Epiphany 2 - Speak Lord you servant is listening

Our world and our culture are changing rapidly all around us. With new communication technology and increasing global interaction, we face a world that will be radically different from the one in which we have lived for so long..

Of course, some see the changes, any changes, as threatening. And so they move into a doomsday mode and adopt a negative view. They decry any change as a change for the worse, where some people see only problems, others see opportunities.

If that is true in individuals, I suspect it is also true of society. And it is true of the church. Never has there been more interest in religion and spirituality in this country than now. The human need to be Spiritual remains even in those societies that strive to deny the Spiritual and believe not in God but themselves. Of course, some of that spirituality is of the weird kind, and certainly not Christian. But that also tells us that there are opportunities to proclaim the Gospel.

The Old Testament reading for the second Sunday of Epiphany is the story of God’s call to the young man Samuel and his commissioning as a prophet to Israel. In many ways, this young man Samuel represents the turning of history for Israel.

The setting of this story is 200 years after the people of Israel leave the slavery of Egypt, travel through the wilderness and enter the long promised land flowing with milk and honey.

They enter the land of Canaan and as they settle and adapt to this new life, the old ways are forgotten, the old lessons of dependency on God become lost and new ways of living seem at odds with all that went before.

The priests continued to worship and maintain the sanctuaries throughout the land. They tried to keep the spiritual vitality alive. But the people could see little advantage in serving God. They became preoccupied with their own interests and their commitment to God grew dim.

And so gradually they began to forget who they were as God’s chosen people and what their mission was in the world. The new generation of children that were growing up had finally abandoned God for pursuit of their own pleasure. The Book of Judges ends with one of the most chilling verses in the Bible. "Everyone did as they wanted to do."

It is against that background that the young man Samuel enters Israel’s history

The first chapters of 1 Samuel tell us of the miraculous birth of Samuel. God heard and answered Hannah’s prayer. As soon as we hear of the birth of this child, we know that there is hope for Israel. We know that there is indeed a future and possibility simply because God has brought it about. But change does not always come easily, and we do not yet know the shape of that future.

And so the stage is set for the text in chapter three that we have heard this morning.

There are three characters in the story: the old priest Eli, the young man Samuel, and God. Too often we focus on Samuel and forget about Eli. But if we listen carefully to the story, we realize that Eli has a significant role in the story. It will take all three of these figures in the story for Israel to have a future.

Eli by this time was an old man, nearly blind. He was priest at the sanctuary at Shiloh, and likely had been all his life. In the previous chapter (2), we are told that Eli’s two sons were worthless fellows who despised the things of God. They had violated the very sanctuary of God

Eli represents Israel and the path that she has taken in allowing the things of God to grow dim, like his eyesight. Eli represents the old ways that Israel had been following now for 200 years, paths that have led to spiritual blindness and a deafness to the voice of God.

Yet there is a glimmer of hope here. We are also told in verse 3 that "the lamp of God had not yet gone out, and Samuel was lying down in the temple of the LORD, where the ark of God was." It is no accident that this story takes place at night. The darkness represents the same thing that Eli’s blindness represents: the lack of spiritual vision and the failure to be God’s people.

The lamp of God and the ark both symbolized the presence of God in the sanctuary. In this story they represent the presence of God in the darkness into which Israel’s spiritual blindness has led them. In the midst of the darkness of failing vision the flame of God’s presence is still alive.

And in the darkness there is Samuel, the miracle child! The child born to a barren woman! In the darkness lies the future, just waiting for God’s presence to fan it into a new flame!

We must be careful here that we do not romanticize Samuel and make him the hero here. The story is not about Samuel. But he is the instrument of God's work.

We all know the story of God's call to Samuel. God called to him. He heard God’s voice, but did not understand. He was only a boy and had not yet learned to distinguish the voice of God from all the other voices in his life.

He went and asked Eli if he had called. Eli told him to go back to bed. Twice more this happened. Finally, the third time Eli began to understand what was happening. He explained what Samuel should do and how he should respond.

The fourth time Samuel responded to God's call, and was given the prophetic message from God. It was a message about change, about the ending of the old ways of doing things in Israel.

Although Eli can be seen as the villain in the story the truth is that he is important and was there to guide Samuel in the right direction. Even though the old ways were dying, they still had a role in guiding the new generation into their calling as God’s people. Eli enables the young Samuel to be one who will bring change so desperately need.

Eli may not be a hero, but his role was to facilitate and enable the change that God was bringing. He was the transition figure between the past and the future, the cutting edge over which the old became new.

And what of Samuel? Does he become the hero? Yes but if we look later at Samuel, even after being the prophet of God for many years, he had sons of his own. And his sons were worthless fellows, just like the sons of Eli. Eventually, Samuel himself came to the position of Eli, and faced the judgment of God on his own family and his heritage!

Samuel filled the same role as Eli, as he presided over yet another change in Israel’s history. Samuel was commissioned by God to appoint the iftt Kings of Israel first Saul and then David, an act that would bring his own leadership of Israel to an end.

