This Lent the Lectionary takes us to John’s Gospel with four of his Signs of the Kingdom stories. John builds his theology of love and the Kingdom of God around and through these stories. We began on Lent 2 with the story of Nicodemus and his nocturnal and clandestine visit with Jesus and will end on Lent 5 with Jesus’ visit to Mary and Martha and the raising of their brother Lazarus. The hallmark of these signs stories is the focus on Jesus’ true identity and the effect when this  becomes known to the other actors in the drama of each story.

Today we are given the story in which Jesus heals the man blind from birth. We need to remember that each Sunday the lections refocus us on the question: how is God seeking conversation with us today? Today’s conversation opens with Jesus once again challenging the crude and cruel conventions of his religious society.

A useful Metaphor

John unlike the other Evangelists does not construct his Gospel around the chronology of Jesus’ three years on the road. Instead, he constructs a theology of Jesus’ ministry around his seven Signs of the Kingdom stories. Each of these stories functions like a play. I suggest the concept of a play as our metaphor for capturing the complex flow and movement within these stories.

Today’s story is a play in four acts:

• Act 1 – Jesus and the disciples encounter the man blind from birth. This is not any blind man, for its crucial for John’s later development of the plot that we know from the outset that this man was born blind. The discussion about sin ensues and Jesus challenges his disciples assumption that illness or misfortune results from sin. Instead, Jesus invites them to see the man’s blindness as an opportunity for God to open not only his eyes, as in to restore his sight; the man’s blindness is an opportunity for God to open all their eyes to the bigger picture of things, as in invite them into insight.
• Act 2 – Jesus and the disciples exit to stage right. Entry from stage left, the blind man’s acquaintances and neighbours. In this act the drama unfolds around their confusion about what has taken place for this man. The only way they can make sense of it is to dispute that this is the same man, whom they have known as blind from birth. He protests that he is the very same and that the man Jesus, healed him. The act closes with the group asking: so where is he? The man formerly blind says he does not know. At this stage he knows only that he can now see, and does not know who has performed this healing.
• Act 3 – The group take him to the Pharisees – scholars of the Law, because this is all too much for them to handle. The Pharisees can’t work out what has happened either. They end up arguing among themselves with one group saying this could not be a healing because Jesus performed it on the Sabbath, and so Jesus himself is a sinner; ipso facto God can not work through sinners. The other group object that the evidence of their own eyes is that God has acted, Sabbath or no Sabbath. Two interesting developments now take place. Having asked the man who he thinks Jesus is and shocked by his answer they call for his parents in an apparent attempt to continue to question the veracity of the man’s blindness. We should note how the focus now subtly shifts from questioning the healing to questioning Jesus’ identity. The act concludes in considerable disarray. The man’s parents fearful of being cast out by the Pharisees put the whole responsibility on their son for declaring who Jesus is. We see the man, under the relentless pressure of the Pharisees’ interrogation moving from the simple statement: all I know is that I was blind and now I can see, to: the facts seem to be these, this man cured my blindness, an action that clearly cannot be performed by someone who is breaking God’s Law, therefore, all I can say is that he is of God. We now see him in the process of moving from sight to insight. We see the religious authorities approaching the invitation to insight, and pulling back in horror. The act ends with them rejecting the man, who for dramatic purposes, is left alone on the stage.
• Act 4 – Jesus enters from stage right having heard that the Pharisees had rejected him. He asks the man who has healed him? Remember that the man was blind when he last encountered Jesus so he has no way of recognizing him. Jesus identifies himself and the man proclaims his belief that Jesus is the Messiah. The act close with Jesus teasing the Pharisees with the suggestion that: if you were truly blind you would not be sinners because you can’t be blamed for what you can’t see. But because you claim to be able to see, and clearly have no insight, then for that you are culpable.

The play spirals back to end on the opening theme of sin and culpability.

Text and context

This is a text, which we simultaneously hear echoing in three contexts:

1. The original context of Jesus, the disciples, the man blind from birth, and the confrontation with religious attitudes that enshrine the hardness of the human heart rather than the love of God.
2. Some 60 years later John records this original story in his Gospel. John reconstructs the story to connect with the issues, current in his own community. We hear the echo of a mighty struggle between the Johannine Community and the Jewish Synagogue. John is writing after the destruction of the Temple in 70AD. Judaism had regrouped around the Synagogue-centered Rabbinic movement, the descendants of the Pharisees of Jesus day. The Synagogue had expelled the Christian community by John’s day leaving John’s community struggling to hold itself together in the face of persecution from without, and division from within. One of the significant divisions in the Johannine community was between those prepared to proclaim Christ and take the consequences and those who still wanted to secretly follow Christ for fear of being excommunicated by the Synagogue – a theme played out in the story between the Pharisees and the man’s parents.
3. In 2014 we receive this text within the context of our own time and place.  We hear the echo of Jesus’ conflict with the Pharisees and the Johannine Community’s struggle with the Synagogue some 60 years later. Our task to to receive this text as God’s desire to open a conversation with us about the challenges of being faithful in 21st Century America.

For me the story of the man blind from birth opens us to the challenges of continuing to live our lives as a community being called by God to proclaim the expectations of the Kingdom. We live in a time when under the impetus of unparallelled change older forms of Church are passing away and we still can’t quite see what will take their place. This fills us with anxiety.

In my last sermon blog on the story of Jesus and the woman at the well, I drew some general conclusion about the similarities between the community of John and our Anglican tradition in the Episcopal Church. I did so to remind us of the unique gifts that we as a tradition offer the wider society of our day. https://relationalrealities.com/2014/03/28/the-woman-at-the-well-a-sermon-delivered-to-an-unknown-community/

Receiving the text

As he walks along with his disciples they come across a blind man. The disciples give voice to the age-old desire to explain-away illness and misfortune in terms of sin. They ask: Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents; that he was born blind. 

It always pulls me up short when I encounter the tendency of people who consider themselves quite religious to use religion and religious explanations as a mask to validate the hardness of the human heart. 

Wanting to see this man’s blindness as the result of his or his parent’s sin comforts the disciples and give them a false sense of security. This illusion of security holds out the prospect that if they can avoid the commission of sin, then the callous gratuitousness of affliction, will pass them by.

I don’t often recall these days that my undergraduate degree was in law. Growing up in New Zealand it was the English Common Law tradition that I was trained in. This tradition still forms the bedrock of most American State legal systems, though not all. English Common Law works by appealing to precedent. Precedent operates when counsel, or the judge appeals to an earlier decision of a court of equal or superior authority, as binding, i.e. binds the court in the present case to arrive at the same conclusions as in the previous case. The legal device of distinguishing is the way counsel argues that there is a crucial difference between the precedent and the present case, thus arguing that the judge is free to decide the present case on a different basis.

Distinguishing is not only a legal device. As the disciples demonstrate the desire to distinguish is deeply rooted in the human psyche. Though Episcopalians don’t usually appeal to sin as a distinguishing device, we nevertheless distinguish all the time when we attribute another’s misfortune to the results of their own carelessness, or their own fault.

Jesus challenges our desire to protect ourselves from our fears in the same way that he cuts right through the disciples desire to distinguish themselves from the man blind from birth. Like us, the disciples are seeking to distance themselves from this man’s fate because of their fear – fear that the precariousness of life’s bad fortune could strike them at any time. In so doing they act-out religion’s tendency to scapegoat those different from us when their point of view or their misfortune threatens our security or complacency in some way. We love to scapegoat such individuals or groups by casting them into the role of the other, the outsider, the sinner, and appealing to religion to validate our actions in doing so. Throughout his ministry Jesus’ most serious conflicts always center on his confrontation with religion operating as a mask for the hardness of the human heart.

How we distance ourselves from our own fear of life’s unpredictability is one theme in this story that we need to take to heart. There is also another theme that seems to me to be significant. This story offers us a nuanced play on the movement from sight to insight. If we receive this story of the man born blind into our own lives, by which I mean, allow the authority of this story to apply to us, we immediately face some uncomfortable questions:

1. Where and to what do our fears still blind us?
2. Do we have the courage to allow our blindness to be healed and begin to see?

