kneel in wonder at heaven touching earth» Epiphany

You send the gospel to the ends of the earth

Paul Sibley — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 09:00:10 +0000

Communications technology continues to advance at a rapid pace, and at the same time, become easier to use. As a result, the world appears to be becoming a much smaller place than it once was. And in many ways that is especially highlighted by the rise in popularity of the likes of twitter and other types of social media. Some amazing statistics about social media are available on the “econsultancy blog”. Nowadays we can pass on news and hear news from all around the world in an instant. When I think back, even to my childhood, there have been massive advances in the technology available. It makes you wonder what it will be like for the coming generations.

So, because of all those advances in communications technology, it has never been easier to send a message to the ends of the earth; never easier to “send the gospel to the ends of the earth”. And I’m left wondering if we take advantage enough of the technology available to us in talking about the “good news” of Jesus Christ. And especially if I am, personally, doing enough.

I know I write this blog, and while I don’t think of myself as evangelising in my writing — that isn’t the intention — I hope I am sharing the love of Christ, the love of God, with those who read my words on here. And I know that, in theory, this blog could be read by thousands, even millions, of people. In practise, of course, it isn’t; in fact it’s around about a thousand a week. I have had to accept, because of my ongoing health concerns, that this is frequently going to be my only viable opportunity to share God’s love with other people — even this wouldn’t have been possible a few years ago.

There are hundreds, if not thousands, of other websites written by people who all want to share the love of God with others from around the world. And probably an equal, or greater, number that are about evangelising and conversion. So the reality is that a great deal is being done to “send the gospel to the ends of the earth”.

But there is one thing that all of these websites, including mine, have in common. They all rely on people being interested enough to make an effort to read what’s being written; the same as with any other kind of website available on the internet. I suspect the social networking sites, such as Twitter, will begin to play a part in changing that, but even with them there still is an element of people needing to make an effort to “follow” you, or your message will just be lost within the myriad of others being sent at the same time.

So, on this Fourth Sunday of Epiphany, I’m left once again with questions. Are we, am I, doing enough to help with sending the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ, to the ends of the earth?

God of heaven,
you send the gospel to the ends of the earth
and your messengers to every nation:
send your Holy Spirit to transform us
by the good news of everlasting life
in Jesus Christ our Lord.

Additional Collect for The Fourth Sunday of Epiphany
is Copyright © The Archbishops Council

Your Son proclaimed good news to the poor

Paul Sibley — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 09:00:02 +0000

I wonder where you would put yourself if I asked you whether you were rich, poor, or in between. The chances are you would do the same as me, and say, “in between”. We know that in a global context our access to clean water, sanitation, food, healthcare — and especially the computer you’re reading this on — puts us firmly into the wealthier segment of the world population. But we all know someone richer than us, probably lots of people.

So what exactly does it mean for us to celebrate our relationship with Jesus, the one who announced his presence as “good news to the poor” (Luke 4:18)? If we’re not poor, how can we discover for ourselves — and share with others — the gospel which is good news to the poor?

I recognize that there is a spiritual dimension in this. Whatever my material wealth, I can only receive Christ when I recognise my spiritual poverty. Think of those words from the hymn, “Rock of Ages”: “Nothing in my hand I bring, simply to your cross I cling”. This suggests a truth we too often fail to recognise — it’s hard for the rich to enter the Kingdom partly because the more we have the harder it gets to admit that our wealth has its limitations: money can’t buy me love, and that includes God’s love.

So our beatitude of choice is Matthew’s “Blessed are the poor in spirit” (Matthew 5:3) because we can see how we might qualify for blessing; Luke’s “Blessed are you who are poor” (Luke 6:20) seems to leave us out in the cold.

A theological explanation for this apparent disparity — that seems so glaring to us in our society, in which poverty is usually interpreted purely as an economic matter — probably lies in the consistent biblical understanding that poverty is the result of sin: “There will, however, be no one in need among you, because the Lord is sure to bless you” (Deuteronomy 15:4).

