Year C Christmas 2: he was twelve

Posted on January 3, 2016 by Rosalind C Hughes

Some of you know that shortly before Christmas we suffered a minor break-in here at the church. I came into the office the day before Christmas Eve to find that someone had entered the building by force, and had left a trail of open doors for me to follow. I will confess to a moment of deep apprehension walking through to the worship space before finding that, after all, the pageant costumes were still in their places, and the torches undisturbed. Even the penguin was still keeping watch over the manger, where T & T had left it on Sunday night.

I could forgive most other things. There were a few broken doors, a missing laptop. I called the non-emergency police number, and the EPD responded swiftly, professionally, and with a refreshingly innocent shock at the idea of someone breaking into a church.

“We’re a soft target,” I told the uniformed officer. “We forgive people.” He startled, smiled, agreed.

The detective was less amused. The fingerprints they managed to pull were, in his opinion, probably those of a juvenile, which meant that they would not be matched, because juveniles do not leave their traces in the database, receiving instead special treatment, second chances; “But there’s a special place in hell for the ones who break into a church,” the detective told me.

“We prefer to forgive,” I murmured once more, and he gave me some kind of look.

I mean, I have no problem with legal consequences for illegal actions, but consigning some kid to hell for a couple of doors and a laptop? Seems extreme, somehow.

He was twelve. Those words have been haunting me all week. Every time I think about Jesus lost in Jerusalem. Every time I turn on the news and see the grief, the unsurprised, grim disappointment over the decision not to try the death of Tamir Rice. Every time I turn around, it hits me in the imagination: “He was twelve.”

Jesus, in Jerusalem. Everyone in the family group assumes that he is with somebody else. He is twelve, old enough to choose his own travelling companions. The adults reserve their attention for the little ones in danger of falling under trampling feet, wandering off alone, falling victim to the shadows, stranger danger. Jesus is old enough, it is assumed, to exercise a little discretion, to take a certain amount of responsibility for his own safety.

I wonder what the scholars in the temple thought of this strange boy. What happened when they retired for the night, went to their homes and their wives and their dinner, with their own preteen sons and daughters: did they recognize the shape of a young adolescent, or when they saw him, did they think that he was old enough to take care of himself? Did they think that he was older than his years? No waif or stray, this strapping lad. There is no indication that anyone asked him his age, where he belonged, why he did not go home. For five days: a day’s journey out of Jerusalem for his parents, a day’s frantic journey back, three days of hectic searching.

Three days: can you begin to imagine? He was only twelve!

“Child!” they cried out when they found him.

After Monday’s decision not to charge the officer who shot Tamir Rice over a year ago, when he was twelve, the Washington Post published a piece about Tamir’s age and size, and why the prosecutor’s office keeps insisting on the latter.

Prosecutors said “Tamir was big for his age … and could have easily passed for someone much older,” ….
… [R]esearch published last year by the American Psychological Association found “evidence that black boys are seen as older and less innocent and that they prompt a less essential conception of childhood than do their white same-age peers.” In other words, people tend to think of black boys as bigger and older than they actually are. …
… “participants began to think of black children as significantly less innocent than other children at every age group, beginning at the age of 10.”

He was twelve.

It is a lonely age. Some will judge you by your size, whether or not you have had your adolescent growth spurt yet; most do not know you well enough to judge you by your time on this earth, your life experience, whether or not you have completed sixth grade, begun to learn algebra. Add your blackness, then God help you; because for four long minutes, no one else will, as you lie bleeding on the ground.

When his parents found Jesus in the temple, “All who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers.” Was that because they had just found out that he was twelve, this overgrown child who had been sitting amongst them, sleeping God knows where, eating God knows what, for five days while his family was frantic over whether he would live or die? All of a sudden, the teachers in the temple, the wise ones, those with authority and understanding, were called to check their assumptions, reassess their judgements, recalibrate their entire conversation with this boy.

“Child!” his parents called him, because he was twelve.

Jesus, aged twelve, in the temple, told his parents, “Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” And if they found him here, in God’s house, in this temple, how would that be; and would they trust that he had been in safe hands, in tender care, held in the love of God?

The scary thing, for me, about the kinds of research that the Washington Post reported, the unconscious bias it uncovers, is wondering where I would come out on the researchers’ surveys; how my own gut reactions line up with my reasoned responses; whether I could live what I preach.