These two questions are challenging enough. But there is a third and more difficult one to face.

3. Having recovered our sight can we risk the journey from sight to insight?

The man born blind seems at first to be content simply to have his physical sight back. Yet, John’s point is to show us how by refusing to be cowered by religious authority, he moves from the possession of physical sight to the acquisition of spiritual sight. To put this another way, we see him moving from sight to insight. It’s only through insight that he discovers who it is that has not only healed him, but more to the point, calls him to a new experience of life.

What is this new experience of life, you ask? If we read-on into chapter 10 we find Jesus offering his own interpretation of this story of the man blind from birth in his metaphor of the shepherd and the sheep. The sheep are not confused by the voice of the imposter because they know the shepherd’s voice, and knowing him for who he is, they trust him. The new experience of life is a life lived with the courage to trust. Trust means that no matter what – we know ourselves to be loved. Is this not the best insurance policy against the fear of the unpredictability and precariousness of life?

I. Some general observations about John’s Gospel

Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s Well is one of those very rich stories that functions for John as one of seven Signs of the Kingdom. We love these stories from John, especially– the wedding at Cana, Nicodemus’s night-time visit –which formed last week’s Gospel reading, and of course the raising of Lazarus and the story of Mary and Martha. Today’s story of the woman at the well, like the others Sign stories, appears only in John’s Gospel. Why is this?

John’s Gospel is the last of the Canonical Gospels to be written. John writes within the context of the Christian Community in Jerusalem. It’s fair to assume that already possessing the Gospels of Mark, Matthew, and Luke, John’s community didn’t need yet another synopsis of the events of Jesus’ Ministry. After all, by now everyone knew the story back to front.

Although Matthew and Luke follow Mark’s blueprint, they each add additional stories while also bringing their own theological and community context to bear on Mark’s blueprint. Therefore, John’s adding of new story material is in itself, not remarkable. What is remarkable is that John’s purpose in writing seems so very different from the other synoptic writers. John is not telling the story of Jesus’ ministry through the chronology of times, places, and events. John is building a theology of Jesus’ ministry around his series of seven stories, each intended to be sign that in Jesus, God’s Kingdom breaks into the human dimension of the here and now.

II. Approaching the text

On the face of it the story of Jesus and the woman at the well is rather complex with a number of different moving parts. It could be thought about as a play in three acts.

The first act of the story opens with a conversation between Jesus and a woman he encounters at Jacob’s well.  This is a place of significant religious and historical controversy. Both Samaritans and Jews claim Jacob as their ancestor. Jesus surprises the woman by asking her to give him a drink of water. From his request there then ensues a conversation about living water.

You might ask, what is so surprising for the woman that Jesus should ask for water from her? In order to answer this question, we need to know something of the social and political context for this encounter.

By asking her to give him a drink, Jesus is challenging social convention. He surprises the woman with his request because as a man Jesus shouldn’t have spoken to her in public. She was neither his wife of a female relative. In fact, he addresses her, ‘woman’ , implying a relationship of equality, not hierarchy existing between them. This Samaritan woman is doubly taken aback because she can see that Jesus is a Jew, and Jews don’t speak to Samaritans. In asking the woman for a drink Jesus is not only challenging social custom he is also challenging political and religious exclusivity. In order to more fully understand this we need to take a detour into historical context.

After Solomon’s death the United Kingdom of Israel, united by his father David breaks apart into the Northern Kingdom of Israel with its capital at Samaria and its Temple on Mt Gerizim, and the Southern Kingdom of Judah centered on Jerusalem and The Temple. Here is where the similarity to Crimea comes in. In 722 BC the Assyrians destroy the northern Kingdom of Israel and deport around 30,000 Israelites in order to relocate five other ethnic groups to replace them. Over time the remaining Israelites intermarry with the foreigners. In 587 BC the southern Kingdom of Judah falls to the Babylonians and the people in Jerusalem are taken off into captivity in Babylon. However, unlike the fate of the northern exiles who never return, in 538 the Jerusalem exiles are allowed to return and begin to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem. The Samaritans object to this and petition the Persian King to withdraw Persian support for this initiative. thus cementing the hatred between Samaritans and Judeans.

The core of the enmity centers on notions of pollution. The Judeans despised the Samaritans because of their intermarriage with non-Jewish populations, rendering them racially impure. The Samaritans, on the other hand despised the Judeans whom they saw as having polluted the Law of Moses through the Levite reforms instituted during the period of exile in Babylon between 587 and 538. For the Samaritans had despite intermarrying remained faithful to an older operating system – to borrow from the language of computer software, i.e.the Law as it was understood in 722.

There is a dramatic shift of focus as we move into the second act of the story. Here Jesus requests that the woman go fetch her husband. Her response opens the way for her to recognize Jesus’ true identity. Taken by itself, this section alone has led to the familiar misogynistic (women hating) patriarchal treatment of the woman as a prostitute, or even worse and adulterous. Yet, Jesus, nowhere implies that the woman is of anything but impeccable character. Quite the contrary, he sees her as an evangelist, who not only recognizes him as a prophet but also brings the rest of her community to faith.

Jesus’ reference to her five husbands is a historical metaphor for the five foreign peoples with whom the Samaritans had intermarried. The man she is currently with, and who is not her husband, extends the metaphor to include a sixth group of foreigners introduced by Herod the Great in 37 BC. Unlike the first five this man is not her husband and this alludes to Roman occupation, which had forbidden intermarriage between this last group and the Samaritans population.

In the third act we see the return of the disciples who had been shopping for supplies. They arrive back and totally misconstrue the situation they come upon. They are scandalized that Jesus should risk both social and religious criticism by talking to a woman and a Samaritan woman to boot. This final act of the play concerns Jesus’ discussion with the disciples about mission. Mission, is an important theme for John who introduces the metaphor of gathering in the harvest – a harvest that someone else has planted. Here Jesus is telling his disciples to embrace the Samaritan converts, that through her testimony the woman is bringing to Jesus. This woman, whom they condemn has recognized his true identity as the Messiah. As a result, she now brings her neighbors and friends to also believe in him. This is a harvest, the seeds of which the disciples have not sown, but yet now must bring into the community of Jesus’ followers. 

The nature of Christian Community

This is an important story for John and his community. The core of John’s teaching centers on the primacy of love – a kind of love conquers all, approach to faith. In John’s Gospel, Jesus’ central commandment is to love: as the Father has loved me, so I love you, therefore you must love one another. 

John’s community comprised a number of different groups with different theological understandings. In the absence of common agreement between them, this teaching on love holds them together in some semblance of community. Like our own Anglican tradition, John’s community is defined not by agreement on shared belief.  It is held together by an emphasis on right relationship. For Episcopalians, right relationship rests on our behaving with love towards anyone who is willing to join us in worship. Our unity lies in our being able to recite the words of the Book of Common Prayer, despite holding different understandings as to what these words might mean. For John, the woman at the well is a Sign of the Kingdom because it powerfully depicts Jesus reaching across the social divisions of gender relations, as well as the political and doctrinal divisions rooted in a history of conflict and mutual antipathy.

Text and context

Understanding biblical texts is usually a more complex business than we are often led to believe. We see in this story of the woman at the well the interlacing of three layers of context:

1. We have the historical context within which an event takes place, i.e. a meeting between Jesus and a woman at Jacob’s Well sometime between 30 and 33 AD.
2. We have the reporting of the original story by John writing about the event many years later, probably around 90-100 AD.
3. We have our reception of John’s text in the first decade of the 21^st century. This is always how the ministry of Jesus comes to us – transmitted across two thousand years of time.

Of the three layers, it is the third layer, our reception of this text and the meaning we give it, that is our chief focus. Therefore, I ask the question: what might this text mean for those of us sitting here this morning?

