We are familiar with the almost comically unfamiliar Kings that we meet today, journeying in Eastern finery, sticking out like a sore thumb so much that they are strangely familiar, as though there has been a fire alarm in Funny Girls and all the cast were out on the street, exoticism suddenly brought face to face with minicabs and rain and litter. The Magi are not the dusty east of poor Palestinian peasants under Roman occupation, but the spice-laden Persian east, the Aladdin east of our Western imagination- turbans, colourful robes, vast palaces, sultans, minarets and genies, astrology and magic and smoke and mirrors. The Bible calls them wise men- magi (we get the English word magic from that word). Much of what we think we know about them comes is, simply, the accumulated imagination of two millennia.They arrive late in the Bethlehem story. For they have come a long way, and took a detour to consult with a tyrant- visiting Herod’s palace and asking,Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage.Herod had not been expecting a new king, not least one announced by a star. He is worried, and calls in his own advisors. Instead of consulting the stars, they consult their old books, and by accident stumble on the old prophecy that a special ruler will one day come from Bethlehem. Presumably the Magi were by that point drinking sherbets and luxuriating in a palace, probably for the first time since they left their own.Herod tries to use the magi. He knows it’s in Bethlehem the danger lies- but where exactly, he’s not sure. So he pretends to be a potential worshipper (when in fact he has far more nefarious intentions) and sends them off to do the finding for him. And so the naive wise men toddle off to Bethlehem:When they had heard the king, they set out; and there, ahead of them, went the star that they had seen at its rising, until it stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy. On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure-chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.There is, of course, something incongruous about these richly dressed (as we like to imagine them) wise men stooping to get into a tiny cave to worship a baby. The son of a carpenter and a peasant-girl, worshipped by magi, worthy still of worship: here is, indeed, the mystery and magic of the story of Jesus’ birth.It would not have come naturally to the magi to disobey King Herod. For the Wise Men were members of the establishment. They were accustomed to royalty, used to honouring power, comfortable with kings telling them what to do. That’s why they first sought the new king in the royal palace. But this time, they go back by another road, because they had had a dream (people put a lot of store in dreams back then as well).The Wise Men, inadvertently, caused a massacre of children, though it is Herod who is guilty: a man ordering slaughter because he needs to preserve his own power. And that is why this story is so powerful- for we know who today’s Herod’s are, and who their victims.Around the world, children are still being killed because powerful people have ordered it. And they give political or strategic reasons why the children have to be killed- but it is revolting that it still happens today.God’s gift to the world is Jesus Christ, the vulnerable child. God stoops into a cave in Bethlehem to be born, but very nearly doesn’t make it out of the manger, escaping just in time from the murderous Herod. For the Christmas story is no fairy tale. There’s power politics, misunderstandings, evil, tragedy: Rachel weeping for her children. Not everyone welcomes the disruption which Christ will bring into the world. In Christ, God comes, not to a Christmas card world, but our real world of wicked and incompetent leaders, where children die unnecessarily, where ordinary people have their lives disrupted by powers beyond their control.And yet: there’s also the star. In Christ, the light has come which shines in the darkness, and the darkness will never put it out. Thanks be to our God, who brings light even in the darkest places. Amen.
