It has not been the best of starts to 2020 has it? I’m always fascinated that people need to mark the turn of the year. Some gather with friends on New Years Eve, as we did, others fill pubs and have rowdy parties, others stand out in the cold in big cities and watch firework displays. The New Year is going to be the best yet!
Then five days in we’ve had Australia in flames, in 45 degree heat with some people and animals dying and others fleeing their homes or trying to save them, and tempers rising. They call the Prime Minister an idiot and refuse to shake his hand. Then quite unbelievably your man Donald Trump, apparently with no authorisation takes out an Iranian military leader by drone and bombs start flying about and the world is suddenly very unstable.
How do we enter a New Year when it’s all a bit mad? It’s hard to go forward when going forward might bring uncertainty and even danger.
January of course is named after Janus, a deity found in the religion and myth of ancient Rome. The Romans believed that Janus was the god of doors, beginnings and endings, and transitions. In accordance to the role he played, Janus is depicted as a two-faced god, one face looking to the future and the other looking to the past. There is a tendency in us to want to go back. The past was glorious in memory even if it wasn’t in reality.
Well, I’m very anxious about the future, but I come this morning to say this. Maybe to get through the year we need to remember what we have just celebrated. I went in the big Tesco Extra in Wisbech the other day and all of Christmas had gone. It was the 30 December. The shop was full of Valentine’s Day and Creme Eggs.
Few things pack up and disappear so quickly as the Christmas spirit. After what seems like months of preparation, for many people the point of Christmas seems to evaporate after any unwanted presents have been recycled, the last remnants of the turkey have been transformed into a final dish, and the pine needles have been swept from the floor. Few, if any, celebrate the traditional Twelve Days of Christmas now, losing that gradual sense of unwrapping the Divine Mystery that is the Incarnation.
The gift of the Christ-Child is not only for Christmas; he is for the whole of the year. Jesus is God’s outrageous gift of generosity who has come to address the chasm that yawns between the Divine and the human.
Jesus, Word made flesh, the physical presence of God, takes us from the reality of the incarnation to the unfolding realisation of who and what God is and does.
Apart from God’s inspiration and engagement, humanity would have remained stuck in a place far from hope and far from heaven. The reality of human helplessness and hopelessness can only be transformed by the unshakeable presence of the living God. When the novelty of secular festivities has long gone, the celebration of God’s inventive appearance and reappearance in the history and experience of humanity shines an inextinguishable light into the darkest of days.
So I’m glad the lectionary for the first Sunday of the year today was what is perhaps the greatest passage in the whole of the Bible. The prologue to John’s Gospel, in which the gospel writer tries to explain what God coming into the world means. The word became flesh and dwelt among us.
What does this mean for our journey?
Two points I would offer:
One, we matter! God cares enough to join us every day in 2020. In the Christmas story, angels say over and over again “do not fear”!
Those three words are in the Bible 365 times, one for every day of the year, well, maybe we can fear one day this year as it is a leap year. God has come into our world in Jesus to share all of life with us. He has in Jesus became flesh, one of us.
I like the American writer Nadia Bolz Weber on this:
“God came and made God’s home with us and in a real body.
So I wonder if maybe in the incarnation God has done nothing less than blessed all human flesh. So, let us remember that our good and imperfect bodies are born of God and so we have no business calling what God pronounced good anything but good. Because if the Word became flesh and lived among us ~ then despite our botoxic quest for the illusion of perfection, your body is beautiful to God.
Take care of your beautiful selves.”
The Covenant God says to us, you matter. No matter how you are, you matter. The Covenant God says to our churches, you matter. It doesn’t matter how many of you there are, you matter. When I went on my visit to my Circuit to be, we arrived at a little chapel in a pretty village. Some ladies came out to meet us and looked a bit hesitant. Lis said to them, “It’s okay, he does small churches!” And they immediately relaxed and we had some banter. They needed me to tell them they matter and I am not going to close them. Here is the good news: we are no longer our own, but his.
Despite the world of unhinged leaders and so much trouble, God has it all under control. Someone once described the covenant as “abandonment to divine providence.” I like that a lot.
Then this: God’s love is made visible in the vulnerability of a tiny child and that love underpins the whole universe.
That gives us the courage and strength to play our part in bringing healing and hope to our families, our communities and to the world itself. For “to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God.” We have power to become children of God. We can be the people God wants us to be. The Covenant response is to give our best, employed or laid aside, doing or suffering, full or empty, offering all we have and are as and where he chooses. Someone sent me this poem by Maya Angelou the other day and I share some words of it...
My wish for you
Is that you continue
Continue
To be who and how you are
To astonish a mean world
With your acts of kindness
Continue
To allow humour to lighten the burden
Of your tender heart
Continue
In a society dark with cruelty
To let the people hear the grandeur
Of God in the peals of your laughter
Continue
To let your eloquence
Elevate the people to heights
They had only imagined
Continue
To remind the people that
Each is as good as the other
And that no one is beneath
Nor above you
Continue
To dare to love deeply
And risk everything
For the good thing
Continue
To float
Happily in the sea of infinite substance
Which set aside riches for you
Before you had a name
Continue
And by doing so
You and your work
Will be able to continue
Eternally
We don’t just matter, what we do matters too. We can’t do much about the war and injustice apart from prayer and protest but we can change lives, one by one, through just living Christianity. Can’t we?
And here’s a final encouragement. The Jesus who has just been born will face trouble in his life. And we know He will be killed by the political and religious leaders of His day.
And we know, that somehow, the power of this person, this hope, will be enough to roll away the stone, and pierce the darkness, and lift the gloom, and keep the promise, and be Emmanuel. God with us. for always.
Whether in a crib in Bethlehem, or on a cross at Calvary. Whether in the fire-blackened regions of Australia, or the war-fearing countries of the Middle East. Jesus is the word made flesh and even in the mess we can behold his glory.
It was a cold and misty Christmas morning in the very depth of winter after a heavy fall of snow and only Farmer Evans and the Reverend Joseph Lancaster managed to arrive at the church for the morning service.
'Well,' said the Vicar laconically, 'I guess there's no point in having a service today.'
'Well that's not how I see it.' said Farmer Evans smartly. 'If only one cow turns up at feeding time, I still feed it.'
May we this year know that God has come.
May we know we matter.
May we make a difference.
May we feed people, every day.
That is the Methodist covenant. Let’s on this fifth day of January with so much uncertainty, pray it and live it.
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