If Jesus had come here, to this house, would I know that he was only twelve? Would I give him the benefit of my doubt? What if he had an up-country accent, or middle eastern skin? What if he had never been taught to take off his hat to pray, or to eat? What if he were famished, and had no table manners? If he had been raised to look his elders in the eye, or to avert his gaze as a sign of respect? And which infraction would it take to consign him to a special kind of hell?

“Child!” God calls us, “Why have you treated us like this?”

Why did you misjudge us, prejudge us. Why did you leave us alone, unhelped and untended? Why did you leave us behind? How on earth could you consign us to hell? For just as you did it to the least of these, you did it to me.

“Child,” said his parents to Jesus. “Child,” says Jesus to each of us.

At Christmastide, we remember God coming to us as an infant, helpless; even more helpless than his all-too-human parents; even more helpless than us. Why, how could God become this way?

Perhaps it was to invite us to love God as God loves each of us; with deep tenderness, endless patience, enduring compassion. Perhaps it was to invite us to check our assumptions, to reassess our judgments – we are so quick to prejudge one another. Perhaps it was to recalibrate our conversations with a God who will not leave us lonely, nor misjudge us, nor ever fail to forgive us; who sees us for the rebellious and careless children that we are, and who loves us regardless, so that we may love one another; a God who will not abandon us to death or to hell.

It’s a difficult, dangerous age alright. Being twelve can get you lost; in some cities it can get you dead although your life is barely begun. We’ve all been there. And Jesus has been even to that place, too. He was twelve.

Amen.

Posted in current events, sermon, story | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Today or tomorrow

Posted on December 31, 2015 by Rosalind C Hughes

Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to such & such a town and spend a year there, doing business & making money.’ Yet you do not even know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.  – James 4:13-14, from this morning’s Daily Office

It is New Year’s Eve

At the age of twelve

A little misty for the passing 

Time never recovered

Missed opportunities; ghosts

Love seeding our dreams with regret

At the turn of the year

Hope flows, fortified by fantasy

Fear drowns its sorrows in

The spirits of denial

You do not even know what

Ever tomorrow will bring.

Posted in current events, poetry | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Child sacrifice

Posted on December 28, 2015 by Rosalind C Hughes

Twelve: the end of childhood for
a young black male. Thirteen
months to discover there is no
injustice that we cannot render
reasonable by the fiat of our fear.

Rewind. Twelve: the age of
incarnation lost in the
city, left alone before the
empty altar.

Posted in current events, poetry | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Year C Christmas 1: Incarnate Word

Posted on December 27, 2015 by Rosalind C Hughes

On Thursday morning, in company with many around the world, I was in my kitchen baking Christmas treats and listening to the Festival of Lessons and Carols from King’s College, Cambridge. This morning’s gospel lesson was already on my mind as I heard the Provost of the College get up to read the ninth lesson and announce,

St John unfolds the great mystery of the Incarnation,

and I said to my pastry dough, yeah, right, because if this is St John unfolding the great mystery, I would love to see him doing origami.

The problem is that the Incarnation – the birth of God in the person of Jesus – is a great mystery. We can approach it through the language of story and legend, miraculous conception and angelic intervention, stables and shepherds and the whole cast of characters that orient us to the fact that we are hearing a story of things beyond our understanding. We can use the language of poetry – light, life, the Word which is with the God and which is God – to approach the great mystery, but hardly to explain it. Poetry and story do not show their work; they rely on our imagination to engage with the words, with the Word, to approach their truth with some semblance of love and understanding. Poetry and story reach out, invite us to respond. The Word speaks, the light shines in the darkness, and we are invited to hear, and to see.

The twentieth-century Welsh priest and poet, R.S. Thomas, said in an interview once,

“Poetry is religion, religion is poetry. The message of the New Testament is poetry. Christ was a poet … when I preach poetry I am preaching Christianity, and when one discusses Christianity one is discussing poetry in its imaginative aspects. The core of both [is] imagination as far as I’m concerned.”

And so the Gospel of John invites us to look into the manger in the stable and imagine that the soul of the child lying in its birth scent, newly breathing, only just seen; that this child is as ancient as God; that this child was born today and before the birth of time itself. That this child has lived not only with God, but within God, for as long as God has been alive; for as long as God has been God.