Receiving the text in the here and now

There is a trap that a visiting preacher can fall into if he or she is not careful. The trap is to speak with certainty or authority, assuming a knowledge of his or her hearers and their community that he or she does not possess. I have only the most general awareness of how my reflections on this story might be received. All I can say is that this story introduces a conversation that God is intending to have with this community. Lacking specific knowledge of this community, I would like to make some general points from my experience of how God might intend to have this conversation with any Christian community.

This story from John’s Gospel depicts Jesus demonstrating what a relationship of love, looks like.  This is not erotic or sentimental love I see here. I see a love of mutual respect emerging between Jesus and this woman. I note a growing tenderness, which differences of gender, ethnicity, and religion cannot frustrate. In contrast to the worldview of his disciples, Jesus values diversity! This is often a real issue for Christian communities. You know the old joke: the Episcopal Church welcomes you – but only if you are like us. As a Church, we may be very theologically inclusive, yet the fact that our parish communities are shrinking indicates another old adage: that we behave as if everyone who might become Episcopalian – already has.

In our communities, we must examine and uncover attitudes of mind and heart that result in our clinging to safety rather than risking to reach out to those who are different from us. Our Anglican tradition has so much to offer the modern world and it continues to amaze me how it remains America’s best-kept secret. Through the sheer accident of history, Anglican Christians have developed an idea of Christian Community that is not a community defined by shared believe, but one defined by the generosity of God experienced in common worship.

We are the community where traditional worship and a radical commitment to face the challenges of our contemporary context, meet and engage one another. Our parish communities are rooted in the local, rather than the universal. We are Catholic Christians of place and locality and this must embolden us to embrace new populations whose arrival can be seen as a challenge to our sense of privilege  -which to be honest, is a boat that sailed a long time ago.

Let us not only love one another but love the stranger. Let love empower us to catch up with the world around us, embracing it as it really is, and not retreating into fantasies of how we still long for it to be. Let us offer the deep richness of our Anglican Tradition’s valuing of toleration and welcoming of diversity. These are two qualities so badly needed in a world of increasingly polarized divisions.  We offer an appreciation of dignified worship through which the echo of the ancient Church can still be heard. Accompanying this is an appreciation of beauty.  Our Anglican Tradition commits us to sitting in the tension between being faithful to the Tradition with a capital T and being open to the challenges of being Christian in a world of rapid and bewildering change where many are alienated, cast adrift without the anchor of traditions of any kind.

However, what we have most to offer the world around us that simple truth lying at the heart of Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman. This simple truth is that the only thing that matters is the quality of our relationships. Individually and communally we are only as good as our ability to build effective and loving relationships with others. Through relationships that we build connections. Through relationship, that weave webs of mutual support based on the simple notion that my prospering is dependant on my concern for your wellbeing.

The world is sorely in need of receiving the Signs of the Kingdom. These signs become our expectations for the continued realization of the Kingdom of God, something that is already here as well as still in the process of unfolding. As Episcopalian Christians, we are called individually to lives lived in, and through community defined by right relationships, not shared belief. We live out the Signs of the Kingdom through the promises of our Baptismal Covenant http://www.episcopalchurch.org/page/baptismal-covenant  .

Like the woman at the well, may our neighbors say to us: It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Saviour of the world.

History 

Summary of Milestones in Christian History

First 150 years from 33 The Birth of the Church on the Day of Pentecost begins a process of growth with the Gospel. Centered on Jerusalem it begins to be preached further afield in different parts of the Greek and Roman world by the Apostle Paul and his companions. By the early part of the 2^nd Century we have the recognizable shape and feel of growing Christianity that we find in the New Testament.

150-800. With the conversion of the Empire to Christianity under the Emperor Constantine in 312 Christianity gradually evolves from a disparate number of independent church communities, each with their own history connecting them to one of the original Apostles, into becoming an official religion of the Roman Empire. Now theology and politics flow in the same channel and the political needs of the Emperor begin to impact the Church.  This is a period of consolidation and considerable conflict as four emergent centers of Christianity known as patriarchates: Rome-Western Europe, Constantinople-Asia Minor, Antioch-Syria and the Middle East, and Alexandria-Egypt and North Africa, struggle for power and political influence as theological differences take-on political ramifications. In the interests of stability, successive Emperors summon the bishops to sit in Ecumenical Council.  There were seven Ecumenical Councils, each addressing the long-running disputes. The main areas of controversy concerned: the nature of God – three persons in one God i.e. the Trinity, the relationship between the human and divine natures in Jesus, and the development of the Canon of Scripture which required decisions as to which books were to be included and which to excluded. To us the passion behind these disputes seems odd, but we need to remember that theology can no longer be separated from political struggles.

1053 This is the year of the Great Schism, which separated the Greek-speaking Eastern regions of Christianity from the Latin-speaking Western region. This cultural division reflected the growing dissonance between the Roman Empire’s Western and Eastern administrative and linguistics sections. From this point-on, Christianity is no longer a unified, if fractious whole, but two mutually antagonistic branches. We see a growing ‘catholic’ identity centered on the Pope, the Patriarch of Rome in the Latin speaking West, alongside several Greek speaking ‘orthodox’ identities divided between the patriarchates of Constantinople, Antioch, and Alexandria.

The Reformation Upheavals

1517 Martin Luther in challenging the sale of indulgences sparks the first phase of the Reformation. The Reformation is a theological reform movement, but its roots lie in the growth of an urban, economically powerful, and increasingly educated, middle class in Northern Europe, which bitterly resented the financial burden of the Church taxes levied by Rome.

1522 First Bible German Bible (Gutenberg Bible) and in 1526 the first Bible in English (Tyndale Bible). 

1533  Henry VIII divorces Catherine, his first wife thus triggering the start of the English Reformation. Unlike the Continental Reformation of Luther, Calvin, and others, Henry’s Reformation is primarily political, not theological. Already Defender of the Faith, Henry declares himself Supreme Head of the Church in place of the Pope. The Church in England now becomes the Church of England, maintaining its essential catholic theology and structure. Henry abolishes the Monasteries in England from 1536 onwards. This is a move motivated by a desire to get his hands on their wealth, rather than Church reform. 1549 the First Book of Common Prayer published by archbishop Thomas Cranmer is the first evidence of more serious theological and liturgical reform.

1547-1558  is a period of instability with more Protestant reforms under Edward VI, followed by a return to Roman Catholicism under Mary I. The protestant direction of the Church becomes settled with the accession of Elizabeth I.

1558- 1601 is the period of the Elizabethan Settlement establishing the Church of England as we know it and the emergence of Anglican identity. Anglican identity rests on being the middle way between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism. Anglican tradition is both catholic in structure and reformed in theological emphasis. This is a crucial period in our history. You may have wondered why the Episcopal Church emphasises its identity as a community of worship, tolerant of differences in theological emphasis and outlook? It stems from the historical accident of this period when everyone regardless of theology or politics had to belong to the same church. The experience of people who agreed about little, sitting alongside one another in the same pews, meant that identity had to rest on relationships structured around common worship, rather than shared belief. Over time the magic of the Book of Common Prayer molded a community of common worship, which is the unique foundation of Anglican identity.

1611 sees the publication of the King James Bible, named after James I. James continues the Elizabethan Settlement. The KJ Bible becomes the most formative religious text for the English-speaking world.

1611-1642 is a period of religious flowering under the inspiration and scholarship of a group of bishops known as the Caroline (Carolus the Latin for Charles) Divines. They represent the classical period of Anglican spirituality. This flowering takes place against the growing political crisis between Charles I and his many Parliaments.

1642–1660 marks the English Civil War and the establishment of the Commonwealth under Cromwell following the execution of Charles I. During the Commonwealth the Church of England was abolished and Anglican identity suppressed.

1660 sees the restoration of the Monarchy and the Church with the return of Charles II accompanied by many bishops and priests who had fled to France in 1642.

1662 a new Book of Common Prayer is published for the purpose of reestablishing a strong Anglican identity. In the Church of England 1662 is still the authorised Book of Common Prayer.

