Je Suis

Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church

11^th January 2015, 11.00am

Genesis 1.1-5   

In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth,  ² the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.  ³ Then God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light.  ⁴ And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness.  ⁵ God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.

Mark 1:4-11  John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.  ⁵ And people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.  ⁶ Now John was clothed with camel's hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey.  ⁷ He proclaimed, "The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals.  ⁸ I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit."  ⁹ ¶ In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan.  ¹⁰ And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him.  ¹¹ And a voice came from heaven, "You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased."

One of the joys of travelling to work on the tube each day

          (and yes, there are some!)

          is that I have about half an hour each way

          that I can spend either reading a book on my Kindle,

          or broadening my horizons by listening to a podcast.

Many of my regular audio companions originate with Radio 4,

          and one of them is the occasional science series

          presented by Professor Brian Cox and the comedian Robin Ince.

The former rock-star scientist and the English-graduate comedian

          host a show with guest panelists

          taking a light-hearted look at issues relating to science.

Frequently, they also end up talking about religion.

This last week, I caught up with their Christmas special,

          which I listened to with interest,

          because one of the guests was a friend of mine;

                   she’s the professor in Hebrew Bible at the university of Exeter.

          The other guests were Brian Blessed, the Revered Richard Coles,

                   and the Astronaut Chris Hadfield,

                   who became something of  an internet sensation

                   when he performed the song

                             ‘Life on Mars’ from the International Space Station.

It was a whole Christmassy show devoted to science and the Bible,

          and it was great fun, not least because my friend, an outspoken atheist,

          gave full vent to her opinions on the relationship

          between science, the Bible, and faith.

And so we find ourselves in territory

          triggered by today’s reading from Genesis chapter 1.

It’s with some trepidation that I come today

          to speak about the story of origins from the beginning of Genesis.

After all, it’s surely opening of Genesis which,

          along with the book of Revelation at the other end of the Bible,

          generates some of the more fervent divisions within Christianity.

In my experience, It doesn’t take very long in ‘certain’ Christian gatherings

          for the subject known as ‘creationism’ to crop up.

And how one might answer the question ‘what do you think about Darwin?’

          can almost seem something of a test case

          as to whether one is a ‘proper’ Christian or not!

Well, it seems to me that with both Genesis,

                   and indeed the book of Revelation,

          a large part of the problems we find ourselves in with these texts

                   come from asking them to answer questions

                   that they were never designed to address

Many of you will know that I’ve spent quite a lot of time

          studying the book of Revelation,

and if we were to go there, to the end of the Bible

          with a view to discovering a detailed timeline of the end of the world

          we’d fairly quickly start getting involved in arguments

                   about issues like postmillennialism, amillennialism,

                   and partial rapture premillennial dispensationalism!

          And this would be because, I want to suggest,

                   we would be asking the text

                   to give us information that it wasn’t written to impart.

And similarly, if we turn to the beginning of the Bible, to Genesis,

          With a view to uncovering a detailed timeline of the beginning of the world,

          we’re fairly quickly going to start having arguments

                   about creation, intelligent design

                   and theistic evolution!

          And this is because, I want to suggest, we would be again asking the text

                   to give us information it wasn’t written to impart.

A bit of textual history for a moment,

          if you can bear with me…

The first few chapters of the book of Genesis

          took their current shape in sixth century before the time of Jesus.

They were written down by the Jews in exile in Babylon.

This isn’t to say that there aren’t older stories in there;

          stories passed down through oral tradition,

                   told from parent to child around the fire in the evening.

But Genesis as we know it

          reshapes and transforms those older stories

          to serve a quite new purpose

Which is to argue against the theological claims

          of the Babylonians.

The Babylonians claimed that their gods controlled the future,

          and they believed that their gods had defeated the God of Israel

          when the Babylonians had carried off the Israelites into exile.

The Babylonians had their own creation story,

          known as the Enuma Elish,

And it tells the story of how the human race,

          came out of the scapegoat killing of Kingu, one of the minor gods.

According to the story of the Enuma Elish,

          the chief God Marduk has just been attacked by the goddess Tiamat,

                   and so he summons an assembly of the gods

                   to ask them who instigated Tiamat's attack on him.

The gods turn on Kingu, saying:

"It was Kingu who contrived the uprising,

And made Tiamat rebel and joined battle."

