A sermon on Luke 2:1-7 (Prepared for 96.5 Family FM)
By Peter Lockhart
In my experience one of the things that seems to be common amongst the people I meet is that they want their lives to mean something, to have a purpose. More than that many want to be remembered, they want to carve their niche on this world. People want to know that their life matters that it counts for something.
It’s interesting this idea that we want to make our lives count especially given that earlier this year we had a census in Australia in which we were all counted. For me this census was made far more impersonal than previous ones and made me think I counted even less because like many things these days I did it online.
I wonder how you felt being counted by the Australian government, did it make you feel like your life really mattered any more or less. Did you feel like your life counted for something?
Realistically the bureaucrats and powers that be of our day really can’t make our lives count anymore simply by counting us and nor could they in times past.
The opening words of the second chapter of Luke’s gospel tell us that a seemingly insignificant couple from Nazareth were about to be swept up in the bureaucracy of their age.
“In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria.”
The registration spoken of in this passage was of course a census, a census being conducted by the ruling power of Rome under its first Emperor, Augustus.
Now mentioning Emperor Augustus may not mean much to us but to Luke’s community this would have been really big. Luke wrote his gospel just over 30 years after Jesus’ death, which means it would have been nearly 50 years since Augustus’ death.
During his life Emperor Augustus had been understood to be the son of a god, in as much as his adopted father Julius Caesar was hailed as a god after his death. Whilst after his own death Emperor Augustus was also declared to be divine by the Roman Senate.
So, it was this god-like figure of Emperor Augustus who called the census. In doing so he had set Joseph and Mary travelling the road to Bethlehem and to a not insignificant event: the birth of their first son.
Now as I was thinking about Mary and Joseph and the census the question kept coming back to me, “what really makes a person count?” Mary and Joseph had gone off to be counted by the Romans. In terms of their lives did it make them count anymore as people to be counted by the Romans?
If their experience of a census was anything like ours simply an inconvenience then I would expect the answer would have been no. The contrast between the story of this seemingly insignificant couple and the story of the Roman Empire under possibly its most significant Emperor Augustus is immense. But what is interesting is that it is the story of Mary and Joseph that really should cause us to pause to consider what it is that makes a person count.
Does being counted by a government, Roman or Australian, really make you count any more in the big scheme of things? The answer is obviously no but as I suggested at the beginning we all like to be ‘counted’.
We would rather be counted in than counted out. But what does this mean? And how do we work out who is counted in and who is counted out? We all have our ways of thinking about this that we apply all the time. We count some people in and we count some people out. Every time we do this we draw a line around the community we are part of and in doing so try to make sure that we are counted in. In building our human communities we usually build them by excluding others as much as by including others.
But if we go back to Mary and Joseph and the story of the birth of Jesus the whole Christmas story revolves around not that the Romans, under Augustus reign, counted Mary and Joseph but that in God’s eyes Mary and Joseph, and might I say all people of all times and place, count because God loves us.
We know we count precisely because Jesus was born in Bethlehem during the reign of Emperor Augustus. Why? Because Jesus not Augustus is God among us and the historical backdrop that the Bible gives to us helps us to know and understand that Jesus was a real person at a real time in history.
The story of Jesus birth let all humanity and the whole creation into the good news that we count so much to God that Jesus, who is God’s Son, comes to be one of us so that we might have peace with God and live our lives knowing that we count.
In this one small child God shows to us that we all count.
In this one small child God counts us in rather than counts us out.
In this one small child a new future for all of us, and the whole creation, is born.
This is what really counts at Christmas time, remembering that no matter whom we are, regardless of whether the bureaucrats have counted us, regardless of what others might say, regardless even of whether we’ve been naughty or nice; God wants to count us in. God wants to include you and me in a life that matters and Jesus presence in the world points to a hope that we can all share in – we do count, we do matter to God, the one who made us.
This has implications for how we live: living with the knowledge that not only does my life count but so does everybody else’ life. This leads us to include others rather than exclude them, knowing despite any differences or faults or foibles we might with each other have we all matter to God.
I must admit that I find it somewhat ironic that our Christmas celebrations are filled with counting things other than this good news of how much we count to God.
For example, if you were to reflect on the past week I wonder how much counting you have done:
Counting the days left until Christmas;
Counting the hours in a day;
Counting the dollars in your wallet or purse;
Or more likely counting the dollars on the rising credit card bill;
Counting the Christmas cards that you have received;
And, counting people in as you send them a card in return or maybe counting people out because they did not send you a card this year.