1600-1776  covers the period of initial settlement of the 13 American Colonies. While many Puritan and other religious dissidents fled England to settle in the New England colonies, the Church of England became firmly Church in the Mid-Atlantic and Southern colonies. This period ends with the War of Independence.

1784 Following the Revolution, Samuel Seabury becomes the first bishop consecrated for the newly formed American Episcopal Church. He was consecrated in Aberdeen by the bishops of the Scottish Episcopal Church. Seabury was consecrated in Scotland by the Scottish Episcopal bishops, who had already separated from the Church of England, because he was unable to take the Oath of Allegiance to the King demanded by the Archbishop of Canterbury. In 1789 the first American Book of Common Prayer is published. The New American Book of Common Prayer takes follows more closely the Scottish prayer book as a result. The first decades of the Episcopal Church saw growing tension between the episcopally minded Anglicans and the Methodist societies. The Methodist societies had been part of the Church of England in the Colonies and represented a revivalist low church tradition among the rural population, esp. in the South. Seabury’s refusal to ordain Methodist lay preachers without a university education, resulted in the Methodist societies leaving the Episcopal Church to form their own church. A great swathe of the rural population thus left the Episcopal Church, leaving it concentrated in the urban centers of the East Coast.

 The Three Legged Stool 

This is the name given to a distinctive characteristic of Anglican Tradition. The three legs are Scripture, Tradition, and Reason. Anglicanism maintains these in a mutual tension with no one aspect being more important than the other two. In Protestantism, Scripture is the most important aspect, in fact the sole defining aspect – sola scriptura –only scripture. In Roman Catholicism Tradition is the dominant aspect.

Scripture is the Bible. Tradition is how the Church interpret the Bible and theology, i.e. the teaching of the Church,  Reason relates to a sense that there are ways of perceiving God and affirming the existence of God that are independent of scriptural revelation. In viewing the goodness of creation and the natural world, human beings become aware of a higher set of values such as love, beauty, honesty and human integrity-nobility – a kind of natural law.

In Anglicanism, Scripture is held in check by being subjected to the understanding of the community of faith i.e. Tradition. This means that the community of the faith – the Tradition of the Church, decides what importance to give to various parts of Scripture and is able to declare parts of Scripture no longer binding, e.g. the N.T. texts supporting slavery. But Tradition is subject to the independent challenge of Scripture, particularly the Gospel. Custom and practice of belief has to sit under the critical evaluation of the Gospel. Both are subjected to the assessment of Reason. Reason challenges the interpretation of Scripture and Tradition when either fly in the face of the higher values of the natural law.

Scripture, Tradition, Reason and the pendulum swing of history 

A simple way to view the major shifts in Anglican Church history is to see them as a playing-out of the tensions between the three legs of the stool. Inevitably one leg either grows too long or begins to shrink, either way causing the stool to lose its stability. This results in a correction that returns, for a time at least, some stability to the stool.

The English Reformation period from 1533-1660 represents a period in which Scripture and Tradition are in serious tension. The movement begins with an elevation of the importance of Scripture as a challenge to Tradition. Remember Tradition is not everything the church does, but represents the major emphases that shape understanding and practice. The dominance of Tradition, always more important in Roman Catholicism, makes sense when most people can’t read and have no direct access to the Bible. In this context, Tradition as represented by the clergy dictates the content of faith. Once people start to read the Bible, esp. in their own language, it then becomes possible to challenge Tradition, to challenge the stranglehold of clerical power. This is the underlying dynamic of the Reformation, which elevates Scripture’s position as a counter to Tradition. During this period the balance of power shifts back and forth. Tradition is challenged by people’s direct access to Scripture. This results in a reform of Tradition and an example of this is the first Book of Common Prayer in 1549. The BCP has three major revisions (1552, 1559, 1662) during this period in response to the tensions between Scripture and Tradition. During this period the extreme scriptural party, known as the Puritans, are in continual struggle with the more centrist Anglican and Calvinist theologies represented in the mainstream church. An important development of this struggle led to the Puritan emigrations to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in search of a place to practice their form of extreme Biblical Protestantism, and in turn to persecute others who disagreed with them. Political (King verses Pope, King verses Parliament) and economic (rise of educated wealthy merchant class) drivers of social change are all mixed up with theological reform (Protestant direction) and counter reform (Catholic direction) in this period.

After 1660 and throughout the 17^th and 18^th Centuries there is a tension between the growing influence of Reason spurred-on by the beginnings of the scientific revolution. Remember that Newton and Bacon and all the great scientific figures of this time are all Anglican priests because until the early 19^th Century to teach in the Universities required ordination. Throughout this period the importance of Scripture wanes dramatically and Tradition and Reason are in principle contention. Tradition fights a series of losing battles and Reason triumphs with the forces of the Enlightenment. By the latter part of the 18^th Century, Reason is supreme and this is represented by a movement known as Deism. Deism replaces the Christian revelation of God with God as the supreme architect of the Universe. Creation comes to be seen as a clockwork mechanism over which God reigns from a distance leaving human agency, guided by reason to keep things in good running order. Church architecture follows a return to Classical Greek and Roman styles. American civic architecture, established in this period, displays the strong influences of the Roman Imperial style of domes, columns, and heroic friezes.  The Founding Fathers were not as often contended today, good Evangelicals, but Deists. The God of Jefferson and Washington was the God of rationalism, the natural laws of self and social improvement, and political and scientific enlightenment.

1790’s to 1850 are dates marking a broad period when Scripture begins to challenge the triumph of Reason. John and Charles Wesley represent a growing desire to return to Scripture and the centrality of a heart-felt relationship with Christ that is capable of changing lives. This is the period of the rise of Methodism and the Evangelical Revival. This very necessary swing back toward the importance of Scripture and personal piety lays the foundations for great social reforms, the greatest of which are: the abolition of slavery movement, Quaker led reform of the prisons, and the abolition of child labor. The evangelical God is a God who is no longer dispassionate, overseeing from a distance, but a God who cares about and is involved in the plight of individuals.

1840’s to Mid 20^th Century. Nothing is more certain that after a period of steady rise in the assertion of Scripture over Reason a swing in the direction of Tradition was inevitable. The Oxford Movement was a reassertion of Tradition, which led to a revaluing of Anglicanism’s catholic heritage. The emphasis of this movement marks a return to the centrality of liturgical worship as prescribed by the Book of Common Prayer. This essentially conservative Tradition-focused swing expressed itself in a revival of the medieval Gothic style of architecture, and a return to ‘catholic’ ceremonial. Throughout the period of Reason, the main Sunday service would have been Morning Prayer with a very long sermon. The Evangelicals didn’t favor liturgical worship much at all, preferring revivalist styles of gathering with fervent hymn singing. The Oxford Movement, reestablishes the Eucharist as the first service on a Sunday with Sung Matins remaining the main service, now much embellished by the addition of ceremonial and music etc. Eventually, in many Anglo-catholic Churches Matins was replaced by a return of the High Mass – a very elaborate celebration of the Eucharist. Parishes described as ‘Broad Church’, which had stood out against the Anglo-catholic movement became influenced by the Parish Communion Movement following the First World War. By the middle of the 20^th Century Eucharistic Anglican liturgy, as we now know it, had fully returned to most parts of the Church. This ‘liturgical’ development was finally completed in the Episcopal Church with the 1979 revision of the Book of Common Prayer instituting changes to the structure of the Eucharist as the fruit of the liturgical reform movement of the Second Vatican Council.

The Mid 20^th – 21^st Century is a period of balanced equilibrium between the three legs of Scripture, Tradition, and Reason. Scripture was strengthened by contributions from the new academic disciplines of history, archeology, and textual analysis. It became possible to understand the complex textual and historical developments that produced the books of the Bible in a new and deeper way. We will look at this in greater detail when we come to study the Bible. Tradition now played a central role, not only in stressing the importance of Eucharistic-centered liturgical worship, but Tradition as the expression of the mind of the community of faith built-on developments in understanding and interpreting Scripture. For instance, Anglican Churches came to understand the changing relationship between men and women as a shift in Scriptural emphasis. More recently, the emancipation of LGBT people follows a similar pattern. Tradition also encouraged a return to spirituality and the importance of a devotional life. Reason brought new ways of making sense of the Christian Faith in the light of scientific progress. This has allowed Anglicans to accept that the value of science lies in its observational and explanatory approach to the material world. The value of religion lies not in a competing explanatory power but as the rich source for truth as history and truth as metaphor.

