Month: December 2019

2 before Advent

Jesus warns that ‘the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down.’

Maybe you have watched David Attenborough’s programmes on seven continents, and the introduction illustrates the point.  Having seven continents is, in geological terms, a fairly new phenomenon, and they continue to move at surprising speed. At some point in geological history, enormous earth movements started to take place on a scale never before recorded on earth. The once stable single great continental land mass began to break up. We know the details today: India crashing into Asia to form the Himalayas, the Atlantic Ocean opening up, splitting Africa from South America, or, nearer to home, Labrador from Scotland. The consequence of all this was newly emerging land masses, and new environments for life to colonise, with plants able to grow on land, animals able to colonise the land, and ultimately, amongst all the variety of life, the appearance of humans.

But then, what the programmes also bring to our attention is that fact that things can’t continue in the same old way. Things have to change. We must stop cutting down rain forest to grow palm oil, stop the nonsense of using palm oil as bio fuel and pretend this is better than using oil, stop relying of cheap air travel and giving away air miles. We must stop discarding plastic. Our way of life is unsustainable.

When Jesus spoke of the end of the temple in Jerusalem, it seemed unimaginable. The Herods had created the most impressive religious edifice in the Roman world; greater than anything in Egypt, greater than Delphi or the Parthenon in Athens, a cult sustained by thousands upon thousands of sacrifices. To give an idea of its size, the Acropolis, the natural plateau on which the Parthenon was built in Athens, is about 3 hectares in area. Although Jerusalem is always spoken of as being on a hill, the natural one is insignificant in size, but Herod built had commissioned a mound 10 hectares in area, an artificial hill of immense stone blocks. We can still marvel, as Jesus’ disciples did, at the size of the stones forming the foundation for the biggest religious building in the world. As Jesus and his disciples looked at it, it was still being built and indeed, it was never finished.  Within a generation, this temple, and the city of Jerusalem would be no more. Jews and Christians would be forbidden to live there. Yet, Jesus advises, this is not the end of the world. It is a warning to be resolute in the face of persecution.

Today our prophets are different, and their message is different, but it seems evident that their message is as vital to our generation as Jesus’ message was to the infant church. Our prophets might be the very old, like David Attenborough, or the young like Greta Thunberg. But what is the world doing? In some ways nations appear to be doing what the Roman emperor was doing in the days when Luke wrote his gospel. Nero was accused of fiddling whilst Rome burnt. The saying has become a byword for leaders who, in any generation, neglect the urgent needs of their people. Are our leaders, fighting over the coming election, fiddling whilst our cities and indeed our planet choke on the pollution we have made?

Some countries are taking notice. I was struck this week by the way the Dutch Prime Minister announced ways of reducing nitrous oxide emissions. His government had already frozen 18,000 road, airport and housing projects to meet EU targets on nitrogen oxide pollution. But it wasn’t enough. So the national speed limit is to be reduced on motorways from 130 kph to 100 kph between 7 p.m. and 6 a.m. And farmers have been ordered to reduce numbers of pigs because nitrogen emissions are four times the EU average.  He said it was urgent because it causes asthma, brings on asthma attacks, and increases heart disease in the elderly. Quite simply, in order to heal ourselves we need to heal the whole planet. And in particular we need to heal the places where there is the highest density of population and the greatest damage to the health of people. We are changing the climate and see the results in floods at home, floods in Venice, and floods in India. We have wildfires in California, in Australia and we have had them in the Pennine Moors. And yet the papers yesterday were celebrating a non-stop flight from London to Sydney, which used 15 tonnes of fuel per passenger. Are our goals the right ones?

The planet needs healing. And, as this is a healing service, allow me to tell a story of healing services some 30 years ago and more. Someone came to the services, and she sought out healing services everywhere. She approached ministers of all churches asking for special prayers of healing. It is no exaggeration to say that I and other ministers were driven to distraction by her incessant demands. She would approach caring people violently in order to get attention.

