Christmas 2A - Looking for the lost.

Here is my sermon from last Sunday. If you're interested in what the bible readings were that day follow this link. . We used the Jeremiah, Ephesians and John readings in the service. I seem to have had a bit of a song theme running through my sermons for the past couple of months. It has been largely accidental, and I wouldn't force it, but there are a lot of songs around that are saying some very deep things, and its good to connect our Sunday life with what is going on in the rest of the world. Of course, one of the problems in posting a sermon is that the writing style is different to a written article. So I offer the text with apologies to those of you that hate sentences starting with conjunctions!

Today, once again we come across part of God's plan. - we've seen over the last few weeks that it works over a vast timescale, that it is often surprising and that it turns the existing world power structures upside down.

I must admit I was a little wary of speaking yet again about God's master plan, and yet the readings steer us so clearly in that direction that its hard to avoid it really.

For today more of that plan is revealed. Jeremiah speaks of bringing us back from lost places. "I am going to bring them from the land of the north, and gather them from the farthest parts of the earth, among them the blind and the lame, those with child and those in labor, together; a great company, they shall return here." The thing that strikes me most about what the prophet says here is this "I am going to bring them...."
Not "I’ll give them a map and see if they find their own way back" not " I am going to send someone else to do the hard work of going and get them." but "I am going to go and get them MYSELF". And that is what he did in Bethlehem, being born amongst us as a human being.

That is the unique thing about Christianity really. People often ask, what is the difference between Christianity and other religions, and there are a number of answers. but the one that I like most is the one which says "many other religions are about how we can try to find God. Through prayer fasting and other religious practices, and obeying laws and commandments. But Christianity is about how, in Christ, God came and found us. God came in Jesus to bring the lost human race back home, because the whole human race was drifting badly from the path that leads to life.

We were drifting and God offered us a baby’s hand to lead us back.

As Katy Perry sang.
Do you ever feel like a plastic bag
Drifting through the wind, wanting to start again?
Do you know that there's still a chance for you
'Cause there's a spark in you?
You just gotta ignite the light and let it shine
'Cause baby, you're a firework

(Here's the link to the whole song and lyrics)

God sees that firework spark in us. The one that can light up the sky like the ones we saw shooting upwards as the new year began the other night.

And how does God know just what that spark can do?
He knows because He put it there!

But a firework is just a grey cardboard tube with some powder inside it unless someone lights the fuse, someone ignites the light. And that's what Christ came to do.

So Christ came. The Word became flesh and moved into the neighbourhood, to bring us back from those lost places where we were drifting like plastic bags in the wind - And we could be very far away from home indeed - but He would still come and get us.

Jesus told us that that was his job description himself, just after he’d transformed the life of Zaccheus, the corrupt tax collector so radically that he offered to give half his posessions to the poor

“The son of man came to seek and to save the lost” .

We concentrate mostly on the save the lost bit of that job description. But the seek bit is important too.

And sometimes when he is seeking those far away from home, he uses us to help him in his work. Some of you may know that I have been involved in the work of Fresh Expressions for a while, which aims to go and bring church to birth in places far away from the church culture. Not to replace existing churches, but to work alongside them, to reach more people. to adopt a “go to them” agenda. The inspiration for that has always been from the Christ who became incarnate in Jewish first century culture and spent 30 years eating, drinking, and living with them, in order to find them and bring them home.

"Go to them" was also the kind of thing the choir did recently when we went to the market, and to Leeds General Infirmary just before Christmas to sing carols and bring the good news of the birth of Christ to ordinary people just where they were, even the couple that were very literally lost in a hospital corridor trying to find a ward that wasn’t listed on the map. And whenever we step out like that incredible things happen.

I don’t know whether the choir members noticed the effect they had on the people around them - but there were tears in many people’s eyes, and draws dropping and gasps of amazement. - “Don't worry- they’re happy tears!” one lady said to me.

The last time I stepped out in that sort of way was at Ash Wednesday last year. The Archbishop of York appealed for local clergy to go and help him by collecting prayer requests in town which he then prayed for in ten minute vigils once an hour in St Helens church in York city centre. It was called “Say One For Me”. People were amazed that we weren’t asking for anything from them, other than what they might want prayer for, and some tears flowed then too, as people who were simply having a bad time had a chance to talk about it as they filled in their prayer request card. I randomly met one of these people a couple of months later in town. She had asked for prayer for her agonisingly painful wrist and was thrilled to tell me that it had got better that same day and hasn’t been any trouble ever since. God came and met her by the fountain in the town and brought her what she needed at that moment in time. There is a definition of salvation which goes “simply allowing ourselves to be found” and that's what that lady did. The one who searches is the one who does the work.

Yet there is more to come once we are found. St Paul reminds us in the letter to the Ephesians that God’s aim is to
To gather up all things in him.
To adopt us so that we might become children of God
To fix us, through his healing blood, where sin has broken us
and to give us an inheritance - so as God’s children we get God's good gifts.

Paul reminds us that God started planning this before the very start of time. Our very famous gospel reading today reminds us of exactly the same thing too.

"But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God."

This is God’s amazing plan for us all. And we don’t have to screw up our foreheads and by sheer force of will make it happen, we don’t have to accomplish lots of difficult tasks, go on massive retreats, fast for years on end or climb a very high mountain. We don’t even have to be fit and healthy. Jeremiah tells us the fragile, the blind the lame are all being gathered too. We simply have to allow ourselves to be found and carried home on Christ’s shoulders.

So may the saving searching Christ work in us and through us, to seek and save the lost and bring us all safely home Amen.