And the counting won’t stop:
Counting the number of presents that you receive;
Counting the number of prawns or serves of turkey that you have eaten;
Counting how many drinks you have had;
Counting the calories that you have consumed;
And, so the counting goes on.
But this morning, in this moment, gathered together as we are, listening again to the story of Jesus’ birth we remember that what really counts at Christmas time is that this story of Jesus’ birth lets us know how much we count to God – that in this one small child Mary, Joseph, and all of us – and maybe even Augustus and Quirnius - count far more than any of us can fully comprehend.
The God who can count the very hairs on our heads took the time to visit with us on earth, to live among us and share in our life. And more than that by sharing in our life and our death as human beings Jesus carries us through from death into new life where we can know and celebrate forever just how much we really count to God.
So as we hear that good news again this Christmas let us celebrate that you and I really matter, that we count to God because once long ago for a woman named Mary:
the time came for her to deliver her child.
And she gave birth to her firstborn son
and wrapped him in bands of cloth,
and laid him in a manger,
because there was no place for them in the inn.
Wednesday, 14 December 2011
Friday, 9 December 2011
Where is the joy?
May the Words of my mouth
And the meditations of our hearts
Be acceptable in your sight, O Lord
Our strength and our Redeemer. Amen.
Today on the third Sunday of Advent the readings encourage us to contemplate the theme of joy.
In Isaiah 61:
“I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my whole being shall exult in my God”
In Psalm 126:
“Then our mouth was filled with laughter,
and our tongue with shouts of joy”
In Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians:
“Rejoice always, pray without ceasing”
This theme of joy is etched into our Christian existence; it is a response to God’s grace and goodness, it is part of the Christian DNA. So strong is this theme of joy that the word for joy is found over 300 times in the New Testament.
Christians are meant to be people filled with joy.
But what does joy sound like, what does joy look like, what does it feel like?
Is joy found in the pursuit of happiness?
Is joy found in the ownership of goods?
Is joy found in status and wealth?
Or even in a bar of chocolate?
If one were to examine the Western culture in which we live one might think that the answer to these things is yes. In fact much of our advertising encourages us to think that if we consume a particular product we will be happier.
A recent campaign by Cadbury chocolate called ‘share the joy’ included the slogan “A glass and half full of joy”, whilst more recently the current Coca-Cola advertising carries the catch phrase “Open Happiness”.
Ultimately, a great deal of our advertising does the same – it suggests that by owning or consuming a particular product we will be more fulfilled and that we will be imbued with joy or happiness or contentment.
Of course most of us see through the advertising and know that products do not necessarily produce the joy in life that we seek. In fact it seems that our very opulent lifestyle is failing to fulfil us let alone bring us joy.
Despite the indications of how high a standard of living we as Australians enjoy, how wealthy we are on a world scale, we continue to speak of ourselves as Aussie battlers and wear that badge with a sense of pride. And there are clear indicators as Australians that we are not a very happy people.
Statistics indicate that at any given time one in six Australian men is suffering from depression and that women are twice as likely as men to suffer depression after puberty.
Now whilst mental illness is a complex issue this is a disturbing statistic in such a wealthy culture. This statistic is made more concerning but the figures of suicide rates in Australia. More than one in five deaths which occur in 15-24 year old men occurs through suicide.
Timothy Radcliffe, the former head of the world Dominican order, noted in his devotional book “Seven last Words” that in his travels around the world it was in the wealthiest countries that he found that people seemed to be the most worried. It appears that we are afflicted by our anxiety despite our wealth or maybe even because of it!
We have not found joy! This seems somewhat paradoxical given our Western culture has its roots in Christendom. If joy is meant to be etched into our Christian existence where have we gone wrong? Where is the joy?
As I examined the passages set down for today apart from the theme of joy another theme came through, a theme which anchors that joy of which I am speaking and for which I think we long.
Listen for the theme in Isaiah:
The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me; he has sent me
And,
I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my whole being shall exult in my God; for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation, he has covered me with the robe of righteousness,
He goes on,
so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to spring up before all the nations.
Do you hear it? Do you get it? Isaiah’s confidence, his task, his joy was there because he believed and trusted that God had acted, was acting and that God would act again in human history.
So too in the Psalm
“the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion”
The Lord has done great things for us, and we rejoiced.
And again in Paul’s letter the strength of hope expressed in a trust in God’s faithfulness:
“The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do this.”
People of faith through history have found their joy in knowing and believing in a God who acts.
The God who we are told sent John into the world to prepare the way for Jesus coming into the world.