At one healing service I had preached on a story of Jesus telling a man to get up and walk (John 5). I spelt out what the consequences of that must have been. For, if Jesus could heal him, he could no longer get charity.  He would have to work for his living. When he asked Jesus to heal him, to make him stand up and walk, he knew that his entire lifestyle would change, and he accepted the challenge. Paul, in today’s epistle, commends that sort of life. The woman I mentioned had always refused to get medical help, and she was furious, as so often before, at my sermon. Her doctor, a friend who was a Reader in his parish, said, ‘Do we have a patient? He could do nothing because she refused any help.

12 years after the onset of the illness, and after I left the parish, I received a letter from the woman. Her illness had been caused by a simple chemical imbalance; she wrote. Within weeks of receiving treatment from her doctor she was back to her old self, and helping people in the community as St. Paul commended, being a blessing to all around her.

I tell this story because, as I watch David Attenborough or listen to Greta Thunberg and climate activists, I wonder, ‘Do we have a patient?’ Have we realised that our present lifestyle is unsustainable? Do we recognise ourselves as patients, do we recognise the illnesses we are causing ourselves and our planet, which can only be cured by accepting that we must live differently? Some countries are refusing to admit that climate change is happening.

The temple in Jerusalem effectively destroyed itself, because it had ceased to point people to God. When God appeared in its midst, he was rejected. We could be doing something similar on a larger scale today, larger than Nero’s fiddling while Rome burns, and refusing to recognise that our lifestyles and what we are doing to our planet are making us ill. Only then, if we change, as Malachi promises, will the son of righteousness rise, with healing on his wings.

The Feast of Christ the King began only last century in 1925, at a point when kings were reducing – indeed, some had already gone to the guillotine. It only reached our calendar as the last Sunday of the Christian year in 1970. So we might wonder what it’s for, especially when Royalty doesn’t always get a good press. Last week we had one such. The king, Mauricio Pochettino, the manager of Tottenham Hotspur football club, was sacked. Just as suddenly, there was a new king, Jose Mourinho, who had been waiting, idle in London, since being kicked out of his last team, Manchester United, 11 months ago.

A football commentator described what happened like this. He said ‘If you look at the anthropology of what happened, it goes back to a very primitive story, of the most ancient tribal societies. They need a king, someone to embody what the society stands for, someone to claim its victories,  embody the tribe and celebrate its successes. But, in tribal societies, every so often things go wrong: the harvest fails, a plague strikes, a powerful enemy attacks, and the king fails to ensure success. Will this new king at Spurs perform, or will he prove to be as self-seeking and useless as the kings of Israel condemned by Jeremiah? The king should be a shepherd for the people, and indeed a football manager is there to shepherd the squad in his charge. But ‘you have scattered my flock, and have driven them away, and you have not attended to them’.

The accusation against Jesus, the charge nailed to his cross, was, that he was a king. And indeed, our gospels are not ashamed to assert that. Indeed,  our epistle reminds us that, before even the gospels appeared in their present form, Paul had included what appears to be this most ancient Christian hymn in his letter, proclaiming that Christ is, not just king, but ‘The image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him.’ It is the centrepiece of the first Christian sermon, Peter’s proclamation on the Day of Pentecost. ‘let the entire house of Israel know with certainty that God has made him both Lord and Messiah, this Jesus whom you crucified.’

The implication of this, realised by the first generation of Christians, was that our understanding of everything, and particularly the whole of creation, and of what God is like, had to change. And, by implication, what a real king might be, has also to change. For the king, traditionally, leads his people out to battle. The king inspires his football team to believe they can win. The king, in any conflict, is on OUR side against OUR enemies, and leads us to defeat them. He inspires his followers to battle.

But look what happens when we realise the implications of the resurrection of Jesus. He is not only king, but ‘The firstborn of all creation; through whom all things in heaven and on earth were created’. There is now no person on earth who is not a member of this kingdom. No-one is an outsider. No-one is an enemy. There is no place for us to exercise our wrath and our anger because God loves all that he has made, every person that exists. God is not angry, not even with those who put his son on the cross. To those who crucified Jesus he said ‘Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.’ To the condemned criminal he said ‘Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.’

