral about or indifferent to. And if they can, it is because we are not telling it in the right way.

But to tell it in the right way, we first need personally, each one of us, ourselves to get with the story. The Christmas story challenges us to have faith in the One that the story is about. To ‘all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God’, St John writes (John 1:12). The Christmas story is a story that still has the power to change lives today.

So, this Christmas, let’s make sure we tell the Christmas story as it is and pray that people will hear it, and that begins with us hearing and responding to it ourselves. The shepherds said to one another after the angels had announced the good news of Christ’s birth to them:

‘Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.’ (Luke 2:15)

This Christmas, may we do the same.

Amen.

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[1] Felix Just (https://catholic-resources.org/Bible/NT-Statistics-Greek.htm)

The Fourth Sunday of Advent

Here is the transcript of my sermon for the Fourth Sunday of Advent.

The Fourth Sunday of Advent

Reading: Luke 1:26-38 

We have reached the Fourth Sunday of Advent. This week, as we prepare for the coming of our Lord, we think of the role of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus.

For some in the Church, Mary’s role is limited to giving birth to Jesus. In fact, the only time they give her any thought at all is at Christmas, and then it is solely to acknowledge the part she played in bringing Jesus into the world. To many of us, however, apart from any other consideration, this simply doesn’t feel right. Surely there is more to her role than that? But if her role is more than that, what is it?

It is very hard for us to think clearly about our Lady’s role because of all the arguments there are in the Church about her and all the different images that people have of her. Indeed, the images we have of her rather than helping us to understand her role only get in the way of it. But if our images of her are wrong, what image should we have?

In thinking, then, about Mary’s role, we need to begin by asking what our images of her are and in what way they are wrong.

There are, of course, many images of the Blessed Virgin Mary. These images are expressed in various ways: in music, in art, and in literature. They lie behind what gets said in Church about her and in devotion to her. I would suggest that four are the most common.

1. The Porcelain Image

The first image that people have of Mary is what I call the ‘Porcelain Image’. You see examples of this image everywhere not least in many of the statues of Mary in church buildings and on sale in places that supply ecclesiastical ornaments and furniture. But it is one that also appears in many paintings of her. In these statues and paintings, Mary is normally western, immaculately presented, and her clothes all perfect. She is completely free from any blemish, her skin smooth, clear, and white. This is not a woman who needs lotions and creams to achieve a flawless complexion!

Models in fashion magazines are often airbrushed or photoshopped to achieve whatever it is that is the editor’s idea of beauty and perfection. This is what this image tries to do with Mary. It projects on to Mary a cultural and essentially male view of feminine beauty. This image is femininity idealized according to a particular understanding of female attractiveness.

2. The Passive Image

Secondly, there is the ‘Passive Image’. This image, which does not exclude the first, and in some ways builds on it, focuses on what is seen as Mary’s submissiveness. In this image, Mary is portrayed as meek, humble, and dutiful. In pictures of her, her eyes are turned down to emphasize her subservience. This is a good girl, not one to argue, someone eager and willing to please. She is modest and demure.

It is the Passive Image of Mary that so upsets feminists today. It leads them to reject Mary as a ‘feminine icon’, and to turn instead to another Mary, Mary Magdalene. In contrast to Mary of Nazareth, Mary of Magdala is seen as sensual, spirited, and independent. She is someone far more in tune with the spirit of our age and more acceptable to it: not only a feminine, but a feminist icon. Regardless, however, of whether they are attracted or repulsed by it, this second image of Mary, the mother of Jesus, expresses the passivity that many believe to be central to her character and role.

3. The Prayerful Image

The third image of Mary, which again does not exclude the other two, focuses on Mary’s spiritual devotion. In this image, depictions of her present her in positions of prayer and of worship. She has her hands clasped together in prayer and she either has her head bowed down reverently or else she is gazing upwards with her eyes turned appealingly to heaven. It is the image of a devout Mary, someone in touch with the divine.

This Prayerful Image is of a Mary who is other-worldly. A Mary who would be at home in the sort of religious community that shuts women off from the world and makes it possible for them to avoid all material worries and distractions. Not for her the worries and concerns of daily life, her mind is set on higher things.

4. The Powerful Image

Fourthly, a somewhat different image of Mary to other three is the ‘Powerful Image’. Taking its inspiration from St John’s vision of the woman clothed with the sun, in chapter 12 of the book of Revelation, this image portrays Mary in dazzling splendour with a crown on her head. She is riding on the clouds or ascending to heaven where she is enthroned as its Queen. In some paintings, all heaven seems to centre on her and on her beauty and power. This is Mary transcendent.

Like the Prayerful Mary, this is a Mary removed from the world, distanced from its sin and temptations. This is the Mary who invites the adoration that protestants are so suspicious of, but who, like a goddess, draws others to her who are seeking comfort and help.

These, then, are four of the most common images of Mary. The ‘Porcelain Mary’, who looks like she might break; the ‘Passive Mary’ who looks like she would always do whatever is asked of her; the ‘Prayerful Mary’ who looks like she should always be in a church; and the ‘Powerful Mary’ who looks like she has now left this world behind her and achieved heavenly glory.

I have absolutely no intention to mock. I accept the sincerity and devotion behind each of these images. And they appeal to churchgoers precisely because there is truth in each one of them.

The porcelain image seeks to capture our Lady’s purity. When the Angel Gabriel tells Mary she will conceive and bear a son, Mary asks the Angel Gabriel, ‘How can this be, since I am a virgin (Luke 1:34)?’ In an age which has so highly sexualized any depiction of women, any talk of virginity beyond puberty is seen by many as de-humanizing. A person’s identity today is believed to lie in asserting a sexual identity not denying it.

This makes our Lady’s virginity both controversial and challenging. Our Lady’s virginity, however, is not simply about sexual purity, but also about her spiritual purity. The Angel Gabriel’s first words to Mary were:

‘Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.’ (Luke 1:28)

Mary begins the Magnificat with the words:

‘My soul magnifies the Lord,
and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour …’ (Luke 1:46-47)

Mary’s purity is rooted first and foremost in the purity of her relationship with the Lord who is with her in a special way and in whom she rejoices.

The passive image seeks to capture our Lady’s obedience. Mary famously responds to the Angel Gabriel’s words to her:

‘Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.’ (Luke 1:38)

Then, when Mary goes to visit her cousin Elizabeth, who has herself conceived miraculously, Elizabeth says to her:

‘And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.’ (Luke 1:45)

Doubtless, as Elizabeth is saying these words praising Mary, Elizabeth is also thinking of her husband, who didn’t believe what was spoken to him by the Lord, and who now can’t speak as a consequence. Mary, however, willingly both believed and accepted the role that God chose her for, and she carried it out faithfully.

The prayerful image seeks to express our Lady’s spirituality. Immediately after the birth of our Lord and the visit of the shepherds, St Luke tells us that Mary ‘treasured all these things and pondered them in her heart (Luke 2:19)’. Twelve years later Mary and Joseph take Jesus with them to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover. On their way back, however, Jesus goes missing, and his parents eventually find him in the Temple with the elders. Jesus returns with them to Nazareth but, St Luke tells us again, that Mary ‘treasured all these things in her heart (Luke 2:51)’.

The last historical mention of Mary in the Bible is in Acts chapter 1 after the ascension. St Luke describes how the disciples return to Jerusalem as Jesus has told them to. St Luke writes:

‘All these were constantly devoting themselves to prayer, together with certain women, including Mary the mother of Jesus, as well as his brothers.’ (Acts 1:14)

The last thing Mary is recorded doing in the Bible is praying!

