Epiphany 3: Change your mind

 Isaiah 9.1-4, Matthew 4.12-23

About a hundred years before Jesus was born a great victory was won by a man you may never have heard of called Aristobulus I.  He was the king of Judea, the territory around Jerusalem – he had seized power for himself after a family feud. If that wasn’t enough, he was also high priest.  

Aristobulus wasn’t content with the power he had though. He wanted more. He had his eyes on the lands to the north of Judea, the ancient tribal lands of Zebulun and Naphtali, which had once been part of Israel, but had been conquered 600 years before by the Assyrians. Their population had been scattered around their vast empire, and the lands resettled with people from other countries and faiths. It had become a ragbag of nationalities, cultures and backgrounds. That was why the prophet Isaiah called it Galilee of the nations, or Galilee of the Gentiles, a place associated with defeat and humiliation. Aristobulus wanted to change all that. He wanted to make Israel great again – sounds familiar? So he marched north with his armies and, after a bitter war he imposed his rule on this land, forcibly converting many of its people. He saw himself as the living embodiment of Isaiah’s prophecy. He, Aristobulus had “made glorious the way of the sea, the land beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the nations.”

But it didn’t last. He’d hardly had a chance to enjoy his triumph when he died, and about 40 years later, the Romans conquered not only Galilee, but Judea too, and parcelled up his kingdom among puppet kings like Herod. His mighty conquest had been no more than a flash in the pan. 

So, when Matthew quotes that very same passage from Isaiah, and applies it to Jesus, he is being much more provocative than we think. This was all very recent history to the people of Jesus’ time. We often tend to read the Gospels in a very individualistic, spiritual way, but at the time they were political bombshells, full of subversive messages. 

Right from the start of his Gospel, Matthew sets us up to hear a story that is going to be about power and how it is used, kingdoms and how they are built and ruled. Jesus’ birth is told through the lens of the visit of the Magi to King Herod, and all the horror that unleashes, and throughout his ministry Jesus challenges, implicitly and explicitly, the power of Jewish and Roman leaders. But in doing that, he has hard choices to make. What kind of leader will he be? One like Aristobulus, and King Herod, leading by force, ambitious for worldly acclaim and wealth? Of something completely different?

And that’s where today’s Gospel begins. Jesus comes out of the desert, where he has been pondering that question, and hears that John the Baptist has been arrested by Herod , but instead of being scared off by that, he steps straight into the space John has prepared for him, and begins to preach the same message, exactly the same message, in the same words. “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near”. Jesus knows that he will face the same corrupt political forces as John, and so will those who follow him, fishermen like Simon and Andrew, James and John, but he carries on preaching anyway. Repent!

Repentance often gets a bad press these days; sackcloth and ashes are rather out of fashion nowadays. But properly understood, repentance not about guilt and punishment. The Greek word metanoia, means to change your mind. Repentance is about finding a new outlook on life. Understood that way, Jesus’ message is just as compelling today as it was then.  

Do we look at the world with cynicism and despair? “Change your mind,” says Jesus, “learn to see the hope God has for you.” That’s repentance. Do we feel that our lives are pointless, that we are just on an endless treadmill? “Change your mind” says Jesus, “you matter, your life has a purpose, God is at work in you”. That’s repentance too. Do we look at the forces, political, personal, ranged against us and think, “what chance have I got against all that”? “Change your mind,” says Jesus, “God’s light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.“  That’s what repentance looks like in practice. It’s not about despair or misery; it’s about hope. 

Perhaps it’s not so surprising then that these fishermen leapt up and followed Jesus. They had sat too long already in the darkness of oppression, injustice and hopelessness, but now the light had dawned. “The kingdom of heaven has come near” Jesus said to them. “God is here. He’s at work in the world, at work in you, if only you open your eyes – change your minds - and see it.” They weren’t especially strong, or wise, or religiously observant or good - there was nothing about them that singled them out as special - but that, in a way, was the point. God called them and God used them just as they were. And he calls us too, in the ordinariness of our lives. He calls us to stand up for those who can’t stand up for themselves, to love those others have no time for, to learn to react with mercy and forgiveness, not fear and hatred to those who hurt us. To build bridges rather than walls, to seek and to find God in the stranger, and even in the enemy, as well as in the friend.