What we believe, in the light of the resurrection, is that he is not only king of all believers but king of all unbelievers also. The very term ‘king’ hardly does justice to what Jesus represents for us. But what might it mean? I think first of Costa Rica; a tiny slip of land uniting two continents, with Nicaragua to the north and Panama to the south. Cost Rica made treaties with its two neighbours, and in 1949 abolished its army. One result was great and lasting prosperity. Another was a huge influx of Quakers from the United States, who wanted to settle and live in a country dedicated to peace. And they have today formed much of the backbone of the country’s prosperity based on farming and tourism. The country is clean, safe, with a delightful friendly population ad stable government.

We have relied on the wrong kind of king; one based on our ancient primitive model of generals, emperors and, let us admit, football coaches, and not one based on the kingship of the one through whom all things and all peoples were made. To such a notion, the very idea of a king of peace is unimaginable. But then, in spite of being a Christian country, we have been a nation of wars, conquest, invasions, and celebrating our foreign war mongering and guaranteeing our peace not with treaties with our neighbours, but with a nuclear deterrent. Our history goes from 1066 through Agincourt and the 100 years war with France through the Spanish Armada, wars with Holland, with Napoleon, and finally two world wars. The scandal is that we’re in danger of remembering more about the wars, including one that ended over 100 year ago, than why we made peace by joining the European economic community in 1973. This began as the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) in 1951 with the deliberate intention after the second World War in a century of preventing further European wars. Weapons were about coal and steel, so this was an attempt to beat swords into ploughshares, to use steel only for peace. Later the single market was also designed to prevent wars between former antagonistic states. It may not be perfect but when before have that had we had over 70 years without a major European war? We probably wouldn’t fight over coal and steel any more, but the seeds of economic war and jingoistic nationalism are all again rampant in the nations of Europe and beyond. Such narrow nationalistic political leaders are no better than the very worst and most tribal of football coaches.

On this Feast of Christ the King we need to look again at what we mean by true kingship, and how we understand the implications of the realisation that our creator has taken human flesh, lived and died to demonstrate the nature of true kingship. So, on this recently invented feast of Christ the King, may I suggest that, to get truly into the spirit of what it means, you do what is traditional at this season and you listen to Handel’s ‘Messiah’. If you can, join a bunch to sing a scratch performance, and when you do remember that the fabulous climax is the real celebration of Christ the King, which we’ve done for centuries. Sing along to the Halleluiah Chorus, that majestic music which brought the king to his feet and now should do the same for all of us, which concludes with the proclamation of Christ as King of Kings and Lord of Lord, and ‘He shall reign for ever and ever’.

Advent 3

It is the Sunday for rejoicing, traditionally know as ‘Gaudete’ Sunday ‘Rejoice’ is the proclamation of the prophet. Mary sings her Magnificat and the purple of Advent is put away for a day. We light the pink candle in the Advent ring and it could almost seem as though we are celebrating Christmas early.

But John the Baptist is in prison, in the condemned cell from which he will never emerge in on piece. For him, things couldn’t be worse. The doubts and fears crowd in on him. Is this really the Messiah? Will he rescue John the Baptist and drive out Herod and all the Romans? Is this salvation? What is there to rejoice about?

As we heard in our readings, Jesus quotes the prophet in listing the signs that are being fulfilled. ‘The eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy.’ Yes, it is happening, but is it enough? Tell John that, but the rest of the message should probably not reach his ears. So, after John’s disciples left, those who remained heard this. ‘Among those born of women no one has arisen greater than John the Baptist; yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.’