I wonder whether as a culture we have become so reliant on our own abilities, so disconnected from the struggle to survive, so individualistic in our pursuit of happiness that we have lost focus on the heart of our faith – the faithfulness of God. The faithfulness of God expressed to the whole creation in his willingness to share our human existence in Jesus and to point a way forward into the hope, peace and joy of life with God.
To recover our joy as Christians means that maybe we should stop pursuing happiness as it is being sold to us and rather pursue God: to pursue God, knowing that the joy that we find in relationship with him has led Christians through the millennia to face hardship and peril with a sense of joy and peace. The joy of the Christian life is a joy which can and does transcend personal hardships.
When the Psalmist fills mouths with laughter it is done so in the face of adversity.
So the first step may be to stop trying to pursue joy and happiness and rather focus again on God.
But more than this, the reading from Isaiah should also bring to mind that Jesus chose these words from Isaiah to preach the good news to his home town of Galilee.
The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the broken hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners; to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn; to provide for those who mourn in Zion— to give them a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit.
Jesus declared that the year of the Lord’s favour had come in him and truly if we understand this it should be a source of joy for us.
The year of the Lord’s favour, the year of Jubilee, was meant to occur every 50 years. When the year of Jubilee came it “was a time of social renewal when all debts were forgiven, slaves were set free, and every dispossessed family returned to their ancestral lands that may have been sold or lost over the decades. (Leviticus 25) People may lose their land, their freedom, their stake in civil society for many reasons—whether by natural calamity, parental mismanagement, oppressive government, or moral failure—it does not matter. A new generation gets a stake in life. All is graciously restored in the year of Jubilee.” (http://shalomconnections.org/SC/SC07Sp2H.pdf)
If we place our confidence, our faith, our trust in God and if we listen for Jesus words our joy comes from a shared hope in renewed community, in renewed relationship with God and with each other. It is about shared joy not simply individual happiness. Our joy runs deep as we live with hope that all will share in the joy of life lived in God’s creation.
I think sometimes the difficulty for we who have so much is to find joy in God and not our possessions and luxury. To be grateful for what we have and not constantly seek after more, but this is such a counter cultural idea. Yet not only this but to take seriously the concept of the year of the Lord’s favour in which we hear a vision to bring good news to the oppressed and to forgive debts and to bind up the broken hearted and to comfort those who mourn. It is meant to be an eternal year of Jubilee.
Personally I find that the struggle that I have with joy at times is that it is difficult to be joyful about how good my life is when so many are suffering in the world. Yet part of this conundrum is that not to be thankful for the things that I have and the opportunities would somehow seem ungrateful.
I believe Jesus presence in the world releases me and all of us from this conundrum and invites us to live celebrating joyfully the salvation we have found in him whilst at the same time caring so that others may know and experience salvation: life and life in all its fullness. To put it another way to be joyful in our thanksgiving but also to care until all people can share in the joy.
To rejoice in the Lord always means being set from our anxieties about the future and trusting in the God who acts and so to share his concerns for others. I don’t think we can respond to a command to be joyful rather having encountered God and heard that we can place our trust in him we can be liberated from our anxieties and so rejoice.
For me this is about getting things in the right order. Seek after God and we will find joy.
The Christian story has a theme of rejoicing a tone of celebration. This joy comes from the hope we have in Christ and the peace that we have been given in our relationship with God. It is a joy that causes us to take stock of our lives in this community of creation and as we do so to share in Christ’s ministry as his disciples in the world.
The facade of joy that surrounds us is a sales pitch that has no depth. As we edge closer to celebrating the birth of Jesus let us be surprised by the joy of our relationship with God and share that joy with others, especially those in the world who need it most as we say with Isaiah:
“I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my whole being shall exult in my God; for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation, he has covered me with the robe of righteousness”
And the meditations of our hearts
Be acceptable in your sight, O Lord
Our strength and our Redeemer. Amen.
Today on the third Sunday of Advent the readings encourage us to contemplate the theme of joy.
In Isaiah 61:
“I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my whole being shall exult in my God”
In Psalm 126:
“Then our mouth was filled with laughter,
and our tongue with shouts of joy”
In Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians:
“Rejoice always, pray without ceasing”
This theme of joy is etched into our Christian existence; it is a response to God’s grace and goodness, it is part of the Christian DNA. So strong is this theme of joy that the word for joy is found over 300 times in the New Testament.
Christians are meant to be people filled with joy.
But what does joy sound like, what does joy look like, what does it feel like?
Is joy found in the pursuit of happiness?
Is joy found in the ownership of goods?
