Best and Worst - A Sermon for Epiphany

Isaiah 60, 1-9
Matthew 2, 1-18

“It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.” With those words, Charles Dickens begins his epic novel, “A Tale of Two Cities.” Such words find a powerful echo in our Gospel Reading this morning.

For the best of times, we are able to look to the story of the magi. Just 6 days ago, our thoughts were on Jesus in the manger. Then we found him visited by shepherds, men of little status whose working lives were such that they lacked the ritual cleanliness to be fully participating members of Israel’s religious life which meant in effect being outsiders.

Now we meet another group of outsiders, the mysterious magi. We do not know when Matthew sees them as coming to visit Jesus. Often it is noted that they visit Jesus in a house as though this puts a considerable difference between the time of their visit and the earlier visit of the shepherds. However, this is not necessarily so. The Greek word that is often translated as “inn” in terms of no room at the inn, is “kataluma” which is only used elsewhere by Luke to refer to the arrangements for the upper room whilst in the Parable of the Prodigal Son, Luke uses a different word for a commercial inn. Given that most basic homes were one room homes with a lower level for animals who could reach up to a manger at the family living level, there is good reason to believe that Jesus was born in the main section of a home of relatives whilst the kataluma or spare room was already occupied. If so, the two visitations need not be far apart.

But what of these magi? Their visit fits an Eastern pattern of great births being accompanied by momentous events in the sky. Certainly we know of a comet in 11BCE in Gemini with its head towards Leo, seen by many as a symbol of Judah, which may have heightened messianic expectations. We also know of planetary conjunctions in both 7BCE and 6 BCE which would have added to a sense that momentous happenings were on the way. Magi from present day Iran or Iraq would have noticed these things and taken them seriously. But who were they?

One commentator, Brian Stoffregen puts it like this;

“Originally in Persia, Magi were dream- interpretaters. By Jesus’ time, the term referred to astronomers, fortune-tellers, or star-gazers. In fact our word “magic” or “magician” comes from the word Magi. They were horospope fanatics - a practice condemned by Jewish standards. We might compare the to people in fortune - teller booths, or people on the “psychic hotline” or other “occupations” that fore-tell the future by stars, tea leaves, Tarot cards etc. They were magicians, astronomers, star-gazers, pseudo-scientists, fortune tellers..”

Another writer, Nathan Nettleton, puts it like this;

“They were the speakers of the sacred words at the pagan sacrifices. At worst, the term referred to a magician or sorcerer, or even a deceiver. Magi were people whose activities were repeatedly condemned and prohibited throughout the scriptures and were completely anathema to the people of Israel.”

Do you get the picture? These Magi were not just foreigners which to some would be bad enough. They were also those whose religious practices were far removed from those of Israel. God’s blessings are seen to be for even the most unlikely of people. For this Christ has come to demonstrate God’s love for all.

But can we learn from these Magi? I think we can. Part of my upbringing was in a religious context in which you almost feared being unorthodox. God might not like it. And yet, there are times when I find myself uncomfortable with the sort of religious expression that claims to have it all. Bono and U2 were castigated some years ago by some supposedly orthodox Christians when they produced a song entitled, “ I still haven’t found what I am looking for.” I can’t see the problem with that especially given the spiritual depths in amny of their songs. You see, the example of the Magi was that they were searchers. They didn’t claim to have it all but they saw their lives as a journey of discovery. And in that they are an example to us. We don’t know it all. But if we like them are prepared to be diligent seekers, then like them we may be graced by a vision of God’s light, by our Epiphany. So a message for today, is to dare like them to take the risk of seeking and God may well bless us with our own Epiphanys which transform us as doubtless the Magi were transformed by what must have been a surprising experience for them as they knelt before the infant Jesus.