The powerful image seeks to assert our Lady’s ongoing role for the Church and that her significance for us as believers did not end with her death. Instead, this image wants to affirm that she has a continuing ministry in heaven praying for us. This is the most controversial image of her amongst Christians.

For protestants, any role that they are willing to allow Mary came to an end with her death. The idea that Mary has any ongoing role is not only rejected but is seen as of a form of idolatry. Indeed, many would argue that we shouldn’t have any image of Mary, although some who argue like this don’t seem to have the same scruples when it comes to other significant figures in the Church.

Those, for their part, who see Mary as having an ongoing role reject the idea that they worship Mary, although, it has to be said, some do come very near to doing so. However, for the majority of those for whom Mary still has a part to play in their lives and in the life of the Church, her role now is not as the recipient of people’s worship, but as an intercessor and the mother of the Church and of believers.

I believe in the purity, the prayerfulness, the obedience, and the ongoing intercession of our Lady. So, I mean absolutely no disrespect to her or to those who value the images of her that I have described. I would, however, suggest that each of these images, while seeking to express a valuable truth about Mary, is a failed image because of the way they express it. These images not only fail to convey fully the truth they are trying to depict; they instead distort it.

We need an image or images of Mary that express the truth that lies concealed in the common images of Mary, but which avoid giving another misleading and false image of her.

It is, of course, hard to suggest any single image that accurately and completely expresses all these truths about her. My problem, however, is not just that the various pictures and depictions of Mary fail in what they are trying to express, it is that they miss an essential part of the character of Mary, and it is because they miss it that I believe they end up presenting a distorted image of her.

So, what exactly is it that I think they are missing? Quite simply, it is her strength. Too many of the portrayals of Mary make her seem as fragile as some of the statues of her. She comes across as delicate, vulnerable, and weak.

And yet here is a woman who accepts a role that, in the community in which she lived at the time, would mean her being labelled and treated with contempt. She would inevitably bring disgrace on her family. We are not told what the reaction of her family and neighbours was in the small village in which she lived, but judging by what St Matthew tells us was Joseph’s reaction, we can guess. Joseph, on hearing the news that the woman he is engaged to is pregnant, wants to get rid of her (Matthew 1:19). It takes a direct intervention by God to prevent him from doing so.

Forty days after his birth, Mary and Joseph take the baby Jesus to the Temple, as the Law prescribed. A man there called Simeon, whom St Luke describes as ‘righteous and devout’, tells Mary that a ‘sword will pierce her own soul too’ (Luke 2:35). In other words, Simeon is predicting great pain for Mary. The Porcelain Mary, however, would crack at the first sign of trouble. She certainly would not have the strength to flee for her life as a refugee to Egypt. Nor would the Prayerful Mary have what it takes to cope with the day-to-day realities of raising the Son of God, and the five other children we know of, who were in her care – whoever their actual birth mother was!

This is why I like the picture so much that is on the front of the Christ Church Christmas card this year. (See above!) It shows a young woman, holding a baby, in a world where the men around her are dominant. But this is no fragile figure. Her eyes don’t look down submissively, but forward confidently, even defiantly. She has something to do that only she can do, and she is determined to do it.

When we start to see Mary as a strong woman of faith, everything else about her begins to come into focus. Her purity lies, not in the first place in her virginity, but in the purity of her character and in her sense of purpose. Her obedience is not a passive submission, but a willing acceptance of the will of God that she actively embraces. Her prayerfulness expresses itself, not in an unworldly detachment from the realities of life, but in her commitment and trust in God. And her power resides not in herself, but in the ‘Mighty One who has done great things’ for her, whom ‘her soul magnifies’, and in whom her ‘spirit rejoices’.

Surely this strong woman of faith provides a role model for us that is ‘for life and not just for Christmas’? Mary teaches us how we too should respond to God. For Mary’s strength lay not in herself but in the One whom she was blessed for believing. It was her faith that gave Mary her strength. The strength, not to follow her own dreams and desires, but willingly to abandon them to do what God asked of her.

Make no mistake: what God was asking of her was tough and demanding, and yet God’s will for her was not something she accepted reluctantly but welcomed with joy.

Repeatedly today we are told that we will only find peace and fulfilment by putting ourselves first and pursuing our own goals. Mary shows that precisely the reverse is true. We find peace and fulfilment, not by following our hearts, but by following her Son, and serving God through him: ‘in his will is our peace’. But how are we to know his will? St Paul writes:

‘I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God — what is good and acceptable and perfect.’ (Romans 12:1-2)

Discovering the will of God for our lives begins with a commitment to God that involves presenting our bodies, that is, our whole selves, to him as a ‘living sacrifice’. It means, as St Paul tells us, not being ‘conformed to this world’, but being ‘transformed by the renewing of our minds’. It is when our minds are renewed in this way, and only then, that we are able to ‘discern the will of God’.

To put it another way: Mary presented her body to the Lord, not only by conceiving and carrying our Lord, but in a life of service. We are to do the same. We are to stop seeing things as society and the world around us see them, and to start seeing them as God sees them. Seeing, as Mary saw, that God is the One who scatters the proud in the thoughts of their hearts; who brings down the powerful from their thrones and lifts up the lowly; who fills the hungry with good things, but sends the rich away empty (Luke 1:51-53).

God asks of us what he asked of this young woman in Nazareth: to believe his word to us and to embrace his will for us as we follow his Son. Jesus said:

‘If anyone wants to become my follower, he must deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.’ (Luke 9:23-24)

Faith, in the sense of believing in the truths of the faith, isn’t enough. Jesus commands us actively to take up our Cross; to commit ourselves fully to what it is he is asking of us. The call of God is something that like Mary we have to obey, trusting God to give us the strength we need as we do so.

It isn’t easy. We are weaker than we like to admit. We fall and we fail. Mary provides us with the encouragement we need to see that it is God’s grace that enables us to be strong. For some, seeing Mary as a role model in this way is as much as they can accept. And that’s fine. All the Blessed Virgin Mary wants is for you to follow her Son. And in the Blessed Virgin Mary, the strong woman of faith, we have one who gives us an image and example to look up to as we seek to follow him.

But, as we think of her especially this week, who better to ask to pray for us that we may find the strength we need than she whom God favoured with his grace and by whose grace she lived her life.

Hail Mary, full of grace,
the Lord is with thee:
blessed art thou among women
and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
Holy Mary, Mother of God,
pray for us sinners,
now and at the hour of our death. 

Amen.

The Third Sunday of Advent

Here is the transcript of my sermon for this week, the Third Sunday of Advent.

The Third Sunday of Advent

Reading: John 1:6-8, 19-28

Our Gospel reading this week is a selection of verses from the first chapter of St John’s Gospel. We will also be reading the first part of the chapter for our service on Christmas Night. The verses for this week are those in the chapter about John the Baptist whom we also read about last week in the first chapter of St Mark’s Gospel. On Christmas Night, our focus will be on the ‘Word made flesh’, so it is appropriate that we take time this week to see what St John also says about John the Baptist as we think in Advent about those who prepared the way for the coming of our Lord. 

In his preaching, John is anxious to make clear that he is not the Christ, and that the One whose coming he is preparing people for is so much greater than he. John is not worthy even to help the Coming One take off his sandals. Despite this, John’s role in getting people ready was an important one; one that was itself promised in the Scriptures. All four Gospels go out of their way to stress how central John’s role was. St Mark, as we saw last week, described it as the ‘beginning of the Gospel about Jesus Christ, the Son of God’ (Mark 1:1). All four Gospels see the ministry of John, and Jesus’ baptism by him, as the beginning of Jesus’ own public ministry to his people, ‘to his own’, as St John, the writer of this chapter, puts it. 

