Sunday, December 27, 2015

Words and the Word



A Sermon preached on December 27th (Christmas I) at St. Augustine’s, Wiesbaden
Isaiah 61: 10 – 62: 3, Galatians 3: 23 – 25, 4: 4 – 7, John 1: 1 – 18

Some of you may have read just before Christmas about the professor who was suspended from Wheaton College, near Chicago, for her statement, posted on Facebook that "I stand in religious solidarity with Muslims because they, like me, a Christian, are people of the book. And as Pope Francis stated last week, we worship the same God." As Wheaton College is an Evangelical Protestant Christian institution, this statement was particularly courageous and her suspension probably also did not come as a complete surprise. In fact I fear some Evangelicals are not even sure that Pope Francis worships the same God. And sometimes I wonder if I worship the same God as some Evangelicals. But if I have an issue with Professor Hawkins’ statement, it is not that Moslems and Christians, and Jews too, worship the same God, because we all do, just differently. It’s the “we are all people of the book” that I find to be not entirely correct.

That all three monotheistic religions worship one and the same God has been Catholic orthodoxy since Vatican II. “Christians and Jews have a common spiritual heritage” and “Muslims … worship God, who is one, living and subsistent, merciful and almighty, the Creator of heaven and earth, who has also spoken to humanity” are two statements from the 1965 Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions, or Nostra Aetate as it is more commonly known.  This is also orthodox Anglican belief. 

There are of course significant differences in how we view God, how we worship God, and what we believe God wants from us, and some of those differences have to do with “the book.” The idea that we are all “People of the Book” was a very positive one. It was the basis of the idea that Jews and Christians living in Islamic territory were to be tolerated and allowed to worship as before. An ideal that was not always lived up to, there is a reason why Christianity either died out or became a small majority in most of the Islamic world. If you wanted to get on in the Islamic world, it was better to become a Muslim. But nevertheless this edict of tolerance was a lot better than the repeated and widespread persecution of Jews that marked many Christian societies. But it is at least in part a misunderstanding. Of course we share ¾ of our Bible with our Jewish brothers and sisters and if you read the Qur’an you will see that while we do not have the same book, we still share many stories and many of the prophets and other characters, including Mary and Jesus, with our Moslem brothers and sisters. But our interpretation of those things we hold in common is often radically different, and we have our own unique revelation, part of which is John’s Gospel.

This morning’s Gospel reading, which we also heard three days ago at our Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve, is part of our radically different view of God. It describes how the Word was with God and was God from the beginning. Not only was the Word with God from the beginning, but God created everything and everyone through the Word. “All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.” That’s already a pretty lofty claim. But what is unique about the Christian revelation is that it comes not just through words with a small w – the words spoken by prophets or written in a book - but through the Word with a capital W and that this Word, became flesh, incarnate, took on human nature as a living human being, as Jesus Christ. This is of course what we celebrate at Christmas. That God became human and lived among us. 

What does this mean? Firstly that God shared our lives, all aspects of our lives. God knows us intimately. God values life and human life not only because life came into being in and through God (John 1:3-4) but because God became part of life. And God’s light shines into all corners and banishes every trace of darkness. So we have nothing to fear and nothing to hide, because it is already known to God. God loves us not despite, but because of this knowledge: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” (John 3:16) 

Secondly that through Jesus we had and have the ability to know God. It is Jesus Christ the Son of God who shows us “the radiance of God’s glory” (Hebrews 1:3) or as John puts it in rather roundabout way, “No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father's heart, who has made him known.” (John 1:18) What we see and know through Jesus, what we have received from his fullness, is not just God’s infinite glory, but also God’s infinite mercy and compassion (Exodus 34:6) or God’s “grace upon grace.” (John 1:16) The world may continue to reject God, but God does not and never will reject the world.

Finally, God’s gift in Christ Jesus, the Word, brings a gift with him: the gift of new life described here in this passage as the power to become children of God. For St. Augustine – the other one, not ours – this is the promise that we will be transformed, that the Incarnation is not a one way street: “If we have been made children of God,” Augustine writes, “we have also been made gods.”[1] The first Creation story in Genesis that the prologue to John’s Gospel is so full of allusions to, tells us that “God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” (Genesis 1:27) And it is thanks to God’s second creation, again taking place through God’s Word incarnated as Jesus Christ, that we are given the opportunity to fully live up to the image we were created in and to become ever more like it in all ways.

We do worship the same God as our Jewish and Muslim brothers and sisters, but that does not exclude significant differences in how we perceive, receive and worship that one God. I accept all the goodness in other religions, I believe that God’s Spirit moves and works in all humans, not just Christians: it’s not for us to set limits to the work of God. I accept their faithfulness and I am more than happy to work with people of all faiths or none in good faith and for the good of God’s creation. But for me the true revelation of God is not in our shared books and stories but in the Word made flesh. Just like John, the “man sent from God … to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him”,” (John 1:6-7) we are called to act as witnesses to this Word, Jesus. But let’s not forget that our witness to Jesus must be marked by Christlike service and humility if it is to be genuine and perceived as such. And that is certainly what Professor Hawkins from Wheaton College, whose story I started this sermon with, demonstrated.