Is joy found in status and wealth?
Or even in a bar of chocolate?
If one were to examine the Western culture in which we live one might think that the answer to these things is yes. In fact much of our advertising encourages us to think that if we consume a particular product we will be happier.
A recent campaign by Cadbury chocolate called ‘share the joy’ included the slogan “A glass and half full of joy”, whilst more recently the current Coca-Cola advertising carries the catch phrase “Open Happiness”.
Ultimately, a great deal of our advertising does the same – it suggests that by owning or consuming a particular product we will be more fulfilled and that we will be imbued with joy or happiness or contentment.
Of course most of us see through the advertising and know that products do not necessarily produce the joy in life that we seek. In fact it seems that our very opulent lifestyle is failing to fulfil us let alone bring us joy.
Despite the indications of how high a standard of living we as Australians enjoy, how wealthy we are on a world scale, we continue to speak of ourselves as Aussie battlers and wear that badge with a sense of pride. And there are clear indicators as Australians that we are not a very happy people.
Statistics indicate that at any given time one in six Australian men is suffering from depression and that women are twice as likely as men to suffer depression after puberty.
Now whilst mental illness is a complex issue this is a disturbing statistic in such a wealthy culture. This statistic is made more concerning but the figures of suicide rates in Australia. More than one in five deaths which occur in 15-24 year old men occurs through suicide.
Timothy Radcliffe, the former head of the world Dominican order, noted in his devotional book “Seven last Words” that in his travels around the world it was in the wealthiest countries that he found that people seemed to be the most worried. It appears that we are afflicted by our anxiety despite our wealth or maybe even because of it!
We have not found joy! This seems somewhat paradoxical given our Western culture has its roots in Christendom. If joy is meant to be etched into our Christian existence where have we gone wrong? Where is the joy?
As I examined the passages set down for today apart from the theme of joy another theme came through, a theme which anchors that joy of which I am speaking and for which I think we long.
Listen for the theme in Isaiah:
The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me; he has sent me
And,
I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my whole being shall exult in my God; for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation, he has covered me with the robe of righteousness,
He goes on,
so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to spring up before all the nations.
Do you hear it? Do you get it? Isaiah’s confidence, his task, his joy was there because he believed and trusted that God had acted, was acting and that God would act again in human history.
So too in the Psalm
“the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion”
The Lord has done great things for us, and we rejoiced.
And again in Paul’s letter the strength of hope expressed in a trust in God’s faithfulness:
“The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do this.”
People of faith through history have found their joy in knowing and believing in a God who acts.
The God who we are told sent John into the world to prepare the way for Jesus coming into the world.
I wonder whether as a culture we have become so reliant on our own abilities, so disconnected from the struggle to survive, so individualistic in our pursuit of happiness that we have lost focus on the heart of our faith – the faithfulness of God. The faithfulness of God expressed to the whole creation in his willingness to share our human existence in Jesus and to point a way forward into the hope, peace and joy of life with God.
To recover our joy as Christians means that maybe we should stop pursuing happiness as it is being sold to us and rather pursue God: to pursue God, knowing that the joy that we find in relationship with him has led Christians through the millennia to face hardship and peril with a sense of joy and peace. The joy of the Christian life is a joy which can and does transcend personal hardships.
When the Psalmist fills mouths with laughter it is done so in the face of adversity.
So the first step may be to stop trying to pursue joy and happiness and rather focus again on God.
But more than this, the reading from Isaiah should also bring to mind that Jesus chose these words from Isaiah to preach the good news to his home town of Galilee.
The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the broken hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners; to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn; to provide for those who mourn in Zion— to give them a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit.
Jesus declared that the year of the Lord’s favour had come in him and truly if we understand this it should be a source of joy for us.
The year of the Lord’s favour, the year of Jubilee, was meant to occur every 50 years. When the year of Jubilee came it “was a time of social renewal when all debts were forgiven, slaves were set free, and every dispossessed family returned to their ancestral lands that may have been sold or lost over the decades. (Leviticus 25) People may lose their land, their freedom, their stake in civil society for many reasons—whether by natural calamity, parental mismanagement, oppressive government, or moral failure—it does not matter. A new generation gets a stake in life. All is graciously restored in the year of Jubilee.” (http://shalomconnections.org/SC/SC07Sp2H.pdf)
If we place our confidence, our faith, our trust in God and if we listen for Jesus words our joy comes from a shared hope in renewed community, in renewed relationship with God and with each other. It is about shared joy not simply individual happiness. Our joy runs deep as we live with hope that all will share in the joy of life lived in God’s creation.