In preparing people for the coming of Jesus, John is best known for his baptism, hence his nickname, John the Baptist! John, we are told, preached a ‘baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins’ (Mark 1:4). By repenting and confessing their sins, people showed they wanted to be ready for when the Messiah himself appeared. Quite why John chose baptism as the way to do this, we simply do not know.

St John, in chapters two and three of his Gospel, describes Jesus’ first public visit to Jerusalem after his baptism by John. When it is over, St John tells us:

‘After this Jesus and his disciples went into the Judean countryside, and he spent some time there with them and baptized. John also was baptizing at Aenon near Salim because water was abundant there; and people kept coming and were being baptized — John, of course, had not yet been thrown into prison.’ (John 3:22-24)

In chapter 4, St John explains, in a note, that it was Jesus’ disciples who did the actual baptizing under the supervision of Jesus (John 4:2). He also tells us that Jesus’ baptism was so popular that when the Pharisees heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John, Jesus felt he had to return to Galilee, presumably because there was a threat to him and his followers as a result of his growing popularity. The point, however, is that, for a while, Jesus and John were both ministering at the same time and both were baptizing people. Jesus, however, soon started to become the more significant person as John himself said he must (John 3:30). John the Baptist’s ministry itself comes to an end when King Herod has him arrested. It is at this point that the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) take up the story.

John’s baptism was to be the precursor to the Church’s baptism. After our Lord’s death, resurrection, and ascension, the Church carried on the practice of baptizing people, and it has been an essential part of the life of the Church since. Many of us were baptized in Church, and although the exact procedure may have been different to how John and Jesus conducted it, there is still a clear connection between our present day practice and theirs.

So, here’s a question: if you could choose, would you prefer to be baptized by me here in Christ Church or by, say, St Peter in the presence of Jesus back there in the Judean countryside?

The right answer, of course, is by me here in Christ Church. Not because it is by me, but because the baptism that John and Jesus were conducting wasn’t Christian baptism. Christian - or better, believers’ baptism - gets its meaning from the death and resurrection of our Lord. That couldn’t happen before our Lord died and rose again. John’s baptism was a looking forward to the One who would come; the baptism of the Church is about faith in Jesus who has come, and who died and rose again and is now alive and reigning at the Father’s right side.

If you were somehow to be magically transported back to the Judean countryside and to be baptized by St Peter, you would be baptized with ‘John’s baptism’ – a baptism of repentance to get you ready and which looked forward to the One who was to come. Now Jesus has come and completed the work the Father gave him to do, John’s baptism is no longer relevant.

This took some people at the time some time to grasp. Despite the fact that the One to come had now come, nevertheless, even after the resurrection, people continued to be baptized in John’s baptism, and even some who believed in Jesus.

So, for example, St Luke in Acts chapter 18, describes how a man called Apollos came to Ephesus when St Paul was back in Jerusalem. St Luke writes:

‘He had been instructed in the Way of the Lord; and he spoke with burning enthusiasm and taught accurately the things concerning Jesus, though he knew only the baptism of John.’ (Acts 18:25)

Apollos got it right about Jesus and spoke with ‘burning enthusiasm’ about him. But as he knew only the baptism of John, Priscilla and Aquila, two of St Paul’s closest co-workers, had to instruct him ‘more accurately’. Apollos was also to become one of St Paul’s associates, but that is a story for another day.

For now, we have to ask what it was that Apollos was missing that meant he only knew the baptism of John, despite all the other things he got right.

Here we need to go back and ask what it was that John the Baptist himself had to say about what he was doing and about the One whom he was getting people ready for. In St Mark’s Gospel last week, we read that John said:

‘I have baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.’ (Mark 1:8)

All four Gospels agree that John taught that what defined the person he was preparing the way for was that he would baptize them in the Holy Spirit. John the Baptist doesn’t, in fact, tell us a lot about what the One to come will be like and what he will do, so this makes what he does tell us all the more important. Jesus, he emphasizes, is the One who will baptize in the Holy Spirit.

So, given that the Church’s baptism is about the One who has now come, is baptism in the Spirit what makes the baptism the Church now practices different from John’s baptism? Well, yes and no. For while there is a close relationship between baptism in water and baptism in the Spirit, they are not the same.

We need to look at another occasion in Acts when people were baptized. In Acts chapter 8, we read of how as a result of the severe persecution that the Church in Jerusalem is experiencing, some of the leaders have to flee from Jerusalem to escape. One of them, Philip, goes to Samaria where he preaches to the Samaritans. St Luke writes:

‘But when they believed Philip as he preached good news about the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both men and women.’ (Acts 8:12)

However, St Luke continues to tell us that St Peter and St John have to come from Jerusalem to pray for them that they might receive the Holy Spirit (Acts 8:15). What is particularly strange about this story is what St Luke says next:

‘… for he had not yet fallen on any of them, but they had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.’ (Acts 8:16)

As a result of St Peter and St John’s prayer, the Samaritans receive the Holy Spirit, so all is well. But what on earth does St Luke mean by writing, ‘they had only been baptized in the name of Jesus’. Not only is John’s baptism not enough, it seems the Church’s baptism isn’t either.

There is much that could and should be said about this, but the bottom line is this: Jesus is the One who baptizes in the Holy Spirit, and until he has baptized someone in the Holy Spirit, something is missing, even if a person says all the right things about Jesus as Apollos did, or believes and does all the right things as the Samaritans did.

The obvious question, then, is what does it mean to be baptized in the Holy Spirit?

The word ‘baptism’ is the clue. It is a clue we miss because we are so used to thinking of baptism as the very nice, but somewhat formal and controlled ritual that takes place in Church. Think for a moment of the context of John’s words about Jesus as being the One who will baptize in the Holy Spirit. Imagine John, standing there, soaking wet, having been out in the river Jordan immersing people in it. He turns and says, ‘I baptize you in water, but he will baptize you in the Holy Spirit’. I soak you with water. I drench you with water. I take you into the river and plunge you into the water. Jesus will do that to you with the Holy Spirit. That gives a somewhat different feel to it.

It is impossible to be soaked with water and not know about it. This explains a question that St Paul asks a group of believers he comes across at Ephesus. He asks them:

‘Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?’ (Acts 19:2)

They answer that they haven’t heard about the Holy Spirit, and it turns out that they too have only been baptized into John’s baptism. St Paul explains the Gospel to them and then baptizes them ‘in the name of Jesus’. But, as with the Samaritans, this is still not enough; it is only when St Paul prays and lays hands on them that they receive the Holy Spirit. They knew they hadn’t received the Spirit and they knew when they did. And, interestingly, St Paul also knew that they hadn’t and knew when they did.

Again, there is much more that could and should be said about this. The bottom line, again, is that while clearly in the New Testament, as a rule, people are baptized in the Spirit at the same time as they are baptized in water, there is a distinction to be made. Being soaked with the Spirit is something that, whenever it happened, the person knew it had happened. It was a definite and concrete experience.

But what was the purpose of it and what about us today?

First of all, in the New Testament, the Holy Spirit is not an optional extra. As we saw when we read through St Paul’s letter to the Church in Rome, it is the presence of the Holy Spirit in a person’s life that defines whether or not someone is a follower of Christ. St Paul writes:

‘You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him.’ (Romans 8:9)

This has caused all sorts of confusion in more recent years as some believers have talked about receiving the Spirit as a kind of ‘second blessing’ after the ‘first blessing’ of becoming a believer; in other words, as a separate experience distinct to becoming a follower of Christ. There are many experiences that believers can and should have subsequent to coming to Christ; receiving the Spirit, however, isn’t one of them.