And for as long as this infant has been God, he is born only just now as the life of the world; the world at whose creation he was the witness and Word and welcome; because although he is beyond time, we are not, and he will not keep himself separate from us, in any aspect; in life, in death, in light and in darkness, he will be with us, as he was from the beginning, the unseen born as the most beloved sight, the newborn child of God and of Mary.

John Keble, in nineteenth-century Oxford, remarked that,

“There is everywhere a tendency to make the things we see represent the things we do not see, to invent or remark mutual associations between them, to call the one sort by the names of the other,”

so that we find in Jesus the face of God, and glory, as of the only son of a father, full of grace and truth; and in his mortal life we find the eternal life of the Creator and Sustainer of the life that we know, caught between heaven and earth, tangled in our knowledge of finitude and the possibility of transcendence.

Keble continues,

“so may it not be affirmed that [Christ] condescends in like manner to have a Poetry of His own, a set of holy and divine associations and meanings, wherewith it is His will to invest all material things?”

for as much as Jesus brings the birth of God into our messy and stable-muck-filled world, so through being a part of the mess, he invests it with the order of God, and redeems its loss and lack of love to the life that God intended for it. He invests each person with the holy and divine association of the image of God.

Jesus is specific to history; Jesus is beyond time, so that he can imbue all of history with that association.

So that we can see his redeeming work in the Exodus, in the provision of Abraham’s sacrificial ram. So that we can see his crucifixion in the camps, in the genocide, in the south side streets. So that we can see his face in the Syrian refugee, running from war and terror, the child caught up by his parents in the night and removed to a foreign land. So that we can see his blood in the five-month-old baby caught in the crossfire in a car seat in Cleveland. So that we can read his rebellion in the face of the oppressed resisting the Romans, resisting the power of privilege. So that we can speak his healing into the prayers of the suffering, the sick, the dying. So that we can read his resurrection over the graves of the dead, and proclaim his life, which was beyond time, and which reached into our own time, which was created by him, with him, in him.

There is no escape for the Incarnate God from poetry and story. He has submitted Godself willingly to our limitations of language; the ambiguity of poetry, and the symbols and signs of the story. Even our science embraces elegance, the representation of what is unseen in the language of that which is seen. There is no way, no language, nothing within the scope of our imaginings into which God has not condescended to love us.

And we are invited to engage our imaginations to embrace that love, to respond to its call to find God in each child of history, to bear witness to the life of the light of God in the world, to make those associations between the Exodus and the immigration crisis; to find the face of God in crucified defiance, and in the innocent child.

We are invited to unfold the great mystery of the Incarnation in our own words, in the witness of our own lives, to make poetry out of the mess of living, to make heard our response, our echoing reply to the call of the Incarnate Word of God, who has given us grace to become the children of God.

Amen.

____________

*R.S. Thomas, interviewed by John Ormond of the BBC in 1972; quoted by William V. Davis, R.S. Thomas, Poetry and Theology (Baylor University Press, 2007), p. 43

*John Keble’s words are included in Love’s Redeeming Work: The Anglican Quest for Holiness, Geoffrey Rowell, Kenneth Stevenson, and Rowan Williams, eds. (Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 385

Posted in sermon | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Sermon for a Christmas Eve pageant

Posted on December 26, 2015 by Rosalind C Hughes

And so here we all are.

Here is Mary, exhausted. There’s a reason that childbirth is called labour: it’s a workout.

Here is Joseph, permanently bewildered, still not really sure what’s happening, but see the love that he has for this woman and her child. It is enough, it seems, for him to move heaven and earth to care for them.

Here is the ox, and the ass, enough said.

Here are some smelly shepherds. Sorry, but the fact is that they have been living on the hillside, keeping warm under a pile of sheep at night; God knows how long since they were last in town and had access to a shower. So, some smelly shepherds.

But it is the shepherds who give everyone pause for thought. They tell anyone who will listen that they were visited by angels, that the angels told them to come into this most intimate and invitation-only of places, the delivery room. They justify their outrageous breach of etiquette, health and hygiene, and basic common sense with a tale of heavenly choruses and peace on earth.

No wonder all who heard it were amazed. I think that might have been an understatement.

But Mary, who had the greatest reason to resent their intrusion, to reject their advances, to kick them out on the street no questions asked; Mary recognized the angel’s style from her own encounter. Mary treasured their words, and kept them in her heart to consider later, when she might have had some sleep.