I think sometimes the difficulty for we who have so much is to find joy in God and not our possessions and luxury. To be grateful for what we have and not constantly seek after more, but this is such a counter cultural idea. Yet not only this but to take seriously the concept of the year of the Lord’s favour in which we hear a vision to bring good news to the oppressed and to forgive debts and to bind up the broken hearted and to comfort those who mourn. It is meant to be an eternal year of Jubilee.
Personally I find that the struggle that I have with joy at times is that it is difficult to be joyful about how good my life is when so many are suffering in the world. Yet part of this conundrum is that not to be thankful for the things that I have and the opportunities would somehow seem ungrateful.
I believe Jesus presence in the world releases me and all of us from this conundrum and invites us to live celebrating joyfully the salvation we have found in him whilst at the same time caring so that others may know and experience salvation: life and life in all its fullness. To put it another way to be joyful in our thanksgiving but also to care until all people can share in the joy.
To rejoice in the Lord always means being set from our anxieties about the future and trusting in the God who acts and so to share his concerns for others. I don’t think we can respond to a command to be joyful rather having encountered God and heard that we can place our trust in him we can be liberated from our anxieties and so rejoice.
For me this is about getting things in the right order. Seek after God and we will find joy.
The Christian story has a theme of rejoicing a tone of celebration. This joy comes from the hope we have in Christ and the peace that we have been given in our relationship with God. It is a joy that causes us to take stock of our lives in this community of creation and as we do so to share in Christ’s ministry as his disciples in the world.
The facade of joy that surrounds us is a sales pitch that has no depth. As we edge closer to celebrating the birth of Jesus let us be surprised by the joy of our relationship with God and share that joy with others, especially those in the world who need it most as we say with Isaiah:
“I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my whole being shall exult in my God; for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation, he has covered me with the robe of righteousness”
Friday, 25 November 2011
Advent Hope
Peter Lockhart
As we begin the period of Advent I am again confronted by the commercialisation of the Christmas Celebration in the Western world. The gluttony and waste that we engage in should embarrass us all. Sadly, this situation has arisen in part out of the misunderstanding and misdirection of the goodwill and generosity of Christian people.
In past decades generosity at Christmas had real meaning even in our culture where life was certainly not as easy as it is now. Well meaning Christians acted to show God’s love to family members and friends by the giving of gifts and preparation of special dinners. Even the presence of St Nicholas visiting had a deeper meaning.
Over the years as our wealth grew the gifts became bigger and more extravagant, the special dinners become lusher and even excessive. What had begun with good intentions as a signs of God’s love became unintentional misconstrued as obligation and canny marketers took advantage of the Christmas binge.
The story of how we came to celebrate so lavishly is one of those stark reminders how even when we seek to do the ‘right’ thing it can end up so wrong.
A couple of weeks ago I attended a seminar called the Advent Conspiracy. It was a timely reminder of what Christmas is really about and encouraged me to think again and whom I will offer my generosity to this year – family & friends who have all they need and more, or those in the world who are in dire need of the basic necessities for life?
As we begin the period of Advent I am again confronted by the commercialisation of the Christmas Celebration in the Western world. The gluttony and waste that we engage in should embarrass us all. Sadly, this situation has arisen in part out of the misunderstanding and misdirection of the goodwill and generosity of Christian people.
In past decades generosity at Christmas had real meaning even in our culture where life was certainly not as easy as it is now. Well meaning Christians acted to show God’s love to family members and friends by the giving of gifts and preparation of special dinners. Even the presence of St Nicholas visiting had a deeper meaning.
Over the years as our wealth grew the gifts became bigger and more extravagant, the special dinners become lusher and even excessive. What had begun with good intentions as a signs of God’s love became unintentional misconstrued as obligation and canny marketers took advantage of the Christmas binge.
The story of how we came to celebrate so lavishly is one of those stark reminders how even when we seek to do the ‘right’ thing it can end up so wrong.
A couple of weeks ago I attended a seminar called the Advent Conspiracy. It was a timely reminder of what Christmas is really about and encouraged me to think again and whom I will offer my generosity to this year – family & friends who have all they need and more, or those in the world who are in dire need of the basic necessities for life?
Wednesday, 23 November 2011
Advent 1: Dirty Undies
by Peter Lockhart
“We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.”
Today we begin what is known as Advent. It is a time of reorienting ourselves towards the promise of the coming of Jesus into the world – not simply his historical coming but his promised coming in the future.
