A Baptism of Non-Conformity

A Sermon for Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church

15th  January 2022, 11.00am

Matthew 3.1-17  

Isaiah 42.1-9  

At the heart of today’s reading from Matthew’s gospel
            is something of a mystery,
and it’s a mystery that has puzzled people
            from John the Baptist himself,
            to the biblical scholars of our own time.
 
Now, I’m not proposing that we’ll fully resolve this mystery this morning,
            but spending a few moments with it
                        might help us find a way
                        into one of the more puzzling scenarios of the gospels.
 
The mystery is this:
            Why does Jesus come to John for baptism?
 
The story appears in all three of the synoptic gospels,
            and is alluded to in John’s gospel,
so in as much as we know anything about Jesus and John,
            we know the story of Jesus
            being baptized by John in the river Jordan.
 
But the question is, why?
            Why did Jesus do this?
            What was Jesus thinking when he came to John for baptism?
 
Was it a baptism of repentance for sins committed?
            If it was, then this is somewhat out of step
                        with the dominant Christian teaching
                        that Jesus was sinless and had no need of repentance?
 
Was it a baptism of solidarity with sinners,
            with Jesus simply standing alongside those who did need to repent?
Possibly, although it’s not clear why baptism by John is necessary for this,
            unless it is simply to underline
            what has already happened at the incarnation.
 
If this is a question that puzzles modern readers,
            we can take some comfort from the fact
            that it also seemed to puzzle John himself.
We’re told that John initially tried to prevent Jesus from being baptised,
            asking instead that Jesus should baptise him.
But Jesus argued back by saying, somewhat enigmatically,
            ‘Let it be so for now,
            for it is proper for us in this way to fulfil all righteousness.’ (v.15)
 
And here we find our first clue,
            as we begin to grapple with the mystery of Jesus’ baptism.
Jesus is baptised by John to ‘fulfil all righteousness’.
 
We might normally think of ‘righteousness’ as one of Paul’s great themes,
            with his letters, particularly Romans,
            shot full of language about justification and righteousness.
 
But it’s also a concept that crops up again and again in Matthew’s gospel,
                        particularly in terms of the ‘fulfilment of righteousness’,
            and we’ll find ourselves coming back to this over the coming year
                        as our Sunday readings take us through Matthew.
 
His gospel is often described as the most ‘Jewish’ of the gospels,
            and his repeated use of the term ‘righteousness’
            is one of the things that indicates his particularly Jewish concern.
 
‘Righteousness’ as a theological concept
                        finds its origins in the Hebrew scriptures,
            where it’s used to express conformity to God’s will
                        in all areas of life: from law and government,
                                    to covenant loyalty and ethical integrity.
 
The Jewish idea of ‘righteousness’ was that
            when humans conformed to God’s will,
                        rather than to any other claim on their life,
                        they were considered just or righteous.
 
To put it another way, the Jewish insight was that
            because God is righteous,
            so his people are to be righteous in their behaviour.
 
Or, to put it yet another way,
            ‘Righteousness’ was considered a visible sign
                        in the life of God’s people,
            confirming their status as members of God’s covenant community.
 
How did you know whether you were part of God’s people?
            You knew because of righteousness.
            It was a sign of the covenant
 
So when people departed from righteous living,
            when they worshipped other gods,
            or failed to keep the commands of the Lord,
they were considered to be breaking the covenant,
            and the ancient Jewish prophets, such as Elijah,
                        would call them to repentance,
                        to a turning back to righteousness,
            and to a rediscovery of life lived in covenant relationship
                        with the God of righteousness.
 
And this calling of people to repentance,
            this challenging of them to submit themselves to God’s will,
            and to live righteous lives,
was the key message of John the Baptist,
            sometimes described as the new Elijah,
who appeared in the wilderness
            baptising people with a baptism of repentance.
 
From John the Baptist’s perspective,
            the society of his day had departed from the covenant;
                        it had lost its focus on righteousness,
            and needed to turn, to repent, and to start living differently.
 
So the baptism of John was a rallying call
            for all those who wanted to join him
                        in his rejection of society,
            it was a baptism of turning away,
                        a baptism of repudiation of the dominant values
                        of his society and religion.
 
It was a baptism that marked a commitment
            to start living life in a very different way
            from that which the world was expecting.
 
In the midst of all the pressures to conform,
            be they ideological pressures,
                        theological pressures,
                                    or sociological pressures,
John invited people to turn away from an unrighteous society
            and to turn towards a new way of living.
 
He called them to enter into the life of a new kingdom,
            where God was once again the focus of existence,
and behaviour was determined by obedience to God,
            not conformity to the status quo.
 
By this reading,
            John’s baptism was a radical and non-conformist baptism.
It was an outward sign of an inward commitment
            to rejection of an unrighteous society,
and a turning towards an alternative,
            God-focussed, way of being.
 
So, when Jesus came to be baptised by John,
            ‘to fulfil all righteousness’,
he was aligning himself with the non-conformist and radical nature
            of John’s challenge to first century Jewish society.
 
It wasn’t a baptism for the forgiveness of his personal sins,
            rather, it was an act of public repudiation of conformity.
 
It was a rejection of the compromises
            by which his inherited religious tradition
            had entered into its uneasy alliance with the powers that be,
and it was an act of commitment to the recovery
            of the true meaning of the covenant
            as the in-breaking of God’s justice and righteousness on the earth.
 
The challenge which John brought to the world
            of first-century, second Temple Judaism,
is a challenge that echoes down the millennia to us as well.
 