It was the song of the angels that sang her to sleep that night:

Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth, peace among those whom God favours.

This most highly favoured lady knew how to sing the Gloria to God. But what of this peace on earth? She had grown up in a time of oppression, rebellion, and Romans. Never, almost never, had the country known peace. Let alone the whole earth. So she pondered these things in her heart.

[Along with the pageant children, we had a brief discussion about what it might mean to ponder peace on earth, and whether we might come up with any good ideas.]

We have been puzzling about peace on earth for millennia, and it seems that so far we have not found a better solution than Jesus’ suggestion that we start by loving God, and finish up by loving the image of God in one another.

Jesus, the baby in the manger.

When our bishop was here a couple of months ago, he found himself visiting the weekend after a five-month-old baby died after being shot in her car seat in Cleveland. Do you remember that? He told us that if that child had been brought here for baptism, we each, we all would have promised to do everything in our power to raise her in the love of the Lord, which means, first of all, to let her live. And then, it means, to do everything in our power to realize that peace on earth which passes our understanding right now, so that she might know nothing but the love of God, reflected in those around her, living in peace and goodwill with one another.

Angel dust dreams.

Innocent child, born into a less than innocent world.

There is a reason that God came to us as an infant, as vulnerable as a human being can be, completely dependent upon the permission of the world to let him live. And then, as all children are, in need of great love, if he is to know the love of God, the love of neighbour, the love which passes all understanding.

He is born as a baby, so that when he is brought before us, we cannot help but promise to do everything in our power to protect him, to help him to grow in the love of the Lord, and for a moment, as we look on him and love him, mellowed by the Christmas light and evolutionary programming to protect the young; for a moment, we really mean it all.

That is where peace on earth begins, in hearts and minds that really mean it all: the love of God, the love of neighbour, the love for every child, because each one bears the image of God, each one is a child of the living, loving God of all.

This is where peace begins, in the words of the angel: Do not be afraid; in the confused faith of the smelly shepherds; in the warm acceptance of the ox and the ass; in the gentleness of Joseph; and the labour of Mary.

This is where peace begins, in the infant born in the image of God, the saviour of the world. Amen.

Posted in holy days, homily, sermon | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Year C Advent 4: kissing cousins

Posted on December 20, 2015 by Rosalind C Hughes

When we moved to Singapore, in 1998, my cousin and her husband were packing up to move back to Britain. We overlapped by just a couple of weeks. Lisa came out to the condo and gave me some tips on Singapore living, and showed me a few good places to go shopping, and dropped off their unfinished liquor which they would not be shipping home.

We hadn’t seen one another in a couple of years, since her wedding, I guess; and we haven’t seen one another now, I think, since my mother’s funeral. We keep finding ourselves a few thousand miles apart, crossing paths in unexpected ways; at one point, when she ended up in Cambridge, she was teaching English as a foreign language in the house next-door to my birth mother’s home. Cousins are the stuff of coincidences.

I was at a seminar in September, where one of the panelists was Chuck Wynder, Missioner for Social Justice and Advocacy for the Episcopal Church. I don’t remember the moderator’s name, but the two men reported that in talking together before the meeting, these two apparent strangers had discovered that they were, in fact, cousins.

Mary and Elizabeth were related somehow, we don’t know whether by blood or marriage, we don’t know how closely; casual relatives without close definition are routinely translated as cousins, so that is how we know these two women: as cousins.

For Mary, the journey to Elizabeth’s house was no little undertaking. From Nazareth to the hills outside Jerusalem is a trek, and the road was not easy nor particularly safe. It was a strong and overriding impulse that drove Mary to the house of her cousin.

The angel had told Mary that Elizabeth was six months pregnant, even though she was much older and had never carried a child before. Perhaps Mary needed to convince herself that the angel was a truth-teller, before she found herself too far along her own strange road to motherhood. Perhaps she went to Elizabeth for proof.

Elizabeth had not been visited by an angel. Instead, the angel had gone to her husband, Zechariah, as he was serving in the temple. Zechariah had been dubious: “How can I be sure of this?” he asked, and the angel got rather angry, and struck the man mute, until the child should be born.

Perhaps Mary went to compare notes on angel visitations, to convince herself that she was not going mad. Of course, she couldn’t talk to Zechariah about it, because he was unable to tell his own story; so she went to Elizabeth for the translation.