Secondly, the Holy Spirit isn’t about an isolated and purely individual experience. Baptism in the Spirit is baptism into the body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12:13). It’s about becoming part of the community of Christ, his body on earth, where we find both a place to belong and a place to serve, and where we are given by the Spirit the gifts to do so.

Thirdly, seeing the Holy Spirit as essential and integral to belonging to Christ helps us to see what being baptized in the Spirit is all about. Many of you will have heard me say this before. But being a follower of Christ is not like anything else. It is not a philosophy of life; it’s not about an ideology to believe in, a code to live by, or a group to belong to. Or, to put it another way: it is not about what you believe, how you live, or where you go. It will involve you in believing certain things, living a certain way, and going to a certain place on Sundays (when we are allowed to do so!). But this is a consequence, not a definition.

Being a follower of Jesus Christ is to have a relationship with God through Jesus and because of what God has done for us in Jesus. The way this happens is by what the Holy Spirit does in us. The baptism in the Holy Spirit isn’t about having an experience as a sort of spiritual extra; some kind of reward for believing in Jesus. It is about God taking all that Jesus has done for us and making it real to us, establishing a relationship with us, and empowering us to be a follower of Jesus, here and now, as part of the body of Christ as we wait for all that he promises us in the future.

The baptism in the Holy Spirit is a ‘soaking’ in the love of God as we experience the forgiveness of God that makes it possible for us, we who are God’s enemies, to find peace with God and enter a living relationship with him. St Paul writes:

‘… but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.’ (Romans 5:8)

But it does not stop there. Again, as St Paul writes:

‘… because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.’ (Romans 5:5)

God’s love for us which he has objectively demonstrated to us in the coming of Christ, he subjectively makes real to us through the Holy Spirit. Notice that St Paul says God has poured his love into our hearts. As the water poured over people as they were baptized by John in the river Jordan, so now God pours his love over us through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

Now there are a number of possible responses to all this. Sadly, the most common one is for people simply to ignore it, and for it to have no effect whatever on them. This is perhaps understandable with those who are outside the Church, but, tragically, it is the response also of many within it. This is particularly sad because it means they are missing out on what being a follower of Christ is all about.

Others in the Church, however, find talking about the Holy Spirit in this concrete way deeply troubling. Their response often is that this is not their own experience. ‘If this is not my experience,’ they ask, ‘does it mean that I do not belong to Christ, or that I have not been baptized in the Spirit in the way I should be?’

Now it can mean that. And it is not being cruel to tell people, even people who are regular church members that belonging to Christ is about a relationship with God made possible by Jesus baptizing them in the Spirit. Too many in the Church are missing out on what being a follower of Christ is all about because they have been encouraged to see following Christ and going to Church as the religious equivalent of belonging to a club.

But many who ask this question are truly followers of Christ. They just sense that there is something missing. The language of the New Testament about the Holy Spirit does not describe their own experience of him.

The first thing to be said to anyone who feels like this is a word of reassurance. St Paul, as we have seen, writes:

‘Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him.’ (Romans 8:9)

Negatively, this means that anyone who does not have the Spirit does not belong to Christ. But it can also be taken positively as a word of assurance. The New Testament is clear that any who put their trust in Christ and seek to follow him in their life belong to him. And, therefore, any who belong to Christ have the Spirit. So why, then, doesn’t it feel like it?

There could be various reasons but one of the most common is one that St Paul talks about in our second reading this morning. He talks there about ‘quenching the Spirit’ and instructs the Thessalonian believers not to do so (1 Thessalonians 5:19). We ‘quench the Spirit’, that is, we prevent the Spirit from working in the way he wants to, both communally as a Church and personally as individuals.

John the Baptist talks about the Spirit as being like a river. Our Lord himself describes the Holy Spirit as a ‘flowing river of living water’ (John 7:38-39). We build defences against rivers to stop them flooding or to divert them to prevent them going where we do not want them. In the Church, we build similar flood defences with church structures and how we organize our church life. We do church in such a way that allows us, and us clergy especially, to control what happens and goes on. We ‘quench the Spirit’.

But what is true of our corporate church life is true of us in our own personal lives too. Sometimes we do this without realizing it or simply because we are following the lead of our churches and clergy. We don’t know any better. Like the believers in Ephesus, it is as if we haven’t even heard there is a Holy Spirit – and certainly not heard him described in the way John and Jesus describe him.

When John the Baptist baptized people, he took them into the river and immersed them. For very good reasons, we don’t do it like that when we baptize people today. You may have seen how I baptize people: I sprinkle them with water. A small bowl of water is all I need to baptize a lot of people.

This can be seen as a metaphor for our experience of the Spirit. We have been sprinkled, but Jesus, who baptizes in the Spirit, wants to immerse us into the flowing river of the Spirit.

On this, the Third Sunday of Advent, we think, then, of John the Baptist standing dripping wet on the bank of the river that he has just immersed people in, telling those he has immersed that, one day, Jesus will immerse them in the Holy Spirit.

Maybe our experience so far has been only to be sprinkled with the Holy Spirit. It is never too late to let down the defences; to allow ourselves to be soaked by the rushing flow of the Spirit, not because we seek a spiritual experience for its own sake, but so we may experience all that God has for us and be empowered to do all that God asks of us.

‘Veni sancte Spiritus!’
‘Come Holy Spirit!’

Amen.

The Second Sunday of Advent

 Here is the transcript of my sermon for this week, the Second Sunday of Advent.  It is also available as a podcast!

The Second Sunday of Advent

Reading: Mark 1:1-8

This year, Year B in the lectionary, we are going to be reading from St Mark’s Gospel. St Mark’s Gospel is the shortest of the four Gospels. (Luke is the longest; then Matthew; then John.) In the history of the Church, St Matthew’s Gospel has rather overshadowed St Mark’s Gospel as most of St Mark’s Gospel is also included in Matthew. This has changed in more recent years as scholars have come to believe that Mark is the earliest of the Gospels and formed the basis for both St Matthew and St Luke’s accounts of the life and teaching of our Lord. 

The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke are usually known as the ‘synoptic Gospels’. (The word ‘synoptic’ here means having a common point of view.) That there is a close relationship between these three is clear on even a superficial reading of them. Quite how that relationship came about is less clear and not easy to understand, although it doesn’t stop scholars speculating and trying to work it out.

The likelihood is that the Gospel of Mark itself was written in Rome around the time that St Paul ended up in prison there, some time in the AD60s, although some scholars would argue for different dates both earlier and later. 

We should imagine, then, a group of believers in Rome who have been invited to a fellow believer’s house to hear a new book read. This group will contain believers who are both Jews and Gentiles who, perhaps, have been previously attracted to Judaism. The new book is about Jesus, who the believers worship as their Lord. The first words those listening hear are the words we have heard just now: ‘Beginning the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God as it is written in the prophet Isaiah …’ 

Scholars today get quite excited about this as they claim that this is the first time that the word ‘Gospel’ has been used to describe a written account of the life of our Lord. Previously, they argue, it was used of the proclamation of the message about Jesus. In fact, unlike the scholars of today, it is unlikely that those hearing it for the first time would find anything unusual in what was read or in the use of the word Gospel to describe it. 