Are you hoping that they will come, or are you hoping that they will go or are you just waiting for the next lot to come around New Year? Have you had enough of your family yet, not enough or does it not matter very much but you could do with some help eating the ham? At this time of the year when some families move heaven and earth to be together for a few days and some do quite the opposite, it’s appropriate that the Church presents us with the image of the Holy Family.It may seem an artificial image, a concoction of the nice bits from all the gospels mixed with the Victorian stereotypes of father as provider, mother as homemaker, and a child who seems to be a cross between Little Lord Fauntleroy and Aristotle, but this is not the truth which is presented to us, and we are not living in a fairytale.In the gospels we catch glimpses of Jesus’s family which reflect the difficulties we all face in our own families. The Holy Family doesn’t get off to an auspicious start. Joseph and Mary were engaged and he found out that his fiancée was pregnant and not by him, and the Holy Family would not have existed without faith, hope and love, especially in hard times – as well as an honesty about those hard times.Matthew points out that Jesus’s birth is the fulfilment of the prophecy of Isaiah which says a child is to be born whose name will be Emmanuel which means God-with-us, not ‘God doing everything for us’ but God-with-us, so we take heart that beyond the headlines and the guns and the human suffering, but also with the headline and the guns and the suffering – there is the very God that we seek.Matthew’s story of the birth of Jesus begins with an angel telling Joseph that Mary will bear a son, who shall be called Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins. Jesus actually means ‘Saviour’. He continues:All this took place to fulfil what the Lord had spoken by the prophet: ‘Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and his name shall be called Emmanuel, which means, God-with-us.The rest of the gospel is an explanation of what it means to have God dwelling with us. Matthew depicts Mary and Joseph living a normal life in rural Bethlehem when they learn that they are to be the instrument of God’s living with humanity. I’m sure Matthew envisages them expecting great changes for the better. After all, the Old Testament prophecies state that the lion will lie down with the lamb, swords will be beaten into ploughshares and spears into pruning hooks. Peace is to mark the coming of the Messiah. All over the world ploughshares are being beaten into swords. Violence is escalating, from knife crime to war. Traditionally we remember today all those suffering persecutions for their faith. There is the massive persecution of Christians, but believers of all faiths are being killed, often by members of other faiths. We see again the ugly rise of anti-Semitism. Many of our Jewish brothers and sisters no longer feel safe.But God’s grace is unimaginably fertile. The gospel tells of a young virgin and a barren old woman who bear children. God is the source of unquenchable newness even when everything looks hopeless. Gabriel said to Mary, ‘With God, nothing is impossible.'But the change is not what Mary and Joseph expect and the effect on Bethlehem is catastrophic. The secular powers, represented by King Herod, immediately bring greater oppression and atrocities. Joseph and Mary leave their settled life. The birth of the Messiah also brings untold grief to many when Herod, in attempting to destroy Jesus, kills the newborn sons of every family in the region. The birth of the prince of peace brings about death and conflict.But the Christmas story is not one of despair. The fact that some of us can look with longing towards a world that can be better means that it is possible for us to bring the light of Christ into it. We may not stop oppression but we don’t collude with it. We may not put an end to greed but we refrain from contributing to the increasing difference between rich and poor. And when we put the fact of God dwelling alongside us against the callousness of the world, it shines all the brighter for us, strengthening our resolve to do everything in our power to bring about God’s kingdom.So with the passing of another Christmas season, let us go into the New Year strengthened by its message and with our hopes renewed for a better world, for a Holy world, where each person knows that God is with them.
There are all kinds of dreams, are there not. Dreams which we forget the second we wake up, no matter how immersive and occasionally preferable to reality they may be. Dreams which turn into nightmares which we are happy to forget, personal dreams and dreams for others. What are your dreams? We are supposed to be able to achieve our dreams, be they of wealth, avarice, charity or for good or ill – we say ‘you can achieve anything’ to children, which always seems rather unlikely. I have done the funerals of dozens of young men who were killed in gang attacks, all of whom, we heard, were about to become a famous DJ or footballer, but who, instead, became dead with a knife in their back, and the murderers dream of getting away with it generally came true. We have dreams, but we inhabit reality, and that reality as we perceive it is often more fantastic than dreams ever could be.No doubt Joseph the carpenter had