Lent 3

 Lent 3 2026

Psalm 42, John 3.1-15

I expect quite a few of you, like me, come from the generation that was expected at school to memorise all sorts of things – from mathematical formulae to large chunks of poetry. Most of the maths has evaporated from my mind, alas, but I can still, with a following wind, recite Portia’s speech from the Merchant of Venice – the quality of mercy is not strained etc.. Hymns and songs often etch themselves into our memories too. I have often found, when taking services in care homes, that residents who don’t remember much else can are word perfect on their favourite hymns.  

It’s not just words that we learn “by heart” though. How many skills have we picked up over the years which seemed hard when we first did them, but eventually became second nature to us? It may be plastering a wall, knitting, playing a musical instrument or operating a computer – it will be different for each of us – but there are some things we may not even have to think about anymore, which we do by muscle memory. We’ve learned them by heart. 

“By heart” is an interesting phrase. It implies that these things have, in a sense, become part of us. We can’t forget them, even if we try; they have become woven into our being.

In our readings today, we meet people who are thinking about what they have “learned by heart” and what they might still need to learn.

The Psalmist writes of his longing for God. We don’t know what has happened, but it’s clear that things aren’t going well for him. He feels oppressed by his enemy; and he feels as if God has forgotten him. And yet, at the same time, he can’t leave behind the habit of prayer, the memory of God’s love, the times when he has found hope and joy in God before. These are the things that are in his spiritual “muscle memory”. He may feel abandoned, but he has taken deep into himself over the years, learned by heart, the knowledge that God isn’t like that; he doesn’t abandon people. “My soul is cast down within me” he says, “therefore I remember you – that’s God… “Hope in God,” he tells himself, “for I shall again praise him, my help and my God.” 

The Psalm doesn’t deny or soft-pedal the reality of tough times, which come to all of us. We feel how we feel, and we don’t need to pretend to be happy when we’re not. But it reminds us that the God who we felt close to in the good times is the same God now, and still loves us, even if we feel as if he’s far away. “By day the Lord commands his steadfast love, and at night his song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life”. 

The very fact that the Psalmist cries out to God, thirsts for him, reminds him – and us - that God is still real and still matters to him. He is the God of his life. The things he has learned “by heart” about God hold him when the events he is going through threaten to overwhelm him. 

In the Gospel reading, we meet a man who has also learned things “by heart”, but now he is having to re-evaluate them completely – sometimes we have learned by heart things that don’t turn out to be helpful, negative messages about ourselves, prejudices about others. He comes to Jesus “in the dark”. That doesn’t just tell us about the time of day, but that this is a man who doesn’t want to be seen, who feels confused and doesn’t want to admit it. The world he thought he knew, the assumptions he has made about life and about faith, don’t seem to make sense to him anymore and that is hard for him to acknowledge. 

He, Nicodemus, is a respected religious expert, someone who is supposed to know what’s what, and who thought he did. Jesus is a carpenter from the backwater village of Nazareth, with no qualifications to his name, no training, no background. And yet Nicodemus sees something in him that he can’t deny is of God. He calls Jesus “teacher”; he knows there is something he needs to learn from him, but perhaps doesn’t realise how radical that will be. Jesus tells him that he needs to start again, to be born “from above” or born anew, depending on your translation, to open himself to a new vision of the world, to learn “by heart” a new understanding of God. Unless he does that, says Jesus, he won’t be able to “see the kingdom of God”. Jesus isn’t talking about Nicodemus getting a ticket to heaven when he dies; seeing the kingdom of God is about being aware of what God is doing right there, right then in Jesus.

Nicodemus knows he is missing something, like the deer that thirsts for the flowing waters in the Psalm, but finding it will take time. There will be a journey to make. Being born takes time. Learning something by heart takes time. Getting to that point where something new is second nature isn’t an instant business. 

