Sermon for 29 Dec 24 - Christmas 1

Readings:  1 Samuel 2: 18-20, 26; Psalm 148: Colossians 3: 12-17; Luke 2: 41-52

I want to go back to a Christmas 48 years ago.  Libbie and I were in Cooma with her family for Christmas.  Our daughter, Rowena, was not yet 1.  A few days after Christmas Day we all decided to drive up into the mountains for a family picnic.  There were three cars and as Libbie’s father then worked for the Kosciuszko National Park, he had a key to all the locked roads.  We drove up over Schlink Pass to an old Snowy construction hut named the Schlink Hilton.  It’s still there today.  It was very windy, so we decided to have our picnic in the hut – and a very good time was had by all eating and drinking good things.  We loaded up the cards and started down the road.  We looked around in the car – where was Rowena!?  We couldn’t see her.  So, we returned to the Schlink Hilton and found her straight away – sleeping peacefully in her bassinet in one of the rooms at the back of the hut so we didn’t disturb her during lunch.  We can relate to the sinking feeling Mary and Joseph must have had when they can’t find their son, who, it must be said, has grown rather rapidly.  We celebrated his birth only four days ago, and here he is at twelve years.  I commented the other day that one could be forgiven for thinking that the Lectionary seems all over the place in the Advent and Christmas seasons.  Next Sunday we’ll be back with the infant Jesus and the wise men as we celebrate Epiphany.

We’re in an in-between time, between Christmas and New Year; caught between the hope to keep the spirit of Christmas all year round and the often-fruitless compiling of New Year’s resolutions.  What might we take from the readings today.  Firstly, this is a very human story – something we can relate to – Mary and Joseph’s faithful observance of an important festival, the travel, the concern when they can’t find their son, the search, the relief when he is found, the admonition; “We’ve been looking for you for three days,  What on earth do you think you were doing?”; the precociousness, even arrogance of youth, “Why were you looking – didn’t you know I must be here”.  If at Christmas we are caught up in divine mystery – messages from angels to not be afraid, heavenly hosts singing “Glory to God in the highest” the willing participation of Joseph and Mary in God’s purposes, the wonder of the shepherds, in this story we’re very much reminded that Jesus is human – just like us.  Do we not say in the Creed every Sunday that Jesus” by the power of the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary, and became fully human”?

In looking at the readings from Samuel and in the Gospel, I think there is another aspect too. In them, we have the descriptions of two young men, both of whom were contemplating their future lives and vocations – Samuel, who becomes a great prophet, and Jesus, the son of Mary and Joseph, and God with us. In fact, Luke weaves images from the story of Samuel into his story – Hannah, Samuel’s mother is barren, just like Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist.  The Song of Mary has many similarities to the Song of Hannah, and as we’ve read this morning Samuel grows “in stature and favor with God and with the people” and Jesus increases “in wisdom and in stature and in divine and human favor.”

Surely rowing in wisdom and stature is one thing we can take from both readings.  Some commentators talk about Jesus physical stature.  I don’t think Luke means that at all myself.  Jesus grows naturally.  What is being described is stature of a different kind.  One commentator writes of “stature,” or largeness of spirit, that is, how much of the world in its wonderful variety and challenging contrast or the nuances in various situations you can embrace without losing your personal centre.   Persons of stature, he writes, have large images of God and God’s presence in our lives, and see God’s work on a vast cosmic canvas, rather than simply focused on the earth and human beings and individual salvation. People of stature in religion, politics, and business, look beyond their own interests and even the interests of their community and country to the good of the whole.  We can think of people of ethical or spiritual stature - and don’t we need them now, both nationally and internationally! 

Jesus’ experience in the temple can serve as a model for growing in wisdom and stature. On the verge of adulthood, Jesus is drawn to the temple for theological reflection and questioning. Attracted, lured even, by the opportunity to share in the wisdom of his faith, he forgets all about his parents and the rules of his household. Like his later forty-day spiritual retreat in the wilderness, Jesus’ three days in the temple were a pivotal point in his spiritual growth, and they are a guide for our own spiritual growth. Jesus grew in spiritual stature by claiming his faith tradition faithfully and then extending its boundaries to new horizons. Growing in wisdom and stature calls us to take our own faith seriously enough to study the scriptures, wrestle with traditional theological doctrines, explore new images of God, Christ, and salvation, and spend time in prayer, meditation, and service. A growing faith is not accidental but requires going regularly to our own “temple” – both physical and spiritual, I would suggest to listen, to ask, and to share.