People who are poor are oppressed; they are sinned against as much as they are sinners. That’s why the gospel is good news — it sets them free (“let the oppressed go free” Luke 4:18). Even more strikingly, one of the ways the gospel becomes good news to the poor is because it sets the rich free from sin and they cease to be oppressors.

So that’s the challenge. Is the gospel we present — by our words and actions — one that is good news to the poor because it changes our attitudes to wealth and poverty? Are we willing to be good news to those in our locality that we find it most difficult to relate to because they’re not ‘people like us’?

Perhaps you can cope with one more rhetorical question: do we prefer to adapt the gospel to our culture to make it more acceptable, or ensure that it is as true and counter-cultural in a world obsessed with wealth and celebrity as it was two thousand years ago?

Let’s face it; we’re in a minority. The global church is now predominantly made up of people who are poor, as will heaven be: the gospel really is good news to the poor!

God of all mercy,
your Son proclaimed good news to the poor,
release to the captives,
and freedom to the oppressed:
anoint us with your Holy Spirit
and set all your people free
to praise you in Christ our Lord.

Additional Collect for The Third Sunday of Epiphany
is Copyright © The Archbishops Council

Our beginning and our end

Paul Sibley — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 09:00:35 +0000

This phrase, “our beginning and our end”, from today’s Collect (The Second Sunday of Epiphany), always makes me think about the book of The Revelation — the last book in our Bibles, and probably one of the most confusing.

I’m not especially confident or knowledgeable about the book of The Revelation, but there are some wonderful passages in there that really resonate with me. One such is one of our recommended readings for use at funerals, Revelation 21:1-7. It’s a reading that gives a real message of hope for the future. The words that form the link in my mind are to be found in verse six, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end”.

This is God speaking to St John in his vision, that is the book of The Revelation. As I understand it, the word translated here as “beginning” doesn’t simply mean the first point in time, but first in the sense of source of all things. And the word translated here as “end” doesn’t simply mean the end point in time, but the very goal of time, what time and life is striving to achieve. So what’s being said here is that all life begins in God and ends in God.

It’s hard to think of anything more magnificent to say about God. And at first sight it might seem to remove God to such a distance that we’re no more to him than flies on a windowpane. But the rest of verse six goes on to say, “To the thirsty I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life.” All God’s greatness is at the disposal of humanity. “God so loved the world that he gave…” (John 3:16). The splendour of God is used to satisfy the thirst of the longing heart.

That’s the love that God has for each and every one of us. That’s the love that we’re reminded of in this prayer on this Second Sunday of Epiphany.

Eternal Lord,
our beginning and our end:
bring us with the whole creation
to your glory, hidden through past ages
and made known
in Jesus Christ our Lord.

Additional Collect for The Second Sunday of Epiphany
is Copyright © The Archbishops Council

People, Look East!

Paul Sibley — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 09:00:16 +0000

I was on duty for Evensong in Godmanchester again on Sunday. We had, along with many Churches, transferred The Epiphany Sunday. It was, as it usually is, a lovely service. It was also well attended in comparison to normal — nothing to do with me of course — with double the number of people there, which was very encouraging. Anyway, here is the sermon, more or less as preached.

People, Look East!
‘Look toward the east, O Jerusalem, and see the joy that is coming to you from God.’ Baruch 4:36

Orientation
Are you one of those people who can never remember the points of the compass? Do you have to mutter to yourself, ‘West is on the left, when you’re facing north’? That’s if you can even work out which way is north!

Do you find it difficult to get yourself orientated? Ah, there’s a clue there. Oriens is, I’m reliably informed, the Latin for ‘rising’. An oriental is someone who comes from the east, where the sun rises. If it’s morning, the sun will be in the east, and in the evening in the west. Not that that would’ve helped much today — it’s been so grey you could barely see the sun.

There’s a sport called ‘orienteering’: it’s the art of making your way quickly across country with the aid of a map and a compass. Even in the days I could move quickly, I was pretty hopeless at it as a sport — it takes to long to say, ‘West is on the left, when you’re facing north’!