So what does this mean for us?

I think that perhaps we need to realize that some things are ending. I’m not saying we have to see the church in the metaphor of a blind old man who is ready to die. But we do have to recognize that what has been will not be again. The stability and power of our Faith is not in all the trappings of our religion, but in the living God in our midst. We can easily disrupt the new work of God in the world if we try only to hang onto what has always been. Not everything needs to change, or should. But then, not everything can remain the same.

Certainly there is change in the wind. Pope Francis is challenging the Roman Catholic Church to look afresh at some of its deepest held assumptions and practices.

The Church of England is also undergoing change with the long awaited  decision to allow women not just to be priests but Bishops as well

In our Diocese we await the news in few months time of who will be our new bishop of Edmonton, taking over from bishop Peter after 15 years as our Area Bishop

And there is change here too at St Matthias and within the communities of Colindale where we see the evidence of that change all around us.

We need to listen to God in these times of change and for some of us to be like Eli, to ensure that the voice of the future is heard and the Word of God is honoured. For all of us we need to be ready to respond to God when he calls: "Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening."

The Baptism of Christ - You are my beloved in whom I am well pleased

Can you imagine what it would be like to hear the voice of God saying, "I am so very pleased with you"?

“Congratulations”

The banner with bright coloured letters ran up the Vicarage stair case complete with balloons for the home coming of baby Jesse on Wednesday night, hot on the heals of the celebration of the Magi’s visit to the stable in Bethlehem and blessing our home and the churches 20+C+M+B15

Of course we had been waiting, anticipating this moment, indeed praying for him to be well enough and strong enough to be allowed out of hospital and start to live as part of his family. Thank you for all your prayers for Jesse and Jodie these past 6 weeks, this baby has been prayed for in Roman Catholic, Coptic, Anglican and Pentecostal churches he is truly blessed.

“You are my son the beloved, with you I am well pleased” – these are the words of God not just for his only begotten son Jesus but for the whole world to hear and to share in and what could be more wonderful than to hear our heavenly father tell us this?

The joy that came with this small bundle of humanity wrapped in a blue blanket knitted for him by Angie and in a car seat that cost as much in family arguments as it did in terms of cash! was soon followed with the needs of looking after a small baby, the endless cycle of washing and feeding and all that happens in between, but that joy is still with us and in time Jesse will come to understand its full extent in his own life. It is the kind of joy that one gets from looking upon a baby be it ours of that of another that when felt never leaves us.

The first time I saw Jesse, one day old in intensive care wrapped in bubble wrap

the first prayer I said for him

the first time I held him

the first time I fed him

these are moments that cannot be forgotten, will never be forgotten will stay with me for the rest of my life and this is true of our baptism and the baptism on our lord that we remember and celebrate this morning

Baptism is a powerful sign of Gods love for us, those of us who were baptised as infants may not have a direct memory of the event, of the love being expressed and poured out in that simple ceremony but as we grow it is our hope and faith that the words of God the Father to his Son will be equally true of each one of us his sons and daughters.

Our baptism in like a home coming for through the waters of baptism we are granted entry in to the church and the promise of life eternal. In the waters of baptism we are born again in to a new family, the family of Christian people throughout the ages, and the world, yes it really is a homecoming.

In the words of God “You are my child the beloved, with you I am well pleased” we are given the assurance from


...The One who rescued us from death and destruction out of grace simply because He loves us.

...The One who chose you and revealed Himself to you when you were yet in sin, ungodly, without hope.

...The One who turned you from darkness to light, from the power of Satan to the kingdom of God, from death to everlasting life.

...The One who granted you forgiveness of all your sins, who absolved you of condemnation, who breathed into you life that would never end, who assured you He would never leave you nor forsake you, who by His Spirit enabled you to call Him, "Abba, Father!"

What are we to make of that timeless voice, the voice from heaven saying "This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased

What do we make of it this morning as we sit here in church and take moment to listen, to remember, to assure ourselves that we have been chosen and are loved because we, like the one on whom we attempt to model our lives, are a beloved child of God in whom God is well pleased?

When you stop to ponder this in your heart, the timing of the Father's words to His Son was incredible. This happened on the eve of Jesus' public ministry! Jesus was about thirty years old. He came to the Jordan where His cousin John was baptising.

¹⁰And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. ¹¹And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’ ¹² And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness”

Up to this point, Jesus hadn't performed a single miracle.

No sign had been performed by Him, or word spoken by him yet the Father himself said He was well-pleased with His Son.

Jesus hadn't successfully resisted the devil; yet the Father opened the heavens and said, "This is My beloved Son in whom I am well-pleased."

Before Jesus had begun any work of his Father he receives God’s blessing and love.

And this is true for each one of us when we were born, before we had done anything, even before we had opened our mouth to draw our first breath we are loved. This is true for Jesse my first Grandson, it is true of Jesus at his baptism and it is true for each one of us here and throughout the world.