But if we are going to do that, and keep doing that, in a world where that seems as counter-cultural now as it did in Jesus’ day, we will need to change our minds, probably on a daily basis – maybe about others, maybe about God, but first of all about ourselves, so that we can learn to see ourselves and others as God sees us, as people who are full of promise, full of hope, chosen and called, people who matter. “Repent – change your mind – for the kingdom of God has come near.”

Amen 

Epiphany 2 : “Where are you staying?”

 Isaiah 49.1-9, John 1.29-42

Two disciples of John the Baptist follow Jesus, directed to him by John. John has been preaching that God’s Messiah is coming, the one who will bring in the new kingdom of God they have been longing for in the midst of a time of oppression and occupation. Here he is, says John. Follow him. And so they do. They tag along after Jesus, unobtrusively, or so they think, just to see what’s going to happen. But Jesus knows they are there, and he turns to them and says “What are you looking for?”

They could have answered, “the meaning of life” or “the secret of happiness” or “world peace”… but no, all they can come up with is “where are you staying?” 

For many years I thought that answer was completely inane. To be honest, I wrote it off as the kind of thing that comes into your head in a moment of panic when you are put on the spot, when you want to impress someone –  the new boss, the VIP visitor, someone you really fancied – only to find that, when the moment comes you spout gibberish and forever afterwards you cringe at the memory of it. Or maybe that’s just me! 

That’s what I thought these disciples had done. “Where are you staying?” What kind of stupid question is that? But I have come to realise that actually, it is a really vital question, the thing that they really do most need to know.

Think about it. You meet someone randomly – on a train, let’s say. They sit down opposite you and you fall into conversation, and, as the conversation develops you realise that this person is a soul mate, someone with whom you feel a deep connection, maybe the love of your life. What’s the one thing you absolutely must remember to do before they get off at their station and you go your separate ways? Swap phone numbers, or email addresses, or something that will enable you to find one another again. How many beautiful friendships or even romances have been snuffed out at birth because people realised, as the train pulled out of the station that they had no way of contacting the other person again…? What a tragedy!

At the time of Jesus, there were no phones or email or Whatsapp or Snapchat or whatever. If you wanted to keep in contact with someone you needed to know where they lived, or where they hung out regularly. So, when these two disciples ask that apparently trivial question “Where are you staying?” what they are actually saying is “We want to know more. We want to get to know you better. We want to be part of what you are doing, and we can only do that if we know where to find you again.”  They don’t want this just to be a fleeting encounter, something to tell their grandchildren about one day – “we actually met that Jesus of Nazareth – just the once, but it made our day”. They realise that this man isn’t just going to make their day. He’s going to make their lives, so long as they know where to find him. 

Fortunately, Jesus hears what lies beneath their simple question, and, wonderfully, he doesn’t just give them his address and tell them that he might be able to fit them in a week on Thursday. He says “Come and see” – right here, right now.

And the story tells us that they went with Jesus and they “saw where he was staying. And they remained with him that day.”  What did they talk about? What did they do through all those long hours together. We have no idea. The Bible doesn’t tell us.

I love that about this story because it gives us the space to imagine ourselves in that situation. What would we talk about? What would we do? What would it be like for us? What difference might it make to us if we got to “stay with Jesus” like they did?

Staying. Remaining. Abiding. Dwelling. These are all very significant words in John’s Gospel – often the same word, actually, translated in different ways. The Gospel begins by telling us that “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us” and later on, at the Last Supper, Jesus talks at length about abiding. He tells us we need to be like a branch grafted onto a grape vine. “Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me….”(15.4) He talks about the need to “abide” in his love, just as he “abides” in his Father’s love, so that “my joy may be in you” and  “your joy may be complete”.