But, in theory, as long as you’re able to fix where one direction is — east, for example — you can get orientated.

The Middle East
In the UK we think of the people of Israel or Palestine as living in what we call ‘The Middle East’ — they think of us as ‘the near west’. For them, ‘the near east’ is Syria, Iraq, Iran, and Saudi Arabia.

In Biblical times these eastern nations were called Assyria and Persia. When the Jews were exiled to Babylon, that was in the east; when Jerusalem hoped that her exiled people would return, they were told to look east.

When Persian astrologers came to worship baby Jesus in Bethlehem — at that first Epiphany — they were called ‘wise men from the east’. And when they told Herod ‘we have seen his star in the east’ — the Orient — that could equally be translated as, ‘we have seen his star at its rising’, or even ‘in the ascendant’.

Baruch
There’s a striking phrase in the book of Baruch — which we could’ve heard from this evening, as an alternative to our Old Testament lesson from Isaiah — it says: ‘Look towards the east, O Jerusalem, and see the joy that is coming to you from God’ (Baruch 4:36).

Baruch was the name of the scribe who copied down the words of the prophet Jeremiah in around 600 BC. But the book of Baruch is in the Apocrypha, not the Old Testament, and dates from much later than Jeremiah’s time, probably about 150 BC.

It’s easy to see why it’s offered as an alternative reading for Epiphany, when we think about the wise men from the east bringing their riches to Baby Jesus.

Different cultures
There’s a real difference between the cultures of people who live in the eastern and western hemispheres. Eastern people, in general, think mystically; western people think materialistically.

Oriental philosophy’s concerned with states of being, in the West we think in terms of laws and logic. Oriental religions provide for peasants scraping a meagre living year after year from the soil, and think of time going round in an unending circle. Western religion’s for pioneers striking out to discover new frontiers, and thinks of time as a straight line.

Westerners think of Orientals as having no sense of time; Chinese and Indians pity British and North American people going round, as they put it, ‘strapped to a wristwatch’!

These are rather superficial distinctions for a very complex subject — which I certainly couldn’t really claim much genuine understanding of.

Judaism and Christianity, although they pioneered the western idea of time as progress, are in other respects basically eastern religions. Or they were, until Saint Paul and others started translating them into Greek ideas.

Never the twain shall meet?
So we of the West have much to learn from the people of the East. We’ve forgotten our traditions of mystical prayer, so that young people look to eastern religions, unaware that mysticism’s there already in Christianity.

Brooke Fosse Westcott, the author of a well respected — some would say greatest in the English language — commentary on Saint John’s Gospel, wrote that we must wait for someone from the East, who understands Saint John’s mystical outlook, to write the really definitive commentary of his Gospel.

People from the East who’ve become Christians have brought great riches of music, dance, literary form, art, and architecture, and laid them at the feet of the infant Christ.

Rudyard Kipling was only partially right when he wrote:
     Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the
          twain shall meet,
     till Earth and Sky stand presently at God’s great
          Judgement Seat.
In Christianity the best of eastern and western cultures have already met.

People, look east
Eleanor Farjeon wrote a great hymn, looking towards Christmas, which begins, ‘People, look East’. We need to keep our eyes fixed to the east, towards Bethlehem, where the love of God came to earth as a babe in a manger.

Perhaps we should also look further east, to that great world of oriental culture which the Persian magi brought into the Christian faith. We need to get oriented.

Know ourselves to be your beloved children

Paul Sibley — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 09:00:46 +0000

Jesus’ baptism marks for him much the same as baptism does for anyone. It marks a new stage in life, a beginning — a launching into a new life and ministry. That’s what all baptism’s signify, mine, yours, and yes, Jesus’ too. When Jesus went into the water he was an unknown carpenters son. When he came out of the water, he was a man with a mission, a mission to save the world.