The two most important days for baptism in the Christian calendar are the Baptism of Christ, and at the Easter Vigil, on the eve of Easter Day. Today we celebrate the Baptism of Christ, and we have the privilege of performing several baptisms.  

What is Baptism?

On the 25^th of December we began a period of celebration marking the birth of Jesus. The accounts in Matthew and Luke of the birth of Jesus offer us an enchanted[1] picture of the the Creator of the world entering into the experience of being part of the Creation. Christians know this event as the Incarnation or the birth of Jesus. The Incarnation divides history into a time before, and time after. Because through the birth of Jesus, God shows us that being human is to be most like God.

We live in the time after the Incarnation – the entry of God into creation through the birth and life of Jesus Christ. We are born into that changed relationship between God and humanity.  In coming to John The Baptist to be baptized Jesus is acknowledging the full implication of being God’s Son. As it was for Jesus, so it is for you and me. When we come to baptism we self-consciously accept that to be human is to be most like God. From that point-on our lives change because we live with a new intention. There is a difference between being human and becoming Christian. If being human is being most like God, to become Christian is to know we are most like God. This knowledge or self-awareness is what makes a difference to the way we live our lives in the world.

Much of popular American Christianity today tends to believe that we become individually saved through the washing away of our sins by baptism. This popular expression of Christianity emphasizes baptism as the conscious decision of the individual believer. Believer’s baptism implies that through baptism we individually purchase a ticket to salvation.

Episcopalians believe that in God’s mind we are already saved, for to be human is to be most like God. However, a gift must first be accepted to become real. The difference between popular and historic Christianity lies in the understanding of this acceptance.

As Christians of the historic tradition, while baptism is our individual response, baptism is not a ticket to individual salvation. Baptism is entry into the faith of the community that is already saved. Rather than being saved as individuals we are saved through our participation in the life of the Church, the Church as the saved and saving community of Christ in the world. 

What is the Church?

William Temple was Archbishop of Canterbury for a relatively short time during some of the darkest years of the Second World War. Although only Archbishop for a few years he was one of the towering Anglican thinkers of the 20^th Century. He once commented that the Church is the only society that exists for those who are not its members. Perhaps this helps explain the Anglican Tradition’s rather odd view of boundaries. For nothing seems easier than to become a member of the Episcopal Church. In fact, just showing up on a regular basis might easily result in your slipping seamlessly into membership.

Most Christian churches define membership through a shared sense of what they believe. In contrast the Episcopal Church uses common worship, rather than shared belief as the qualification for membership. If you can worship with us, allowing yourself to be quietly molded by the rhythms and cadences of the Book of Common Prayer, then you are welcomed as one of us.

Archbishop Temple’s comment – the Church is the only society that exists for those who are not its members makes for fuzzy boundaries between Church and the World. At one level it means that Episcopalians do not draw a sharp distinction between the Church and the world. The Church is in the world not as the ark of salvation as old fashioned Roman Catholics were taught to believe, but as the ark of witness to the presence of God’s saving activity in the world. This activity precedes our arrival and extends well beyond our boundaries.

Episcopalians are Christians of the historic Catholic and Apostolic tradition of Christianity, defined over a period of the first 600 years of the Church, give or take a century,. Although our boundaries are somewhat permeable, it does not follow that there is no formal entrance to belonging. We welcome everyone who wants to grow into the historic tradition of being Christian and in worship all are welcome, because worship rather than belief is what leads us to gateway of baptism. Through baptism we enter into the practice of the Christian life.

Our Common Purpose 

Baptism is an event that happens in a moment of time. Yet, it is also more than this momentary event. Baptism is a daily process of living our faith in the world. We articulate our common purpose as the baptized in what’s known as the Baptismal Covenant. Every time a person is baptized we all participate in the Holy Spirit’s action through five promises that reaffirm our own baptism and recommit us to a particular way of living in the world.

1. We promise to be faithful in our participation in the life of the Church. In other words we not only show up on Sunday morning but we try to practice being Christians through participation in the church’s common prayer, seven days a week. These days we can have portable access to templates for morning and evening prayer along with daily lectionary through apps on our smart phones and tablets and wedsites on our desktops.
2. We promise to fight evil and when we fail, to return to the struggle through the path of repentance. Accepting failure with a sense of sorrow that reinvigorates us to pick ourselves up and try again is crucial.
3. We promise to share with everyone the good news that in Christ, God has already saved the whole world. Sharing Christ is not a matter of words shouted through a megaphone on a street corner. Christ is shared when the quality of our living makes others want what we seem to have.
4. We promise to serve Christ, by having a regard for our neighbor as much as we love ourselves. We have to take ourselves seriously. Until we do we cannot know what it means to serve others.
5. Finally, we promise to strive for justice and peace in the world and to respect the dignity of all human being. In every generation that last promise is a real challenge. For it requires us to go beyond our easy accommodation to the values of culture that gloss-over patterns of privilege and discrimination that are the roots of oppression and inequality. 

As Christians of the historic tradition of Christianity, we understand baptism as entry into membership of the Church. As Episcopalians, we trust the truth behind Archbishop Temple’s statement that the Church is the only society that exists for those who are not its members. This can make for fuzzy boundaries, but maybe this is the price we gladly pay in order to advance the coming of the kingdom!

Through baptism we participate in the life of the saving community. This community commonly called the Church witnesses that in Christ, salvation is God’s freely offered gift to all, no strings attached. We are saved because first God has love us. Yet, gifts can only be offered. To become effective they need to be accepted. Baptism is our acceptance. To be human is to be most like God, yet, to be baptized is to recognize what it means to be most like God. That meaning is made clear as we struggle to live faithfully and courageously. What does living faithfully and courageously look like? It is each day to be mindfully aware of the promises of our Baptismal Covenant, made at our own baptism, and reaffirmed every time we stand in solidarity as a community with those to be baptized.

Short recap

Over the last three weeks as we have journeyed through Advent I have been exploring my concept of a trans-generational vision[1]. My concept of the trans-generational vision rests on the vision not simply spanning across the generations, but on it remaining as true and relevant in each succeeding generation as it has been in the generations previous. The task in each generation is to engage the vision so as to unlock its truth within the particular context of the here and now.

Going back to the celebration at the end of November of Christ the King as the culmination of another Church year, I noted [2] that Christ the King is less a celebration of an individual kingship of Jesus than it is a recognition that in Jesus we have the arrival of the Kingdom of God. In Jesus the Kingdom breaks into temporal time in a new, and for Christians, a final way. From this point onwards, the Kingdom is here. Yet, the Kingdom challenges our concept of linear time, for while it is already here as manifested in its signs of a call to love and justice, it remains for us, within the boundaries of temporal time, not yet complete. Hence we talk about the Kingdom of God as being both present now – in temporal time, and yet in trans-generational vision terms it is still in the process of coming.

Narratives of the birth of Jesus

Matthew, and Luke, following Mark record the baptism of Jesus as an epiphany of Jesus as the Messiah. Matthew follows Mark more closely in locating this event within the context of the preaching of John the Baptist who, in temporal time is Jesus’ cousin, yet in trans-generational vision time is Elijah come again announcing Jesus as the Messiah. While Luke makes no mention of John in his account, for Mark the baptism of Jesus comes right at the very start of his gospel account. Matthew and Luke on the other hand begin their gospel accounts with the story of the Nativity of Jesus.