As we begin this journey of 4 weeks leading into remembering the birth of Jesus, the very first reading, recorded in the lectionary from Isaiah, confronts us with a Psalm of lamentation of the Jewish people about their feeling of separation from God, including this confession of sin.
Isaiah’s prophecy occurred in tumultuous times for the people of God threatened as they were by internal divisions and external pressures especially from the ancient Assyrian power.
It is this confession that draws us into our own contemplation of who we are, and of whose we are.
For Isaiah the confession found in verse 6 begins with an admission that the people had become unclean. The language here is beyond most of our everyday understanding because for the Jewish people to be unclean was to be unable to come into God’s presence and God’s holiness. Someone who was unclean could not approach God and the source of such uncleanness was sin.
The description in the verse of sin is twofold: firstly, so-called righteous deeds gone wrong; and secondly, iniquities, or wrong doing, carrying the people away.
I want to dwell on the first of these issues for a moment, “all our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth.” The criticism and confession contained within these words are confronting. Even the deeds that the people had done thinking that they were doing the right thing are no better than filthy clothes.
As I was reading about this image a couple of the commentaries pointed out that this phrase actually means dirty undergarments. To rephrase Isaiah it is like saying that those things that you think you are doing that are good are really like that pile of dirty undies on your floor.
But it is not just that they were missing the mark when it came to doing good deeds it was also that they had been caught up in their iniquities as if being blown by a strong wind. A seemingly small error catapulted into the path of a rushing wind and so caught up in the wind unable to resist its power and force.
The consequences of their iniquities were having effects beyond their vision and understanding. Like an avalanche of idolatry their behaviours drove them away from God and had escalating consequences. These are strong words but any time people are moving away from God they are moving into idolatry – replacing God and God’s ways with something else.
Now Isaiah sites one of the reasons for this as God’s silence and supposed inaction, saying, “because you hid yourself we transgressed.”
Of course, blaming God’s silence for transgression doesn’t really cut the mustard but Isaiah’s lament reminds the people and prophesies appealing to God and reminding the people: “Yet, O Lord, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand. Do not be exceedingly angry, O Lord, and do not remember iniquity forever. Now consider, we are all your people.”
At the heart of Isaiah’s lament is this conviction that even if God’s people have become immersed and enmeshed in their transgression they are still God’s people and God is their God, silent or not!
In this the lament beginning in Isaiah 63 and carrying into chapter 64 is focussed on memory. It is about God remembering the covenant relationship with the Israelites and the people remembering that they are indeed God’s people.
As an aside the liturgical act of remembrance within the life of the church is called anamnesis. It is a word that I appreciate because it sounds so close to that word for forgetting in our won language amnesia. In the church and for Israel anamnesis is the antidote to amnesia – remembering the story of God even if we did not know we had forgotten it!
This serves as a bridge from Isaiah’s time to our own. The Israelites were really struggling to be faithful in their relationship with God and it was the lonely voice of the prophet that confronted them with their errant ways. The people had been seduced into idolatry without even being aware.
This is the same issue present in every age of Israel and the church: the forgetting of God and God’s ways and the seduction of alternate views of life and the world. As the book of Ecclesiastes might say, “there is nothing new under the sun”.
In our era we might speak of the Babylonian Captivity of the church in terms of the consequences of things like the enlightenment and humanism. The enlightenment which was so full of promise for humanity and has no doubt brought many blessings with it but like Isaiah’s lament may be seen as being like dirty undies on the floor.
It has brought us great thinking and high standards of living and even notions of the possibilities of humanity but it has also bought with it the rise of rampant individualism, where my rights are more important than the notion of community. It has brought with it the rejection of God and the rise atheism, in favour of an anthropocentric view of the Universe.
We might also speak of the problems of imperialism and nationalism which have lead nations to war and to the subjugation and exploitation of other nations.
We might speak of free market capitalism and liberal democracy which seem to have within them some right ideas but so often seem to get perverted.
And then there is consumerism and the incessant desire for growth, a logical impossibility in a finite world: consumerism which has clearly subverted our holy celebrations in the West. I want to share a brief video about this from Gruen World last week.
What struck me about these video exposés about Christmas is that mention nothing about Christianity. So far removed from the Christian narrative by the avalanche of idolatry around Christmas are these videos that Jesus gets no mention at all. For me this is a slap in the face a wake-up call to all of us in our faith and how we might express our hope in Christ’s coming.
As with Isaiah we find our hope in remembering, in anamnesis. Hearing the reading from Paul’s letter to the Corinthians we hear of the promise of God’s graciously at work in each one of us already: “I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that has been given you in Christ Jesus, for in every way you have been enriched in him, in speech and knowledge of every kind.”