In fact, those present might remember the first time they heard St Paul’s letter to their Church read out to them in a similar way to how St Mark’s new book is now being read out. St Paul, in introducing himself in his letter to the Church, writes that he is: 

‘… set apart for the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy scriptures, the gospel concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be Son of God with power according to the spirit of holiness by resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord.’ (Romans 1:1-4) 

There is, then, nothing particularly unusual in the way St Mark uses the word Gospel. Those listening to it being read would have been used to the preaching of the Gospel beginning this way. St Mark is making a similar statement at the beginning of his book to that which St Paul made at the beginning of his letter. He may even have got the idea for it from St Paul. 

If the Mark who wrote the book is the same as the John Mark in the book of Acts who accompanied St Barnabas and St Paul on their mission when they were sent out by the Church in Antioch, there is every likelihood that he had heard St Paul preach the same message many times (Acts 12:12; 12:24; 13:5).

St Mark writes that the Gospel message about Jesus Christ - that is, Jesus the Messiah, also known as the Son of David - was in fulfilment of the Scriptures. The message that the apostles preached and which St Mark is writing down is one that had changed the lives of those who were gathered to hear it read, and it was one they believed had the power to change the lives of everyone who heard it. It was not, however, a message which had come from nowhere. Its coming, like the person it was about, had been promised many years before. 

But how does this message which was promised in the ‘holy Scriptures’ in fact begin? St Paul doesn’t say so in his letter, but he would agree with St Mark, as do all the other Gospel writers, that it began with John the Baptist and the baptism of Jesus by him in the River Jordan. This is something that St John, who approaches the story of Jesus somewhat differently to the other three Gospel writers, also agrees with. 

John the Baptist, then, is an important figure in the preaching of the Gospel. It is with him that the Gospel message can be said to begin. John the Baptist’s own appearance in the Judean desert was itself promised in the Scriptures. More than that, everything about how John the Baptist is described would have reminded those listening to St Mark’s book being read of the story of Israel in the Scriptures. 

John the Baptist is described by St Mark as looking like the prophet Elijah: both were hairy and wore leather belts, and they both seem to have been at home in the desert (see 2 Kings 1:8). The desert, of course, was where Israel wandered for 40 years after her liberation from slavery in Egypt; it was where she was tested; and it was where she received God’s Law. The River Jordan that John baptized people in was the river that Israel had had to cross at the end of those 40 years to enter the promised land; a land flowing with the honey that John liked to eat. 

It is to this new prophet Elijah and to the wilderness that the people of Israel are coming again to renew their commitment to be the people of God and to find forgiveness for their sins, and in order to prepare for the coming of the Messiah promised by the prophets. And they will again cross the Jordan in baptism. 

What they don’t know yet is the identity of the Messiah. John the Baptist is insistent that it isn’t him; that’s not his role. He isn’t even worthy to help the Messiah take off his sandals (Mark 1:7). But we do know the Messiah’s identity because it is the first thing St Mark has told us. 

The Messiah’s name is Joshua, or Jesus as we know it from the Greek. The name means, ‘God saves’. It is the name of the person who first led the people of Israel from the wilderness, across the Jordan, and into the Promised Land. The Messiah, John the Baptist tells people, will baptize them, not just with water, but with the Holy Spirit. But first, the One who will baptize with the Spirit is himself baptized. 

As Jesus comes up out of the water, the heavens are torn apart, and the same Holy Spirt who hovered like a dove over the waters at the beginning of creation descends like a dove on him and a voice from heaven reveals his identity: ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased. (Mark 1:11)’ 

The message about Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God, has begun in the way the prophets promised it would. What does this tell us today as we, like the crowds who were baptized by John, prepare for the coming of our Lord in this season of Advent? It is best expressed in the words of our Lord himself. As he said to the woman at the well in Samaria: 

‘… salvation is from the Jews.’ (John 4:22) 

In just 11 verses, St Mark has managed to locate his story about Jesus firmly within the story of Israel and her relationship with the God of Israel. This is something all the Gospel writers do in the opening of their own accounts of Jesus’ life. 

St Matthew begins his Gospel: 

‘An account of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham.’ (Matthew 1:1) 

Jesus’ earthly descent is traced by St Matthew through key figures in Israel’s history. St Matthew goes out of his way to show how Jesus’ birth is in fulfillment of the words of the prophets. St Luke’s account stresses that Jesus is the promised Messiah, ‘the consolation of Israel’ (Luke 2:25). And St John, while differing from the others in the style of his presentation, emphasizes that the Word made flesh ‘came unto his own’ (John 1:11) and is the ‘King of Israel’ (John 1:49), even if his own don’t recognize it. 

The writer to the Hebrews writes in words that we shall read at Christmas: 

‘Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son…’ (Hebrews 1:1-2) 

Jesus brought about something new. His coming was like no other. He was like no other. However, in seeking to show how significant and life-changing his coming was, many talk as if his coming was completely unexpected and came out of nowhere. Yes, Jesus changed everything, and changed it in an unexpected way, but his coming itself was something expected, predicted, and long awaited. It was in fulfilment of what God had promised and what the prophets had described. 

Jesus, after his resurrection, tells his disciples that they shouldn’t have been surprised. The Scriptures had all talked about him and his coming (Luke 24:25-27; 24:44-47). The coming and the meaning of his coming are so rooted in the Scriptures that to understand what his coming means, we must understand the Scriptures, and this means understanding what we today call the ‘Old Testament’. 

But the Scriptures that the story is so rooted in and which are foundational to it are the Jewish Scriptures. Yes, we understand them differently to our Jewish brothers and sisters, but by labelling them ‘old’, we also imply that they can be quietly forgotten, except for those nice bits that we like to read out of context and give a modern meaning to. 

In the second century, there was a teacher in the Church called Marcion, who argued that anything to do with Israel had to be got rid of and that the god of the Old Testament was an inferior god to the god of the Church. This Jewish god, he argued, was not the Christian god who sent Jesus, but a lesser god. The Church rejected Marcion’s teaching, but throughout its history the Church has since been more Marcionite than we care to admit. 

Nowadays, it is openly so. Whereas once we generalized the Jewish Scriptures to make them ours, now we just ignore or reject them altogether. Marcion believed that the god of the Old Testament was wrathful and vengeful, whereas the New Testament God that Jesus taught us about was kind and forgiving. Marcion’s day has come in our own. For many in the Church, what we call the ‘Old Testament’ is simply an embarrassment. 

As also is the fact that Jesus was a Jew. And not only a Jew, but sent exclusively to the Jews. Jesus was not God incarnated as everyman, nor even as a man of the first century. He was incarnated as this particular man sent by God in every way as a man of his people to his own people. Jesus’ Jewishness was not incidental to his identity and to the incarnation, it was an essential and integral part of his DNA. God didn’t just become man, he became this particular man, and this man came with a specific role to play in the history of his people, Israel. This was what his earthly ministry was about. 

Jesus couldn’t be the Saviour of the world until he had fulfilled his role as a prophet to his people, and had been rejected by them. 

The Church has made the Jews the question. The question, however, isn’t about the Jews, it is about us. It is about where and how we Gentiles fit in. And that’s not obvious. That we should be included in the plans and purposes of God in the way we are is something that was not only unexpected, but that was hidden. St Paul calls it a mystery that God has had to reveal directly (Ephesians 3:1-6). It simply wasn’t something that the Church could know otherwise.

So how are we who are not Jews to respond to this unexpected offer of grace and welcome? We should respond with gratitude, with thankfulness, and with great humility. 

Like the Wise Men this Christmas, we come to the baby at Bethlehem as Gentiles. But we also come as they did seeking him who is born ‘King of the Jews’ (Matthew 2:2). Yes, he is more than that. He is, as we have been seeing in the past couple of weeks, the Lord and Judge of all. He is now more than the King of the Jews, but he is not less than that. He is the root of Jesse, the Son of David, the glory of his people Israel. He is Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God. He is the One sent by God, as the Blessed Virgin Mary puts it: ‘according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever’ (Luke 1:55). 