And what of those gifts. Gold, frankincense and myrrh - hardly ideal gifts for a baby although my father tells me that he was enrolled in a “Funeral club” within days of being born. Of course, gold points us to Kingship, frankincense to priesthood and myrrh to suffering and death. But there is another understanding that is worth considering. Gold, frankincense and myrrh were used by Persian magicians as elements in their practices. Taken this way, the gifts become infinitely more sacrificial for they can be seen as representing a surrender of old ways and old understandings as they embrace the new revelation that has come to them in Christ. Now they become a challenge to us. A challenge that asks of us if we are using our gifts in a way that conflicts with the way of Christ and if so are we like the wise men prepared to bring those gifts to Christ.

Well, the wise men are part of the good side of Christmas. And yet there is a shadow side. And that shadow side is to be found in Herod the Great. Although as an Idumean he was not a pure Jew and his relationship with his people was difficult, he might have been expected to be one of the stars of the story. And yet like so many rulers, when feeling threatened, he had a tendency to lash out with cruelty and brutality. Even his own family experienced this. Not for nothing was it said that it was safer to be Herod’s pig than his Son. Later to effect mass mourning on his death, he prepared massive executions to coincide with his passing.

Herod reminds us of the dangers of power being used for domination. For we know that too often, people have to die for the fears, ambitions and vanities of leaders. How often have people been seen as expendable just as Matthew presents the infants of Bethlehem as being expendable in the sight of Herod. Herod’s violence is unleashed with brutality. And in that we see something of an ongoing human story. For as American Methodist theologian Walter Wink has written, the dominant myth today is not the official stories of any of the world’s great faiths but the pagan rooted myth of the redemptive value of violence. A myth which has destructive outworkings, a myth which perhaps lies at the heart of yesterday’s snuff video (I’d call it pornographic) where the solution to a violent man is seen as public violence and so as has always been the case, this myth, Herod’s myth leads on to ever increasing circles of hatred and violence.

Follow Jesus and see the contrast between him and Herod;

- A contratst between non violence as opposed to violence
- A Valuing of all however undeserving as opposed to valuing only those who are useful to Number 1
- A courageous compassion as opposed to a destructive rage.

Soon the Holy Family will have to flee. Soon they will become refugees in need of asylum, a journey followed by so many in the 2 millenia that will follow. For the life of Jesus like that of the rest of humanity will be no fairytale but will interract all too powerfully with the forces of darkness.

But this morning whilst we must move into being realistic about our world in which power is so often used to squash others, we can indeed encounter hope. For in Christ, God’s light has entered the world. Darkness cannot put it out. And we are called to live every day as signs of the Light even when it puts us a million miles away from the tyranny of the majority and the drumbeat of conformity.

The best and the worst. The worst is all too real but the best is greater and at Epiphany we can celebrate that the all embracing love of Christ, the Light of the world, that is the most powerful force of all, greater than any of the man made abominations that are weapons of mass destruction.


Preached at Torrington Methodist Church on Sunday December 31st 2006

Welcoming Christ - Christmas Day Sermon Luke 2, 1-20

I love Nativity plays which tell the story of the coming of Jesus. Most years, stories reach the media of occasions when things go wrong. I can never forget the occasion when at a school I was working in, our dress rehearsal went dramatically wrong when one of the shepherds decided to show his bum to the audience. Sometimes, the disasters become memorable such as the boy who played the innkeeper whilst nursing jealousy to the boy who had beat him to the rather more prestigious role of Joseph. When on the night of the performance, Joseph and Mary knocked on the door of the inn asking for shelter, he told Mary, “Ok. You can come in.” Having rewritten the script, he then told Joseph in no uncertain terms where he could go.

Aagh, the innkeeper. Along with Herod who often gets left out of our Nativitys, he shares the role of pantomime villain. But wait a moment! Whilst Herod is all too real in the account to be found in Matthew’s Gospel and indeed in historical accounts, the innkeeper is nowhere to be found. He is but a creative invention.