At the end of his encounter with Jesus, Nicodemus goes away without having made any commitment. But we will meet him again, first in chapter 7 of John’s Gospel when other Pharisees are plotting against Jesus. Nicodemus challenges them, saying that Jesus should at least be given a fair hearing. And then, after Jesus dies, Nicodemus finally comes out of the shadows, bringing spices and ointment to anoint Jesus’s body, assisting at his burial. It’s taken him several years, but Nicodemus has made his choice; he has let his heart be changed by the Spirit of God. The fact that the Gospel writer names him suggests that the change was permanent, that he did, in time “learn by heart” the way of Christ and become a member of the Christian community, valued by them, his story told, his name known. 

In our Lenten series of sermons on healing, today’s theme is the healing of the spirit. It’s a healing that starts when we acknowledge our thirst for God, like the deer that longs for the flowing streams, but it needs to continue from that point, allowing that thirst to take us on a journey, learning by heart a new way as we go, which will leads us to the water that never fails. 

Amen 

Lent 1: Healing at Bethesda

 

Lent 1 2026

2 Cor 12.1-10, John 5.1-15

 

Throughout the benefice during Lent the decision has been made to have a theme of healing running through sermons, readings and the various Lent groups that are meeting.

 

So, expect to hear healing explored from all sorts of angles, from whoever is standing here over the next five weeks or so. Healing is a very appropriate theme for Lent. This is a time when we are encouraged to reflect on ourselves and our world. We don’t get very far in doing that without seeing that there are all sorts of things in us and around us which need to be healed. It may be physical healing we long for, for ourselves or someone else, but it might equally be healing in our hearts or our spirits, in our relationships, in our society, in creation itself. All of these are places where we know things aren’t right, where we often see dis-ease of some sort or another.

 

But healing isn’t a straightforward issue – that’s pretty obvious too. We may pray earnestly for someone to be physically healed, and yet it doesn’t happen. Christian leaders or churches which promise miracles usually come to grief in the end. Some are exposed as cynical frauds. Others may be entirely sincere in their beliefs, but are so heavily invested in those miracles happening because their own worth, their own faith, their own ego depends on it that when people aren’t healed they blame the victim for not having enough faith, or not praying right, or they tell them that they must be sinful in some way or have deserved their illness, or are being punished. Or they simply increase the spiritual pressure- pray louder, pray longer -  until prayer itself becomes abusive. It sounds a bit strange to say that healing needs to come with a health warning, but sadly it does.

 

It seems to me that there are two factors that are often involved when healing ministry goes awry. The first is that we forget that we aren’t God. It ought to be obvious, but it isn’t. We like to think we are in control – life feels safer that way. Of course, there are things we can do to help ourselves and others to be healthy. Diet, exercise, sleep, access to health care, clean water, vaccinations, a pollution free environment. But even if we get all of that right, we can’t guarantee that we won’t fall ill, or be injured, and (spoiler alert) all of us will one day die. We’re not in control. We’re not God. And that means that when we pray for healing, we can’t make promises. All we can do is put ourselves and those we pray for into the hands of the one who is God. Our prayers for healing need to be rooted not in our own ego, or our anxious need to feel that we can pull the strings that will make God act, but in our trust that, whatever happens, we, and those we pray for are held in his hands and loved eternally. That’s a far more precious gift to receive, a far more vital lesson to learn.

 

The second factor that often leads to problems with healing ministry is that we don’t read the Bible enough – or rather that we don’t read enough of the Bible. We light upon one healing story, and we think that if healing came to that person that way, then all healing happens like that. All we have to do is follow the pattern it gives us. But the reality is that healing comes to people in the Bible in many different ways.   And the two readings we’ve heard today are a perfect example of that.