John would die not knowing the whole of Jesus’s message, and, infinitely more important, would not know of the death and resurrection of Jesus. Three of the gospels are written from the point of view of what people knew before Easter Day. They reconstructed the story as though no-one knew what was to come. I believe St. John, knowing of these accounts of the life of Jesus, wrote a very different gospel, one bathed in the light of the resurrection and using this event to shine a light on the meaning of the incarnation and the ministry of Jesus. I have good authority for saying this, because I am quoting Professor David Ford who has spent the last 19 years writing, with periods of careful reading with colleagues, the gospel of John. John, he would claim, knew about those accounts of the life of Christ which attempted to reconstruct what it was like at the time, with all the misunderstandings and doubts which everyone, including the disciples shared. But John writes in the full knowledge of these gospels, his personal knowledge of Jesus, and his experience of the resurrection.

John the Baptist did not, could not, know that Jesus would rise from the dead and that his resurrection would be the ultimate vindication on his ministry. So Jesus says ‘Among those born of women no one has arisen greater than John the Baptist; yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.’ This is no criticism of John, but a simple report that no-one could have known that, with the resurrection of Jesus, John the Baptist, Isaiah, Jeremiah, the whole of the rest of them, the psalmist and the lot would share in the resurrection of God’s Son.

And there is this ultimate difference between the messiah and earthly kings. ‘What then did you go out to see? Someone dressed in soft robes? Look, those who wear soft robes are in royal palaces. What then did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet.’

There will also be a fundamental difference between the message of Jesus and that of the prophets including John the Baptist. And there will be a fundamental difference between people’s imaginings about the Messiah and Jesus, the Son of God. Some of this difference is clear in today’s reading from Isaiah. ‘Here is your God.  He will come with vengeance, with terrible recompense.  He will come and save you.’

God does not save you by beating up everyone else. It is not this situation which my 4 year old grandson imagines in his games, where there are good guys and bad guys, and the good guys have free rein to beat up the bad guys. In the creation God made they are all, we are all, children of God. But it is just possible that John the Baptist didn’t understand who was coming. For example, he described the Messiah in these terms, ‘His winnowing-fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing-floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.’ It could sound very like the 4-year old’s game of bad guys and good guys. But, apart from healing the blind and the lame, what did Jesus do?

When they showed Jesus a woman who had been taken in the very act of adultery, he said very clearly ‘Let the person who is without sin cast the first stone.’ Those who were claiming to be the good guys were unmasked.

He says ‘‘Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. For with the judgement you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get. Why do you see the speck in your neighbour’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbour, “Let me take the speck out of your eye”, while the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbour’s eye.’

He accepted invitations to dinner from tax collectors and sinners, and was criticised for it. But then, he says in today’s gospel, ‘blessed is anyone who takes no offence at me.’

And, following today’s gospel, Jesus says ‘But to what will I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the market-places and calling to one another, “We played the flute for you, and you did not dance;  we wailed, and you did not mourn.”

For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, “He has a demon”; the Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, “Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax-collectors and sinners!” Yet wisdom is vindicated by her deeds.’

Those who take offence at Jesus will be unable to discern that this is God at work.

However, I’m reminded that we need to say this with some care. I have just read the report by the C of E Faith and Order Commission about our relations with Jews. This is an important issue which has tarnished some of the political discourse recently, when it should have been laid to rest years ago. The report doesn’t give me any advice about how to interpret Jesus’ words in tonight’s gospel, ‘Among those born of women no one has arisen greater than John the Baptist; yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.’ There is a danger of seeing this text as proclaiming a kind of Christian triumphalism. And there is no escaping the fact that Christianity and Judaism are different, but then Judaism today is very different from the faith of those who worshipped in the temple in Jerusalem, and Christianity today different from that of those who wrote the gospels.

In all this I find, as did those on the commission, help from St. Paul’s letter to the Romans (9) in which he attempts to heal divisions between Jewish and Gentile Christians. He says ‘I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my own people, my kindred according to the flesh. They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises; to them belong the patriarchs, and from them, according to the flesh, comes the Messiah, who is over all, God blessed for ever. Amen.

But this does not help me interpret the gospel text from Matthew, so I shall try an approach like that of the 4^th gospel. let me offer you an image of the Baptist which sees him from the perspective of St. John’s gospel.