The traditional view that comes over in our Nativity plays is that the innkeeper is a man who tells Mary and Joseph that there is no room at the inn, leaving them to effectively squat in a stable. This morning, in the interests of being true to Scripture as well as finding inspiration in the true Biblical story, I want to challenge that traditional interpretation.

The Palestine that Jesus was born into, had a culture that took hospitality seriously. In Bethlehem, one would expect that hospitality to be available to Joseph and Mary. Sure they were ninety miles away from their hometown of Nazareth but the registration ordered by Rome meant that Joseph was back in the town where his roots lay. Furthermore, Mary was not without connections in the area. After all, it was to this area that she had travelled some months earlier to see her relative Elizabeth whose husband Zachariah as a priest was himself well connected.

Yet tradition tells us that they were turned away at the inn. And yet I think the tradition is unbiblical. For not only is the tradition in conflict with what we kno of Palestinian society but the language doesn’t fit. The word used for “inn” here in the Greek text is “kataluma” which can mean inn but can also mean a guest room, attached to the house or built on the roof, which is how it is understood in its only other mention in Luke’s Gospel, when Jesus is making preparations for a guest room in which to share the Last Supper with his friends. Furthermore, in the only occasion in which there is mention of a commercial inn in Luke’s Gospel, in the parable of the Good Samaritan, Luke uses a different Greek word.

So assuming that there was no room in the guest room attached to the house in which Jesus was born, how was Jesus born? Well, the probability is that he was born in a one room house which was normal for peasants. Such houses would have 80% of the room on a raised terrace on which the family cooks, eats and lives whilst at the lower level is the place where the animals would spend the night. The tradition of the time would be for a manger to be built into the floor at the higher level so that a hungry cow or donkey could reach into it if necessary for food. Such a place is in accordance with the nature of the site of the Church of Nativity which is the traditional site of the birth of Jesus.

And if this is so, do not the words of the Christmas carol ring true?

“Ox and ass before him bow,
For he is in the manger now!
Christ is born to save,
Christ is born to save.”

Jesus being born into a loving yet humble home, makes access so much easier for shepherds used to being turned away. Its essential decency enables them to leave, praising God in a way that a stable would not have done.

So at Christmas, we rejoice that Jesus has come in a way that enables even outsiders to gain access to him. We rejoice in the love and care that surrounded him.

And if a peasant householder at a busy time could make the sacrifices which enabled Jesus to be welcomed into our world, does not Bethlehem become an example to us with a challenge to make space for the Christ child even amidst the bustle of our lives.

For we have the advantage of hindsight. Unlike those relatives we know the significance of Jesus as the one who in Betjeman’s poem is;

“The Maker of the stars and sea
Become a child on earth for me!”

At Christmas, we celebrate the coming of the One who from the very beginning was available for those who were so often kept at the margins. Unlike the example of the fictional innkeeper, there are no bouncers keeping people at a distance. For he has come for all, even lowly shepherds and those from other lands - so much for the false image of God as a quintessential English gentleman!

Welcomed in love 2000 years ago, may we welcome him with love today, even as our joy turns to uninhibited partying!

Preached at Bideford Methodist Church on Christmas Day 2006

Midnight Communion - The Hills are alive to the sound of music.

Luke 2, 1-15

And so at this late hour we gather, a people filled with excitement as we stand on the threshold of Christmas. In a few hours, we will share gifts, party, eat, drink and be merry. And yet, we think back to a night two millenia ago which is the source of our festivities.

It is not that it was an idyllic night. Fear stalked the streets of Palestine. Occupying, often cruel, soldiers were on the streets. Anger was in the air. And to make matters worse if such could be possible, people were on the move as Rome was carrying out an enrollment for taxation purposes. People had had to be on the move including a heavily pregnant teenager named Mary travelling the ninety miles from Nazareth to Bethlehem from whence her man Joseph’s family had come.