Perhaps she was simply afraid, and needed a time-out, a time to gather her strength and courage before confessing to her family that, no matter the odds, she was in the family way.

Whatever her reasoning, Mary ran to Elizabeth, and when Elizabeth saw her coming, we are told, the unborn Baptist, John, jumped for joy in her womb. I believe that this is the only time in Scripture where we are allowed to imaging John the Baptist joyful or jumping.

When my cousin and I overlapped in Singapore, I had three small children under four, and she was carrying her first. I don’t know which of us was running for the hills.

I have met women who have become mothers for the first time later in life, like Elizabeth, and they are terrified; with good reason, I am beginning to feel in my bones. I have met women, like Mary, girls who have fallen pregnant much too soon, much too young; and they, too, are terrified.

Yet when they find one another, these two, when they find where they overlap, Elizabeth’s baby jumps for joy, and Mary is strengthened to sing out her praises to God; to allow herself the luxury of joy, and hope, for her own strange child, her own strange twist of fate.

“My soul glorifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices,” Mary can finally say.

No matter how close we are to God; no matter how close God comes to us – Mary was carrying the divine child in her very body – no matter, she needed her cousin, she needed a friend, she needed someone outside of herself to understand, to help her carry her burdens of joy and of sorrow. She needed companions on the way.

For most of us here, our abiding and pressing concerns do not have to do with pregnancy or childbirth, let alone strange angelic visitations. But we have our need of overlap, our need to know that we are not alone, that we are not too unusual, that we, too, bear the image of Christ in our bodies, on our souls.

Some of us live in families. Some of us live alone. Some of us live with families not altogether of human origins. Cousins can be people we know well, with a shared history and common ground. Cousins can be strangers, discovered by chance at some meeting or another, brought together by grace and by God. No matter how we find one another, something inside of us leaps for joy when we recognize Christ in one another.

No matter whether we live alone or with others, we each of us carry our burdens of grace and of grief in our own bodies, and bring them to God in our prayers and our praise; and no matter how close we can be to God by ourselves; no matter how close God has come to us in our lives; we still come together, as strangers, as family, because there is nothing like sharing that joy, that makes babies leap in the womb, even John the Baptist.

When we deprive one another of our company, we deprive them of those moments of great joy, when they recognize Christ in us, in the overlapping images of God that we carry in ourselves, in our lives. Sometimes it is in the blossoming of life; sometimes it is in the grief of the cross that we carry; no matter, when we offer ourselves to one another, we offer the image of Christ, and we would be hard pressed to justify withholding that grace from those around us.

On Thursday night, and Friday morning, we will see people here that we haven’t seen in a while, running home or running for the hills; coming out from under the shadow of the cross to worship at the cradle. Let’s find the overlap we share with them, let them know that our hearts leap for joy to see them, let their hearts be lifted into song by our welcome. Let it be said of us that we are blessed, who have believed that what the Lord has said to us will be accomplished.

And for ourselves, whether we are running home or running for the hills, may the Christ child meet us in unexpected ways, and we find ourselves strangely strengthened, oddly joyful, to find our path overlapping his. Amen

Posted in sermon | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Afterwards

Posted on December 17, 2015 by Rosalind C Hughes

An Advent meditation for/from the Diocese of Ohio

On this date eighteen years ago, my waiting had finally come to an end. One day earlier, our Christmas baby, our Omega child, had been born in the night. Of course, the end of one kind of waiting led to the beginning of several other sorts: waiting for the kettle to boil for my cup of tea; waiting for the midwives to pack up their things and leave; waiting for the family to fall back to sleep, all in our bed by now. Father, daughter, son, mum – except for my hand, which had fallen asleep in the bassinet basket in which the new baby slept close by our bed.

One wait over, I watched through the rest of the night, the rise and fall of their breathing: husband, daughter, son, and this new, strange creature, the Omega child, waiting for them to wake up and remember what comes next.

When the waiting of Advent is relieved – not long now – and the tension is pricked and deflates like a balloon, the watch has only begun.

When the season of Advent is done, its soul continues to whisper through the stable, through the suffering, through the tomb, through the Spirit: “Remember what comes next.”

Though the wait may be over, the watch has only begun. Amen: Come, Lord Jesus.

Posted in advent meditations, spiritual autobiography | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Second thoughts

Posted on December 15, 2015 by Rosalind C Hughes

Mary did not float through her pregnancy without her swollen feet touching the ground.