The gods then bind Kingu, and sever his blood vessels.

          Then, out of his flowing, blood they fashion humankind.

Meanwhile, Tiamat meets her own sticky end

          as Marduk splits her in half, ‘like a shellfish’ we are told,

          and he uses her corpse to make the heavens and the earth.[1]

So, according to the Babylonian creation account,

          the cosmic and physical order is founded out of horrific violence,

          and the human race is born

                   from the blood of an accused and executed renegade god.

The Enuma Elish continues, telling how Marduk then organises the gods

          into their respective orders above and below,

          assigning them their different tasks.

They, in return, propose the building of a temple

          as a place for them to live,

          and as somewhere for Marduk to have his throne.

So, according to the Babylonian worldview,

          social order arises from the ritual execution of a victim,

and Marduk’s temple forms the centre of this social order.

And it’s against these claims that the Jews told their stories

          of God as the creator and lord of all the cosmos,

          who created the world out of love, not out of violence,

          and who watches over his creation,

                   working to once again make all things good.[2]

To the despairing exiles,

          the Jewish version of creation

                   declared that the God of Israel

                    was the Lord of all of Life

So the Jewish creation stories, at the time they were first written down

          were told to address a genuine theological problem,

which was where to find a ground for faith in God

          when the experience of life in exile in Babylon

          seemed so readily to deny the rule of a God of love.

Where is the God of love and goodness

          when the world seems ruled by gods of violence and war?

These stories certainly weren’t written down to provide twenty-first century readers

          with a scientific understanding of the origin of the universe,

                   nor to explain the emergence of humanity on the earth.

Rather, they were written to inspire faith in the one God of love,

          when all the evidence of experience seems to argue against this.

They are stories to tell that God can be trusted

          even when it appears evident that all is not well with the world.

And for those of us who look around at the world,

          and see the evidence of sickness, poverty, war and violence;

for those of us who see the world now

          much as the ancient Israelites saw the world of Babylon,

these stories still speak to us of a God who is at work in the world.

For those whose lives are in tatters, whose hopes have been exiled,

          these stories articulate the hope of a God at work

                   to bring new life from the dust of the ground;

          creating new hope, and offering a new dawn for humanity.

These stories offer to us the idea that a word has been spoken

          which transforms reality.

They claim that the word of God which shapes creation

          is also an action which alters reality.

And this isn’t an historical claim, but a theological one.

This word of God, spoken by the Father in creation,

          is, Christians believe, spoken again most definitively in Christ,

                   and spoken continually through the Spirit of Christ at work in the world.

The word that becomes flesh in Jesus, is the word of good news,

          the word of hope, the word of life-giving and life-creating power,

          bringing and shaping hope from the dry dust of life.

So when we come to read the beginning of Genesis,

          we need to meet this text on its own terms,

and not to seek to impose upon it our modernist language and ideologies,

          of ‘scientific history’, or of ‘mythic history’.

These are not historical stories, they are theological.

          So we need to meet these stories of creation

                    as stories of proclamation.

They aren’t stories which tell us ‘how it happened’,

          and to attempt to make them such

                   is like reducing the wonder of encountering a great work of art

                   to a discussion about the technique of the artist.

The concern of the Israelites in exile, of those who shaped these stories,

          was with God’s intent in creation, not his technique.

And so they gave voice to the good news

          that life in God’s well-ordered world

          can be a joyous and grateful response to what God has done.

Rather than the short and brutish response

          that the Babylonian worldview provoked.

This is the purpose of these stories,

          and I think we need to reject the seductions

                   of literalism and rationalism,

          to discover once again this good news

                   announced to the exiles in Babylon.

If we hear the text in this way

          we can leave the question of how the world came into being

                   to those scientists gifted by God

                   with the ability to explore such issues.

And we can turn our attention to the question

          of the good news proclaimed through these stories of creation.

The Genesis story offers a perspective on human existence

          that is not predicated on violence and suffering.

It offers an understanding of a cosmos created good.

          with the God of that creation committed to its sustaining and its redemption.

But of course, those of us who inhabit this created world

          are very aware of the fragility of the goodness of creation,

We know how easily the land can be over-farmed,

          how easily the natural resources of the planet can be plundered,

          how easily the perfect balance of ecosystems can be distorted,

          how easily one human being can turn against another

                   in hatred and violence.