Meanwhile out in the fields were a group of shepherds. These were men of low social standing whose work kept them on the margins of society, men whose inability to observe the requirements of the law, left them as outsiders with regards to Israel’s religious life.

It was a night that seemed to offer so little - and yet it was to be the night in which the hopes and fears of all the years would be gloriously met.

Luke tells of angels appearing to these shepherds with a message that a Saviour had been born. We know nothing of the initial reaction of the shepherds other than that they were afraid. No wonder. For this was a night in which they were to be taken beyond their normal experience of life. And for most of us there is something distinctly terrifying about the unfamiliar.

Over in the village of Bethlehem, in a crowded house Mary will have been experiencing her last contractions with all the fear of a first time mother. But then, the child is born - and the world can never be the same again. In a moment, that first Noel has changed the world. Nothing can be the same. This moment has divided history into a Before and an After. Suddenly a world that is brutish is opened up to the possibilities of the wonder of Divine redeeming love.

Back in the fields the hills are well and truly alive to the sound of music. There is a joy amongst the angelic host for god has transgressed the boundary between Heaven and Earth. And for what? The answer is for love. For in the child of Bethlehem, divine love is invading the world and all the darknesses of hatred, real as they are, cannot put out the light of divine love. And that love fills Planet Earth with boundless possibilities.

But what of those shepherds. Together this motley crew f rejects, decide to go into Bethlehem to see that about which they have been told. And so they go to the house which would have been very much a peasant house with the infant in a manger for the guest room (not an inn as we know it) was full.

When the shepherds returned to the Hills, they returned praising God. They had seen a sign of God’s greatness and contrary to so much that they experienced, they were not excluded from it. For God had entered into their world and ours, not with mighty status but as a peasant child. God had become as one of them. And I guess that the hills never looked quite so mundane to them again.

And what of us? On this night, we recall that it is for us and out of love for us that God has become a child. This is the night when we feel around us the touch of God’s passionate love. Unlike those shepherds, we know something of how the Christ child’s life will pan out. We know something of the beauty of his life and we know that ultimately he will show to us the full extent of the courage of Divine love in his going to the torture and ultimately death on the cross of Calvary.

This is not to say that the story which began that first Christmas is complete. Around us we see all too well the shadow side of life.

We see it in;

- those who are prepared to kill others even in the name of God

-those who hurt so much at their sense of grievance, rejection or loss of purpose that they pour alcohol and drugs down their throats to escape their pains

- those who crave love but as they seek it in the wrong places, only descend further down a ladder of losing self worth

- those who find no lasting meaning in life and who desperately seek some satisfaction in unending consumerism.

Yet at Christmas, there is a message of hope. For in Christmas, the God who is at the heart of the being of the universe and even of our own being, sends to us an unequivocal message that simply says;

“I love you like crazy”

And that love is made manifest in a manger. Its final fulfilment is yet to come. But come it will. For the day will come when God’s will is done on earth as in heaven. The day is coming when the Kingdom of justice, mercy and peace that Christ proclaimed, will be a reality.

This night, look up! Catch the vision. For truly, the Hills are alive with the sound of music. The times, they are a changing.’

Celebrate! Rejoice and sing! Christ has come!


Bideford Methodist Church Midnight Communion December 24th 2006

Magnificat - the subversive message of Christmas Luke 1, 39-55

In that Christmas classic song, the “Fairytale of New York” recorded by the Pogues and Kirsty MacColl about two bickering Irish immigrant lovers whose dreams of a great life together in the USA have been shattered by their alcoholism and drug addiction, there is a classic interchange between Pogues frontman Shane MacGowan and Kirsty MacColl in which she responds to his “I could have been someone” with a fiery retort of “So could anyone!”

In the Magnificat, Mary responds to the life changing and in an honour culture such as Palestine in those days, potentially life costing news that she a yet to be married teenager is to become a mother, with an emphatic song that asserts that however things might appear, God sees everyone as a someone. For in Magnificat, we are given a picture of the God who transforms the realities that we so often dare not challenge.