When Mary returned to her senses, the bread was burning, and she nearly took the skin off her hands snatching it from the fire in a hurry. A sense of unease followed her through the afternoon. She was used to her spells of absence, time lost, bread burnt; but rarely did she dream. Now, she had the nagging feeling of a veiled memory hiding, closeted behind her conscious mind, bright and hazy somehow all at the same time.

When she missed her period, and her breasts were tight and her bladder squeezed, she knew the signs; but it hardly made sense. Between bouts of sickness and fear, the memory still pressed against the door in her mind, insistent but in vain.

Except, she thought, something about Elizabeth.

Elizabeth had gone home to the family house in the hills, hiding her changing shape from the city. Older women exchanged dark looks and grim whispers; a woman of Elizabeth’s age, swelled up as though with child, more often than not was consumed instead by her own womb. But, Mary knew, there was also that story of Zechariah, the accident in the temple, which sounded a little like one of her own episodes, but with added drama.

At least, thought Mary, with Elizabeth she would have time to puzzle out her own condition, and maybe there would be wisdom, and Elizabeth would be in no condition to scold her.

Mary went in haste to the hill country.

Elizabeth saw Mary coming and cried out to her cousin, “Blessed are you among women!”

A sliver of light cracked open in Mary’s mind; as though from far away a shaft of memory pierced her brain, and she fell. When she came around, she was lying in Elizabeth’s house, singing the words as though they ran through her without troubling her present mind. She heard herself with a kind of wonder:

“My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my saviour.”

She looked at Elizabeth, and the older woman smiled, shook her head. “When I saw you coming, he nearly leaped out of my throat.” She laid a hand on her drumskin belly. “God is with you, Mary. Only believe that, and be blessed.”

Again, that splinter of light.

Mary stayed three months, until the sickness had subsided and Elizabeth sure that she was fit for the journey home. Her own time was near, and as concerned as she was for her young cousin, Elizabeth was afraid for herself as well. She was old, she knew, for this kind of adventure. Better that Mary not witness her trouble; the young one would have trouble enough of her own to face at home.

Later, they stopped on their way to register in Bethlehem. John was growing strong, and Elizabeth looked weary but satisfied. Mary was still searching for that crack in her memory that would let the light through. Elizabeth advised her not to push it.

It was the shepherds who broke it down for her. As soon as they said the word, “angel,” Mary heard his voice again: “Do not be afraid.” When they told of the singing, she heard an echo, the sound of brightness breaking.

As the people chattered and scuttled around her, Mary looked into the light of her son’s dark eyes as he fed, and pondered it all in her heart.

Posted in advent meditations, lectionary reflection, sermon preparation | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Year C Advent 3: Rejoice anyway

Posted on December 13, 2015 by Rosalind C Hughes

The third Sunday in Advent is known as Gaudete Sunday. The rose candle is lit – if one is used – and the readings rejoice in God our saviour. Gaudete! Rejoice always, as the letter to the Philippians commands.

And then there’s John the Baptist, speaking with a forked tongue of the wrath to come and good news for snakes. Rejoice.

Context may not be everything, but it might help to remember that John’s exhortations are all uttered against the backdrop of messianic expectation, that God will come imminently to judge and to save the world from judgement. Rejoice, then, vipers.

Zephaniah, even back in the seventh century before the Christian era, wrote of the same messianic expectation. The rest of his book reflects a much more immediate scenario, in which the world of the prophet is going to hell in a handbasket, and he fears that God will end up doing the very thing that God has promised never to do again: that God will repent of ever creating us and our world of sorrows and sin. It is against this backdrop that Zephaniah offers a new vision of a messianic age, one of a new heaven and a new earth, free from besetting sorrow and sin. Rejoice, survivors of the Flood.

As for Paul, writing to the Philippians from prison and in chains, he urges the Philippians, concerned for his fate and their own, to rejoice in the Lord always. They are embroiled in some kind of internal conflict: he urges them to agree in the Lord, to be gentle with one another; rejoice.   Against these backdrops the message of John: good news for poisonous snakes; seems a little less incongruous. Rejoice, anyway!

So what should we do? the people ask John. First of all, he says, don’t make things worse. Don’t presume upon the privilege of your ancestry. Don’t act unethically. Don’t be greedy, stingy, or fraudulent. If you can manage these, then you might have a go even at making things better. Share what you have. Distribute your surplus to those who are running at a deficit. If you have two coats, give one to someone who is cold.

