SERMON PREACHED AT St ANDREW’S, MAHENO
and St LUKE’S, OAMARU
ADVENT 4 (December 22nd) 2019
READINGS:
Isaiah 7: 10-16
Psalm 80: 1-17, 17-19
Romans 1: 1-7
Matthew 1:18-25
Many years ago, when I was a broadcaster, I interviewed a
rabbi in the lead up to Christmas. It became a strange assignment.
Understandably the rabbi seemed to think it was his task single-handedly to
dismantle the entire fabric of Christmas stories. With great delight he
disclosed to me, with an Oxbridge accent, his great insight: the Hebrew of our
passage from Isaiah does not mention the subsequent Greek interpretation, “a
virgin shall conceive,” but refers to conception, not necessarily miraculous,
by a young woman, probably in early adolescence.
Unfortunately the
combination of his accent and a slight speech impediment meant that I didn’t
hear the rabbi terribly clearly. I must have looked reasonably gormless as he
drove his point home. I’m sure I continued to appear gormless for the ten
minutes that he would have remembered me.
In fact there was
no shocking new disclosure. It’s never been any great secret that Matthew
invested a massive amount of symbolic meaning into his version of the story of
the Messiah’s birth. Luke did the same, and the stories have been, at their
best, powerful vehicles of the gospel message ever since.
But they were not
designed to tell the mechanics of the conception and birth of the Christ. Twenty
centuries of misogyny have ensured that aspects of this story have been used to
maintain a deep fear of women and their role in human reproduction.
Enough said in a
family setting, and besides, I’m a prude. But as I have often said in
preaching, the critical take away from Matthew’s chronicle is not about the DNA
of Jesus of Nazareth, but about a caring, compassionate God. This is the same
God who flings stars across universes, and yet who cares for lowly and the
humble and the not so lowly and humble, who cares for sparrows that fall, and for you and for me. That is, as Mark’s
more pared back gospel-telling puts it, is “the beginning of Good News.” In
Matthew’s quill the story will end with “Lo, I am with you always, even to the
end of the age.” Mark is more subtle. He has women telling the gospel story
despite their abject fear.
Currently
apocalyptic fires and unprecedented rising temperatures are ravaging our near
neighbour. Much of the trauma is occurring in places where Anne and I have
lived, had parishes, have family. Other near-neighbours face the drowning of
their homes beneath rising sea-levels: we will soon see new waves of refugees
as a result. One can only pray that they will not receive the razor wire
incarceration that has been the response of many nations in recent years and throughout history.
Do humans not see
the image of God in refugees?
Every news feed provides
examples of ways in which any pretence of decency is stripped away from the
leadership of the free world. This has of course happened before. That is why I
referred last time I was here to “an anti-Christ” rather than “the
anti-Christ.” the latter is a phrase I simply do not use. Nevertheless the rise
of hatred and erosion of public trust are deeply anti-Christ, and the blasé
indifference of the wealthy nations to the most wretched of the earth is deeply
offensive to God. Narratives of hatred have been enshrined before, in the
electorally sanctioned rise of Mussolini and the parallel lead-up to Hitler’s
Reichstag Republic. This will happen again, if God does not elect to intervene
dramatically in the timeline of cosmic or at least human history.
We know that God
cares, because Matthew bent over backwards to tell a potent story about the
coming to us of God’s redeeming, healing love. He told a story of a God whose
compassion and justice are revealed in a Bethlehem manger and will be revealed
again in whatever form judgement may take. Matthew told the story, and the
early Christians’ experience of the presence of God in worship and fellowship was
so strong that they had no trouble in telling that story over and again
throughout the crumbling Roman Empire. They even made Matthew’s and the other
gospel writers’ words into Scripture, “holy writ.” Their experience of the presence of the
death-conquering, hope-bringing Immanuel was so potent, so confirmed again and
again as the Christians read the Hebrew texts, that we hear it still today.
We do so even if
the white noise of Christmas and of Western (Global North) complacency has all
but drowned it out. We do so even if what one prayer-writer calls “our unhappy
divisions” have all but drowned it out. We do so even if our own sinfulness
(mine and yours) has all but drowned it out.
The Advent story
with its reverberations of a God of judgement, the Christmas story with its
reverberations of a God who draws near (even within) us, Immanuel, the gospel
stories of Jesus’ teachings of compassion and justice, the sorry story of his being
deserted by all but a handful of faithful but powerless women, the gospel
stories of his suffering and death: these stories would have remained fatuous
nonsense had it not been for the early and overwhelming experience of the
death-conquering, risen Christ with them – and us – after the resurrection.
It is to that
that our liturgies and readings point. It is because of that that, while I am
not interested in the DNA of Jesus or the bio-mechanics of his conception, I am
absolutely convinced that in the Jesus-event we see the unique, redeeming
action of God. As Matthew and Paul before him knew at the time of a crumbling
Roman Empire, human expectations and constructions were horrendously fallible –
and still are. Empires wax and wane, still are, still do, but a greater truth
lay beyond them. As individuals we may suffer, and will die, but the early Christians
were dynamically aware of a greater hope beyond their sight, making itself
known to them by faith. It is that life- and death-transforming hope that we
are called to be messengers of, by our lives and, if necessary, our words.
We can be
authentic messengers only by the empowerment of the Spirit, who makes all of
Jesus’ meaning present to us. As we rejoice, amidst the white noise of
Christmas, may we know the peace and the dynamism of the Christ-child. He
emerged from the womb of an obedient and brave mother. He would later die with
her watching on. Yet he would transcend even death, and those who followed him
would proclaim that Good News even to the ends of the earth and even to the
present day.
God of light and life
grant that we may be ready,
like Joseph and the young woman Mary,
that we too may be willing
to welcome, gestate and proclaim
your saving presence in the world,
this Christmas and through all ages,
empowered by your Spirit
and always in and through
your Son our Saviour,
Jesus Christ,
born in a manger, died on a cross,
resurrected
and leading us onward
even in eternity,
Immanuel. Amen
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