Magnificat has rightly been seen as a challenge to the power structures that often dominate. During the 1970s it was banned by the Argentinian military junta when utilised by the Mothers of the Disappeared in their demands for non violent resistance to that blood soaked regime. But this response was hardly new for in the 1930s, it had been banned in Mexico and by Franco’s Spain.

And in a way, they were right to be afraid. The German martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the centenary of whose birth has been remembered this year, once wrote;

“The song of Mary is the oldest Advent hymn. It is at once the most passionate, the wildest, one might say the most revolutionary advent hymn ever sung. This is not the gentle, tender, dreamy Mary whom we sometimes see in paintings… This song has none of the sweet, nostalgic, or even playful tones of some of our Christmas carols. It is instead a hard, strong, inexorable song about collapsing thrones and humbled lords of this world, about the power of God and the powerlessness of humankind. These are the tones of the women prophets of the Old Testament that now come to life in Mary’s mouth.”

And yet, we often miss so much of what is the message of Magnificat. Certainly it begins with a note of gentle yet joyful acceptance. After all, her response to the angel bringing the traumatic news of her pregnancy has been a submissive;

“I am the Lord’s servant. May it be to me as you have said.”

Now having visited her much older relative, Elizabeth, herself pregnant with the future John the Baptist, Mary responds to Elizabeth’s words of joy, by breaking into song that;

“My heart glorifies in the Lord.”

All of this is admirable and inspirational. Mary is a powerful example of a woman who is prepared to both trust in and rejoice in God, at a time when most would be filled with fear. And this joyful obedience has made Mary an important figure to many Christians.

But we can hardly stop there. For Mary knows that what is happening is absolutely earth shattering. It is for her. After all this is a young girl living in the backwater village of Nazareth, a place not mentioned in the Old Testament or by the first century Jewish historian Josephus. 30 or so years later, Nathaniel who was one of the first of those who followed Jesus, will have had to overcome his scepticism on hearing of Jesus’ roots to ask whether anything good can come from Nazareth. And yet, this young girl from Nazareth is able to accept that she is to be God’s blessed instrument.

And she accepts it joyfully because of her insights into the nature of God. She knows of God’s dealing with Israel. And so, she bears testimony to the faithfulness and effectiveness of God down through the generations. And she knows to that the nature of God is mercy. In short she knows that God is a good reality whose will she will gladly obey.

But Mary sees God’s justice as that which changes the world. For her the concept of God’s Kingship will not be like the political practice of rearranging which bottoms should be on which of the seats of power. No! She sees God as being far more revolutionary than that. For God’s ways are infinitely greater than human ways. And so as William Barclay puts it, she in Magnificat, envisages three great revolutions.

The first is the moral revolution. Here is the death of pride. To be truly human involves coming to terms with our shared dependency on God.

Secondly, there is the socio political revolution. The powerful use of power to dominate and Lord it over others is challenged. The needs of the lowly have a priority over the wants of the mighty.

And thirdly, there is an economic revolution. The needs of the dispossessed and hungry become prevalent and economic orders that fail to address this stand condemned by God.

In all of this, we are reminded that Christianity is a materialist religion. God takes the material seriously and Magnificat is an unending reminder to us that following Christ means being the sort of transformed nonconformists, who refuse to march to the drumbeat of conformity but who dare to assert the equal preciousness of each and every life. And make no bones about it it, this message is a challenge to our living and to every political, social and economic order. It is a message of dynamite!

Fred Kaan puts it well in one of his hymns;

SING we a song of high revolt;
Make great the Lord, God's name exalt:
Sing we the words of Mary's song
Of God at war with human wrong.
Sing we of God who deeply cares
And still with us our burden shares;
God, who with strength the proud disowns,
Brings down the mighty from their thrones.