 

If all we had was today’s Gospel reading, what might we conclude about sickness and healing? The man who was lying by the pool at Bethzatha had been ill for 38 years, we are told. Do you only get healed if you have that much patience, if you wait that long? And yet in other stories people are healed quickly. Jesus asks this man by the poolside, “Do you want to be made well?” We might conclude that if someone isn’t healed it’s because they don’t want to be, not deep down, not really. And yet, in other stories, there’s no conversation at all. Jesus heals the unconscious, maybe even dead, daughter of a synagogue leader called Jairus. He heals a centurion’s servant who isn’t even present. Sometimes he heals with a touch, sometimes with a word, sometimes even with spit mixed with mud – I’d rather give that one a miss thanks! Sometimes he casts out demons, sometimes not.

 

A really problematic part of the story we heard today comes at the end, when Jesus tells the man not “to sin any more, so that nothing worse happens to you”. Does that mean that disease is the result of sin? That can play into some really dark and damaging beliefs around healing – or might it just be that this particular man’s paralysis is the result of something he did that he shouldn’t have done. Just a few chapters later, Jesus explicitly challenges his disciples when they ask whether the blindness of a man he is about to heal is his fault or his parents – it’s no one’s fault, says Jesus.  We generalise at our peril.

 

And our first reading underlines that. St Paul writes to the Church in Corinth. He talks about the wonderful things that have happened to him, the visions he’s had, the calling he received from God on the road to Damascus, and the assurance that gave him of God’s love.  “I know a person in Christ” is just a roundabout way of referring to himself. And yet, he says, that doesn’t mean that everything in his life is easy. He has a “thorn in the flesh”. We don’t know whether that’s a physical ailment, a problematic relationship, or something spiritual, but whatever it is, despite his prayers, despite his faith, despite his close relationship with God, it hasn’t been taken away. Yet, he says, he’s come to see that through it he has learned to look for and to find God’s strength “made perfect in weakness” and that, in turn, has helped him face the “weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions and calamities” that come to him as a result of his ministry.

 

So where does this all leave us as we start our Lenten exploration of healing? In one sense, we might be feeling that it’s all more complicated than we thought. But in another sense, perhaps it’s actually simpler. Healing, whether it’s physical, spiritual, relational, societal, cosmic, doesn’t depend on us following this ritual or that ritual, using these words or those words, or no words at all. It is found – in whatever form it takes - simply by realising that we are in the presence of God, who is closer to us than our own heartbeat, who doesn’t expect us to heal ourselves, or to heal others – because we can’t – but who invites us to find our rest in him as we pray, and place others for whom we pray into that rest as well, so that, as our collect today put it, “as you know our weakness, may  we know your power to save.”

Amen

Lent 2026

In the Kent Downs and Malling Benefice this year we are following a theme of healing through Lent *,  in sermons and in our various Lent study and reflection opportunities. 

I have put together a little booklet, as I did last year, which aims to help people engage with the Gospel reading (mostly - Mothering Sunday will look at the Epistle instead) for the coming Sunday. 

You can download the booklet here.

-----------------------------

*Because we are following a special theme we aren't using the standard set readings from the Church of England lectionary, in case you have wandered in from another benefice and are puzzled!

Candlemas

 Heb 2.14-end, Luke 2.22-40

Today is the feast of Candlemas. It marks the moment, forty days after the birth of Jesus, when Mary and Joseph bring him to the Temple to offer the sacrifice prescribed by the law after the birth of a baby. It was a completely normal thing for them to do, what everyone in their community would expect them to do. It would have been odd if they hadn’t, and they were probably among many other families in the Temple doing the same. 

Imagine the Temple, the hubbub, the coming and going in this vast complex of buildings, courtyards, and covered walkways. It was the focus of national life for the people of Israel, a place not only of sacrificial worship- think of the noise of all those animals, and the smell… but it was also a place to debate, full of heated discussion, maybe argument… If, when you think of the Temple, you imagine the hush of a great cathedral, forget it. This was a noisy, and sometimes smelly place, and it was full of people.

Every Jewish man was supposed to come to the Temple at least three times a year to offer sacrifice at major festivals, and often whole families came together. And then there were all the other times when you might need to make a sacrifice – if you had been ill, or had become ritually unclean somehow, or needed to make amends for something, and, as here, if you’d had a new baby. 