Christmas 2010 Sermon

Here is my Christmas morning sermon. Judging by the rather excited reaction of some of the congregation I think I must have hit a spot there; however this might be more to do with some stuff that was going on in their lives on Christmas Day than being anything to do with my preaching. It was an eventful morning I must admit, but I wrote the sermon last Monday, before  the eventful morning, and before the Pope said stuff about God being surprising, although its nice to see that other people think so too!

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Well I usually start a sermon by reminding people of the themes of the day, but today needs no reminders, or announcements. Its impossible to avoid the fact that its Christmas.

But this presents an altogether different sort of problem. What do you say when so much has been said already? Maybe I should just give up and wheel in Tony Jordan, who, after working on Eastenders and Life on Mars brought a bit of angst into the story of the Nativity this week on the BBC - even if he did take a few little liberties with the biblcal text of the tale.

And what a tale! Sometimes it is so epic that it takes on the feel of a fairy story for us. Yet, although it might sometimes feel like a fairy story, the Christmas story is no Cinderella- style pantomine. It is the story of a birth of someone real.

“Christus” or Christ  was mentioned by the Roman historians Tacitus, Pliny the younger. and Josephus as well as the bibical texts; Josephus (AD37-100) said. “About this time came Jesus, a wise man, if indeed it is appropriate to call him a man. For he was a performer of paradoxical feats, a teacher of people who accept the unusual with pleasure, and he won over many of the Jews and also many Greeks. He was the Christ. When Pilate, upon the accusation of the first men amongst us, condemned him to be crucified, those who had formerly loved him did not cease to follow him, for he appeared to them on the third day, living again, as the divine prophets foretold, along with a myriad of other marvellous things concerning him. And the tribe of the Christians, so named after him, has not disappeared to this day.”

Tacitus is a little ruder, which makes it pretty obvious that he isn’t a believer himself .

“Christus, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out”

And yet despite the concretely historical nature of this birth, our familiarity with the gospel accounts of *how* Christ’s birth happened have blinded us to the utterly surprising nature of them! For God is a God of surprises.

The Jewish people had been on the lookout for their Messiah or Christ, their rescuer to be born for many years. Their scriptures contained numerous prophesies of what sort of person this messiah would be,and even where he would be born

“But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for out of you will come a ruler  who will shepherd my people Israel.”

And yet, when it actually happened, they still missed it.

If we strip away what we know of the story, and pretend we have never heard this tale what would we think?

Who would the son of God be born to?

Someone rich perhaps, married and respectably holy in society. Yet Mary and Joseph were so poor they could not afford to sacrifice a lamb at the temple to mark Christ’s presentation, and had to make do with two turtle doves.

And God did not wait until Mary was married to do his work which left mary looking rather un-respectable, despite her holiness.

Mary and Joseph were not of the holy priestly tribe either, but distant descendents of the kings of the tribe of Judah.

And when Christ was born where did it happen?

In a palace with physicians in attendance?

At home with the assistance of a midwife?

No. In a stable.

I expect Joseph had to do the delivery himself. The thought that Joseph might have been the one to deliver the child, struck me during the Abbey Grange carol service this year. One of the pupils wrote a piece which  told of Joseph’s thoughts.

“I delivered him, and one day he will deliver me”.

That idea that the One who came to deliver or rescue our society from all the wrong that has infested it, himself needed to be delivered or rescued from suffocation or stillbirth, and was depending on someone else to cut his chord was quite a powerful one that still rings in my ears.

The utterly surprising extent of Christ’s powerlessness at that moment in time is quite mind boggling.

Yet after the baby is born the surprises continue. Who does the angel announce the good news to, so they can come and visit? Local dignataries?

Priests and Rabbis?

Minor celebritites?

Nope.

Shepherds, the local outcasts, who were frowned on for never going to Synagogue because they were too busy looking after their sheep. The ones who were regarded with the same sort of suspicion that drug addicts are these days. The smelly ones who never got an invitation to anybody’s party  got an invite to this one.

And who else comes. Strange travelers from the Middle East , who aren’t even practicing Jews, who are involved in astrological predication which is frowned upon in the Jewish scriptures,  and carrying the most bizarre presents.

If you were going to make it up, you wouldn’t make it up this way I’m sure!

And I’m sure Joseph and Mary never planned to have their child on the floor of  the part of the house where the animals lived, and I think they probably planned to have a slightly better cradle than a cows feeding box!

There is a quote, atttributed to Woody Allen, which goes. “If you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans”

We can think we have our lives mapped out, and when God steps in some glorious chaos can ensue!

Yet, in the end we can see that the surprising Divine plan often comes out better than the one we came up with on our own. It can sometimes take a long time for that to become apparent though.

This awful snow and these ridiculous low temperatures have messed up lots of our plans, and I have certainly realised that the daily life I previously took for granted as being normal is a lot more fragile than I thought.

It takes humility though to admit our own powerlessness and let God in to run things instead.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote” "For the great and powerful of this world, there are only two places in which their courage fails them, of which they are afraid deep down in their souls... These are the manger and the cross of Jesus Christ.

No powerful person dares to approach the manger, and this even includes King Herod. For this is where thrones shake, the mighty fall, the prominent perish, because God is with the lowly.

Here the rich come to nothing, because God is with the poor and hungry, but the rich and satisfied he sends away empty.

Before Mary, the maid, before the manger of Christ, before God in lowliness, the powerful come to naught"

This is disturbing news for those who wish to be powerful, who wish to run everyone else’s lives who like to have it all organised.

But for the rest of us, those who want to belong to the next chapter of God’s story, it is good news indeed.

Let’s be brave and approach the manger and meet the Christ who is there. May that surprising wonderful Christ step into the poverty and spiritual hunger of all our lives this Christmas and bring new life and warmth and hope and a future! Amen.