By God the poor are lifted up;
God satisfies with bread and cup
The hungry folk of many lands:
The rich are left with empty hands.
God calls us to revolt and fight,
To seek for what is just and right.
To sing and live Magnificat
To ease all people's sorry lot.--

Oh, Magnificat is full of spiritual power, the spiritual power that caused 17th Century Japanese Christians to quietly intone the words af Magnificat as fellow Christians were burnt at the stake. It is an unending affirmation of the Kingdom that will see out the idolatrous kingdoms of our world.

But now, it is all beginning. Christmas, the birth of Mary’s child Jesus, draws near. And with it are the birth pangs of God’s new order. Shepherds - bottom of the pile, ritually unclean and so excluded from so much, - these outsiders will be the first to hear. Soon magi - foreigners of a different faith - these outsiders will come with their gifts. The world is a changing.

And with it comes the news that everyone is now a someone!

Bideford Methodist Church Carol Service - Dec 24th 2006

Carol service - December 17th. The difference Christmas makes

Jesus was born into a world marred by violence, oppression and terrorism. It was a world with many injustices in which too many were excluded from the good life.

Next week, we celebrate that coming in our world that is marred by violence, oppression and terrorism. Ours is a world with many injustices in which too many are excluded from the good life.

Too often at Christmas, we are seduced by idyllic imagery to take our eyes off the radical nature of God taking flesh in our world. And is there not a danger that Christmas has become increasingly seen through comfortable Victorian aspirations rather than through the cutting edge of the Gospel accounts.

For a start, it is a story that involves pain. Think for a moment of Mary, a young female probably in her early teens. Pregnant without a satisfactory explanation for those who would look at her accusingly. So young yet now in danger of not just losing her dreams of a happy married life with Joseph but confronted also with shame and even the possibility of forfeiting her life. And then there is Joseph. Doubtless he is the object of much scorn and derision. And such mockery will go on doubtless for many years. We do not know how long Joseph lived. After the time when a 12 year old Jesus was accidently left behind in the Temple of Jerusalem, we hear no more of him. We can but assume that he died sometime in the next 20 years. But for Mary, we know that pain was to be a companion for many more years. She would see Jesus mocked and at times find his words to her hard to bear when she sought to rescue him from conflict. Ultimately as Luci Shaw writes in her poem “Mary’s Song” she must see her Son torn.

And yet this story of pain is a sign of God bringing a healing into our world. Too often, the Gospel has been captured by the powerful to reinforce the status quo in our world. But the coming of Christ is far from a message of comfort to the systems of domination in our world. Mary on her visit to cousin Elizabeth, realises this. In her song, the Magnificat, she sees the child in her womb as the one who will continue God’s transforming work in the world. He is the one who will tear down rulers from their thrones whilst lifting up the humble. He is the one who will fill the hungry with good things whilst sending the rich empty away. In the child whom she carries, she sees the signs of a great reversal in our world.

And the evidence of this is found in the people who were the first recorded visitors of Baby Jesus. We need to know that Jesus was born into a society that knew how to exclude. Think of South Africa under appartheid and you will recall how race was a means of exclusion until the miracle of Nelson Mandela. In the time of Jesus, Israel in the name of God, used not just race as a means of exclusion but also gender, religious background, working practices and disabilities.

But those first visitors to Jesus were precisely the outcasts whom the system sought to keep in their place. Shepherds were the ritually unclean who were kept on the fringe of the Temple. But more was to follow. The magi were foreigners, you know the type of people that the Sun so often ruminates against and more than that their religion was back to front for they were probably Zoroastrians coming from what is now Iraq. And then, when Jesus is taken to the Temple for the appropriate rites, we meet the sort of people often thought of as insignificant, Simeon and the the woman Anna. Do you get it? It was the outsiders of the world into which Jesus was born who are to be found in the first celebrations whilst King Herod takes on a part akin to a pantomime villain.