As Christians, we are called to be people of spiritual stature; or you could say “large-souled persons.” In Philippians, the apostle Paul describes this in terms of having “the same mind that was in Christ Jesus.”[1] Colossians provides similar guidance for those who wish to embody Christ in thought, word, and deed. “Clothe yourselves with compassion . . . clothe yourselves with love.”[2] In other words, let your face to the world be one of love in action. To have the mind of Christ is to see Christ in everyone and treat everyone as if he or she is Christ’s beloved son or daughter.

Colossians also counsels us to “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly.”[3] Take time to listen to Christ’s presence within you in times of prayer and meditation. In every moment of life, the word of God wells up within us. God is always inspiring us, if we open our spirits to God’s leading. Through our prayer, worship, study, and reflection we hear and respond to that inner word of God.

What we need at the turn of the year is greater “stature.” So on this “low” Sunday, we can commit ourselves to a “high” spirituality. We can commit ourselves to daily practices so we increase in stature – to daily meditation, to hospitality and welcome, to a growing understanding of God through study, and to service that changes the world.  Then, we will grow with Jesus, and we will feel the spirit of the incarnation throughout the year, for we will, “grow in wisdom and stature and favor with God and humankind.”

© Rev’d Bill Crossman

 [1] Philippians 2:2

[2] Colossians 3: 12-14

[3] Colossians 3:16

Sermon for Christmas 2024

Last Friday evening for some reason I was at sixes and sevens a bit.  I wanted something to read.  I had four books on the floor by my bed, but they wouldn’t do.  I’d just read two of them and didn’t feel like picking up the other two.  So off to the bookshelf for something not too taxing.  I took down a collection of short stories I haven’t read for years; “Adventure Stories from the Strand”.  The Strand was a monthly magazine first published in 1891 and ran until 1950.   I looked at the contents page, and my eyes lighted on a story written by H.G. Wells in 1903 - Wells was known as “the father of science fiction”.   The story was titled “The Land Ironclads” and in it he does some military crystal ball gazing and forecasts the use of tanks in modern warfare.” Where’s he going with all of this?” many of you may beginning to think.  Bear with me.  In the story, none of the characters are named – perhaps, I think, to depict the de-humanising nature of warfare.  In the opening scenes, Wells writes this of one he describes as “the war correspondent”.  He was depressed.  He believed that there were other things in life better worth than having proficiency in war; he believed that in the heart of civilisation, for all its stresses, its crushing concentrations of forces, its injustice and suffering, there lay something that might be the hope of the world.[1]

Words for our times surely. Quite a few people comment to me about how depressing news bulletins are these days.  I think many around the world desperately long for some sense or vision of hope.  Whether it be people trapped in seemingly endless awful violence and conflict in and between Ukraine and Russia, Gaza, the West Bank, Israel, Lebanon and Yemen, Sudan and South Sudan.  In other places ordinary people struggle to survive under corrupt regimes where entire economies have been destroyed.  I saw a news bulletin the other evening about the human and societal destruction being wrought by gang warfare in Haiti.  Around the world we see the rise of right-wing populism, in my view a dangerous threat to properly functioning democracy. In the past week we’ve seen the dreadful loss of life at the Magdeburg Christmas Market in Germany, and the suffering following the earthquakes in Vanuatu.  Many are worried about approaching bushfire and flood seasons, others carry their private grief of illness or loss. In all this a sign, even a glimpse of hope can literally be lifesaving.  Among the many great gifts of Christmas is the gift of hope, please pray that those who see no hope may catch something of the hope of the world whose coming we celebrate each Christmas.  In the Christ Child we pray that that the light of hope may shine brightly for them.

