LUKE 2: 41-52

Laterally Luke…Christmas 1…Revised 2018

It may be the Sunday after Christmas, but today’s Gospel event takes place 12 years after Christmas! But what’s 12 years to God?! We have range of possibilities here. Starting with the Journey the Holy Family makes, along with other Hebrew families, to celebrate Passover. To journey to God, & with God, is a metaphor at the heart of Hebrew, Christian & other faiths. Isn’t what we have in common as we journey side by side often more important than where we differ? Perhaps that’s another way of expressing what it means to ‘travel in company’, as Mary, Joseph, & Jesus do? Are you & I still journeying on in Faith, to & with God, & each other, & in God’s time? 

The Holy Family journeys in this case to Celebrate God & what God has done for their people long before at Passover. Celebrating, a term we use often, keeps all the ‘God-events’ & us with them, alive & well & up to date. As Christians will celebrate Passover under another guise after the events of Good Friday & Easter. How good are we at celebrating the Liturgy? Are we personally involved in participating to the full? The answer to this may be a ‘marker’ of our progress along the way today. 

Might it be because Jesus experiences being a kind of ‘lost sheep’ in this episode that leads Him to have so much care for lost sheep throughout His ministry? On earth, as in heaven? In Heaven, as on earth?

This passage could help us explore the whole question of Obedience. To God, to those who have proper authority over us in the faith community or our natural family, or society - including our duty to our country. Are there priorities that call us to over-ride the authority someone else legitimately holds - or think they hold - over us? Who decides any ‘over-riding’? Does our style of ministering allow opportunities for questioning as well as listening? As young Jesus does in the Temple courtyard? Experience tells me small groups, Home Groups, formed from within congregations, are essential in providing opportunities for wrestling with issues of faith. Sermons to larger gatherings may open issues up, but can’t explore them as far as is needed. 

Another important principle established here is that Mary & Joseph don’t simply turn a blind eye to Jesus’ behaviour; though clearly He is ‘different’, ‘special’. Issues in natural families & church families need to be recognised, confronted (is that too strong a word?) & dealt with. If we don’t know how, why not make that part of the questioning & answering process above?

Brian

Afterthought: Does v.51 imply Jesus ‘turns over a new leaf’? If so, does that open some intriguing possibilities to explore? In Our Lord’s own ‘hidden’ life, & in ours, too? What new ‘leaves’ might we need to ‘turn over’ in order to be faithful disciples?

JOHN 1: 1-5, 9-14, 16-18

Jottings on John…Christmas…Revised 2018

Genesis, the first book of the Hebrew Scriptures launches with its magnificently imaginative & evocative story of a Creation told into being by YHWH God: ‘In the beginning God created the heavens & the earth..…’ Is it simply a co-incidence that the writer of John also chooses to start with ‘In the beginning…’ & a magnificently & imaginative, evocatively poetic expression of how the New Creation comes into being? Can any account of Creation improve on that of the Genesis tale-teller? Any more than accounts of how the New Creation comes into being can improve on JE’s? For me, it’s always JE when it comes to Christmas Gospel & Christmas preaching! 

For one thing, it offers us the opportunity of reflecting on our own physical & spiritual beginnings. But has JE’s Hymn to the Word with its deep, meaningful, imaginative, & creative take on the Christmas event become too hard to preach? Compared with stables, mangers, & other MT & LK trimmings? Some Christmases ago, I happen to be sitting near another priest I know at a Midnight Mass. The ‘sermon’ turns out to be a kind of watered-down ‘kids’ talk’. This at one of the big, largely adult, congregations of the year. After the Dismissal, as we’re leaving, my colleague turns & whispers to me, “He sure dumbed that down, didn’t he?!” Do we really need to do that? Are we really called to do that?

I always omit vv.6-8 because they’re an interruption - by whom we don’t know - to JE’s original hymn. A distraction that destroys its integrity. They belong, with v.15, after the hymn where JB properly makes his entrance after v.18. Let’s not gazump the Evangelist’s mind-blowing, spirit-expanding verses! Is interrupting the flow of the Gospel with the insertion about JB perhaps a metaphor for us inserting ourselves in the wrong place between God & God’s purposes. A warning we need to heed all year around, not only at Christmas!

The Word who speaks Creation into being now speaks a new, restored Creation - personal & universal - into being in Jesus. God’s Divine Word, God’s ‘new beginning’ for us. Jesus doesn’t simply speak God’s language to us, He is God’s own language! Are we recognisably God’s language, God’s ‘Word’ for others?

Brian

Afterthought: Whatever else John wants us to take in from his magnificent poem he wants us to glorify God as Jesus does. If our Christmas worship, including a sermon on this passage, gives glory to God, John the Poet has achieved what he sets out to achieve, hasn’t he?

LK 1:39-45

Laterally Luke…Advent 4…Revised 2018

In making her long trip to visit Elizabeth & share Gabriel’s news - God’s news, really - with her, Mary joins the ranks of those inside & outside the Scriptures who make journeys, physical &/or spiritual, as part of God’s plan for them - & for others. What-ever plans we have for physical journeyings in life, God always knows where He needs us to be. For our own sake, & for that of others! (There are always Godly spin-offs for others when we walk The Way!)

My wife & I have long personal experience of this. 50 yrs ago we lived & ministered on the East coast of OZ. Ask us then where we’d expect to be living 50 years later, & we’d both have answered, ‘On the East coast of OZ, of course- where else!’ God, though, has a different way of looking at things. We’ve no doubt it was God who called us to move on physically - as He’s always calling us to move on spiritually - like we encourage others to do the latter when we preach! First we were moved to the North coast; then, after four years there, to the West coast where we’ve now lived & ministered for 45 of those intervening years. (Oh, & also with 3 months ‘filling in’ in the Centre!) Looking back we can see A Plan bigger than any of ours! 

In the 6th month of Elizabeth’s carrying John the Baptiser to be, Mary visits her relative. To share Elizabeth’s joy-tinged-with-apprehension (?) To tell her her own news of being called to bear the Saviour (apprehension-tinged-with-joy?). I reckon we’re meant to understand JB leaping in Elizabeth’s womb as a display of the spirit-ual energy he’s going to be capable of years later. Tiny steps can lead to larger steps once God confirms, one way or another, that we’re heading in the right direction - spiritually &/or physically. Has our own spiritual energy given any such display at any stage of our life? What’s our spiritual energy ‘rating’ right now?

If we’re called to journey physically, spiritually, or both, to bring somebody - our own self or someone else - to birth for God, then so be it! Amen! Whenever we use the ‘Amen’ word, not least after praying: ‘Your will be done on earth as in heaven…’ we’re opening ourself to a call to move on, one way or another, for God. Are we open to that? Up for that? Do we discern any such call to journey, one way or the other, in the offing at the moment?

 Brian

Afterthought: In ‘Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places’¹ Eugene Peterson comments, ‘Elizabeth & Mary stand at the extremes of impossibility regarding conception, Elizabeth a barren post menopausal old woman & Mary a young virgin.’ Are there ‘extremes of impossibility’ we’re using as an excuse not to make some journey God is calling us to right now. On Advent 4? At Christmas? In the new Year?

¹ p.268. H & S, 2005

LUKE 3:7-18

Laterally Luke…Advent 3…2018

To start in the middle, what JB says here sounds very Jesus-like, doesn’t it? But it’s never JB who’s meant to be centre-stage. By all means preach this to highlight why Jesus is attracted to this wild Prophet out in the desert. Stay centred, though, on Jesus Himself; the One whose appearance among us JB comes to announce!

Maybe it’s JB’s ‘hairiness’ that reminds me, but years ago I come across an article  from Harvard Business Review about B-HAGs! Yes, B-HAGs! I’m about to run for the pesticide when I find they don’t bite. Well, not that way! It’s simply an acronym for Big Hairy Audacious Goals! (Like Henry Ford’s, when he markets his T model, is ‘to run the horse off the roads’!) Today JB has a 3-fold B-HAG. When ordinary folk  ask him, ‘What must we do?’ JB tells them, “Share what you have with those who don’t”. When bureaucrats ask, it’s “Be honest!” When those with physical power to bully others ask, he replies, “No shakedowns, no frame ups, &, be content with your pay!”¹  To prepare the way of the Lord, JB wants people to have such God-given & God-driven Big Hairy Audacious Goals as will drive everything else off the road!

As our societies are descending more, &, more quickly, into chaos today, how can we preachers lead people to the point of asking, not JB, but God, through Jesus, & by His Spirit, questions appropriate to life today? Beginning by asking those same questions of ourselves. Incorporating into our discipleship B-HAGs from our Lord, who by His very nature is the most God-filled human being ever.

However we decide to approach this, we need to go beyond JB’s B-HAGs, exciting as they are. We need to go further as Jesus does: that we love one another. That’s the B-HAG that shows a greater than John has come among us; demands even more of us as only He Who Is Being Itself can ask. If all this sounds too hard, be assured Jesus never asks of us anything He Himself doesn’t do for us, &, wouldn’t do for us!

If people’s hopes are rising at JB’s teaching [v.15], history tells us they’re dashed in more ways than one, beginning with JB’s murder & Jesus’ arrest & crucifixion. One lesson I take from this is that any hopes we have for a better, less hate-filled world will also be dashed till we become people who have B-HAGs; as big as love one another - even the unlovable!

Brian

Afterthought: 

JB’s emphasis on Baptism (it’s not our Christian Baptism) reminds us of our need to re-discover, grow into, our own Baptism. Let it really happen to us by living & loving it out. That’s a B-HAG indeed! A Big ask! Hairy, most probably! Audacious indeed! All as we live out Jesus as the Way, the Truth, the Life, & the Love of God.

¹ Complete Gospels, Polebridge, ad loc. 

LUKE 3:1-6

Laterally Luke…Advent 2…Revised 2018 

Verses 1-2a may sound boring old history, but they ground John the Baptiser, &, by association, Jesus, in recorded history. It’s important, too, to ground our own stories firmly in history; not least religious history. Including our personal ‘track record’. Who are, or have been, mentors, key players, reference points, on our journeying in faith? Including our personal dilemmas in our wildernesses?

Good preaching includes challenging people (ourselves included!) to straighten out our lives. JB follows in Isaiah’s steps in doing this; Isaiah builds on Moses & others before him. Jesus builds on them all. To preach God’s Good News is to join that succession because we’re called to do so. 

When we navigate today’s physical roads, many of us rely on our GPSs. But, we often hear someone complain their GPS doesn’t know that ‘right turn’ into such & such a street is closed off because of an ‘incident’, or road-works. JB urges us to do the hard-yards of life’s journeying ourselves; personally. Not hand over responsibility to any of the short-cuts we have a-plenty in the electronic aids on offer today. (Even someone else’s sermon notes!) JB is on about personal reformation from the ground up. As is Jesus Himself, too, in due course.

Which paths I’m currently treading need to be made straight? Which of my valleys needs filling in? Which of my mountains & hills need to be brought low? What is there about me that’s crooked & needs straightening out? Which of my ‘rough edges’ need to be smoothed? We’re not talking about someone else here. Isaiah, JB, & Jesus are all speaking to me & you! How are we to approach this responsibility? What homework do we need to do on ourself before we mount our pulpit? 

Jesus is mentioned only in JB quoting IS’s ‘Make ready the way of the Lord’. But it’s important not to turn JB into a stand-alone character. None of the saints is that! Not JB back then; not you or me today. Jesus goes out to JB to discern if & where he - JB - fits in to God’s scheme of things. Which immediately raises the question of where does He Himself fit in? With flow-on effect to where we fit in. The answer to that in Jesus’ case is to be found in His being baptised by JB. MT (3:13-15) tells us JB’s ‘horrified’ at the thought, but discerning whom Jesus is, bows to His will. As we must bow to the will of The One into whom we’ve been baptised by water & Spirit by growing in Faith in God & Faith in ourselves & our calling. 

Brian

Afterthought: Yesterday I have a ‘deep & meaningful’ with a chap of a Pentecostal persuasion from our street. He tells me he’s leaving his long-time church as the new Pastor ‘keeps talking in words I don’t understand’. Now there’s a warning to us all! Might have come straight from JB in today’s passage, mightn’t it? ‘If the cap fits….!’