We tend to conflate the Matthean and Lucan accounts failing to notice that they are both quite different. Only Luke has Shepherds and only Matthew has Wise Men. In Luke the focus is on Mary. In Matthew the focus is on Joseph. Matthew mentions Herod and the danger he poses to the newborn Jesus. Luke makes no mention of this.

The Lectionary for 2013 gives us Matthew’s account of the Nativity. In Matthew’s account the trans-generational vision is colored in particularly Jewish hues.  Matthew’s is a very Jewish gospel where Jesus is portrayed as the new Moses who comes to bring a new Law, a law no longer confined to the Jews, but a new Law, inviting all people to enter into the promises of the Kingdom. This inclusive invitation is a characteristic of the trans-generation vision as it emerges in the prophecies in the Book of Isaiah. Isaiah’s hope re-emerges in the Christian era as hope of inclusion, realized.

Another important characteristic of Matthew’s account of the birth of Jesus is the focus on Joseph, the righteous Jewish man. Rather like Matthew and his community, Joseph is challenged to transcend the limitations of his Jewish culture-bound worldview in order to hear God’s very particular call to him. Many commentators explore the huge cultural implications for Joseph in his decision to go through with marriage to a pregnant Mary.

In adding the Wise Men and Herod into his account, Matthew asserts his Jewish identity through the implicit association between the infant Jesus and the infant Moses. Moses was also born into a dangerous situation with Pharaoh seeking the death of all newborn Israelite males. Moses’ mother conceals her son in the bulrushes, where ironically he is discovered and adopted by Pharaoh’s daughter. Joseph, soon after the birth of Jesus must flee with his wife and son from Herod’s murderous rage. He takes the familiar refugee road to Egypt. Given the significance of the connections being drawn between Jesus and Moses the irony of Egypt as a safe refuge is not lost on Matthew, nor should it be lost on us, given the current tragedy of the refugee crisis in Syria and elsewhere in our own world.

The kingdom of God

The Kingdom of God:

• Comes in the form of a child, born in obscurity, and surrounded by circumstances that place him in considerable life-danger.
• It comes as a challenge to conventional cultural values as represented by a righteous man Joseph. God calls Joseph beyond his conventional expectations of how things should be and to step beyond the security of what he knows and expects into the considerable risk of actions that carry unknown consequences.
• It comes through a young woman whose conceiving of a child is the result of a mysterious and as some contend, a miraculous process, flying in the face of the normal laws of biology. 

What matters here is how we in our own time and place receive the trans-generational vision of the Kingdom in order to unlock the truth of the Incarnation for a world in desperate need of its Good News. In this task we are burdened by the  thinking of modernity, shaped by a scientific revolution that has conditioned us to assess any claim as either true or false according to our capacity, now much enhanced by technology, to verify its veracity through external observation.

The fallacy of true or false

Matthew nor Luke construct Jesus’ birth narratives in order to articulate a true or false dichotomy. Neither of them write from a place of ignorance with regard to the biology of procreation. It is just that both Matthew and Luke hold a pre-scientific view of truth. Unlike ours, theirs concept of truth is more nuanced. They hold an enchanted[3] understandings of truth in which the everyday is charged with the mysterious and inexplicable action of God.

For Matthew and Luke the virginal conception is a truth, which is neither affirmed nor denied on the basis of its probability or improbability, as seen from the perspective of everyday experience. Truth emerges through events that ordinarily are improbable because such truth invites us to move beyond the blinkers imposed upon us by  the confines of an everyday experience that is too small for us. The paradox of modern life is that now free to move about the external world in ways unimaginable to even our parent’s generation, we nevertheless carry around within us an ever shrinking capacity for imagining ourselves in the world.

A truth for today.

The Incarnation is the powerful truth that has never been more needed by our own world today. The Incarnation as truth-claim does not rely on us having to accept or deny the veracity of the seemingly supernatural elements in the birth narratives. The supernatural within these narratives has no explanatory function at all. Rather the mystery which shrouds reported events has a protective function that prevents any one generation dumbing-down the mystery of God’s actions only to that which is capable of rational comprehension.

In Matthew and Luke the function of the narrative of the birth of Jesus is to point us to the realization that at a certain point in the unfolding of the trans-generational vision of creation, the Creator voluntarily becomes subject to the limitations of being part of the Creation. The Creator enters into within the experience of the Creation. The how of this happening is beside the point of the story.

I believe the function of the narratives of the birth of Jesus is to attest that being human, fully human, reveals something fundamental about nature of God. The trans-generational Messianic vision now anchored in the events of the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus the Messiah is the way God calls us to live out the fullness of our humanity as an expression of an essential truth that we are made in the image of the unseen God.

As human beings we are made in the image of God. We are invited through the Incarnation to value ourselves and the created world, because God clearly does so. When we follow God’s lead, we labor with God to continually co-create a world fit for human beings to live in. This is a world shaped by the signs of the Kingdom.

In the Kingdom of God despite appearances to the contrary, love is stronger than hate, the passion for justice confronts systems of injustice enshrining self-interest, exclusion of others as an expression of our fear gives way to a spirit of generous inclusion of all.

In our own time following the cataclysm of two world wars, we once dreamed of a better world captured by the phrase a land fit for heroes to live in.  As the radical in-breaking of the Kingdom of God, the Incarnation – the birth of Jesus as Messiah, is God’s way of showing us what it means to be fully human, and what a world fit for human beings to thrive in, might look like!

Random Thoughts

Like many of you I grew up with the two-year Lectionary cycle from the Book of Common Prayer, in which the Third Sunday of Advent was the Sunday on which we finally got to direct attention more specifically to the coming event – the birth of Jesus as a babe in Bethlehem. This is why the pink candle in the Advent Wreath sits in third place. For the last two Sunday’s we have focused on the coming of Jesus as Messiah in what I referred to last week as the trans-generational vision, a vision so clearly articulated by the prophet Isaiah in his dream of a future in-breaking of the Kingdom of God.

This Sunday will be my last stint in the pulpit for a while. Next Sunday Canon Bill Rhodes gets to talk about what, half-consciously, I had been looking forward to talking about, i.e. the message of the Angel Gabriel to the young girl Mary about the coming birth of her son. I will be taking a short break between Christmas and New Year and Deacon Myra Kingsley will be sharing the Word on the 29^th December. On the 5^th January Father Troy Mendez, the incoming Dean of Trinity will be with us.

So it was with a little disappointment that I was jerked back to the reality of the three-year Ecumenical Lectionary which keeps the joyful Annunciation stuff to the last Sunday of Advent. This change, although a little unsettling, emphasizes the counter cultural message of the Church in a world. Around us the world has already virtually celebrated Christmas already with lights, trees and infuriating popular Christmas music. The rich repertoire of Advent music has been lost to our popular culture. Maybe it never noticed it. At least, I keep hoping for some traditional carols in place of endless Bing Crosby and his more contemporary ilk.

Well, one thing is for certain at Trinity, we are not lighting the pink candle today. It now needs to wait to the last Sunday of Advent. My residue of brain-dead Anglo-Catholicism balks at such a radical departure from tradition, yet it is only sensible to keep the consistency between Advent Wreath and Lectionary.

Today we jump way ahead from chapter 11 to chapter 35 in Isaiah. Last week, I referred to the dream Isaiah has during the Assyrian siege of Jerusalem in 715 BCE as a trans-generation vision. By this, I mean that it is as true now as it was then because even though much time as elapsed between 715 BCE and today, Isaiah’s words remain a pertinent reminder of the way the Kingdom of God plays with time. Historically speaking we stand after the events of the Incarnation and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, through which God dramatically fulfills the promised in-breaking of the Kingdom.  Isaiah stand before them, nevertheless we are connected by this trans-generational vision because for us the Kingdom, while here, is still in the process of becoming, in the same sense as it was for Isaiah, a here, but not yet ,kind of thing.