Light, of course, has always been associated with the joy of Christmas.  The prophecy of Isaiah – “the people who walked in darkness have seen a great light”, or the light of the guiding star, or the glory of the Lord which Luke describes shining around the shepherds.  And it’s interesting, or at least I think it is, that amid all the joy and celebration we feel, the message of the angels to the shepherds is essentially the same as the message given separately to both Joseph and Mary in the gospel accounts leading up to the account of Jesus’ birth – and that message is “Do not be afraid.”  A former Archbishop of Canterbury, Archbishop Rowan Williams commented some years ago now that this message “Do not be afraid” is a “recurring motif in the Christmas stories, and a significant reminder that the overwhelming news of God the Saviour's coming is both all that the human heart could hope for and also something that powerfully disrupts the way the world goes and the way our lives go. There is something to be afraid of in the renewal of a world”[2]

On one hand, we may not be so keen on a renewal of a world when we think we’re OK – kind of.  If we are safe, secure comfortable, it’s possible that we may not be so keen on having God unexpectedly break into our world.  The stories surrounding Jesus’ birth have God breaking into the lives of Mary, Joseph, Mary’s relative Elizabeth and her husband Zechariah in extraordinary ways.  They were ordinary people, living ordinary lives and suddenly caught up in God’s wonderful purposes – and they really wondered what it was all about.  Why me?  Who am I?  –  they ask.  But the message comes – don’t be afraid.  All of us are like Mary and Joseph – ordinary people - and the wonder of Christmas is that we too can be caught up, if only for a time in God’s purposes – to hear the story again, to have our imaginations fired, our sympathies broadened, our harshness softened as we hear again the story of Christ’s birth.  The gospel reading reminds us that joy is not just a matter of circumstance or worldly success but emerges even in the most contrary environments. Jesus was born in Roman occupied Judea. They are the ones who order the census, no doubt so they can make sure everyone, even an ordinary man like Joseph pays tribute or taxes to the oppressor. Jesus’ birth took place in the humblest environment. Incarnation –– God coming to us in human form - God’s vision of possibility is another description I’ve read - is global, not restricted to the environments or communities we might think are the obvious ones. God comes to the weak as well as the strong; to the powerless as well as the powerful; to the foreigner as well as the neighbour.  The message to us is the same – Do not be afraid.  God is with us.  The Holy Child is the hope of the world.

There are many who do not want their worlds changed – particularly those who wield power and influence unjustly.  Like King Herod, they are threatened by faith in one who comes in weakness and vulnerability – who in his life of teaching showed there was a different way.  People can feel uncomfortable when religion makes a visible difference in public life.  A couple of weeks ago here in a sermon I quoted The Rev’d Geoffrey Studdert-Kennedy who wrote “Nobody worries about Christ as long as he can be kept shut up in churches. He is quite safe there.  But there is always trouble if you try to let him out.”[3]  Why is that I wonder.  What do they fear?  Loss of influence, loss of power – or are they thinking about bad stereotypes of Christianity we see too often in the media.  At the extreme, fear of genuine faith can lead to the unthinking violence of the religious extremist.

But there is nothing to fear because, again to paraphrase Rowan Williams, what happens when God comes to earth is not something like the first landing of an occupying army, who possesses land ironclads and wants to take all that is ours. The truth is as different as could be and the clue is in those simple words from St’ John’s Gospel, simple words that invite a lifetime's joyful reflection, 'The Word became flesh and lived among us'.[4]

God comes in stillness. He comes in dependency and weakness. He comes by God's absolutely free gift. Yet he comes from the heart of our own human world and life, from the womb of a mother, from the free love of Mary's heart given to God in trust.

As Christians, our faith does not need to carve territories to defend, nor do we need to mount campaigns to take over a potentially rebellious world and subdue it by force, although we must admit in times past Christians have used force supposedly in God’s name.  We simply witness to the world that the world will never be fully itself except in what Rowan Williams calls the glad receiving of God's presence and the recognition of the 'true light' at the centre of all human, all created life.  And it’s this glad receiving we celebrate at this holy season.  As humans, God calls us to a destiny more glorious than we can imagine.  We need not be afraid of this.

We don't have to fight for our claims in such a way that all the world sees is another power-obsessed and anxious human institution; we have only to let the Word be born in us and speak in us. In the stillness of this place, in the stillness of these next few moments, ask that God may give us grace to let Jesus Christ, his son, the Word made flesh as St. John calls him, be born again in us this Christmas, and live in us, and speak in us…………………………………………………………………..