We live in a world, and at a time, where not much seems to abide for long, where certainties seem to be crumbling. We wake up every morning thinking “What? Really?” as one shocking thing after another happens, as a world order that has remained relatively stable for as long as most of us can remember seems to be collapsing around us. There is rapid technological change to deal with too and the climate crisis. It’s not surprising if we feel unmoored, anxious about the future. What’s going to happen next? No one knows.

How shall we survive these times? Only by finding a place where we can abide, stay, remain, put down deep roots into good soil. I wonder what that means, what that looks like for me and for you? Those first disciples discovered their security in Jesus, the one who stayed with them, who stuck with them, even to death on a cross. They learned to trust the abiding love of God, and to abide in it themselves. What about us? We’re invited to come and see, just as they were, to find that “abiding place” for ourselves.

Amen 

Epiphany Sunday: Holy Curiosity

Isaiah 60.1-6, Matthew 2.1-12

Just a very short sermon today, because of the temperature of the church, [the heating has broken down, again] but I just wanted briefly to focus on one little, and to me, intriguing detail of Matthew’s story of the visit of the wise men to Jesus, something that niggles at me and makes me wonder.

A group of foreigners arrive at the court of King Herod, claiming that they have seen a new star, which they believe is a sign that the long-awaited Jewish Messiah has been born, the one promised in the Jewish scriptures who would save and deliver his people, the one people have been praying for, looking for, for centuries – the passage we heard from the prophet Isaiah looks forward to this time, a joyful time of peace and prosperity. 

The chief priests and scribes are summoned by Herod to give their expert opinion on where these men should look for the Messiah. And then the wise men are sent on their way. 

And yet no one goes with them – that’s the thing that puzzles me. Not one of those religious professionals, the priests and scribes, not one of those who have spent their lives scouring the scriptures and praying for God to save and help their nation, not one of them goes along with the wise men to check out their story, even if only to disprove it. Bethlehem is only about 6 miles from Jerusalem – a couple of hours walk. They could be back in time for tea. But they don’t go.

I can understand why Herod acts as he does. He is a paranoid megalomaniac and any talk of a new king is bound to send him into a frenzy of fear and jealousy. But these priests and scribes…don’t you think they’d at least be a little bit curious? And yet they aren’t willing even to take that short journey to Bethlehem to find out whether there is anything in the wise men’s story.

In telling this story, Matthew paints a picture at the start of his Gospel of a political and religious system which doesn’t consider for a moment that anyone outside their favoured circle might have anything to give them that’s worth having, which doesn’t consider that God could ever be at work beyond the limits of their own horizon. 

Their refusal to be curious, their apparent apathy, is rooted in prejudice, but their prejudice, like all prejudice, is rooted in fear. They are just as afraid, in different ways, as Herod, afraid of what it might mean for them if the wise men’s mysterious story might turn out to be true. Better the devil you know than the devil – or even the God – you don’t. 

Epiphany means “revelation”. This season of Epiphany, which begins today, challenges us to open our eyes and minds and hearts to God’s revelation to us, to the things God might be trying to say to us and show us - the healing and hope and life and joy and peace he wants for us. But it also challenges us to open our eyes and hearts and minds to the things in us that might make it hard to hear and receive from God. 

Like those religious insiders, we can easily be hindered by our prejudices. We may have already made our minds up about other people, so we miss God speaking to us through them. And we may have made our minds up about ourselves too. “There’s no way God could be calling me to do this – I am too old, too young, too inexperienced, too much of a mess”. 

But our prejudices, like those of the priests and scribes in the story, are usually also rooted in fear. “What if I said yes to God? What if I dared to believe that God cares about me? What if I went to Bethlehem, to the place where God is born in me? What if I took God’s call on my life seriously? Where would that lead me? Would I find myself, like the wise men, being led out on “another road”, a journey I didn’t expect to take? 

I don’t know what the answer to those questions might be for each of us, but I do pray that we will have the courage to be curious, the courage to ask where Christ might be born for us and in us, the courage to set out on the journey to meet him. “Arise, shine for your light has come”. 

Amen