In other worlds, we know how easily God’s good creation

          can be spoiled, distorted and destroyed.

And this, of course, is where we, the human race, come into the story.

We have our part to play in this story of creation.

          And the Genesis story, as it goes on, tells us

                   that human persons are honoured, respected and enjoyed

                    by the one who calls them into being.

We are born not from divine bloodshed,

          but from an act of divine love.

Humans are made in the image of God.

And in a world of Babylonian idols,

          of domestic gods and localised deities,

the Jewish assertion of one God,

          the creator of all and originator of humanity,

          stood out like a beacon in the darkness;

offering powerful counter testimony to the idolatries of Babylon.

If you want to know what God looks like, said the Jews,

          don’t look at an idol, or a statue, or a picture.

Rather, look at your neighbor, look at yourself,

          because humans are made in the image of God.

And lest we should think this issue,

          of whether it us appropriate to represent God as an image,

                   is an issue of the distant past,

          the disturbing reality is that it is terrifyingly and bloodily current.

The events in Paris this week show us

          that the debate over the representation of God and his prophets

                   is frighteningly contemporary.

The thing is, if the insight of Genesis is to be believed,

          not only is it true to say je suis Charlie,

          but it is also true to say nous sommes Dieu.

Not only do we share common humanity with the victims of Paris,

          but we are made in the image of God.

And this is true of us all, from satirist to terrorist.

We are not, says Genesis, born from violence and destined for violence,

          rather we are born from love and destined for love.

And as humans, created in love and gifted with free will,

          each of us had a choice as to whether we will live in love, or in violence.

Will we live according to the Babylonian creation narrative,

          or the Jewish alternative?

Will we oppose any representation of God that is beyond our control,

          or will we recognise our own place within God's good creation?

It is this same divine love for creation

          that we meet at the Baptism of Jesus in Mark’s Gospel.

God comes to his creation not in war or violence,

          but in love and new creation,

not in the waters of chaos,

          but in the life-giving waters of the Jordan.

The man who comes to John for baptism is the embodiment of God,

          he is Jesus, a human being,

          and he is said to be the beloved of God.

The act of public identification that

          is signaled by the mass adoption of the je suis Charlie slogan this week

                   is an echo of the act of identification

                   undertaken by Jesus at his baptism,

          whereby God declared solidarity, not only with Charlie Hebdo,

                   but with all those whom others would declare unrighteous.

In Baptism, Jesus declared not just je suis Charlie

          but je suis homme, ‘I am man’.

The son of man, in his baptism,

          undertakes the ultimate act of solidarity with sinners

The offensive image here

          is not some cartoon representation of the divine

                   in defiance of those who would see such a move as sacrilegious,

          but an incarnation of the divine in human flesh,

                   a rendering of God himself in the body of a man.

If Genesis speaks of humans being made good, in the image of Gold,

          the baptism of Jesus demonstrates God's ongoing commitment

          to divine-human reconciliation and reunion.

The original Jewish understanding of God’s self-disclosure as ‘I Am’,

          becomes ‘I Am Human’ in the baptism of Jesus.

The voice from heaven at the baptism is God’s declaration to the world

          that ‘Je Suis’ has become je suis un homme,

          ‘this is my son’, says the voice, ‘I am a man!’

And God declares himself well pleased with this:

          God-become-human, God in human form, is declared good,

          just as the rendering of humanity in the image of God,

                   in the original intent of creation, was also declared good.

The presence of God on the earth

          is found not in the violence of Marduk,

          not in the rending of the body of Tiamat,

          not in the scapegoating of Kingu,

but in the one who is baptized by John in the Jordan,

          in the one who takes upon himself the sins of the world.

The God of creation, who spoke creation into being, and declared it good,

          is still, it seems, at work to draw that creation back to himself,

                    in love and restoration.

The story of Jesus, which begins in Mark’s gospel with his baptism,

          is the story of the redemption of creation.

It isn’t a story to explain why humans are evil and creation is corrupt.

          Rather, it is a story that points to hope for good,

                    for the absolution and forgiveness of sins,

                    and the restoration of all creation.

So in a world where so many would seek to control God

          by declaring that it is their responsibility

                   to speak on his behalf,

                   to defend his honor,

                   and to police his image,

both Genesis and the baptism of Jesus

          offer us a powerful counter testimony,

where God takes the ultimate risk, again and again,

          every time a human being is born,

                   recommitting himself to the stuff off creation,

                   for better our for worse;

always seeking to bring good from the chaos of the world,

          and light to the darkness of our lives.