The God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ was and is the God and of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. John the Baptist, St Luke tells us, said that those who came to him should not put their trust in having Abraham as their ancestor, God could raise up children of Abraham from the stones of the wilderness (Luke 3:8). John the Baptist meant by this that those who came should show by their actions that they were children of Abraham. 

But in a sense, and in a way that John did not envisage, God has raised up unexpected children for Abraham. And we are those children. St Paul insists that all who share the faith of Abraham in the promise of God are children of Abraham and that God’s promise finds its fulfilment in Christ. All who have faith in Christ are now children of Abraham: ‘for he is the father of us all’ who believe (Romans 4:16-17). St Paul teaches that we do not need to convert to Judaism to be adopted as children of the God of Israel. However, it is still the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, revealed now in his Son, who adopts us. 

The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is the same God who called Abraham to leave his country and who led his people out of slavery to freedom in the promised land. The history of the people of Israel is our history. As St Paul puts it: we have been ‘grafted’ in (Romans 11:17). But that does not mean, as St Paul makes clear, that God has now rejected his people (Romans 11:1). They are still ‘beloved, for the sake of their ancestors; for the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.’ (Romans 11:28-29) 

There are, however, many who go a step further and argue that because God has not rejected his ancient people, it is now wrong to seek to evangelize and convert Jewish people to Christ. Without in anyway wanting to downplay the horrors of the Church’s treatment of the Jewish people in the past, for us not to seek to share the Gospel with the Jewish people today is to completely miss the point. Our Lord came in the first place as their Messiah: ‘Beginning the Gospel of Jesus the Messiah’. The Gospel is to ‘the Jew first’ (Romans 1:16). Why wouldn’t we want to share it with those who Jesus came to and was one of? Clearly, there is a right and wrong way to do it, but not to do so would be a grave dereliction of duty. The right people to do so are believers who are themselves Jews who have come to believe in the Messiah, and they need and deserve our support. 

As then we prepare to celebrate the coming of the Messiah, we should align our prayers with those of St Paul who wrote: 

‘I am speaking the truth in Christ — I am not lying; my conscience confirms it by the Holy Spirit — I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my own people, my kindred according to the flesh. They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises; to them belong the patriarchs, and from them, according to the flesh, comes the Messiah, who is over all, God blessed forever. Amen.’ (Romans 9:1-5) 

As we read through St Mark’s Gospel and especially as we celebrate this Christmas the birth of the one who was born King of the Jews, we will understand him better and serve him more if we understand him for who he is. The One promised by the prophets, the Saviour of his people, their Lord and ours. 

Amen.

Advent Sunday

Here is the transcript of my podcast for this week, Advent Sunday.

Advent Sunday

Reading: Mark 13:24-37

In Mark’s Gospel, chapter 13, St Mark brings his account of Jesus’ public ministry to a conclusion. It is also Jesus’ own conclusion to his ministry to his people, Israel. And what a conclusion! Jesus has been teaching in the Temple, and now he leaves the Temple for the final time with his disciples. As they go, the disciples comment on how large the stones and the buildings are. They were not exaggerating. The stones that were used to build the Temple were so large that even today we are not quite sure how they managed to get them into place. Some of them measured over forty feet in length and weighed over 500 tons. (By way of comparison, the largest stone of the Egyptian pyramids, for example, weighs 11 tons.)

The Temple was in every way a magnificent and beautiful building. But greater than any architectural importance it may have had was its spiritual significance. This was the place where heaven and earth came together and where God met with his people. Here the sacrifices were offered and here the festivals were celebrated. It is very hard for us to understand and feel how much it meant for the people of God. This wasn’t simply a holy place; this was the holy place; this was the house of God.

So, when Jesus says that not one stone will be left on another, he is not talking about some trivial event. What he is predicting is both cataclysmic and catastrophic. It is no wonder that in the disciples’ minds it must be linked to coming of the Day of the Lord and the appearance of the Son of Man at the end of this age. The four disciples, Peter and Andrew, James and John, ask the obvious questions: when will it happen and how will we know it is about to happen?

Jesus, in answering, talks about all the things that are not signs that it is about to happen. All the normal events that happen in the world will continue to happen before it: wars and rumours of wars; famines and earthquakes; political upheaval; all will continue as usual. In the midst of all this confusing normality, false teachers and prophets will appear who will themselves seem and sound very believable and normal.

For Jesus’ disciples, however, life will be anything but normal. They can expect to be hated, betrayed, arrested, put on trial, beaten, and killed. It is only those who endure all these things to their bitter end who will be saved. The Gospel must be preached to ‘all nations’, and they must do it, whatever the cost to them personally. They may be beaten and killed, but according to St Luke, Jesus promises that not a hair of their head will perish (Luke 21:18).

Then it will happen. But what will happen? We think that what will happen is that Jesus will come again. It is at this point, then, that we need to remind ourselves of the question. We forget that the question Jesus is answering is when the Temple will be destroyed. It is this that Jesus is focused on in chapter 13. This is why he says that those in Judea must flea to the mountains (Mark 13:14); they need to get away from Jerusalem, the scene of the disaster.

Jesus is not in the first place in chapter 13 (and the accounts in the other Gospels) describing the end of the world, but the end of a city. It is, however, also the end of a world. Naturally enough, we want to know about the end of our world, but Jesus is talking about the end of his world and the world of his disciples. We don’t appreciate the importance and significance of this. It is only after he has described it that Jesus moves on briefly to the coming of the Son of Man and the end of our world and of the present age.

First, his world comes to an end, then secondly, the world itself as we know it comes to an end. For us living now, the first, the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple, has happened, but not the second. The first happened in AD70, 1,950 years ago. So, given that there is so much distance between them, why does Jesus talk about them here in the same breath. Because after the destruction of the Temple, there is nothing else significant, historically, to talk about until the end of the world. Our Lord says this of the destruction of Jerusalem:

‘For in those days there will be such tribulation as has not been from the beginning of the creation that God created until now, and never will be.’ (Mark 13:19)

All other events pale into insignificance in comparison to this terrible event. Yes, there will continue to be wars and rumours of wars. Nation shall continue to rise against nation, kingdom against kingdom. There will be earthquakes in various places, there will be famines, and all sorts of other disasters both natural and man-made. And for those caught up in them and affected by them, they will be important, but, historically, they are of little significance after what happened in AD70. It’s like looking at a school boy fight in the playground when talking about the great battles in history.

After the fall of Jerusalem, everything else is ‘birth pangs’. They, of course, have significance for those affected by them. They are significant in what they point forward to, but not of much significance in and of themselves. They do not change anything. The fall of Jerusalem, however, changed everything.

In the Gospel accounts of his life, our Lord wept twice. One occasion is well-known. He wept at the grave of Lazarus his friend (John 11:35). He wept there with those who wept and wept at what death does and the pain it causes. The other occasion is less well-known; our Lord also wept over Jerusalem and the destruction that was coming on her.