Within the book of Isaiah we now jump some 200 years. While chapter 35 is a continuation of the vision of chapters 2-11, it’s not the same person speaking. Chapter 35 is the voice of the man scholars refer to as Second Isaiah. Second Isaiah, writing in the name of the great prophet 200 years and several generations earlier picks up the thread of the trans-generational vision in the midst of another crisis, this time the invasion by Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians. The Babylonians succeed where the Assyrians had earlier failed to capture Jerusalem. In 715 the Northern Kingdom of Israel was destroyed. The southern Kingdom of Judah is spared only to fall victim to a similar fate in 597 BCE. Now, Jerusalem is destroyed and the southern Kingdom’s leaders taken into 50–60 years of exile in Babylon.

Second Isaiah, like his forerunner, is still speaking out of turn. He is still speaking against the grain of time. In the midst of impending crisis and this time doom, he still finds the voice to speak-out the dream of expectation. At the time of the prophecy this is a continuation of an expectation of improbable things[1]:

The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad, the desert shall rejoice and blossom; like the crocus it shall blossom abundantly and rejoice with joy and singing. … Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy.

Hope is a many paradoxical thing

Last week Matthew’s Gospel introduced us to the figure of John the Baptist. Today we jump forward seven verses to the time. Herod has imprisoned John and as John languishes helplessly in prison, he hears reports of the things Jesus is doing. John, in ordinary time is the cousin of Jesus. John in the trans-generational vision is the forerunner announcing the coming of the Messiah. John is deeply disillusioned by Jesus’ performance as Messiah. Jesus’ interpretation of what it means to usher in the reign of God is not at all what John is expecting. John’s message was a call to repentance with the promise of dire consequences for those who failed to heed the call. This is a message still much favored by religious figures who like to cast themselves in John’s image of the religious firebrand. His was an expectation of the Messiah as a mighty warrior returning to set things right.

John somehow gets word to his disciples telling them to go ask Jesus what on earth does he thinks he is doing? The accusation is barely veiled in the question: are you the one who is to come or are we to wait for another? Jesus does not say to John’s disciples: you go tell John he can’t speak to me that way. Instead he asked them to go and tell John what they see and hear: that the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. Note that in answering John, Jesus is paraphrasing the prophecy of Second Isaiah we heard in the Old Testament lection for today: Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy. Jesus is clearly mindful here of the trans-generational vision of the coming of the Kingdom.

There is a sting in the tail of Jesus’ message to John for he ends it with: and blessed is anyone who takes no offence at me. Jesus immediately affirms John’s importance in the trans-generational vision. John is more than a prophet, for he is Elijah come again. Jesus says that as human beings go, there is no-one more important than John the Baptist. Yet, the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he. The rebuke is clear. It’s a rebuke for John. Yet, it echoes down the trans-generational vision as a rebuke for you and me. Expectations for the coming of the Kingdom and the signs of its arrival are not necessarily in sync with one another.

For two weeks I have been quoting from a section from T.S. Eliot’s poem East Coker. In it Eliot reminds us that while hope is important, to hope necessarily will involve hoping for the wrong thing. It’s inevitable that as human beings we will latch onto a set of expectations that, like those of John the Baptist open us to the inevitability of disappointment and maybe even disillusionment. Like John our hopes are a projection only of what we already know. Because our expectations are so conditioned by our sense of the possible they are too limited to be accurate signs of the Kingdom’s coming. Remember Isaiah’s dream of the Kingdom is a dream of things manifestly improbable to any rational view of things. The result of our disillusionment is that like for John, Jesus becomes for us a source of offence.

Living in the paradox of hope and the coming of the Kingdom

I arose on Saturday morning around 5.30am to begin to put some thoughts to electronic paper in preparation for Sunday’s sermon. As I made coffee I switched on the radio. Alongside urgent reports on Christmas shopping trends, the NPR end of year pledge drive urging me to take advantage of the tax code because of course, I require financial compensation for any acts of generosity; there was a further report on the situation in Syria. As if the unspeakable brutality of the civil war were not enough, the weather is now conspiring to increase the burden of misery for the refugees, poorly clothed and house in the face of freezing conditions. My automatic response was to be filled with a sense of futility that compounds my guilt along with my sense of helplessness. In the face of such terrible suffering, not only in Syria and Iraq, but also currently in sub-Saharan and central Africa, and the anniversary of the slaughter of the innocents of Sandy Hook being marked by more gun violence in Colorado, I want to cry out: God, what on earth do you think you are doing? How can I hope for the coming of the Kingdom when everywhere I look I see signs that confirm the futility of such a hope. In my disillusionment Jesus the Messiah becomes a source of offence to me.

Expectation verses hope

My expectations have often been disappointed in life. My expectations often have turned out not only to be wrong, but too limited. Events have come about which have been so much richer and more fulfilling than anything I could have dreamed of if left to bring about only the contents of my own imagination. As I reflect on this in the light of my expectations of the kingdom I have to acknowledge that my sense of time frame is too limited. Like John I want to see what I expect to see, and I want to experience its fulfillment now! As I look back over my experience I can see a crucial distinction between what I shall call expectations and something else, which is more properly hope.

Hope is not the fulfillment of my optimism to come to directly experience the truth that things will be all-right in the end. Yet hope is, that things will be all-right in the end! In the meantime as my life journeys towards that ultimate realization I move from moment to moment propelled by more limited expectations, some of which are fulfilled while many others open me to repeated disappointment. Despite disappointment, even disillusionment, the long-term direction of my travel continues guided by the compass setting of hope.

How do we keep the long-term direction of travel fixed on the compass setting of hope? We do so as we come to see that the direction of travel set by hope is not detoured by disappointed expectations along the way. Paradoxically, it is fed and strengthened by repeated disappointment and disillusionment. Hope is the projection of longing born of two things. The first is faith. The Letter to the Hebrews explains faith as the realization of things as yet unseen. We trust and believe in developments and outcomes, which we cannot yet imagine. The second thing is dogged perseverance born out of our sense of loss and grief. Through perseverance fueled by a desire for things to be different we courageously act in the present time by performing acts of love, taking steps in solidarity with others, one act and one step at a time.

Word and action out-of-place

Isaiah’s vision of the Messiah goes against the grain of reasonable expectation.  It’s a word out-of-place. Jesus performed the signs of the Kingdom and these failed to realize John’s Hebrew, messianic desire for liberation from oppression. As Jesus tells the crowds, great though John is, his expectations precede the arrival of the Kingdom.

We are those who come after the in-breaking of the Kingdom event for Jesus is the Messiah. At one level, things don’t appear to have changed much. Yet, to be Christian is to believe that everything has changed. For within the reign of the Kingdom through our actions, our embodiment of the word and action that is out-of-place, our hopes and dreams ultimately contribute to its emerging. The fruits of Christian history are not as the cynics claim a legacy of hate and war. Those are endemic to the human condition, which when unredeemed is to act from fear and the hardness of heart. The fruits of Christian history are the advances of compassion and justice into a world, which in Jesus’ time knew neither. We may complain that its emergence is slow, but it is also unstoppable.

I keep reminding us that we have a part to play in the interpretation of the trans-generation vision of Isaiah in our own time. Our part is to take our place as baptized members of the community that continually speaks the word out-of-place, and acts against the grain of societal expediencies.

One of the great early figures of the anti-slavery movement was a woman named Sojourner Truth, a brilliant and indomitable slave woman who could neither read nor write but who was passionate about ending unjust slavery and second-class treatment of women. At the end of one of her antislavery talks in Ohio, a man came up to her and said, “Old woman, do you think that your talk about slavery does any good? Do you suppose people care what you say? Why, I don’t care any more for your talk than I do for the bite of a flea”.“Perhaps not”, she answered, “but, the Lord willing, I’ll keep you scratching”.

Barbara Lundblad commenting on this passage notes we must be determined and persistent fleas…Enough fleas biting strategically can make the biggest dog uncomfortable.  And if they flick some of us off but even more of us keep coming back with our calls, emails, visits, nonviolent direct action protests, and votes —we’ll win.[2] 

In Advent let our hope be encouraged by being taking our part in the unfolding of the trans-generational visions for the coming of the Kingdom. Along side Sojourner Truth, over a century later the theologian Paul Tillich wrote: that for which we long for into the future already conditions who we have become in the present. In the context of hope, the psychologist Alice Miller wrote: we are already who we have been waiting for. And the poet T.S. Eliot reminds us continually that although the human-conditioned objects of our hoping and loving will often be misdirected, hoping and loving come to ultimate fruition in the faithfulness of our waiting.