This is Good in human form,

          baptised in solidarity with the worst of sinners,

                   even and including those who would take up Guns in a Parisian street.

This is the scandal of God made flesh,

          and this is the offence of the Christian gospel

                   that finds its ultimate conclusion in the outrage of the cross,

          as God in human form not only identifies with humanity's sinfulness,

                   but takes decisive action to bring about

                   forgiveness and reconciliation once and for all.

So in a world divided, once again, on issues of religion,

          perhaps we need to discover, once again,

                   the scandal of the Jewish creation story,

          and to embrace, once again, the offence of the baptism of Christ.

All those of us who would follow Jesus on this path to new creation,

          are invited to join him in the waters of baptism.

And in so doing, we are invited to identify with him, as he identifies with us,

          and so to share with him in the renewal of all things.

Today, je suis Charlie, nous sommes Charlie.

Amen.

---

[1] Hammerton-Kelly, The Gospel and the Sacred, p.66; Tablet VI, lines 29-34

[2] A lot of what follows is from Brueggemann, Genesis.

Golden Dawn

Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church

Epiphany Sunday

4/1/15

Isaiah 60.1-6  Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the LORD has risen upon you.  ² For darkness shall cover the earth, and thick darkness the peoples; but the LORD will arise upon you, and his glory will appear over you.  ³ Nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn.  ⁴ Lift up your eyes and look around; they all gather together, they come to you; your sons shall come from far away, and your daughters shall be carried on their nurses' arms.  ⁵ Then you shall see and be radiant; your heart shall thrill and rejoice, because the abundance of the sea shall be brought to you, the wealth of the nations shall come to you.  ⁶ A multitude of camels shall cover you, the young camels of Midian and Ephah; all those from Sheba shall come. They shall bring gold and frankincense, and shall proclaim the praise of the LORD.

Matthew 2.1-12   In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem,  ² asking, "Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage."  ³ When King Herod heard this, he was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him;  ⁴ and calling together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Messiah was to be born.  ⁵ They told him, "In Bethlehem of Judea; for so it has been written by the prophet:  ⁶ 'And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for from you shall come a ruler who is to shepherd my people Israel.'"  ⁷ Then Herod secretly called for the wise men and learned from them the exact time when the star had appeared.  ⁸ Then he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, "Go and search diligently for the child; and when you have found him, bring me word so that I may also go and pay him homage."  ⁹ When they had heard the king, they set out; and there, ahead of them, went the star that they had seen at its rising, until it stopped over the place where the child was.  ¹⁰ When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy.  ¹¹ On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.  ¹² And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road.

Today we stand facing the golden dawn of the new year.

‘Arise, shine, for your light has come,

            and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you.’

A new year…

            A new hope…

                        A new dawn…

A new government?

            Maybe.

But who will lead us,

            who and what forces will shape our national life together?

The European attraction to far right politics is not a new thing.

            The desire to define oneself by a fusion of national and ethnic identity

                        is not a recent trend.

            Neither is it merely a twentieth century phenomenon.

In part, it is an outworking of the innate, and readily understandable,

            human tendency to feel comfortable with those

                        who look and sound like those with whom we grew up,

            coupled with a fear of those who look and sound different

                        to that which we are used to.

But in addition to this, the way in which the European mind-set

            has been shaped over the centuries

lends itself to a particular kind of nationalist politics

            which recurs in various forms throughout European history.

The flip-side to all this, of course,

            is the attempted enlightenment of the European project;

the desire to find some expression of unity

            which transcends national boundaries

            and finds common ground, and unity, and stability

                        between nations and peoples who have a history of conflict.

The first European ‘project’, as such, was that enacted by the Romans,

            who by virtue of their imperial strength

                        imposed a political, and to some extent cultural, unity

                        on the nations of Europe.

However, the decline of the Roman empire

            led to the fragmentation of its constituent parts,

            and the rise of the nation-state as we have come to know it.

Many centuries later, the treaty of Westphalia

            marked the end of a series of wars

                        that had swept the Holy Roman Empire

                        during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries,

and whilst it failed to abolish inter-European warfare,

            it succeeded in laying the basis for the system

                        of national self-determinism

            that we still live with in our own time.