The occasion was what we know as Palm Sunday. Jesus is entering Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives. There is great joy and celebration, but for Jesus himself, however, there is not only the foreboding of knowing that his own death is approaching, there is the knowledge that the city he is now entering in triumph will, within a generation, be utterly destroyed because of its failure to recognize him for who he is. St Luke writes:

‘As he came near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, “If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. Indeed, the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up ramparts around you and surround you, and hem you in on every side. They will crush you to the ground, you and your children within you, and they will not leave within you one stone upon another; because you did not recognize the time of your visitation from God.”’ (Luke 19:41-44)

We have all wept over the death of a loved one. We weep no matter how much faith we may have or how strongly we believe we will see them again. Regardless of our hope for the future, we still weep. Death is never our friend. The destruction of Jerusalem is on the same level. But in the same way that there will be a resurrection for those who die in the faith of Christ, so too there will be a resurrection for the Jewish people and a new Jerusalem to look forward to. Jerusalem shall live again!

In case you think I am letting my imagination run away with me, remember what St Paul writes in his letter to the Church in Rome about the Jewish people:

‘For if their rejection means the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance mean but life from the dead?’ (Romans 11:15)

For now, Jerusalem has fallen. A hardness has come on the people of Israel. We live in the ‘times of the Gentiles’, as St Luke describes the time we are living in (Luke 21:24). But this time won’t go on forever. It will come to end, and one day, as St Paul tells us, ‘all Israel will be saved’ (Romans 11:26). For us Gentiles in the present, then, there is no room for arrogance and no place for complacency, only for gratitude and humility. ‘Note then the kindness and severity of God’, St Paul warns us Gentiles. We need only to look at Jerusalem to see God’s severity; let us pray that we may continue in his kindness.

Jesus tells his disciples all this, and tells us through them, not in order to satisfy our curiosity or to encourage us to speculate about the ‘times and seasons’, but to warn us. We are to ‘be alert’, Jesus says, in verses 23 and 33. We are to ‘keep awake’, he says in verses 35 and 37. We do not know when our Lord will come. But we do know that he will come, and he expects us to be prepared for his coming.

St Paul writes in Romans:

‘Besides this you know the time, that the hour has come for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed. The night is far gone; the day is at hand.’ (Romans 13:11-12)

Not unreasonably, like the disciples, we want to know when the Day will come, and we want to know what signs we should be looking out for that show it is coming. Many believers become fascinated by the subject of our Lords’ return, and it has led to endless speculative systems and timetables that claim to show in what order it will all take place.

When I first became a believer, I had a study Bible that interpreted everything in the Bible according to how the authors believed the second coming would take place. You may have heard of the ‘Left Behind’ series, which takes a similar approach.

These approaches, more often than not, owe more to the imagination than they do to revelation. Sincere believers disagree over the details of our Lord’s return. This is because we are given so few details. The reason we are given so few details is because the details are not to be our concern. St Paul, echoing our Lord’s words, tells us what is to be our concern. We are to be awake; we are to be ready.

Being ready doesn’t mean having carefully worked out systems and timetables of events leading up to our Lord’s coming; it means living the way God wants us to live until our Lord comes. It refers to our priorities, values, and attitudes, and how we are living them out in our daily lives.

St Paul continues in the passage I have just read to explain what being ‘awake’ means.  He writes:

‘So then let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light. Let us walk properly as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in quarreling and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.’ (Romans 13:13-14)

‘Walking properly’ means not indulging ourselves in such things as ‘orgies and drunkenness’; it means not engaging in sexual immorality. Most of us can go along with this, but ‘walking properly’, St Paul tells us, also means not quarrelling and not being jealous. It means making no provision for the self. More than that, it means putting on the Lord Jesus Christ.

‘Putting on the Lord Jesus Christ’ itself involves more than seeking to keep our Lord’s teaching, although that would be a start. It is rather a command to be like our Lord in his character. We are to be compassionate, kind, humble, meek, and patient. We are to put up with one another; forgive one another; love one another. And in the midst of the chaos and darkness of this world, we are to let the peace of Christ rule in our hearts and be thankful. (see Colossians 3:12-15).

To be dressed and ready for our Lord’s return means being clothed with him by making him the centre of our lives and the role model for them.

You have probably heard the phrase, ‘What would Jesus do?’ It is a question that believers are sometimes encouraged to ask themselves when confronted with a difficult situation. This Advent Sunday, we are encouraged to ask another question. What would we do if we knew Jesus was about to return at any moment? What difference would it make to how we think and live?

This is why Jesus closes his answer to his disciples questions with words specifically directed to all who will follow him:

‘And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake.’ (Mark 13:37)

The Advent Collect: 

Almighty God,
give us grace to cast away the works of darkness
and to put on the armour of light,
now in the time of this mortal life,
in which your Son Jesus Christ came to us in great humility;
that on the last day,
when he shall come again in his glorious majesty
to judge the living and the dead,
we may rise to the life immortal;
through him who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

Amen.

Christmas is Coming

It's official we are now in the run up to Christmas!  As I suspect many of you did in your churches yesterday, we lit the first of our Advent Candles on the Advent Wreath, I have begun writing Christmas cards, and the Christmas tree arrives on Thursday.  Readers of this blog will know that I love Christmas and I am really looking forward to it this year with all that goes with it - even the mince pies!  (For my previous comments on Christmas, see under the label Christmas.)

I don't know what your favourite moment at Christmas is.  For me, it has to be the Midnight Eucharist on Christmas Eve.  But herein lies a paradox.  I have preached at this service for quite a few years now both here and, previously, in Scotland, but I have never been happy with my sermon.  I don't just mean in the 'we can always do better' sense, rather I am always left feeling that I just didn't quite get there.  The sheer wonder of the occasion seems to demand so much more than certainly I have been able to achieve.

Part of the problem - only part of the problem, mind you - is that by Christmas Eve, I always feel completely drained.  Like having a Ferrari with no petrol in it.  No matter how hard you put your foot on the accelerator nothing is going to happen.  Another part of the problem is simply finding the words to describe the Word, the Word that did not stay a Word, but became flesh and dwelt amongst us.

This year I am going to go back to basics and work through the Christmas Gospel, that is, St John's Prologue to his Gospel in chapter 1 which tells of the Word becoming flesh.  I have read it so many times and preached on it often, but have never really felt that I have got to the heart of what St John is saying.  So to begin with, I am going to try reading and understanding the Prologue again.

Anyway, the sermon preparation for Christmas Eve begins in earnest now.

A New Liturgical Year

I am more than a little embarrassed at how long it has been since I last posted.  It has been so busy this term and the trouble is that once you get out of the habit of posting regularly, it tends to get squeezed out.  But no excuses!  Thank you to those who have been reading older posts and sending comments, you have encouraged me to get back in the saddle.

So what's been happening here?  All the normal things, but rather a lot of them.  We have experienced quite some numerical growth over the past year, which resulted in the largest congregation in our history a few weeks ago.  It is hard to identify any one single reason for this growth, we are, of course, encouraged by it, but it does also pose challenges not least in terms of space.

By far the greatest challenge, though, for me is getting to know the congregation.  How do you get to know so many people in any meaningful way and, more importantly, how do you minister spiritually to them?  Spare a prayer if you are reading this!

Last Sunday was the Feast of Christ the King.  I have written about this occasion in the past.  To save you having to look it up: it is also our anniversary celebration.  Christ Church was officially 77 years old.  Our Bishop was with us for the service, a good number of people were confirmed, and we had a Parish lunch back at the Vicarage.  The weather was really kind to us dry, sunny, and not too hot and many came both for the service and the lunch.

I wrote in the last post about different new years.  That was at the start of the academic new year.  This week it is, of course, Advent Sunday and the start of the new Church liturgical year.  I can't believe we are back to Year A and Matthew's Gospel.  It only feels like last year that I bought some new commentaries on Matthew to help preparing sermons in Year A.  From a preaching point of view, my two favourites are Craig Keener's and Ben Witherington's.  I am going to make use of France this time around as well, and will be interested to see what he has to say.  I generally like France, even if he did once turn me down for a job!