his dreams. Perhaps of having lots of sons who would all be successful carpenters or furnishing Herod’s palaces by winning the contract to build all the furniture. But all these were dashed by his holy dream, in which he is commanded by an angel to take Mary, his pregnant fiancée, and marry her and raise her child as his own. This dream sunk all the little private dreams he might have had – the reality meant that the fantasy had to take second place. So far, so normal. I used to say to the young people at school ‘would you have the courage to follow the message of an angel in a dream when you heard that your fiancée had become pregnant through the operation of the Holy Ghost?I am not suggesting that we should not follow our dreams but they may seem small and petty compared with Joseph’s dream, which is about being caught up in the infinite mystery of God’s love for all of humanity. Few of us are likely to have dreams of angels commanded us to do alarming things. But Joseph’s dream is God’s dream for us all. It is of the child who will save all people, who is Emmanuel, God with all of us. Do we inhabit our own dreams for ourselves or do we get caught up in God’s great dream for us all together? Or a love beyond all hope? It’s a big question and one that God asks Ahaz in the first reading, saying ‘Ask for any sign you want, absolutely anything’. But he does not dare to. He pretends that he does not want to bother God. ‘Far be it from me to tempt the Lord’ he grovels. It is like someone who is offered Paradise opting for a week on the Costa del Sol because he’s been there before, he can imagine it, he knows he likes it, he knows its safe. These are knowable ambitions. We see other people who have achieved them. And there is no safety here, only challenge and unfamiliarity.Joseph’s holy dream passes all our understanding. It is a love which is beyond our grasp. It apparently involves disaster. His nice respectable life must be lost. He must marry a woman pregnant with a child not his own. He will take upon himself shame. And the child will be a disgrace to his parents, hanging around with undesirables and coming to a dreadful end. It sounds more like a nightmare than a good dream. But actually it is the most wonderful story of love. But it takes time to see this and it takes experience of love and of God to know the difference. Just like any love, it may leave to abandonment, to what can look like rejection, to uncertainty with anything apart from the trust that God will bring us home and His love does not end and that we never need fear, even when, frankly, there is a lot of be scared about.At Christmas we are invited to trust the Lord who only longs for our utter happiness, even if he seems to go about it in an odd way. This is the holy obedience that Paul talked about in the second reading. It is not just doing what you are told. It is being led into the mystery, step by step, and finding love and hope there and then leading others into it as well.Finally, the little private dream often makes promises that are frankly untrue. It is untrue that I can do anything I want. I cannot stand in a bucket and pick it up. I cannot run a four-minute mile. I cannot bring myself to go to Subway and actually consume the food which is, I assume, the source of the stench that emanates from them. I have the wrong kind of body to run a four-minute mile and the wrong kind of mind to be cautious. We are not a kind of fleshy material which 4d printers can turn into anything. We are us, and we should be happy to be so.But in God’s holy dream, we are accepted as we are: limited, weak, foolish, mortal. In Jesus God has embraced us in our limitations and offers us everything. We are at once what Christ is, immortal, beautiful, loved and capable of love. There is a dream for us to follow, and we are able to follow it, because Christ himself once inhabited a body just like these.
Gaudete, Gaudete Christus est natus. Ex Maria Virgine, Gaudete.Rejoice, rejoice! Christ is born of the Virgin Mary. Rejoice.Gaudete. Rejoice.The Messiah, the Christ is coming. He will come to be the light to lighten the gentiles and to be the glory of His people Israel. And as the Gaudete carol continues:Deus homo factus est natura Murante, mundus renovates est a Christo regnante.God has become man, with nature marvelling. The world has become renewed by the reigning Christ.Joy. Joy will come to the world. Joy will be ours.Advent is a penitential season – a time for reflection, penance and preparation for the coming Christ. The liturgical colour is purple, and our first two Advent candles are purple. But today is Gaudete Sunday, a day of joyful anticipation for the coming Christ. A day to shift away from the more sombre purple to a gentler joyful rose. And the third Advent candle, soon to be lit, reflects this too.At Advent 2, last Sunday, we heard about John the Baptist preaching in the Judean wilderness, preparing the way of the Lord. Baptising with water while the One who is coming will baptise with the Holy Spirit and with fire. He will clear the threshing floor, will gather the wheat unto Himself but the chaff He will burn with unquenchable fire. Strong stuff! A powerful Messiah who will defeat the Romans and restore the good of Isreal to glory. And John the Baptist, as his father Zechariah proclaims in the words of the Benedictus ‘will go before the Lord