What does this tell us? It tells me that what pleases God more than anything else is our intimate relationship with Him, our total submission to His Word, His purpose, His timing.

Imagine the freedom you would experience if you knew that you were already — right now and today — pleasing to God!

Would you face the challenges before you differently?

Would you enjoy your life a little more and live your life abundantly?

And so the yearning strong

With which the soul will long

Shall far out pass the power of human telling;

For none can guess its grace

Till he become the place

Wherein the Holy Spirit makes his dwelling.

‘Come Down O Love Divine’   -   Bianco da Siena, d.1434.

The world did not know him - A New Years thought

The gospel writer John is hardly the most romantic or sentimental of the gospel writers. His vocabulary is technical and his approach seems more the work of a theologian than an eyewitness telling a story that has a beginning middle and end.

       

If you go to John’s gospel for shepherds or angel choruses, or kings following bright stars, friendly beasts, harsh innkeepers, or strange dreams, you have gone to the wrong gospel.

Jesus walks onto the stage of history full grown when John first takes any interest in his life. And John writes like an intellectual, like a philosopher... in circles. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, And immediately we know that this is not a word like supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. It is a Word that has theological meaning.

Of course the Word is translated from the original Greek Logos, which is more than just a word, it is more like a concept, a thought that wants to be uttered rather than a word that must be defined.

So as January begins with the Christmas decorations still around us, our minds finally clearing from the excess of New years parties we have a moment to pause and reflect on this first Sunday of the New Year, before we take up the story anew next Sunday with the beginning of Epiphany.

John’s prologue, the first eighteen or so verses of the gospel, take us back to the beginning of all time. In the beginning, John begins, and if it sounds a little more like Genesis than John, it’s supposed to. John wants us to think about the beginning of everything, when the earth was formless and void. It was at that time that the idea, the Word, was already in God’s mind. God knew from the beginning that a Word would need to be said, a Word would need to be born.

In contrast to St Luke the birth story did not begin with the annunciation. For St John the genealogy of Matthew and Luke is trumped  by tracing the lineage of Jesus not with Adam or Abraham but with God before time began. John states that from the beginning of time, God meant the Word to be. He wants to know from whence all things come. And he gives us a mystery to ponder - the fact that even though the Word was the first thought God ever had, the reception of the Word, the child born of Mary,  by God’s people was the last thing of theirs.

 “He was in the world, and the world came into being through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own,” John goes on, “and his own people did not accept him.”

His own people may have missed the point, but what excuse do we have?

I am struck by John’s words which echo into this new year of our Lord two thousand and fifteen.

Have we really not seen him, not known him?

He was in the world, John says, and the world did not know him. If not, then what is this annual exercise we have just been through?

We have transformed our city with lights and placed candles in our windows. We’ve hauled living trees into our homes and decorated them with strings of bulbs and bows and tinsel. We’ve spent Billions of pounds in our shops.

But maybe “knowing him” should not be confused with the gaudy display and orgy of spending that Christmas has become for so many, pretty as it may be, and relief to the longest nights of the year that it is. Because if all there was to the Word’s coming into the world were pretty lights and tightly wrapped packages, then the only people who gain are those in the business  of retail and advertising, when what Christmas holds out is hope and life for the whole of creation.

We are always challenged to look beneath the surface, to look deeper in to the Christmas story for meaning as Anghard reminded us last Sunday when she preached taking us beyond the perfect night with a nuclear family of Mary and Joseph and the baby Jesus to something a little more gritty and uncomfortable, even painful but certainly more inclusive and hopeful.

It is for St John to point us to this in his beautiful words that form the first verses of his gospel, the prologue. For here is the real heart of what we have been preparing to celebrate through the weeks preceding Christmas, the coming of One who would be for us light and hope, joy and strength, the Word become flesh and dwelling among us full of grace and truth. And in the place of the inhospitable Inn keeper of Luke’s gospel John states , “He was in the world, yet the world did not know him.”

As we strive to make our New Years resolutions in a world that is still divided and torn apart by ideology, wealth and religious values that deny our common humanity let us hear the words of hope that St John gives us this morning as we look out to the year beginning in the darkness of our making as well as that of this winter season and pledge ourselves to the hope that we celebrate at Christmas even though “he was in the world, and the world did not know him.”

It’s John’s clear if somewhat minimalist message, without angels or shepherds, stars, strange dreams or magi, nevertheless a message that makes all the difference once you grasp its implications, that in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of a parent for an only child, full of grace and truth.

If there is any hope for this world I am not sure that it lies in images and messages that we are constantly bombarded with but is does lie in the pages of Scripture that we turn to every day of our lives and read and meditate upon.

In a world that does not know the one sent to be its light and life; as we make our New Year resolutions let us look for the evidence that God is indeed with us. Let us commit ourselves to look for those places where there is kindness expressed, and comfort offered, and prayers are said, and people are encouraged, and the dying are soothed, and the ill are not alone.

This is how God is made known in the world, in this and every season. When the Word is expressed in flesh and dwells among us, full of grace and truth.