Our hope remains in God, even when we find ourselves hurtling down the mountain trapped in the avalanche of idolatry moving away from God, God reaches out to give us hope and to reorient our lives in the life of Jesus, the promised coming one.
As Paul goes on to say, “the testimony of Christ has been strengthened among you— so that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ. He will also strengthen you to the end, so that you may be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful; by him you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.”
It is in this fellowship with the son that we remember and look at the weeks ahead with hope. As we wait with patience anticipating that we are not preparing to have a nice Christmas day but that in the fullness of God’s time Jesus will come and correct those things which are not of life but of death in this world.
In this our preparation shifts in focus away from the commercialism and obligation we may feel to give gifts to those who have no need of them into reconsidering what it means that in Christ we know that all people are loved by God. The hope of Christmas is about the kingdom coming near in all people’s lives in our present age as we wait for the coming of the new creation which is begun in Christ and the church already and is promised for all things.
“We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.”
Today we begin what is known as Advent. It is a time of reorienting ourselves towards the promise of the coming of Jesus into the world – not simply his historical coming but his promised coming in the future.
As we begin this journey of 4 weeks leading into remembering the birth of Jesus, the very first reading, recorded in the lectionary from Isaiah, confronts us with a Psalm of lamentation of the Jewish people about their feeling of separation from God, including this confession of sin.
Isaiah’s prophecy occurred in tumultuous times for the people of God threatened as they were by internal divisions and external pressures especially from the ancient Assyrian power.
It is this confession that draws us into our own contemplation of who we are, and of whose we are.
For Isaiah the confession found in verse 6 begins with an admission that the people had become unclean. The language here is beyond most of our everyday understanding because for the Jewish people to be unclean was to be unable to come into God’s presence and God’s holiness. Someone who was unclean could not approach God and the source of such uncleanness was sin.
The description in the verse of sin is twofold: firstly, so-called righteous deeds gone wrong; and secondly, iniquities, or wrong doing, carrying the people away.
I want to dwell on the first of these issues for a moment, “all our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth.” The criticism and confession contained within these words are confronting. Even the deeds that the people had done thinking that they were doing the right thing are no better than filthy clothes.
As I was reading about this image a couple of the commentaries pointed out that this phrase actually means dirty undergarments. To rephrase Isaiah it is like saying that those things that you think you are doing that are good are really like that pile of dirty undies on your floor.
But it is not just that they were missing the mark when it came to doing good deeds it was also that they had been caught up in their iniquities as if being blown by a strong wind. A seemingly small error catapulted into the path of a rushing wind and so caught up in the wind unable to resist its power and force.
The consequences of their iniquities were having effects beyond their vision and understanding. Like an avalanche of idolatry their behaviours drove them away from God and had escalating consequences. These are strong words but any time people are moving away from God they are moving into idolatry – replacing God and God’s ways with something else.
Now Isaiah sites one of the reasons for this as God’s silence and supposed inaction, saying, “because you hid yourself we transgressed.”
Of course, blaming God’s silence for transgression doesn’t really cut the mustard but Isaiah’s lament reminds the people and prophesies appealing to God and reminding the people: “Yet, O Lord, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand. Do not be exceedingly angry, O Lord, and do not remember iniquity forever. Now consider, we are all your people.”
At the heart of Isaiah’s lament is this conviction that even if God’s people have become immersed and enmeshed in their transgression they are still God’s people and God is their God, silent or not!
In this the lament beginning in Isaiah 63 and carrying into chapter 64 is focussed on memory. It is about God remembering the covenant relationship with the Israelites and the people remembering that they are indeed God’s people.
As an aside the liturgical act of remembrance within the life of the church is called anamnesis. It is a word that I appreciate because it sounds so close to that word for forgetting in our won language amnesia. In the church and for Israel anamnesis is the antidote to amnesia – remembering the story of God even if we did not know we had forgotten it!
This serves as a bridge from Isaiah’s time to our own. The Israelites were really struggling to be faithful in their relationship with God and it was the lonely voice of the prophet that confronted them with their errant ways. The people had been seduced into idolatry without even being aware.
This is the same issue present in every age of Israel and the church: the forgetting of God and God’s ways and the seduction of alternate views of life and the world. As the book of Ecclesiastes might say, “there is nothing new under the sun”.
In our era we might speak of the Babylonian Captivity of the church in terms of the consequences of things like the enlightenment and humanism. The enlightenment which was so full of promise for humanity and has no doubt brought many blessings with it but like Isaiah’s lament may be seen as being like dirty undies on the floor.