My Advent discipline – now continuing through Christmas until the Epiphany - has been to read a poem and a reflection on that poem each day – taken from this book by Malcolm Guite[2]. The poem for 17th December is entitled O Sapientia and is itself a poetic reflection on one of the ‘O antiphons,’ seven ancient Advent prayers that look forward to the coming of Christ by exploring seven different names or attributes of Christ – one being sapientia or wisdom. I’m going to finish with a few lines from this poem. It helped me reflect on the mystery of God’s gift of the Word, and so I hope it helps you too:

O Mind behind the mind through which I seek,
O Light behind the light by which I see,
O Word beneath the words with which I speak
Come, hidden Wisdom, come with all you bring,
Come to me now, disguised as everything.[3]
Amen.


[1] Augustine of Hippo, "Psalm 50", Exposition on the Book of Psalms
[2] Malcom Guite, Waiting on the Word (Canterbury Press, 2015)
[3] From ‘O Sapientia’ in  Waiting on the Word, 66

Friday, December 25, 2015

Angels



A Sermon preached on December 25th (Christmas Day) at St. Augustine’s, Wiesbaden

Isaiah 9:2-7, Titus 2:11-14, Luke 2:1-20

Perhaps things have improved, but for a while in the religious/spiritual section of bookstores there seemed to be more books on angels than on Christianity! I’m not quite certain why their rather complicated and esoteric theology, or angelology, which includes lots of different orders of angels is or was so proved popular. Perhaps because each person had one or more personal angels and people preferred having a spiritual being all to themselves, rather than having to share as we do!

But angels are biblical of course and in fact the main Gospel of this year’s lectionary, Luke, contains more accounts of angelic revelation than any of the other Gospels: angels reveal to Zechariah that John will be born, an angel tells Mary that Jesus will be born, angels appear –as we just heard – to the shepherds to reveal not only that Jesus has been born, but who this Jesus is. Angels, described as two men in dazzling clothes, appear outside the empty tomb at the end of the Gospel and this theme of angelic revelation continues into Luke’s second book, the Acts of the Apostles, with angelic appearances to both Peter and Paul.

These angels are however, while spiritual beings, not sent to accompany and protect or enlighten individuals. They are simply messengers from God. That is all the Greek word angelos means: messenger. And the word angelos is the Greek translation of the Hebrew term, mal’ākh, which again just means "messenger." And so the Old Testament prophet named Malachi, whose book is the last one in our version of the Old Testament, is simply just that, the Messenger.

One of Luke’s central themes is that of the importance of the messengers who point us to who Jesus really is. These supernatural beings proclaim the message of God’s intervention in the world and the coming of salvation for which the people have longed. But it would be a mistake to assume that Luke believed that only angels could be messengers of God. On the contrary each appearance points to the importance of human messengers and in fact each time a human messenger is appointed to pick up the baton and to carry the message on.
Zechariah – once he gets his voice back – tells us in the Canticle that bears his name that his son John will go before the Lord and to prepare his way and “to give his people knowledge of salvation.”[1] In the song we call the Magnificat, Mary tells us that God “has remembered his promise of mercy, the promise he made to our fathers, to Abraham and his children forever.”[2] And as we heard this morning the shepherds took on the message of the angels, “glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.” (Luke 2:20) 

So Luke’s stories of angels are not intended to make us passive recipients of God’s supernatural message, but active participants in its proclamation. The message is a message of salvation: both spiritual and physical. Isaiah looks forward, as we heard, to a kingdom of justice, righteousness and peace, a kingdom the child who will be called – and I almost want to sing this - Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace – will establish. And we celebrate the establishment of this kingdom every Christmas – even if not all aspects of it are yet visible everywhere or in everyone.  Paul tells Titus that the same child, who he simply calls the grace of God, God’s gift to us, has already brought salvation to all and will, if we let him, educate and train us “in the present age to live lives that are self-controlled, upright, and godly.” Again – that’s still work in progress, at least for me!

There’s a lovely German poem by Rudolf Otto Wiemer called „Es müssen nicht Männer mit Flügeln sein, die Engel, “ that is “Angels don’t just have to be men with wings” that we used last year at the Christmas Eve service at the Teestube, the day centre for the homeless that we support as one of our outreach projects. 

One verse that I particularly like is:
Sie haben kein Schwert, kein weißes Gewand, die Engel. Vielleicht ist einer, der gibt dir die Hand, oder er wohnt neben dir, Wand an Wand, der Engel. Dem Hungernden hat er das Brot gebracht, der Engel. Dem Kranken hat er das Bett gemacht, und hört, wenn du ihn rufst, in der Nacht, der Engel.
They don’t have a sword or white robes, the angels. Perhaps it’s someone who takes you by the hand, or lives right next door to you. Who gives the hungry bread, who for the sick makes their bed, and who hears you, when you call in the night, the angel. 

I really and truly believe in angels, but not the esoteric kind. You see, when I look out into this church I see a whole room full of angels, you! I want you to be angels like the ones we just heard about in the poem. I want you to be messengers of God. The message you can bring, by word and by deed, is a message of salvation. We need to be saved from our self-imposed alienation and isolation – both from one another and from God. Christ came at Christmas to tell us that we are not alone, that God came to be with us – that’s one of the names he is given, Emmanuel, God with us. I want you all to be impassioned messengers of God and to bring this “good news of great joy to all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, who is the Messiah, the Lord.” 

We share this one God and this one Saviour with everyone, just as we share our one humanity with everyone. That is Good News that can change us and change the world. Like the shepherds you have come and found Mary and Joseph, and the child here today – and I don’t just mean in our wonderful crèche or nativity scene. And so just like the shepherds I hope you will go out of this place, glorifying and praising God for all you have heard and seen, as it has been told to you, and that you will tell and show others about the love of God that is the Good News of Christmas. Amen.


[1] BCP, 93
[2] BCP, 119