to prepare His way.’Clearly great things were ahead.John even knew, somehow, while he was still unborn when his Lord was near as he leapt in his mother’s womb when Mary paid Elizabeth, John’s mother, a visit.Great things were indeed ahead.But hang on; today we hear that John is in prison. He’d been imprisoned by King Herod for chastising him about marrying his ex sister in law. And where was this promised Messiah? Rome is still in power. Herod is still king – still as corrupt as ever. What’s going on? Is Jesus really who John thought He was? Is He truly the Messiah? John is beginning to doubt!Rather than being a man of fire, sweeping aside the wicked and corrupt, Jesus seems to be working from a different script. He’s befriending tax collectors and other sinners. He’s healing people. Gaining a great reputation but not for what John expected. It’s like a main character in a stage play had gone rogue and done something which the other characters had not expected. How do they handle it? How does John handle this possible disappointment? He needs to know what’s going on. ‘Are you the one who is to come or shall we look for another?’ He is doubting – something we really wouldn’t expect of John the Baptist. He is wondering if his life, his proclaiming in the wilderness for this man, this Jesus – was it all in vain? All for nought?John the Baptist doubted. And that’s OK. It’s OK to doubt. Doubt can be a virtue – a sort of failsafe because without it, without some measure of reservation on things we’d likely end up making one heck of a mess of things. But if, when, we do doubt, do we have the courage to admit it? Thomas certainly did when he was told of Jesus’ resurrection because he was elsewhere when Jesus appeared to His disciples after that first Easter morning. And we hear today that John the Baptist also begins to doubt – something which led to him asking, via his disciples, what has been described as perhaps one of the most poignant and heartfelt questions in the whole of scripture: ‘are you the one who is to come or shall we wait for another?’ Have I made a massive mistake all these years? And now I’m in prison am I going to miss the coming of the true Messiah? Can you even begin to imagine what was going on in John’s mind? Confusion? Disappointment?John doubted. And what did he do? He took his question to the Lord. And that’s what we must do, whenever we doubt. Take our doubts to the Lord in prayer. And oh so often, God will speak to our doubts through scripture. And that is just how Jesus responded to John. Not with a straightforward ‘Yes, I am He’. But He answers John by quoting the very scripture which inspired John to cry out in the wilderness, to prepare the way for the Lord. Jesus spoke words from the book of Isaiah – the very Old Testament reading we heard this morning.But why does Jesus take John to the Bible in His answer? I believe that the Bible, scripture, is the basis upon which everything else is built. Our traditions are essentially based upon our experiences and this, along with our reason, with regards to things theological, is driven by our assimilation of scripture. The Holy Spirit is working in us, through us and beyond us to guide our lives of faith and to bring us closer to God – through scripture. Faith – our lives of faith. Jesus’ answer to John give him hope. We are not told that the disciples actually took Jesus’ answer back to John, but we can hope that they did. And if so, John can die knowing that he was right in doing what he has been doing. And that’s what true faith is all about. And true faith gives us hope – true hope. Faith may not change our circumstances, but it gives us hope. Unwavering hope carried deep within the heart of all Christians who know that Christ goes with them and before them. Heaven is in the heart of the Christian who hopes.Faith seeking understanding (fides quaerens intellectum) is the motto of St Anselm of Canterbury, 11th century Benedictine monk. We need to admit that we don’t understand it all but by faith we strive towards that goal, towards that understanding. And to doubt? Well doubt can be an important lens through which we can see what God is really doing in the world.John doubted; Jesus’ direction towards scripture will have strengthened John’s faith and given him hope.Whenever we doubt, we must pray. Take a breath. Look around at our beautiful world. See God’s work – trust Him, trust His timing (because God’s timing is perfect). As we approach the nativity, on this Gaudete Sunday let us have faith, hope, joy. And let us kneel in wonder and adoration at the child in the manger. Believe in the Saviour born for us who grew up to heal, to teach, to proclaim the good news. He did not grow up to be a mighty warrior and great political leader but a gentle, suffering servant.John did not live to see the crucifixion and the resurrection. But we live in a post Easter world. We know how the story develops – not ends, because it has not ended yet. We believe what we have been told about how the story progresses because we have faith. And we are called to share that faith and to answer, whenever asked, is Jesus the one or are we to wait for another, that yes – Jesus is the one, the world’s Saviour, the resurrection and the life.Gaudete, Gaudete Christus est natus. Ex Maria Virgine, Gaudete.Rejoice, rejoice! Christ is born of the Virgin Mary. Rejoice.