The traditional picture of the crucifixion, like that on the rood screen in this church, has the crucified Christ in the centre flanked by the weeping figures of the beloved disciple and the mother of Jesus. In the famous Isenheim altarpiece, the scene is radically different. It was created for a hospital, where dying men and women who were beyond the help, but not beyond the care of an order of religious, were placed in their beds to allow them to contemplate religious images. In the tortured figure of Christ on the cross all the pain of the terminally ill patients in the hospital is conveyed in gruesome detail. The agony of Jesus is intolerable. And his beloved disciple, instead of standing on his side of  the cross, has rushed across to comfort Jesus’ weeping mother.

The renaissance, around 1500, was a time for startling new religious images, of great theological depth. The best known is Leonardo’s ‘Last Supper’ showing the moment when every disciple finds himself accused. At Isenheim the traditional altarpiece has, where the beloved disciple has vacated his place, John the Baptist. He stands, full of life, and quoting the scriptures as he points to Christ. He is risen from the dead, and invisible to Jesus in agony. At John’s feet is a lamb, with blood pouring from its breast into a chalice. The Baptist is saying (from John 1) ‘Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! This is he of whom I said, “After me comes a man who ranks ahead of me because he was before me.”’

It is as though the vindicated Baptist is saying ‘I told you so!’, and alongside the picture of the most hideous, agonising and shameful death he is holding out an eternal,  resurrection hope to the dying in the hospital. Indeed, another of the images of the altarpiece has an unbelievably radiant image of the risen Christ, displaying is wounds, but gloriously alive.

The Isenheim altarpiece, unlike conventional images which try to portray the crucifixion as it happened, shines, like John’s gospel,  with the joy of knowing that, even in the depths of the Good Friday agony, God’s Son will be vindicated. The risen Baptist stands as a sign of hope for all the dying in the hospital. He embodies the rejoicing of ‘Gaudete’ Sunday. And, as proof that those who did not know the resurrection in their earthly lives, and equally saved by God.

In this Advent season we rejoice in the hope coming into the world, the hope given to Israel and treasured through long and difficult centuries, held secure through countless setbacks. For it is the one God, creator and father of all, who planted this message of hope, and it is the one we all worship .

Advent 4

Advent is a time for looking forward, and nothing does this better than the writings we now call the Book of the Prophet Isaiah. One writer described it as ‘simply and of itself one of the great wonders of the world, something like the vital backbone to the whole process by which the Hebrew people gifted the world with authentic monotheism.’ What we have appears in the bible to be the work of one author, but it is the work of an entire school of disciples somehow kept alive over a period of three hundred years, and maybe well longer, the vision which the Judaean court prophet Isaiah had begun to elaborate somewhere around 730 BC. This vision, of a power so much greater than any of the power politics going on around the royal court at the time as to lead to a deeply peaceful critical indifference to them (see Isaiah 7-8), was associated with Isaiah’s priestly vision of heaven surrounded by cherubim in the Holy Place of the Temple.  It is a vision which we quote at every Communion Service, as we join in the heavenly chorus ‘Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of hosts. Heaven and earth are full of your glory.

The school of Isaiah were inspired by that vision over the next several centuries, and over time it enabled them to reinterpret the relationship of all the ups and downs of history that befell Israel and Judah, finally leading to the extraordinary clarity which we see in what is called Second Isaiah, the post-exilic reworking of the vision. There it has become clear organically, from within the vision, that the Lord in question is not a tribal deity. God is not another god among the gods. God is not-one-of-the-gods, God is more like nothing at all than what pagan peoples think of as a god. The astonishing, indeed, miraculous thing is that from the terrible experience of the exile in Babylon emerged this vision of true monotheism.

As such, though the initial vision was in the Temple in Jerusalem, Isaiah has no time for the ways in which pagan gods are worshipped, with sacrifices, with violent ritual slaughter. He sees this for what it is, an angry, wrathful and sinful act, glorifying the worst of humanity’s bestial instincts. He says

Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes;
cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.

