Sunday 19th December 2016 - Hope
Well, we’re almost there. It’s nearly Christmas. Tonight, we
have our carol service and soon it will be time to start a bit of Christmas
shopping. There is always a lot going on at this time of year, it often feels
like celebrations start even before Advent and that the goal is to consume more
than is practical or sensible. I know this isn’t the same for everyone and it
really is good to see people having fun at the end of what has been a difficult
year for many of us.
As some of you know, this year hasn’t been the easiest for
me, it started with several months off work with viral labyrthinthitis, which
affected my balance, then redundancy, starting a new job and then this last
month, another virus which made my asthma and breathing quite bad. This has all
been combined with Reader training and exploring my calling with God and the
church.
And now, we do have a week of Advent to go, this is a very
special time of preparation, it’s a time of waiting, when we pause to
spiritually prepare ourselves for that amazing moment when God became human in
the fragile form of a baby.
Advent is also a time when we really focus on the themes of
Hope, Joy, Love and Peace, but for me, more than anything at the moment, it’s
hope which drives me forward. This has been a difficult year, for many of us,
our nation and the world has some difficult times ahead, with Brexit, a new
American president, wars in Syria and the Yemen and we will all have a role to play,
in holding out for values based on love, the common good, Justice and Truth.
When faced with all this, we do have something absolutely wonderful to hold
onto and that is hope, hope in the love of God, hope in the joy of a season of
celebration and hope in the power to be saved through faith in Jesus, whose
birth we will celebrate again next week.
Hope is a difficult thing to keep going, especially in turbulent times, yet
times like these are nothing new. When Jesus was born, much was different, but
we can still feel for his parents and their circumstances. In our gospel
reading, there were a few different people who would have had hopes and
expectations…
So, I wonder, what did the Jewish nation hope for? We should remember
that they were under a harsh Roman occupation, while they had some religious
freedoms, they were oppressed and could be cruelly punished at the slightest
sign of dissent. Matthew is the clearest of all the Gospel writers to make
Jesus a saviour for the Jewish people, the first half of the chapter before our
passage today recount
the family history of Jesus from Abraham and Isaac, through King David to
Joseph and Jesus.
To Matthew, Jesus is the next in a great line of prophets and
kings, a saviour. This makes Joseph a focus in the passage, because it’s his
ancestry which gives Jesus legal authority to reign. Of course, while born and
brought up as Jewish, Jesus wasn’t quite the king anyone expected…
So, I wonder, what did Joseph hope for? Well, he was
betrothed to Mary. This was a probably a marriage arranged when they were very
young and now they were betrothed, while not quite married, this was a legally
binding relationship. So he would have probably been hoping to be able to marry
Mary, then start a family, living a quiet life away from Roman interference.
Instead he found Mary was already expecting a child and in
those days, which were very patriarchal, he could have quite easily abandoned
her in disgrace, her family could well have done the same leaving her destitute
and homeless. It was clear he already had some integrity over the social norm
because he was going to dismiss her quietly, most likely a low-key divorce.
When he was planning for the future, he would certainly not
have been hoping for a life which would mean becoming step-father to the son of
God, preceded by a visit from Angels in a dream.
We can be sure that Joseph was devout, his ancestry would
have been important to him, even if he was now a carpenter and we know his son
would spend time in the temple studying scripture, so when he received this
message, that he was chosen to name Jesus, Emmanuel, God is with us, he would
have recognised this as the kind of message the old testament prophets
received, knowing at once he had to protect Mary and her oh so amazingly important
son.
Amid all this, I wonder, what did Mary hope for? As a young
woman of about fourteen, her choices in Roman occupied, Jewish patriarchal
society would have been very limited indeed. Matthews gospel doesn’t tell us a
lot about Mary but like Joseph, her encounter with Angels and the Holy Spirit
changed her life forever.
Being chosen to bring Jesus into the world, like any calling,
was a huge privilege and while we know she of course, loved her son, as any
mother would, whether she really understood what being the mother of God would
really mean, until she saw him perform miracles, then die in agony probably
didn’t fully sink in until she saw the church grow later with the other
apostles.
And I wonder what did God hope for? There were many reasons
for God to send his son into the world as a baby, to live among us, to
experience life in all its joys, pain, hopes and messiness. So that, even
before Jesus’ public ministry began thirty years later, he would have seen so
much of life, that God’s relationship with humanity would have changed forever.
This is before we even think about his teaching, life, death, resurrection and
promise of eternal life through faith.
So, I wonder what do we hope for this Advent and Christmas?
For me, personally, and for us all, I’m hoping for good health, for wisdom but
most of all the gift of being reminded that God loved us abundantly. The most
risky, audacious, loving plan he could envisage, to restore his relationship
with the human race, was to send Jesus into the world. That is a gift for us
all to truly look forward to this advent, the gift of Jesus in our lives.
The joy of this season and the hope that it brings, is a
reminder of God being among us, but also that God is more powerful, amazing and
mysterious than we could ever imagine. This poem sums it up for me, it’s called
Everything Holds Together by
Malcolm Guite.
Everything holds together, everything,
From stars that pierce the dark like living sparks,
To secret seeds that open every spring,
From spanning galaxies to spinning quarks,
Everything holds together and coheres,
Unfolding from the centre whence it came.
And now that hidden heart of things appears,
The first-born of creation takes a name.
And shall I see the one through whom I am?
Shall I behold the one for whom I’m made,
The light in light, the flame within the flame,
The image of my God?
He comes, a little child, to bless my sight,
That I might come to him for life and light.
I hope and pray that God may bless us all, all those we love and all who
we miss, this Advent and Christmas.
Amen
Preached at St Georges Church, Cam. Gloucestershire.
Comments
Post a Comment