I have enjoyed Luke this year, though.  I have found myself regularly turning to Darrell Bock's large two volume commentary and Craig Evans' much shorter volume, which I have found surprisingly helpful given its size. What always strikes me reading Luke's Gospel is how different it feels to Acts.  Obviously, you might say, given the change of location, but it is more than that.  From the moment Acts opens you feel things are different.  I don't mean in a literary way and it's hard to put into words.  It is just a completely different world in every way.  Maybe there is a sermon there in itself.

Thank you again to those who are still interested in this blog.  I make no promises except to say I'll do my best to do better.

Have a great Advent!

I am one of those dinosuars who still prefers to write his sermons by hand.  This means that I can't easily post my sermon for Advent here. There is so much going on this weekend and I just don't have the time to type it in.  If you are so motivated, you can download it or listen to it on the Christ Church, Kowloon Tong website.

The theme is 'God in himself and God as he chooses to reveal himself'.

I love Advent and the lead up to Christmas.  I love Christmas Trees, and Christmas Cards, the dinners and parties, and all the celebrations.

Scrooge is not allowed in this household.

But above all, I love the Midnight Eucharist: On this most Holy Night ...

I am trying to persuade a brilliant singer I know and love to sing as part of the Christmas Night Eucharist.  She is proving to be a bit of a shrinking violet at the moment, but I have four Sundays to persuade her ...

I hope you have a great Advent!

The Collect for the First Sunday of Advent


Almighty God,

give us grace to cast away the works of darkness

and to put on the armour of light,
now in the time of this mortal life,
in which your Son Jesus Christ came to us in great humility;
that on the last day,
when he shall come again in his glorious majesty
  to judge the living and the dead,
we may rise to the life immortal;
through him who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
Amen.

Advent 4: Saved!

Today is the last in the series of meditations for Advent. I'll post again tomorrow!

Advent 4: Saved!

‘But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us. Much more surely then, now that we have been righteoussed by his blood, will we be saved through him from the wrath of God.’ (Romans 5:8-9)

God is angry with our sin. And if we are honest, we will admit he has every right to be. We all know, don’t we, that we have done things of which we are ashamed? None of us would welcome having our past lives displayed on a screen for all to see. We all know that the world we live in is full of wickedness, cruelty, and injustice. We are angry with our sin. The difference is that we have no power to do anything about it. We are weak and helpless trapped by the very thing that we condemn in others and in our world.

We are not always conscious of this helplessness but it finds a sub-conscious outlet. Our despair expresses itself in our behaviour: in our cravings and addictions; in our longings for power, money, and control; in our desire for sex, for food, for slimness, for meaning, and for pleasure. We know all is not well. Life seems hopeless. We feel helpless. We search for help and for meaning. But to no avail.

‘For while were still weak, Christ died for the ungodly.’

And this is the Bible’s message of salvation. The message that we have rejected as irrelevant or have tried to change to meet the needs of the hour.

‘For I am not ashamed of the Gospel for it is the power for God to salvation.’ What is the Gospel? It is the good news concerning Jesus Christ whose birth we are about to celebrate. Yes, God was and is angry with us. Yes, God is the Judge before whom we all must appear. Yes, we must face the consequences of our actions. But God the Judge is also God our Creator. And because he created us, despite what we have done, are doing and will do, he still cares for us.

Any parent must know this feeling. Your son or daughter has done something of which you really disapprove, something which really makes you mad, but even so, you would die for him or her if you had to.

Well, God has.

He is not a detached observer who has no understanding of our plight or condition. He is one who has become one of us and has experienced it all. Did he have to do this? No. Why did he do this? Because even though our behaviour angers him as – let’s face it - it angers ourselves, he still loves us and cares for us.

This Christmas it’s a straight choice: go on as we have been doing, trying to run away and avoiding the consequences of our actions and behaviour, or admit we need help. The help we need lies in a manger.

What do we have to do to receive this the greatest of gifts? How do we find the help we so desperately need? This was the question a prison guard asked St Paul when he had given up all hope. The answer, the same then as it is now, is both simple and profound: Have faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved.

Advent: 3. The Wrath of God

Monday Morning

The beginning of a busy week. It has been a long time since I have been able to take a break. I am hoping to take the Sunday off after Christmas, but it is proving very difficult to find anyone to cover for me. It is one of the biggest pressures here: feeling that everything depends on me and that there is no-one able or willing to help. Let’s hope that by the end of the week I will have found someone! I hope so.

On a happier note, our congregation here is growing, numerically at least, and everyone is getting very excited now Christmas is drawing near. Yesterday was Pledge Sunday when we ask the congregation to pledge themselves and their resources to God for the year ahead. It met with a most encouraging response.

Today, I post the third in the series for advent. This one is about a little discussed topic nowadays. Back to the Personal Journey series tomorrow.

Have a good week!

The Wrath of God

The Bible tells us that we have all sinned and fall short of the glory of God. It is because we are trapped in sin that we need saving. Salvation, in traditional Christian terms, is from sin and its consequences. One of the consequences of sin is that it incurs the wrath of God. To put it another way: it makes God angry and receives his response.

It is very easy to dismiss this idea as simply being a throwback to the middle ages: to a time that we have now, thankfully, left behind. And this is what just about most of us Christian and non-Christian alike are doing. You won’t hear many sermons in Church about the wrath of God. This is in part because of what was an unhealthy emphasis on it in some sections of the Church, in times past; in part because we prefer to talk about the love of God; and in part because we just don’t believe in it. A God who gets angry seems far too primitive for our advanced taste.

As far as we are concerned: if God exists (and it’s a big if) he had better be grateful to me for believing in him at all, and be nice to me if he wants me to take any notice of him. Like the genii in the lamp, he is there to grant my wishes, and if he wants my continued attention, then he had better give me more than three. So we have a god for all seasons. A god who is always there. A god who never has a bad word to say about us, who not only accepts me for what I am, but who also would never dream of trying to change me. A 21st century god without any of the nasty bits. A god you aren’t ashamed to be seen out with.

If this is our god, or anything like it, then I have to say that this god does not exist – no matter how much we may like him to. The God of the Bible is not at our beck and call. He is the Creator of all, who calls us all to account, and who holds us all accountable for our behaviour and actions. He is a God who gets angry at sin and who expresses that anger. And one day, the Bible tells us, we all will have to appear before this God for judgement.

We may find this goes against all our prejudices and preconceptions, but the alternative god is a god who does not get angry with sin, who does not judge it, and who does not respond to it. Such a god is one who does not care about the inequality, injustice, exploitation, and downright wickedness of our world. For if we humans care and get angry at racism, or child abuse, or political corruption, then a god who does not is either irrelevant or heartless. But we cannot have a god who is selectively angry at sin. If social and political sin call for a response - and it does - so, too, does our own sin. We are prepared to condemn social and political sins, but we have to guard against seeing the speck in society’s eye and not seeing the beam that is in our own.

It is not enough, however, for God to get angry: that anger must be expressed, otherwise God is either impotent or useless. When the Bible talks about the wrath of God, it means more than just God being angry. It means that God does something about the things that make him angry. He judges them, condemns them, and punishes those who perpetrate them: both now in this life and, more finally and completely, in the life to come.

Sixty years ago, the allies in Europe conducted the Nuremberg trials in which those who were suspected of war crimes and crimes against humanity were put on trial. No matter how imperfect, most think this was not only justified, but necessary, and that not to have done so would itself have been a crime. Why, then, do we find it so strange that God should put those who are guilty of crimes before him on trial?