He looks forward to the coming of the messiah, saying, as we know from Handel’s Messiah ‘The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light; for unto us a child is born, Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

He looks forward to worship which is peaceful. Psalm 80 reflects Isaiah’s vision of heaven in the words ‘Shine forth, you that are enthroned upon the cherubim’ and the peaceful worship means that ‘Sacrifice and offering you did not desire but my ears you have opened,  burnt offerings and sin offerings  you did not require.’

St. Paul would speak of true worship, Christian worship, as being a ‘sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving’.

As we look forward to the coming of the messiah we have to acknowledge that time and again we lose the vision of Isaiah, and his vision of peace. We set ourselves against each other, and indeed against other Christians and against other faiths. Instead of one faith we have the tribal deities of catholic and protestant, Roman and Orthodox or Western and Eastern. Everyone does it: with Shia and Sunni Muslims, Buddhists against Rohinga Muslims, Chinese against their Muslim brothers. This Christmas Christians in Gaza will not be allowed to go to Bethlehem. Everywhere faith in the one God is fractured by sin into the worship of tribal deities. India, once trying to be a model of neutrality between faiths, has espoused religious bigoty.

Where do we go? Can I, as we approach Christmas, dare to hope that we may have a possibility of peace in our own land? With the present election, and getting Brexit done, there is space for a peaceful and fruitful relationship with the EEU, and there are models for that in Norway, in Switzerland and with other nations.

Better still, the tribal warfare of left and right may have to cease as the new government recognise that they need to support the whole country, the north, the old industrial heartlands, a health service for all, not just those who can afford to go private, an equal opportunity for all in good education, and policies which respond to the universal challenge to the environment and the health of the whole planet. It may be difficult to stay on course and the siren voices of tribalisms, like old time pagan gods requiring their sacrifices, may re-emerge. But let us pray that we have government for the good of the entire nation, and that peace may prevail in a land where I believe we lost our way, and our moral compass, when we went to war in Iraq.

In conclusion, please turn to today’s psalm, and in particular to this. ‘O Lord God of hosts, how long will you be angry at your people’s prayer?’ God is not going to be pleased with prayers to a tribal deity who is asked to bash our enemies. This is not the true religion of Isaiah’s vision. This is not what the coming of the Messiah was about. So, in this Advent season we pray ‘Turn us again, O Lord God of hosts; show the light of your countenance, and we shall be saved.’

Christmas Day

Tonight we share in one of the most ancient traditions of the Christian Church. As soon as Christianity became accepted in the Roman Empire, a lady called Egeria made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and wrote of her travels. She saw that Christians would go to Bethlehem on this night for a midnight vigil.  They, like the shepherds, ‘watched by night’ as we do tonight.  This was followed by a torch-lit procession to Jerusalem, arriving at the Church of the Resurrection at dawn. Perhaps I should explain that Orthodox Christians still call what we refer to as the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, built centuries later, by its original name as ‘The Church of the Resurrection’ because of course no-one is buried there, but, far more importantly, it is the place where the risen Christ appeared to Mary Magdalene at dawn on Easter Day. It is not just an empty tomb. It is the place of the resurrection.  In one night, the Christians of Jerusalem celebrated both the birth and the Resurrection of Jesus. They were making the point that we only celebrate Christmas because of the resurrection. And this is what we do in this Eucharist.

So tonight, to present the complete picture of the meaning of Christ’s incarnation, our gospel reading comes from the majestic opening of John’s gospel.

‘In the beginning was the Word’. With this astonishing opening to his gospel, St. John re-writes the entire creation story. He knows that there is no more need for the ancient myths about creation, for he has seen God face to face in Jesus Christ. And what he has seen is that God, simply, is love. The child born in Bethlehem, the child laid in a manger, is love personified. And that love fills all creation.