The notion of co-existing sovereign states,

            held in check by a balance of power,

            laid the foundations for the Europe we recognise today.

The three key tenets of the Peace of Westphalia were;

            firstly, the right of the ruler of each state

                        to determine their own religion;

            secondly, the freedom of religion

                        for those who wanted to worship

                        in ways other than that determined by the state;

            and thirdly, the recognition of the exclusive sovereignty

                        of each state over their own lands.

All the inter-European wars fought since the treaty of Westphalia

            have been enacted on the basis of these key tenets,

and it was in this context that the far right politics of fascism and neo-fascism

            emerged as an ideology

            committed to the maintenance of ethnic and cultural purity

            within the confines and borders of the nation state.

Whilst the more moderate end of far-right politics

            focusses on opposing policies of immigration and integration,

the more extreme end is amenable to methods

            designed cleanse and purify the population

            of those who challenge the homogeneity of the nation;

and so groups deemed inferior, undesirable, or traitorous in some way,

            find themselves ostracised or removed from mainstream society.

Many of these far right groups,

            from the National Socialists of Germany

                        to the National Fascists of Italy,

            have sought to equate their stance

                        with some notion of a dawning golden age,

and it is here that we start to encounter the forces of religious belief,

            and it’s here that we start to hear the impact

                        of passages from the scriptures

            including our readings from this morning

So, for example, the Nazi party

            defined themselves as the ‘Third Reich’,

                        or ‘third rule’ to put it in English.

            They believed the First Reich to be the thousand year rule over Europe

                        of the Holy Roman Emperors (800-1806),

            with the second Reich equating to the German Empire (1871-1918).

The third Reich, by this understanding, was the golden age,

            a dawning new period in European history,

beginning in Germany,

            but destined to spread its good news across all the states of Europe

This identification of a coming, dawning, new age, was nothing new.

            In many ways it finds its origins in the writings

                        of the twelfth century monk Joachim of Fiore,

            who understood the history of the world from beginning to end

                        as being divided into three stages

                        modelled after the three persons of the Trinity.

            Each of Joachim’s three stages represented an age,

                        ruled over by the relevant person of the Trinity.

            So the first age was the age of the Father,

                        and ran from the time of Adam to the birth of Jesus.

            The second age was the age of the Son,

                        and ran from the birth of Jesus to Joachim’s own time.

            And the third age, the age of the Spirit,

                        was the dawning new age of enlightenment

                        that he believed was coming into being in his own time.

            In this way, Joachim located himself on the cusp of a transition,

                        with the world moving from the age of the Son

                        to the age of the Spirit.

This idea of dividing history into ages, or dispensations,

            entered deep into European psychology,

                        and comes out again and again, in both politics and theology,

            as people continually believe themselves

                        to be living on the cusp of the dawning new age

                        that is coming into being in their midst.

So whether it is the Third Reich of the German Nazis,

            or the Age of Aquarius of the New Age Movement

                        and the Rosicrucian mystery sect,

            or the imminent millennium

                        of Christian fundamentalist interpretations

                        of the book of Revelation;

            people continually convince themselves

                        that the new age is dawning,

                                    and that it is dawning in their time,

                                    and, specifically, amongst their people.

Interestingly, the Rosicrucian movement

            gave birth to an occult organisation

                        known as The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn,

                        co-founded by my namesake William Woodman

                                    along with two others,

            and it attracted many celebrity members

                        including, allegedly, Arthur Conan Doyle,

                        Aleister Crowley, and E. Nesbit.

The name they chose, with its language of ‘Golden Dawn’,

            picks up on the hope of a dawning new age,

and it is a phrase which echoes down to the present day,

            as does the association of far-right politics

            with the idea of a golden dawning new age.

The Golden Dawn political party in Greece

            is simply its latest expression,

combining extreme nationalistic ideology

            with a commitment to establishing a new world

            through violence and exclusivism.

This is the same language that we find in the book of Isaiah,

            who prophesied to the people of Israel,

                        to offer them a vision of a future

                        where their nation was purified, remade, and reborn.

Isaiah says to Israel that,

            ‘Nations shall come to your light,

            and kings to the brightness of your dawn.’ (Isa 60.3).

The hope that Isaiah holds before the broken and dispirited people of Israel,

            languishing in exile in Babylon,

is that a new age is coming,

            with the golden dawn of a nation reborn rising ahead of them.

It is easy for us to be blind to it,

            because we hear this passage through the lens of Handel’s Messiah,

but in its original context this is as revolutionary a piece

            of nationalistic propaganda

            as any contemporary political tract or rallying speech.

The nation that has been overrun by the foreign power of Babylon,

            the nation that has been compromised by the experience of exile,

is called by Isaiah… no, is called by God, no less…

            to set its eyes on a hope that ahead of them

because there lies a future

            where they rise above those who have trampled them.

Arise, shine; for your light has come,

            and the glory of the LORD has risen upon you. 

² For darkness shall cover the earth,

            and thick darkness the peoples;

but the LORD will arise upon you,

            and his glory will appear over you. 

³ Nations shall come to your light,

            and kings to the brightness of your dawn.

It is often said that the nationalistic theological perspective,

            that was dominant in the nation of Israel at the time of Jesus,

was forged in the crucible of exile,

            some six hundred years earlier.

And, if Isaiah 60 is anything to go by,

            it is a theology of nationalism,

            it is a theology focussed around the rise of a so-called people of God;

                        a chosen nation, called to be a blessing to the world.

And this theology of patriotism,

            this fusion of religion with the politics of nationalism,

is alive and well in our world today.

From Blake’s Jerusalem,

            stirringly and radically reinterpreting the chosen-nation ideology

            for a world dominated by the British empire;

to the American Dream of a new world born in our midst,

            welcoming the tired, the poor, and the huddled masses of the world

            into the arms of America, one nation under God;

the use of religion to justify nationalism

            is as vibrant today

            as it was in the sixth century before Christ.

And it is to a world where nationalism and religion are synonymous

            that the Christ-child comes.

It is to a world where monarchy is hereditary,

            that the Christ-child comes;

it is to a world where the most important thing about a person

            is who their father and mother are,

                        that the Christ-child comes;

it is to a world where privilege is entrenched,

            and rights are national not universal,

                        that the Christ-child comes.

And so the Messiah comes,

            not to the blue-blooded family of the Herodians,

                        but to a penniless, homeless family,

            soon to be refugees on the run from a reign of terror…

As the Canadian singer Bruce Cockburn puts it

            in his wonderful Christmas song, ‘Cry of a tiny babe’

The child is born in the fullness of time

Three wise astrologers take note of the signs

Come to pay their respects to the fragile little king

Get pretty close to wrecking everything

Cause the governing body of the Holy land,

Is that of Herod a paranoid man

Who when he hears there's a baby born, King of the Jews

Sends death squads to kill all male children under two

But that same bright angel warns the parents in a dream

And they head out for the border and getaway clean

And there are others who know about this miracle birth

The humblest of people catch a glimpse of their worth

For it isn't to the palace that the Christ child comes

But to shepherds and street people, hookers and bums.

Like a stone on the surface of a still river

Driving the ripples on forever,

Redemption rips through the surface of time in the cry of a tiny babe

These astrologers, the ‘wise men from the east’, as Matthew calls them,

            cross the Jordan into the chosen land,

            and come to worship a king.

They, too, at least at first,

            are seduced by the ideology of nationalistic theology.

They head straight for the palace of Herod,

            because where else would one find a king?

They, like the rest of us, find it easy to think

            that a powerful ruler must come from a family of powerful rulers.

From Kennedy to Bush to Clinton,

            from Tudor to Stuart to Windsor,

            from Cavendish to Astor to Churchill,

We like our political leaders to come from political stock,

            to be ‘born to the task’.

We like our leaders to be ‘ours’ and not ‘theirs’,

            preferably children born on our soil…

And this is an ideology that is directly challenged

            by the birth of Jesus and the visit of the Magi.

As wise men from a far-off country,

            wise men who followed another religion,

came and worshipped the child of God.

Too often we domesticate the story of the birth of Jesus;

            too often we use it to privatise our faith…

Too often the popular nativity scene

            of mother, father, baby, and visitors

                        creates a Christ for the nuclear family,

            a Christ who comes to us in the trials and joys of our personal life.

Too often the baby in the manger remains an infantile Christ,

            divorced from the realities of the public sphere,

            an object of private devotion, and personal comfort.

As the theologian Stanley Hauerwas puts it:

Too often the political significance of Jesus’s birth,

            a significance that Herod understood all too well,

is lost because the church … reads the birth

            as a confirmation of the assumed position that religion has

            within the larger framework of politics.

That is, the birth of Jesus is not seen as a threat to thrones and empires

            because religion concerns the private.

The gospel of Matthew, however, knows no distinction

            between the public, the political, and the private.

Jesus is born into time,

            threatening the time of Herod and Rome. [1]

So Herod, upon hearing the news that ‘wise men from the East’

            have come to Jerusalem asking about a child

                        who has been born ‘king of the Jews,’ was deeply concerned.

His fear of this baby reveals the depth of his fragility.[2]

A king born to the wrong family,

            a new ruler emerging from the wrong town,

is an inherent threat to the ideology that sustained his power.

And so it is to this day,

            despite the attempts of so many down the centuries

            to domesticate or assimilate the Christ-child.

The birth of Jesus to Mary and Joseph

            continues to undermine any attempt

            to confine his coming to the realm of the private and the personal.

The coming of Christ to the margins

            continues to subvert any attempt

            to fuse the kingdom of Christ with any kingdom of this world.

Because this is not a messiah for the private world of the family,

            and this is not a messiah for the parochial world of nationalist ideology.

This is a messiah for all people, for all nations.

It was in the birth of Christ

            that Matthew saw Isaiah’s vision fulfilled;

not through the resurgent nation of Israel,

            but through the Messiah of Israel

                        drawing kings and rulers and wise men

            from nations far beyond the reach of Israel’s national borders.

Matthew tells us that the wise men from the east

            brought their gifts of gold and frankincense,

            just as Isaiah said they would.

And they worshipped the new-born babe as a King,

            but not as king of Israel alone.

In the coming of Christ, the borders and identities we construct for ourselves

            are consistently challenged.

Those who are ‘in Christ’ are part of his universal kingdom,

            whatever earthly country we may inhabit.

The new dawn that comes with Christ,

            is a new world where nationalistic theology is rendered meaningless.

The star of his coming, seen rising by wise men from the East,

            is a new day, a new age, a new kingdom.

Stanley Hauerwas again:

The kingdom of Christ is not some inner sanctuary,

            but rather the kingdom is an alternative world,

            an alternative people, an alternative politics.

Jesus is, in his person and in his world, God’s embodied kingdom.

The temptation for Christians is to equate the kingdom

            with ideas that we assume represent the best of human endeavour:

            freedom, equality, justice, respect for the dignity of each person.

These are all worthy goals that Christians have every reason to support,

            but they are goals that are not, in themselves, the kingdom.[3]

The wise men from the east

            grasp the truth, eventually, that the kingdom of Christ

            is more than one nation, one ideology, one theology.

And so they worship the child born in the manger,

            bringing the gifts of the world to the child who challenges all power.

And what about us?

Where, in our world, and our lives, will Christ be found?

In our private devotions?

            Yes, I hope so, but not only there.

In our public life?

            Yes, I hope so, or else the world continues as before.

In our political life?

            Yes, again, I hope so, but never in a way

                        that equates any political ideology

                        with the in-breaking kingdom of Christ.

I’ve said it before, and I’m sure I’ll say it again,

            we need faithful followers of Christ

            to be active across the broad spread of mainstream political life.

The kingdom may be political,

            but it is not party-political,

and as election year dawns,

            we will need to remember that our allegiance is first and foremost

                        to Christ, and to Christ alone.

We will need the wisdom of the wise men from the east,

            to see through the pernicious propaganda

            of thinking that I and mine are in some way special.

I am no more, nor less, a citizen of God’s kingdom

            than any other human being on the face of the earth.

It is to each of us that Christ comes,

            and it is in him, and him alone, that we find our identity.

As Paul reminded the Christians in the province of Galatia;

            for those who are in Christ,

                        there is no place for any division based on

                        ethnicity, culture, social standing, or gender.

We must live this in our common life together

            as the people of God in this place,

            where all are welcome, and none are excluded.

And we must work together at how we live this truth

            in our public lives as we engage with the politics of our society.

So, as we stand at the dawn of a new year,

            may the star of Christ rise before us,

            guiding us into all truth.

Amen.

[1] Hauerwas, Matthew, p.38

[2] Hauerwas, Matthew, pp. 38-39

[3] Hauerwas, Matthew, p.38.