The sacrifice Mary and Joseph come to make was meant to be a reminder to parents that their children weren’t just theirs. Ultimately, they belonged to God. They were gifts of God, lent to parents for a time, but not theirs to own or control. God’s plans for them were bigger than theirs. That’s something that those of us who are parents still need to be reminded of sometimes. 

But it is true of all children, it was especially true of Jesus, who would grow up to change the course of human history, and do things that were way beyond anything Mary and Joseph could imagine. 

There was nothing that singled him out as different as they brought him into the Temple, though. Despite all those famous paintings we see reproduced on our Christmas cards, he didn’t glow in the dark…The only reason that Simeon and Anna knew who he was was that the Holy Spirit told them so, and their hearts were so attuned to God, shaped by decades of prayer, that they recognised God’s voice, and trusted what they heard, and acclaimed him as the Messiah, the chosen, anointed one of God, the one who would be “a light for revelation to the Gentiles” and be the glory of Israel. 

That’s where the association with candles comes from, of course and the reason this feast day is commonly called Candlemas. Back in the Middle Ages it was the day on which the candles to be used in church through the year were blessed, and people brought candles from home for blessing too. This feast happens just at the point when we might start to notice the days getting a little bit longer, if we’re paying attention, and the snowdrops – not great , colourful showy flowers, but so welcome – starting to bloom, the promise that winter will end. An old name for them is Candlemas Bells. Candlemas is about that first glimmer of light, the almost imperceptible lengthening of days, of the light we see just before dawn that tells us that the night will come to an end- some nights, especially when we are anxious or lonely, can seem as if they never will. Or imagine you were lost on a dark mountain in the pitch black – Candlemas is that tiny glimmer of torchlight in the distance held by the rescuer coming to save you, or the far-off glow of a window, reorientating you and guide you towards the safety of a house you didn’t know was there. It’s the light that promises you that help is coming, that all is not lost, the light that lifts your spirits enough for you to keep going until dawn arrives. 

That’s what Simeon and Anna see in this little baby, a reminder of the faithfulness of God, the God who doesn’t give up on us, even if we give up on him. Who doesn’t stop believing in us, even if we stop believing in him, who doesn’t stop loving us, even if we stop loving him. That was the promise they had held onto during the long years that they had spent in the Temple, and now they see it coming to fruition. 

But of course, their recognition that something special is happening is only the beginning. Having recognised him, acclaimed him and blessed him, Simeon and Anna send Mary and Jospeh out, to carry Jesus all the way back to Nazareth, where they will care for him as he grows up and becomes strong and filled with wisdom, ready to start his ministry. 

And in a way, this story calls us to do the same. Yes, it calls us to look for Jesus, as Simeon and Anna did; he may come to us in all sorts of forms, inside and outside the church, maybe in the least likely people and circumstances. Our hearts need to be attuned to God through prayer, just as theirs were. And when we find him, yes, this story calls us treasure what he means to us. But it also calls us to carry him out into the world, to shine with his light, wherever we find ourselves, so that we can bring hope to those who feel as if the long, dark winter will never end. 

That’s why at the end of the service today we’re going to do two things.

The first thing is that, as you will have seen, we’re going to end the service with some responses, drawing our celebration of Christmastide to an end, and turning towards, Lent, Holy Week and Easter. During the last hymn we will light your candles, but the crucial part of this short bit of liturgy  is actually the moment when we blow those candles out, not because the light of Christ has gone out, but as an acknowledgement that, during this long season of pondering the significance of Jesus’ birth, the light, we hope, has gone in, become more deeply part of us. 

The second thing we’re going to do is to invite someone – could be anyone, young or old- to carry the Christ Child who has lain in the manger here in front of the altar out tin the procession that ends the service , as a reminder that, like Mary and Joseph , we are all called to carry Christ into the world, to let his light shine out to others. Amen 

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