The message is not confined to John. ‘The ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God’ says Isaiah. The writer to the Hebrews echoes the opening of the gospel. ‘In these last days God has spoken to us by a Son, through whom he created the worlds.’ Literally, all things and all ages.

St. Paul shares the same understanding, writing to the Corinthians 1 Corinthians 8:6: ‘But to us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we in him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by him.’

In another Christmas reading,  Paul quotes an early Christian hymn in Colossians which sings the same story. ‘Colossians 1:13-20:  ‘Christ  is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation, for through him were created all things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, thrones, dominations, principalities and powers, all things were created by him and for him.’

The creation story must be re-told, so ‘In the beginning was the Word.’ To make a modern analogy to what the apostles discovered, take a motor car. In the old story a creator, the factory, makes the car. And when it goes wrong someone else, a mechanic, fixes it. In the old story creation and salvation, creation and redemption, are two different things. But they are not.

We do St. John a disservice when we read John 3.16 and translate it as ‘God so loved the world.’ What John wrote was not just world, but, in Greek, and in English ‘Cosmos’. God loves the whole of his creation, and everything that exists is the fruit of God’s love. All things came into being through him. It is not a narrow story about personal salvation, it is ‘Joy to the world – let heaven and nature sing.’ And here, in flesh, is the Word who produces order out of a seemingly chaotic universe. Through the Word there is light and there is life, and life moreover, that has a potential for knowing its creator, for knowing that it is created, and wanting to know what the creator is like.

But this is what the world has missed. As St. John says, ‘the world did not know him and did not accept him.’ The world gets is way by wielding death. In Jesus’ day it is Rome overcoming all opposition, or it is the people of Jerusalem fighting to expel the Romans from their holy city. In the Christmas story it is Herod ordering the massacre of the innocents of Bethlehem in his bid to destroy this king. In our day it is the bombing of Syria and Yemen, it is by everything from threats of nuclear war to attacks on a conference in Fishmongers’ Hall, assassinations of critics of Russia or Saudi Arabia and cyber warfare.

The fundamental mistake about God is that God might seek to control the world by using death as a weapon, just because humans, since the myth of Cain and Abel, have wrongly supposed that this was the way to power.

But the truth of what God is actually like did not emerge until after the resurrection. It did not dawn upon the disciples until then. Up to that point they, like everyone else, were completely wrong about what God is like and who God is.

St. John says, ‘He came to what was his own and his own people did not accept him.’ Our gospel writers tell the story against themselves of how, so often they missed the point. But no wonder, for how pervasive this culture of death has been. The tragedy is that it is all too easy to fall into the trap. We turn St. George, a Christian martyr put to death in the 3^rd century in the time of Diocletian, the last pagan emperor to persecute the Christian church into an emblem of crusaders. Christians, and others, go to war over Jerusalem when Christ himself did the exact opposite, he was executed there and foretold that its entire destruction would be inevitable. And when the crusaders invading Jerusalem rebuilt the site of Christ’s resurrection into the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, they were part of a culture which had turned away from the resurrection gospel and glorified slaughter.

The satisfaction theory of the meaning of Jesus’ death gives the impression that God required the death of his son to appease his righteous wrath. No, says St. John, again and again and again. ‘God is love.’ It’s as simple as that.

So, this Christmas we need to renew ourselves in that love. We need to make a spiritual journey, the ancient tradition of making our pilgrimage from the site of Christ’s birth to the Church of the Resurrection. We go to Bethlehem and then join in the song of the angels ‘‘Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to his people on earth!’ Peace is the first message of the risen Christ on Easter Day to his disciples in the upper room. ‘Peace be with you.’ After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.’ When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them.’

Tonight this service is our spiritual pilgrimage. We come in the middle of the night to where a replica of Jesus’ crib is set up. We come to where sins are forgiven and where God’s Spirit is received. We come and join the song of the angels. We share God’s peace with each other, and we share in this Eucharist, the foretaste of the banquet of heaven, which celebrates our risen life in Christ.  We celebrate the entire gospel, acknowledging with John that ‘the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.’