And in the life that follows, Jesus will go on breaking down the barriers. He will give hope and dignity to the poor and powerless whilst many of the politically, economically and religiously powerful, will find his teachings hard to take and some will even plot to kill him.

But it to a world with places of darkness and of animosity that Jesus comes. And in the darkest of places, Jesus with his Kingdom, offers a new vision. One of my favourite Christmas Carols is “Silent Night.” In a powerful song written forty years ago, entitled “Silent Night/7 O’clock News, Simon and Garfunkel illustrated this. It begins with a melodic singing of the Carol before an increasingly loud edition of the 7 O ‘Clock News comes on. It’s News of violence including the Vietnam War becomes a part of an interplay with the message of heavenly peace. And yet it is to such a world that Jesus came. The same carol had also had an impact ninety two years ago during the First World War. On the first Christmas of that bloody conflict, it being one of the few Christmas carols known to both Germans and British, it was sung from opposing trenches, leading to what became known as the Christmas truce which continued in some places for quite a time before the opposing High Commands chose to drown out the message of peace.

But in 2006, the message of Christmas cannot be stifled. It continues to challenge us to seek the ways of peace. It continues to challenge us when our practices and words exclude rather than include. And it does so with the essential message that people of all races, genders and backgrounds are valued by God. And if the stories of Jesus living amongst us do not get that message across to us, the surely the ultimate act of self giving by that Baby of Bethlehem some thirty odd years later should.

For as Mary says in Luci Shaw’s poem;

“For him to see me mended
I must see him torn.”

And to understand his coming to Bethlehem, we need to see his being torn for each and every member of the human race as being a part of the reason for his coming at Christmas.

A tough thought perhaps as we prepare to celebrate but it is an imperfect world that needs the good news that Christ brings.


This sermon was preached at Alwington Methodist Church Carol service

Raise your heads Advent 1

And so we begin our countdown to Christmas. This is a time when so much of our attention is upon cards and gifts, carolling and partying. It is as the old song puts it “the time to be merry.” Or is it? For whilst we may be longing to think of baby Jesus, our Bible readings this morning point us to a very much harsher world.

Jeremiah’s words come from a time of great threat to the nation of Judah. The army of Babylon’s King Nebuchadnezzar is on the outskirts of Jerusalem. Many are telling Judah’s King to resist, for Jerusalem was seen as a pretty strong fortress to defend. It had worked before under Hezekiah albeit due to Divine intervention. But now, such is the power of Babylon’s army that the chances of holding on appear to be but slim. And Jeremiah claims that God has told him that these Babylonians are to be the means by which Judah will be punished for its disobedience to God. Dark times says the prophet are ahead. And indeed, soon Jerusalem including the temple in which such pride was felt will be destroyed. The elite will be taken into exile whilst those who remain will face a harsh existence in surviving the destruction of their economy.

In our Gospel Reading too, there is much to disturb faint hearts. Jesus talks about signs in the sky and distress amongst the nations. People, he says, will faint from fear and foreboding. And certainly Luke’s readers knew very well what it was like to live in a world that was threatening. For only a few years before the likely date of Luke’s Gospel being written, there had been a Jewish uprising against the Romans. And it had failed, indeed failed catastrophically. For the Romans had had enough of this troublesome province and had crushed the rebellion with great brutality. The temple which had been the pride and joy of the Jewish people as well as the centre of Jerusalem’s economic wellbeing, was destroyed so that only that which we know today as the Wailing Wall survived. It must have seen to many as if the world had completely caved in.

To add to all of this, things were not easy for the emergent Christian community. Jerusalem was a part of their heritage. And now having initially been seen as a Jewish sect, the divorce from Judaism which was to split families and communities was well under way whilst meanwhile Imperial Rome viewed the Christians as a difficult band of dissidents useful only as an easy group to blame when things went wrong.