In many ways, this Collect for The Baptism of Christ encapsulates many of the essentials of what we believe the Christian faith is all about. Jesus is shown to be God’s Son; we recognize him as our Lord; and because of that we can know that we are loved as children of God.

I don’t actually remember my own baptism, I was only four months old at the time, so no surprise there. But it did mark the beginning of my public Christian journey, just as Jesus’ baptism did for him. However, my journey into a recognized public ministry came many years after my baptism, many years after my confirmation when I was thirteen years old even.

One thing that is different for me than for many Christian ministers, though, is that my church-based ministry doesn’t take place many miles away from where my baptism happened. For I was baptised, and confirmed, in Godmanchester Church, the same Church as, half a century later, I’m a Licensed Lay Minister (Reader) — it’s the only Church I’ve worshipped at regularly throughout my life.

In many ways, because of that lifetime connection with a single Church, I feel as though I am a child of that Church. There are people in the congregation who were there before me, who remember me as a baby, remember me as a rebellious teenager, missed me when I left the Church, and welcomed me back with open arms when I returned.

I’m very fortunate. I know myself as a beloved child of God through my faith in his Son Jesus Christ, my Lord and Saviour. But I also know myself as a beloved child of the Church that I love, too. And that means a lot, because, for me, the Church is an important part of my faith.

Heavenly Father,
at the Jordan you revealed Jesus as your Son:
may we recognize him as our Lord
and know ourselves to be your beloved children;
through Jesus Christ our Saviour.

Additional Collect for The Baptism of Christ
is Copyright © The Archbishops Council

Epiphany of the Lord

Paul Sibley — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 09:00:12 +0000

I was able to take Holy Communion to another of the retirement homes in Godmanchester on Wednesday. With it being so close to Epiphany, I thought they might appreciate an Epiphany service. I did a short homily for them, which they seemed to appreciate. Here is more or less what I said:

Epiphany of the Lord
Readings: Isaiah 60:1-6 & Matthew 2:1-12

Following a star
Isn’t it amazing in this sophisticated and scientific age that we’re all so interested in stars, horoscopes, and astrological signs. All of us are pleased when we read that something spectacular will happen.

The Magi’s journey across mountains and deserts, following the star, echoes in our hearts. We feel that we have our own star to follow — a yearning deep down within our being for meaning, truth, and happiness — an individual path in life which we alone are called to tread.

When the Magi found the child Jesus, it was highly unlikely that they saw an infant with a halo who was clearly recognisable as God’s Son.

Eyes of faith
I believe that they saw just another tiny child, because that was all their bodily eyes could see. However, with their eyes of faith, they were able to see beneath the surface of appearances and recognise, in this child, God’s light which had come into the world. Ever afterwards, they weren’t guided by a star in the sky, but by the light of this child, who they saw as the Saviour of the world.

We too have been given the eyes of faith to keep us on course as we follow Christ along the highways and by-ways of life, across desert paths of loneliness, pain, failure, and illness.

Wise Men
There is something beautiful about the story of the three Kings. Those Wise Men of yesteryear represent all of us on a spiritual adventure which goes on as long as life lasts.

We’re to be Wise Men for our day, making Jesus visible to the whole world as its Saviour and Redeemer. Our special role is to make Jesus known along the pathways of life by being receptive to his word. The Lord needs our commitment in furthering his work.

The Wise Men didn’t come to the Lord empty-handed, but with gifts specially chosen which expressed the reason for their search, and neither must we come empty-handed. We may not have gold, frankincense, or myrrh, but we can bring the gift of ourselves, as human beings grafted into Christ. This gift of self is something more precious, as it never wears out.

Two journeys
The Church wants us all to rejoice today. The Epiphany is the day when we proclaim to all the world that Jesus came to save everybody, and that his influence isn’t restricted to any one culture.

Christmas is about making two journeys. The journey to Bethlehem, and the way home by a different route. We’re all making our journey home through life.

Having found Bethlehem, let us hope that at the end of life’s journey, we’ll be met once more by Jesus.