Michael Leunig, the cartoonist, died just under a week ago. I felt pangs of sadness as I was a fan of his work and because he died on my birthday.  He could be savage and controversial and confronting.  But he could be whimsical, delightful and profound.  In a cartoon simply titled “Christmas” wrote these few lines with which I conclude.  We thought about them in our Advent Study Group the other day and thought, on balance, we could see reference to the Christ Child, the hope of the world being born in us.  He wrote:

I see a twinkle in your eye

So this shall be my Christmas star

And I will travel to your heart

The manger where the real things are.

And I will find a mother there

Who holds you gently to her breast

A father to protect your peace

And by these things you shall be blessed.

And you will always be reborn

And I will always see the star

And make the journey to your heart

The manger where the real things are.[5]

And may you all have a holy, happy and blessed Christmas.

 [1] Adventure Stories from the Strand The Folio Society Ltd., London. 1995 p90

[2] This and other references to Archbishop Rowan Williams from http://rowanwilliams.archbishopofcanterbury.org/articles.php/1620/christmas-sermon-2003.htm

[3] https://www.azquotes.com/author/32441-Geoffrey_Studdert_Kennedy

[4] John 1:14

[5] The Essential Leunig Viking, an imprint of Penguin Books, Melbourne, 2012 p257

 © Rev’d Bill Crossman

Sermon for Advent 4 - 22 Dec 24

Readings: Micah 5; 2-5a; The Song of Mary, Hebrews 10: 5-10; Luke 1: 39-45

We come to the fourth Sunday of Advent and to a lovely story in St. Luke’s Gospel – the story of the Visitation of Mary to her cousin Elizabeth.  In relationship to the gospels for the last two Sundays, it’s a kind of flash-back.  We’ve seen the adult John the Baptist on the second and third Sundays of Advent and now the focus shifts to John before his birth.  Luke opens his gospel with two stories – the annunciation of the birth of John the Baptist and the annunciation of the birth of Jesus.  The two are told as separate stories – with some common features; the angel Gabriel is the bearer of the news in both stories.  In our gospel reading this morning, the two stories come together.

 I began last week with a story from long service leave some years ago.  Perhaps I could return there for a moment.  Libbie and I had moved on to Italy from the United States.  We were in Florence – for many years we’d wanted to see the Uffizi Gallery and finally we were there – after two hours of queuing.  There are paintings by well-known great masters, of course – Leonardo, Botticelli among them.  I walked into one of the smaller rooms in the gallery and I happened to glance at a smaller picture just by the door – and I was just spellbound.  It was a painting of the Visitation - I recognized that immediately, but what held me in front of the picture for what seemed like ages was the depiction of the greeting between Mary and Elizabeth.  The picture was painted in 1503.  The colours were very strong, but there was incredible softness in the picture.  The artist was a Mariotto Albertinelli, whom I’d never heard of.  In one sense he was perhaps an unlikely artist to have painted such a scene.  A biography says of him:  “Mariotto was a most restless person and carnal in the affairs of love and apt to the art of living, and, taking a dislike to the studies and brain-wracking necessary to painting, being also often stung by the tongues of other painters, as is their way, he resolved to give himself to a less laborious and more jovial profession” So he opened a tavern. The biography goes on: “But at last the low life became an annoyance to him, and, filled with remorse, he returned to painting.[1]”    

I’m glad he did. The painting captures the moment of meeting – of recognition between Mary and Elizabeth.  They lean close to each other and grasp hands, Elizabeth touches Mary tenderly on the shoulder.  It’s easy to imagine they’re about to greet each other with a kiss. There is an amazing tenderness and grace in their moment of greeting – this moment of greeting between two humble women, ordinary women – and yet, there was to my mind when I saw it a wonderful transcendence about it as well.  I had the sense when I saw it that there was something much greater going on than just a greeting between two relatives. 