John is talking about cleaning house, preparing the way for the Christ who is to come. He wants the people coming to him to understand that their hearts will receive him more easily if they are clean, and open; if they have done an inventory of their dirt and cleared it out, repenting of sin and submitting to the cleansing ritual of baptism. As we clean and decorate our houses for Christmas, we might think of John’s exhortation to clean our hearts, clean up our acts, clean out our lives, make them ready for the Christ; not paying lip service to the rituals of Christmas, but preparing a place fit for Christ to come to our table and sit with us, Emmanuel, God with us.

Are we presuming upon our privilege, of race or of background, at the expense of others? Let’s see if we can’t air out some of that dirty laundry. Are we cheating ourselves or others out of the best parts of ourselves, out of greed or fear or denial of our need for one another? Let’s clean out that closet. Are we sharing as we should? Let’s count our coats.     You know those moments of anxiety when a guest is invited and we are not ready? Instead, says John, rejoice to receive him. Be ready. He is coming. Rather than cover up the cracks with Christmas decorations, let’s do it right this time (I am preaching to myself here, you understand).

If John addresses our personal preparations, then Paul is all about our interpersonal arrangements. Let your gentleness be known, he says; let the peace of God, which passes all understanding, speak for you; keep your hearts and minds safe from unnecessary conflict, from disputes that do not matter, that distract from the good news of the gospel of Christ. Let go of envy, do not let insecurity provoke you to argument, or anxiety lead to irritation. Do not let difference divide you, when we are all made in the image of the same God. We are the image of God and of one another. Be at peace, says Paul. Pray for all that troubles you; pray for those folks who trouble you; be at peace.

And then Zephaniah goes beyond the personal, the interpersonal; he goes right to the political landscape, and the fallout from kings who defy God and depend instead upon their own power; people who worship at the altars of false idols and forget the one true God. In an age of war, confusion, and corruption of the character of religion and public life; in an age much like ours, you might think, Zephaniah exhorts the people to rejoice in God, whose way is salvation, whose will will be done, when all else is said and done.

He is coming, says John. Make ready yourselves so that you might receive him without fear, and rejoice.

He is coming, says Paul. Make ready your lives. Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things (Philippians 4:8). Be at peace with one another, so that you might receive him in peace, and rejoice.

He is coming, says Zephaniah. Make ready your world. Do not follow after idols or leaders whose will is opposed to God, and do not be afraid, for God is greater than any of these; rejoice.

When all else fails, rejoice in the Lord. Rejoice anyway. Christ will come.

Posted in sermon | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

The letter of Zephaniah to the Philippians, as recorded in the Gospel of John the Baptist according to Luke

Posted on December 7, 2015 by Rosalind C Hughes

Wondering how to reconcile the rejoicing of Gaudete Sunday with the somewhat confrontational style of John the proverbial Baptist? Try the Glee cast approach: make of a mix-and-match mash-up approach a whole new song. Rejoice!

John said to the crowds that came out to be baptized by him, ‘Sing aloud, O daughter Zion; shout, O Israel! Rejoice, you brood of vipers! Rejoice in the Lord and exult with all your heart.

Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? The Lord has taken away the judgements against you; he has turned away your enemies. Again, I will say, Rejoice!

Bear fruits worthy of repentance. The king of Israel, the Lord, is in your midst; you shall fear disaster no more. Do not let your hands grow weak, but let your gentleness be known to everyone.

The Lord your God is in your midst, a warrior who gives victory. He will rejoice over you with gladness; he will renew you in his love; he will exult over you with loud singing as on a day of festival.

The Lord is near. Even now the axe is lying at the root of the tree; “I will remove disaster from you, so that you will not bear reproach,” says the Lord. Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be known to God. His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.  “I will save the lame and gather the outcast,” says the Lord, “I will deal with your oppressors at that time.”

Do not begin to say to yourselves, “What then should we do?” God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. “I will change their shame into praise and renown in all the earth,” says the Lord. “At that time, I will bring you home, at the time when I gather you.The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds at that time, when I restores your fortunes before your eyes,” says the Lord.’

So, with many other exhortations, he proclaimed the good news to the people.

 

Posted in lectionary reflection, sermon preparation | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment