Category: Sermons

“They have no wine”

After the celebrated fullness of Christmas, it must seem suddenly strange to find ourselves utterly empty. “They have no wine,” Mary says to Jesus. Not just the post-Christmas mantra of the Deep Dark Woods’ song “All the money I had is gone”, but we have no wine! Empty wine-skins and empty pockets, it seems. And, of course, we may find ourselves empty, too, with grief and dismay at the terrible destruction of the earthquake in poverty-stricken Haiti; a natural catastrophe magnified by human poverty. There, too, it must seem there is no wine, no joy. And, of course, there are those who point the finger of blame at God because of the realities of human suffering. That, too, is part of our emptiness.

And yet, this gospel story speaks powerfully to the human predicament. We are empty in ourselves of all that has purpose and meaning, of all that has joy and delight. We are just so many broken pots and empty cups. We confront emptiness and loss. Mary’s words are really quite profound. She speaks of an emptiness that is about something more than money, more than even wine physically and materially considered. We lack the wine of divinity.

We meet in the season of the Epiphany. The gospel story of the marriage feast at Cana of Galilee is one of the outstanding stories of the Epiphany season. It is an epiphany. Why? Because it calls our attention to the making known of the essential divinity of Christ as critical to the understanding of him as the Redeemer of our humanity. One of the most poignant stories of the Epiphany, it manifests the power of the one who seeks our good, the one who brings redemption and salvation to a world of empty souls.

“This beginning of signs,” John tells us, is the first miracle and it gives us an insight into the meaning and truth of all the miracles of the gospel and an insight into the redemption of our humanity.

In the background to Mary’s remark is an old Jewish saying that “without wine there is no joy.” We lack the joy of divinity which graces our humanity. Left to ourselves, our joys and our happinesses are incomplete and empty. We need the wine of divinity. This is what God wants to give us precisely in our awareness of what we lack. God seeks the perfection of our humanity which is found in him. Out of the six jars of water comes the wine, the good wine, which restores the joy of the party and signifies the social joys of our humanity. They are found in God. They are found by our paying attention to the creative and redemptive word of God incarnate in Jesus Christ.

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“Be ye transformed by the renewing of your minds”

With the coming of the Magi to Bethlehem, Christmas goes global. It becomes omni populo, for all people, simply by the journeying to and from Bethlehem by those who are simply called the Magi from Anatolia, the wise ones from the east. We know next to nothing about them; only their gifts, their “sacred gifts of mystic meaning” as an ancient hymn puts it, point to the larger dimension of the reality and the universality of the Incarnation. The one before whom they kneel in adoration is signified in the gifts they bring as nothing less than King and God and Sacrifice.

The gifts teach. Epiphany emphasises the fundamental feature of all revealed religion. God teaches. God makes something of himself known to us and in so doing reveals something of ourselves to us as well, both the good and the bad.

The idea of Revelation honours our humanity; the theological assumption contained in the idea of Revelation is that we are capax dei, capable of God, not by virtue of any presumption on our part, of course, but by the grace of Revelation itself. For Christians Revelation has its fullest expression in the Incarnation of Jesus Christ. What greater honour could be bestowed upon our humanity than the divine condescension to enter into the very fabric of our humanity? “Thou didst not abhor the virgin’s womb” as the Te Deum wonderfully puts it. An honour and a dignity have been bestowed upon us. To what end? To teach and to redeem so that our humanity which is capax dei can also participate in the divine life opened to view in Jesus Christ; “he in us and we in him”, as our liturgy puts it.  We are meant to be changed by what we are given to see. In a way, it is as simple as that.

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“They saw…they came…they worshipped”

It may be, as someone recently remarked to me, that had the wise men been women, they would have gotten there on time and presented more practical gifts! Yet the gifts of the Magi have another purpose. They are profoundly symbolic: “sacred gifts of mystic meaning”, as one of our hymns puts it. In short, they are gifts that teach. Both the gifts of the Magi and the journey of the Magi wonderfully illustrate something of the nature of the Epiphany.

Epiphany marks at once the beginning and the end of Christmas. With the story of the coming of the wise men from the east who brought gifts to the child Christ, it seems, thereby breaking-in to Bethlehem, Christmas is omni populo, for all people – and so there is the beginning of Christmas for the whole world. But with the break-out from Bethlehem which Epiphany also signifies, there is a new and different focus. There is a journey, both a journeying to Bethlehem and a journeying from Bethlehem to Jerusalem. And yet, the deeper meaning and significance of God with us is the critical lesson in the journeying from Bethlehem. Something of Bethlehem continues with us.

The mystery of God with us is the mystery revealed, the mystery made manifest. Epiphany is more than a day and a season. It signals a doctrine – a teaching. Indeed, the teaching that it signals is the teaching of God – God making himself known to us through the conditions of our humanity; God teaching us something about what he wants and seeks for us. We are opened out to the mystery of God with us. We are taught something about what belongs to the truth of our humanity from within the conditions of our brokenness. We learn, it seems, even from the little ones.

Christ is God’s “great little one” to whom the great of the earth – kings in their power and the wise in their wisdom – “come and worship”. The mystery of Christmas cannot stay hidden in some remote corner of the world; it must needs break out from the confines of little Bethlehem. In the coming of the Magi from afar (they are the prototypical come-from-aways!) the whole world in its desiring to know is understood to have its place and its fulfillment in this story.

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“Of his fullness have we all received, grace upon grace”

There is a rich fullness to Christmas, to be sure. We have had, perhaps, our fill of Christmas in too much eating, too much drinking, too much feasting, too much partying, too much snow, too much everything; even, it may seem, too much Church! (And, perhaps, for some both near and far, too much Curry!) There is, indeed, a rich fullness to Christmas.

It is something which one day cannot presume to capture nor that even twelve days with all the festivities of our social, family and communal gatherings can ever hope to exhaust. Such things belong, to be sure, to the rich fullness of this season, but only as attendant events. They circle about the central scene of Christmas. In a way, they are our poor attempt to capture something of the rich fullness of the Mystery of Christmas.

There is but one poor, humble scene of Christmas. It is the stable of Bethlehem. And yet, therein lies all the rich fullness of Christmas. That poor, humble scene contains a great crowd of scenes, a great gathering of Christmasses; in short, it opens to view a rich fullness of grace, even “grace upon grace”. There is more here, we may say, than meets the eye. It is altogether something for the soul. We are bidden to ponder the Mystery of the Word made flesh. The attitude of the Church is an essentially Marian attitude. “Mary kept all these things” – all these wondrous things that were said about the Child Christ by Shepherds and Angels – “and pondered them in her heart”. And only so can they come to birth and live in us.

There is the Christmas of the Shepherds, the Christmas of the Angels, the Christmas of Mary and Joseph and Christ’s holy birth, the Christmas, too, of Christ’s heavenly, eternal birth for “there was not when he was not”. And, shortly, there shall be the Christmas of the Gentiles in the coming of the Magi, without which, too, we would not have Christmas. For in their coming Christmas is “omni populo”, for all people. With the coming of the Magi, it is Christmas still and yet again. Christmas is more Christmas, not less, a richer fullness than ever we had envisioned. All come to Bethlehem.

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“His name was called Jesus”

What’s in a name? Everything. Something of the wonder and the mystery of words and names is startlingly before us on this Octave Day of Christmas. It is concentrated for us in Bethlehem. Strong words and names are proclaimed in the Scripture readings. Bethlehem is the place of words and names that speak beyond the confines of a stable and a manger. Bethlehem is the place where the Word made flesh is named and signified as Jesus. Such is the wonder and the mystery of this day.

The idea of the Word made flesh, it seems to me, challenges the all-too-easy nominalism and relativism of our culture, as if names were merely of our choosing and at our convenience and as if names and words convey no real meaning beyond what meaning we choose to give to them; in short, that words and names signify no reality. We are really only talking to ourselves.

Bethlehem shows us something more. It makes visible the astounding wonder of the unity of creation with the Creator and the unity of the whole of our humanity. Bethlehem speaks to the deep desires of human hearts and to the form of those desires in their contemporary complexity. What are our environmental concerns about except a yearning and a longing for some sort of connection with the world from which we have alienated ourselves by our technocratic exuberance and arrogance? What are our social and political concerns about except a yearning and a longing for peace and harmony, for true unity and respect for all the peoples of the world?

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“For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour,
who is Christ the Lord”

Christmas is rich in images. Yet all of the many, many images that belong to the Christmas story circle around one place, little Bethlehem; little and yet great, a fitting place for the coming of “God’s great little one”. But it is only on Christmas morning that we first hear of Bethlehem in the Scripture readings in the Angels’ words to shepherds in their fields.

A place of insignificance, the place that is the least of the clans of Judah, as the prophet Micah, puts it; and yet the place that is not the least of the princes of Judah, as Matthew puts it. A contradiction in the Scriptures? A mistranslation by Matthew?  Probably. And, yet, by no means the only contradiction or error, if you will, in the Scriptures. What? How can that be and the Scriptures still be true? Or is all just a tale for a winter’s morning? A quaint and touching story that somehow touches human hearts?

That won’t suffice, I’m afraid, to account for the quiet wonders of Christmas morn. The apparent contradictions and errors of a factual nature often turn on a number of things; one source juxtaposed with another and yet placed side-by-side in the Scripture texts thereby defying the most prosaic of human minds; and then there are matters that can never be known with any degree of historical accuracy, such as the actual date of the birth of Christ, and, hence, of Christmas itself; and even more there are other details that simply admit of complementary interpretations. Micah is right about Bethlehem as the place of the least of the tribes of Judah; Matthew is right with respect to the honour belonging to Bethlehem as the place of Christ’s holy birth, and therefore, not the least. There is nothing new about this except our cultural and intellectual forgetfulness.

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“And the Word was made flesh”

Christmas parties ought to come with an advisory, a cautionary warning, not about the dangers of drinking and driving – but, of course, do be careful! – but about the Christian faith itself. Recently, I was at one such gathering at which Christmas carols were sung, quite lustily and in good cheer, in fact, but after one carol – I forget exactly which one – someone cried out, “Doesn’t sound very Christmassy!” Though perhaps a wee bit tipsy, he was right!

In a way. But here is the problem and, hence, the need for an advisory. Christmas carols are often quite direct and clear about the realities of the Christian faith, about the meaning of Christmas itself, we might say. And no, don’t worry! I am not going to go down that rather over-worn and obvious path about Jesus being “the reason for the season”! Of course, he is. It is Christmas, after all. And yet, it is the sad reality that in a recent survey among school children, Christmas is associated with everything except Jesus Christ and his birth. Santa Claus wins out. Not enough Christmas carols, it seems. The point is who is this Jesus whose birth we celebrate? Can we really ignore the rich images of this season and its profound message conveyed through music and song, through story and service, especially in worship and in all the rich trappings of this season? I don’t think so.

There is hardly a Christmas carol that doesn’t proclaim Jesus Christ as the Son of God become the son of man for us and for our redemption; hardly a carol that doesn’t allude to sacrifice and death, to sin and grace, to our darkness and the light of Christ, to God and man. They go to the very heart of Christmas, but if we think of Christmassy things as just being happy thoughts and bonhomie, then, of course, these things may seem, well, ‘unChristmassy’. They may even disquiet and disturb us.

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“As you did it to the least of these my brethren, you did it to me”

Matthew’s strong and disturbing words are apocalyptic. They are part of what is sometimes called the Matthaean apocalypse. The opposite of apocryphal, which is to say, the things that are hidden, apocalypse refers to what is unveiled, unhidden. As such it belongs to an important and fundamental feature of the season and of the Christian religion, namely, revelation. God makes something known to us about himself but also about ourselves. Apocalyptic writings especially belong to the revealing of things in this world as seen from the viewpoint of God, from a standpoint of ultimate judgment. This cannot not be disturbing; neither can it be ignored. It is powerful stuff.

The words of Matthew are meant to challenge us and to make us reflect on our lives in relation to God and to one another. They are meant to make us think more deeply about the radical meaning of Christ’s coming, the Advent of Christ.

Advent signals the coming of God towards us in a variety of ways: his coming as Judge and Saviour; his coming in Word and Sacrament; his coming as the Babe of Bethlehem and the Christ of Calvary; his coming in the flesh and in the many acts of kindness, random or otherwise, in human lives. Judgment is inescapably part and parcel of the Advent, whether that judgment is looked at from the standpoint of the endtime, a kind of final or last judgment, or as an ever-present judgment. Indeed, the two are very closely intertwined. For this ‘last judgment’, as it were, sounds a very strong and convicting note of judgment for all of us right now. A kind of moral imperative arises out of this apocalyptic vision.

The challenge has to do with how we have acted towards one another, towards all the forms of humanity in our midst and in the larger world from which we cannot escape. We are all very much members one of another in the so-called global village, though that is but a small part of what it means to be “members one of another in the body of Christ”, which is cosmic and universal, embracing the multitudes of generations before us. We are inescapably neighbours to everyone in the whole of our suffering world. The question is not, it seems to me, what can we do so much as what do we do? Something or nothing? And what are the principles which animate our actions? These are the questions which occupy our imaginations, whether globally, as in Copenhagen this week, or locally, in our daily lives here in Windsor.

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“Behold, the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world”

We have come full circle, it may seem. Today’s Gospel ends with where we began on The Sunday Next Before Advent. In a way, Advent captures the whole of our lives in faith.

It signals the coming of God towards us. That is the first note. It signals as well the heightened awareness on our part about the coming of God towards us. That is the second note. Advent is simply and entirely holy waiting and holy watching – our watching and our waiting upon God, upon the God who comes to us with grace and salvation, with healing and forgiveness. “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” John the Baptist says in today’s Gospel.

Such is our beginning and our ending to which this week of the darkest night would bring us. It would bring us to Christ, the Lamb of God, the Word and Son of the Father who comes to us as the Son of Mary, the Word made flesh, the Lamb slain from before the foundation of the world whose birth marks the beginning of the way of sacrificial love. He is the light of the world in every sense.

We can only watch and wait. It is the hardest thing for us, I fear, and yet, as always, the hardest things are the things most worth doing. We watch and wait upon God. There is our heightened awareness, our heightened expectancy – all of which are concentrated for us on this day.

But what makes this watching and waiting so hard? Because it is a watching and a waiting upon God. Without that all our advent preparations for Christmas are but tinsel and wrap, sounding brass and clanging cymbal, empty show and vain illusion. We so easily get lost in the busyness of our Christmas preparations. We are, I am afraid, simply too much with ourselves and not enough with God.

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“This is he of whom it is written, Behold, I send my messenger before thy face, which shall prepare thy way before thee.”

He is a prophet and yet more than a prophet for he stands on the brink of the fulfillment of all prophecy and yet he, too, is a figure in the darkness of Advent. “Art thou he that should come or do we look for another?” Such is the question of John the Baptist to Jesus about Jesus.

A question that he asks from prison, it reminds us that the wilderness of human pride and presumption is greater than the wilderness of Judaea. He is in prison, Matthew later explains, because he had the temerity to upbraid Herod the tetrarch, one of the Roman rulers, for marrying his brother’s wife, Herodias. Though Herod wanted to put John to death, he “feared the people,” and instead kept him in prison. But on Herod’s birthday, the daughter of Herodias, unnamed in the Gospels but named by the Jewish historian, Josephus, as Salome, danced before her uncle and step-father so pleasingly that he “promised to give her whatever she might ask”. At her mother, Herodias’ prompting, she asked for “the head of John the Baptist on a platter”, which request Herod reluctantly granted to her on account of his promise. And so John was beheaded. There is a cost when truth speaks to power.

The scene has captured the imagination of artists, poets, playwrights and musicians. The fuller story gives added poignancy to Jesus’ remarks about John the Baptist. He is the forerunner of Jesus not only by his birth and ministry but also by his witness and death. In every way, he is the messenger sent to prepare the way of Christ. And his ministry becomes an essential feature of the Church’s ministry, signalled so clearly in Paul’s first Letter to the Corinthians and captured so beautifully in the Collect. “Grant that the ministers and stewards of thy mysteries” – referring to the mysteries of Christ – “may likewise” – after the example of John the Baptist, that is to say – “so prepare and make ready thy way.” How? “By turning the hearts of the disobedient,” my heart and yours, “to the wisdom of the just.” Tough, uncompromising stuff! And yet, it belongs precisely to the deep joys of the Advent preparation for Christmas.

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