Just the facts

It’s always a little dangerous to allude in a sermon to anything from TV or cinema occurring much before the early 90’s because in a fast changing culture with increasingly diminished memory span, it’s the quickest way to date oneself as irrelevant. So let me explain that one of the oddities about growing up in New Zealand was that because we didn’t get TV until 1960 I grew up on a diet of American TV shows that by the 60’s and early 70’s were often at least 10 or more years old. I mention this to account for the fact it’s not that I am so old, but that I share the same TV memories as a generation of Americans much older than me. So with that qualifying explanation out of the way, some of you may remember Joe Friday, the hero of the long running detective series Dragnet. In what to us now seems an astonishing display of sexism, Friday implored his female witnesses to: give me the facts, Ma’am, just the facts. So here are some facts.

After the death of Solomon the Kingdom of Israel, which his father David had welded together out of the 12 tribes of Israel, split in two, with a northern kingdom of Israel with its capital at Samaria and a southern kingdom of Judah with Jerusalem as its capital. In 721 BCE, the Assyrian army captured the Israelite capital at Samaria and deported the king, nobility, and priesthood of the northern kingdom into captivity. This left only the poorest of the peasantry, who over time intermarried with the foreign peoples around them producing the racially mixed Samaritans we know about from Jesus’ day.

The virtual destruction of Israel left the southern kingdom, Judah, to fend for itself in the whirlwind of warring Near Eastern kingdoms. At the time of Samaria’s fall, there existed two kings in Judah — Ahaz and his son Hezekiah — who ruled as co-regents. Judah existed as a vassal to Assyria during this time and was forced to pay an annual tribute to the powerful empire.

In 715 BCE, following the death of Ahaz, Hezekiah became the sole regent of Judah and initiated widespread religious reforms, including the breaking of religious idols. He re-captured Philistine-occupied lands in the Negev-dessert, formed alliances with Ashkelon and Egypt, and made a stand against Assyria by refusing to pay tribute. In response, Sennacherib attacked Judah, laying siege to Jerusalem.

It’s in this political context that the prophet Isaiah proclaims his extraordinary vision of a future time when out of the ruined and burned stump of the once mighty Davidic kingdom there will spring a new shoot. The new shoot is a metaphorical allusion to the Messiah, the promised one. He will rise up to restore the fortunes of Israel. Last week we heard that when he comes swords will be beaten into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks. In the midst of impending crisis and destruction, Isaiah dreams of improbable things.

Moving beyond the facts

Today’s first lesson gives us more of Isaiah’s vision of improbable things. Isaiah envisions that:

the wolf will lie down with the lamb, the leopard with the kid, the calf and lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them.

What seems to me to be the most startling thing, another of the facts, as Joe Friday would say, is that Isaiah’s picture is of the Messiah coming not as a mighty warrior, but as a little child. It is not surprising that the early Christians understood this prophecy as a direct reference to Jesus’ birth and therefore, a powerful corroboration of their claim that Jesus was the promised one, the Messiah.

Last week, I noted that the season of Advent invites us to bold expectation, diligent preparation, and courageous and patient waiting. I return to my reference to the great theologian Paul Tillich who said: …if we wait in hope and patience, the power of that for which we wait is already effective within us. Those who wait in an ultimate sense are not that far from that for which they wait. 

Tillich’s is such an important message for us, for we are a people who no longer believe that we should wait for anything; so powerful is our need for immediate gratification. Consequently, our dreams are too small being too conditioned by so-called reality. In my view one of the characteristics of our current period is that we have lost the courage to dream, seeming to prefer the accommodation with a culture that is increasingly fearful.

So if we only expect the familiar, what we already know, then we are in real risk of bringing about a future that is simply a projection of our past. Expectation by its very nature must be of things that seem to us from our present vantage point improbable if not impossible. Advent reminds us that we must try to live life with more than an expectation of the future as a projection only of what we assume to be possible.  To do otherwise is to remain firmly within the limitation of past experience. In other words expectation is dreaming beyond Joe Friday’s, just the facts Ma’am.

What are we waiting for?

Christianity gives us a trans-generational vision, which is the dream of the coming of the Kingdom of God. It’s a vision that in each generation remains as authentic, valid and true, as it has ever been. Yet, we cannot accept a previous generation’s interpretation of that vision. We must engage with the Christian vision in order to unlock its truth for the particularity of our own time and place. Our Christian vision emerges out of the story of Jesus as Messiah. This story sets the agenda for our present-time where we must work tirelessly in the service of the Kingdom. The significance of the Kingdom of God is that it is both now, and yet to come.

Matthew’s Gospel reading for Advent II introduces us to the character of John the Baptist. John emerges in time and space within the unfolding of our trans-generational vision. In time and space, John is most popularly identified as the cousin of Jesus. In the trans-generational vision John symbolizes the return of the prophet Elijah, whom it was believed had to appear first to announce the arrival of the Messiah. John, in time and space, the cousin of Jesus now steps into Isaiah’s vision as the voice of one crying in the wilderness: prepare the way of the lord, make his paths straight. The blogger Bruce Epperly brings out the commonality and connections between John’s dream and our dream as he writes:

John dreamed of the peaceable realm and so do we. He never lived to see its full embodiment, but he planted seeds that enabled Jesus to move forward as its messenger and embodiment. John is Advent personified: he embodies the fierce urgency of the now, but not yet. He is impatient with our foolishness and sin, and wants us to be better. As Advent messenger, he knows that salvation occurs through the transformation of one person at a time. This very moment is the right time for us to let go of the past, turn away from our half-heartedness and complicity with injustice, and find a new pathway to God’s peaceable kingdom, one step and one breath at a time. http://www.patheos.com/blogs/livingaholyadventure/2013/12/the-adventurous-lectionary-the-second-sunday-of-advent-john-jesus-and-spiritual-friendship/

Our Christian vision has a past stretching a long way back through the prophecies of Isaiah and the other great prophets of Israel into the primal Genesis narratives of creation. This long, trans-generational vision becomes our Christian vision when it finds its anchor point in the Incarnation and Resurrection of Jesus as Messiah. In Christ, God came to dwell within the conditions of the creation. In Christ God has acted once and for all. Yet, once and for all is clearly not realized all in one fell swoop. The meaning of one fell swoop, is to accomplish everything that needs to be done at the same time and in the same moment. The Kingdom is here, and yet, its full meaning only unfolds over time.

Our expectations, if they are Kingdom shaped, will seem to us to be improbable, even impossible because only a Kingdom vision provides the courage and motivation to move beyond the limitations of imaginations conditioned by the familiarity of the past. There is a 21^st century chapter in the story of the unfolding of the Kingdom within which we have our crucial role to play.

The prophet Isaiah dreamed of a time when under the leadership of the most vulnerable and fragile of all God’s creatures – a nursing human child – the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of God as the waters cover the sea. John the Baptist understood that the Kingdom comes with a fierce urgency, with no time to waste. We dream our way forward guided by the expectations of the Kingdom unfolding through our welcoming it. To welcome the Kingdom means turning away from our half-heartedness and complicity with injustice, finding a new pathway to God’s peaceable kingdom, one step and one breath at a time (Epperly). 

Paul Tillich reminds us if we wait in hope and patience, the power of that for which we wait is already effective within us. Those who wait in an ultimate sense are not that far from that for which they wait. Alice Miller, one of the great psychologists of the 20^th century echoes Tillich when she says we are who we have been waiting for. To paraphrase T.S. Eliot: that which we hope and long for is made real only in the waiting (T.S.Eliot in East Coker). Expecting, preparing, waiting is our work in the season of Advent.