And of course, there is something much greater going on in our Gospel reading.  Luke doesn’t tell us why Mary sets out, yet one can imagine why, perhaps. Just before this episode, Mary has been visited by Gabriel, who announces to her that she will conceive and bear a son, despite her protest that she is a virgin, and her son will be called the Son of the Most High. Mary receives this startling news by saying “Let it me with me according to your word,” giving her “Yes” to God, and so co-creating with God the possibility of blessing and salvation. But because she is not yet married, to conceive and bear a son will put her in a very precarious social position in Nazareth, and probably a precarious position with Joseph as well—after all, it is in Matthew’s account that an angel appears to Joseph to assure him of Mary’s integrity; Luke leaves us to wonder how Joseph receives the news.  In one of the Advent studies from the ABM resource “Caravan” which re-imagines the stories of the incarnation in a contemporary Australian context, Joseph is a knock-about chippie who receives the news by letter.  He is confused, aching, angry, even furious and hurt.  Maybe Mary decides she needs the wisdom and guidance of an older woman, a trusted relative, who can understand her unusual situation. When Elizabeth hears Mary’s greeting, it touches off a series of recognitions. The “recognition scene” was a staple element in classic Greek literature, and Luke, being a fine storyteller in that style, uses that to good effect in his story. When Mary greets Elizabeth, the unborn John the Baptist in Elizabeth’s womb recognizes the presence of the unborn Jesus in Mary’s womb, and leaps for joy. Elizabeth then recognizes the meaning of her baby’s movement—not just a random kick, but a ready greeting—and in turn recognizes Mary, not primarily as a relative, but as “the mother of my Lord” and “she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.”

This recognition on Elizabeth’s part is not clairvoyance, but the work in her of the Holy Spirit, which empowers her to recognize realities she herself could not have witnessed firsthand. Mary, in turn, recognizes the work of the Spirit in Elizabeth’s sudden knowledge, and responds with her Magnificat, or Song of Mary, which is the Psalm for today – we sing it in the form of “Tell out my soul, the greatness of the Lord.”  It is in this complex web of recognitions and recognitions-of-recognitions that the witness to the coming of the Christ emerges. No one part alone tells the whole story; but together these women and their unborn children proclaim the advent of the Lord.  Something much greater indeed.

The Fourth Sunday of Advent brings us as a worshipping community of faith to the eve of the Christmas Gospel, as today’s gospel makes clear.  During Advent, the gospel lessons have moved us from the grand cosmic scale of the first Sunday of Advent to a very domestic, situation this morning – two female relative meeting in a home.  Yet even here in the seeming ordinary domesticity of this meeting, God is turning things upside down – one commentator calls Elizabeth and Mary living signs of the Great Reversal: two women, completely outside of the religious and social establishments recognize and prepare for the in-breaking of God in the world.  They are insignificant in the eyes of patriarchal culture—one is old, one is young; one has been barren, one not yet childbearing; neither possessing status nor power—and yet they are the first to recognize the embodiment of God’s holiness in a human life. It’s a constant theme in the gospel stories surrounding the events of the anticipation of Jesus’ birth, and his actual birth, that the governors, emperors and other power brokers are of no account – God simply subverts them.

Elizabeth and Mary’s relationships—with each other, with God, with Zechariah and Joseph, with the townspeople and villagers; relationships both of support and subjugation, both suspicion and rejoicing—Elizabeth and Mary’s relationship form the fertile ground in which the incredible possibilities that God has in store can grow and flourish. Those new possibilities are gathered most obviously in the unborn John and Jesus, whose potentials will unfold in adult lives of ministry and mission. But those new possibilities are also and immediately evident in Elizabeth and Mary, in the inspiration and insight and song they share, in the way their lives are changed and redirected by the Holy Spirit.

 Human relationships are complex and contradictory.  Often human relationships are the framework in which tragedy, trauma, violence, evil are manifest.  At the same time, however, human relationships are the framework in which unconditional love, compassion, forgiveness, goodness and peace are made manifest.  As we come to the end of this Advent Season, can we look at ourselves and our own relationships?  Do they provide the right framework or the fertile ground for the things of God to flourish and grow.  Mary and Elizabeth’s story is one of recognition. How do we recognize the presence of Christ within and among ourselves, how are our lives are redirected, changed by the Holy Spirit.

At the start of a new Christian year, the season of Advent offers us the chance to begin our life with God and God’s creation anew.  Yet this new beginning is also a return to the old unlimited promises of God for a just creation.  We look back to look forward.  Each year these hopes for the fulfillment of God’s promises are born again, as we look forward to the advent of the One who redefines past, present and future.  May we be prepared to recognize and welcome him.

© Rev’d Bill Crossman