And yet, the essential message of Jesus is;

“Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”

In these words is a message not of denial of hard times but of hope in hard times. It takes me back to a story of how in 18th Century Poland, the Kaiser’s forces were burning all the Jewish villages. One village had been totally destroyed yet the following morning an elderly Jewish man appeared and pounding a few boards together, set up a market stall and opened it for business. A young man passing by, looked in disbelief before asking:

“What are you selling among these ruins?”

The old man smiled before replying;

“I am selling hope. You can sell water in a dry desert, so the place to sell hope is on the ash heap of destruction.”

In Advent, we prepare ourselves for Christmas by looking at harsh realities and then seeking to find the hope, the joy, the peace and the love to enable us to move forwards as God’s people.

Recently, I read of a minister who spoke of putting Herod at the heart of Christmas. I think that he was absolutley right to rescue Christmas from sentimentalism. In a real way, if we ignore the harsh realities of the world to which Jesus came and still comes, we are engaged in nothing better than infantile escapism. We need the Advent Hope precisely because there is a brute side of life.

On Friday, it was World Aids Day. In the past quarter of a century, the World Health Organisation estimates that 25 million people have died of this disease. Alarmingly the toll is ever getting higher. Last year the death toll was at a rate of approximately three September 11ths every day.

Around our world the scourge of warfare goes on. Increasingly images in the press, on television and now through the internet show us the reality of lives that are appallingly devastated . Elsewhere, we see a growth in the toleration of torture and other forms of cruelty.

Behind bars, there is a growing army of people locked away, separated from families and loved ones, loved ones who also feel the daily pain of separation. And all around bitterness grows in ever increasing circles.

On our television screens, the marketing geniuses bombard us with images of that which we should apparently want or they would have us think need but may be unable to afford. And in frustrated hearts, people seek for escape in substance abuse, anti social actions whilst often descending down the painful ladder of depression. And ways out are at their lowest levels for those who experience the absolute poverty of African extreme poverty or the shanty towns of Latin America and the likes of the Philippines.

And yet, today in a brutalised world, we hear the words of Jesus;

“Stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”

What’s it all about? Too often, believers take refuge from the harsh realities of life by looking at events and hoping that they might be so bad that Jesus will bodily return. On the internet, there is a site called “Rapture Index” which scores events as to how they fit into an end time scenario.

But increasingly, I cannot see this as the way of faith. In Christ, we have seen revealed the ways of God, ways which turn our values upside down. In him we see a vision of dignity for all, a vision of peace and a vision of a new community. Sure, we are yet to see the full completion of the Kingdom of God in our world. And it is important that we see God’s work as ongoing. Yet in a world which has always had its brute side, we cannot see ourselves as deserted by God. In a real way Christ is present with us now. And when we endlessly speculate as to the exact nature of a second coming we too often ignore his current presence with us or even treat it as not being good enough.

There is a danger that we will allow ourselves to be so lost between a sentimental view of Christ being born in Bethlehem and an awaited second coming, that we lose a sense of what it means to be God’s watchful, faithful people in the here and now.

Yes, I believe in the power of the God whom we see revealed in Christ to transform our realities. Jeremiah believed in it. At a dark hour in Judah’s history, he had a vision of a “righteous branch” that would bring justice and righteousness back to the land so that Judah be saved and Jerusalem live in safety. Jesus believed in it. Oh there was much darkness around but Jesus tells us that it can not be the last word ;

“Stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”

At Advent, we are called to take some time to consider our lives and our world. We are called to see the realities, unpalatable as they may be. And we are called as God’s people in the here and now to seek to transform those things which are wrong into conformity with God’s will. And we do so with hope, because we believe that what began at Bethlehem is the way for us and for all creation. And we believe that the Kingdom for which Christ was born, will ultimately come in power. For ultimately a word called grace which is at the heart of all that Jesus offers, is more potent than even the grimmest of man’s means of destruction for as Bono writes;

“Grace makes beauty out of ugly things.”

“Stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near."