It has brought us great thinking and high standards of living and even notions of the possibilities of humanity but it has also bought with it the rise of rampant individualism, where my rights are more important than the notion of community. It has brought with it the rejection of God and the rise atheism, in favour of an anthropocentric view of the Universe.
We might also speak of the problems of imperialism and nationalism which have lead nations to war and to the subjugation and exploitation of other nations.
We might speak of free market capitalism and liberal democracy which seem to have within them some right ideas but so often seem to get perverted.
And then there is consumerism and the incessant desire for growth, a logical impossibility in a finite world: consumerism which has clearly subverted our holy celebrations in the West. I want to share a brief video about this from Gruen World last week.
What struck me about these video exposés about Christmas is that mention nothing about Christianity. So far removed from the Christian narrative by the avalanche of idolatry around Christmas are these videos that Jesus gets no mention at all. For me this is a slap in the face a wake-up call to all of us in our faith and how we might express our hope in Christ’s coming.
As with Isaiah we find our hope in remembering, in anamnesis. Hearing the reading from Paul’s letter to the Corinthians we hear of the promise of God’s graciously at work in each one of us already: “I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that has been given you in Christ Jesus, for in every way you have been enriched in him, in speech and knowledge of every kind.”
Our hope remains in God, even when we find ourselves hurtling down the mountain trapped in the avalanche of idolatry moving away from God, God reaches out to give us hope and to reorient our lives in the life of Jesus, the promised coming one.
As Paul goes on to say, “the testimony of Christ has been strengthened among you— so that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ. He will also strengthen you to the end, so that you may be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful; by him you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.”
It is in this fellowship with the son that we remember and look at the weeks ahead with hope. As we wait with patience anticipating that we are not preparing to have a nice Christmas day but that in the fullness of God’s time Jesus will come and correct those things which are not of life but of death in this world.
In this our preparation shifts in focus away from the commercialism and obligation we may feel to give gifts to those who have no need of them into reconsidering what it means that in Christ we know that all people are loved by God. The hope of Christmas is about the kingdom coming near in all people’s lives in our present age as we wait for the coming of the new creation which is begun in Christ and the church already and is promised for all things.
Friday, 18 November 2011
God in our Lives
Terry Stanyer
The Kingdom of God is the Kingdom of right relationships, when we are in the right relationship to our Father in heaven, and in the right relationship to our neighbours.
In Biblical times kings were not known for their gentleness and concern; but they were to be obeyed. Christ points to a different understanding of kingship, yet with the same obedience. The Christian insight is that if we want to get the most out of life then obedience to God is the way. ‘Follow the Maker’s instructions’ as the Christian Aid poster had it, with the picture of a gift-wrapped world.
Our Lord’s new commandment is that we love one another, as he has loved us, that the world may know we are his disciples.
What would it mean if Christ were to reign on earth, as one day he will? What does it mean to be King of the Church? What would it mean if Christ were to reign in my life, now?
In what way do I allow God to rule, over-rule my decisions, ambitions, priorities, values, beliefs, my attitude to money and people?
The Servant King. Servant – Leadership, these are the twin roles of a minister, and indeed of all Christians. We lead in such a way that we serve, and we serve in such a way that we lead. Christ the King came among us as one who serves, he has set us an example. John 13, see Ezekiel reading, David the shepherd – king, caring for the weakest as in the Gospel reading.
The Kingdom of God is the Kingdom of right relationships, when we are in the right relationship to our Father in heaven, and in the right relationship to our neighbours.
In Biblical times kings were not known for their gentleness and concern; but they were to be obeyed. Christ points to a different understanding of kingship, yet with the same obedience. The Christian insight is that if we want to get the most out of life then obedience to God is the way. ‘Follow the Maker’s instructions’ as the Christian Aid poster had it, with the picture of a gift-wrapped world.
Our Lord’s new commandment is that we love one another, as he has loved us, that the world may know we are his disciples.
What would it mean if Christ were to reign on earth, as one day he will? What does it mean to be King of the Church? What would it mean if Christ were to reign in my life, now?
In what way do I allow God to rule, over-rule my decisions, ambitions, priorities, values, beliefs, my attitude to money and people?
The Servant King. Servant – Leadership, these are the twin roles of a minister, and indeed of all Christians. We lead in such a way that we serve, and we serve in such a way that we lead. Christ the King came among us as one who serves, he has set us an example. John 13, see Ezekiel reading, David the shepherd – king, caring for the weakest as in the Gospel reading.
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