It is a relevant challenge to us, because humans,
            be they first or twenty-first century humans,
have a tendency to compromise,
            a tendency to set aside righteousness,
and a tendency to then justify that compromise
            as necessary, pragmatic, or expedient.
 
‘It’s just the way the world is’, we tell ourselves.
            ‘We can’t change it, so we might as well join it’, we say.
 
We conform, and then we try to justify our conformity,
            as we try to justify ourselves,
by making the same move in our own time
            that John challenged in the first century
            with his baptism of repentance.
 
The collusion of the Christian church with the powers that be,
            from the time of Constantine onwards,
has reinvented within the church of Christ,
            the same pattern of compromise
that led John into the wilderness to take his stand.
 
The tradition of Christendom,
            of the ‘Christian country’
is the same attempt to fuse faith and fatherland
            that led to the post-exilic Jewish compromise of the first century.
 
And the baptism of Jesus at the hands of John
            was an expression of his commitment
                        to a radical, non-conformist alternative.
 
Jesus’ baptism was a conscious and public alignment
            with the radical revolution of the Kingdom of God,
                        where compromise is rejected,
                        and conformity confounded.
 
Now, this is a vision of baptism
            that I can start to get quite excited about!
 
You may have noticed that the building where we’re currently worshipping,
            rejoices under the name of
            Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church.
 
The history of this fellowship has been told and re-told
            by far greater historians than I, so I won’t rehearse it again now.
 
But I do want us to pay attention for a moment
            to the fact that we are a Baptist church.
 
We’re a church that baptises.
            We invite people into the waters of baptism,
            and we immerse them on expression of repentance
                        and declaration of faith.
 
We do, pretty much, what John did.
            And many of us have been through that experience ourselves,
                        following the example and command of Jesus Christ.
 
And the origin of this practice,
            at least in the way that leads to the Baptist churches of the current era,
was for baptism to be seen as an act of non-conformity.
 
The early Baptists of the seventeenth century were,
            like their earlier continental cousins the Anabaptists,
uneasy about the alliances and collusions
            that had grown up between church and state.
 
They were unhappy with a situation that required all children to be baptised
            as an expression of their joint membership of church and nation.
 
The rejection of infant-baptism,
            and the rediscovery of believer-baptism,
was born not just out of theological conviction,
            but also from radical political conviction.
 
The dedication we have had today of young Ruri
            is a marking of love towards him by his parents, and the community of faith.
But it is not a baptism - he will choose that, or not, for himself,
            when he is old enough to make such a choice.
 
And the baptism of Thomas that we are celebrating here today
            is a joyous and challenging ritual, freely entered into.
 
What we certainly would not expect
            would be for either an infant dedication or an adult baptism
            to start putting someone’s life in danger.
 
Yet this was once the case here in London,
            and it remains the case in other parts of the world.
 
To refuse to allow the state to determine a person’s faith,
            to take a stand for religious liberty,
is not just a religious decision, it is a political decision.
 
In many ways we have lost the political significance of baptism,
            and yet Jesus’ baptism at the hands of John
            points to a profoundly and radically politicised act.
 
Now I’m sure none of us yearns for a return to persecution,
            In fact, the commitment to religious liberty for all
                        is as much a core part of our Baptist history
                        as the non-conformist act of baptism itself.
 
But nonetheless, we should not lose sight of the radical and political nature
            of baptising someone in repentance and into righteousness.
 
Baptism is more than a symbol
            of our personal forgiveness
            and of our identification with Christ in his death and resurrection.
It is also a sign of entry
            into a radical, revolutionary, and counter-cultural lifestyle
                        that rejects the status quo of conformity
            and yearns, longs and lives for a world transformed,
                        a world re-imagined, a world reconfigured.
 
Baptism is the initiatory act
            of the convicted revolutionaries
            of the in-breaking kingdom of God
It is a rejection of conformist religion,
            it is a rejection of the notion of the Christian country,
and it is something people take upon themselves
            to mark their membership of and entering into
                        a radical new way of living.
 
And so we come to our second mystery in today’s reading…
            And the second mystery is this:
                        Why a dove?
 
Jesus has gone to John, had his argument, and been baptised,
            and then something very strange, something very apocalyptic, happens.
The heavens open, and the Spirit of God
            is seen descending on Jesus like a dove,
            and alighting on him.
 
And I find myself wondering, why a dove?
 
But then something even more strange happens,
            and a voice is heard speaking from heaven,
And the divine voice quotes the prophet Isaiah,
            ‘This is my Son, the beloved, with whom I am well pleased’.
 
All very strange, when you stop to think about it.
            And all very symbolic.
So let’s start with the voice,
            and then come back to the dove.
 
The quote from Isaiah is from chapter 42,
            which we had as our Old Testament reading.
And as is often the case with those places
            where the New Testament quotes the old,
the quote is just the first verse,
            but it implies the whole of the passage that follows.
 
In this case, the Old Testament passage that is being referenced
                        is the first of the four ‘servant songs’ of Isaiah,
            where the prophet writes of a servant
                        who will bring about a new world
                        through suffering, death, and restoration to new life.
 
In the context of Isaiah’s original community,
            the suffering servant was Israel itself,
            it was Israel personified.
Isaiah was writing to the exiled Jews in Babylon,
            offering them a perspective on their present suffering,
                        and a hope for future restoration,
            by personifying the nation of Israel as a servant,
                        whose suffering and restoration
                        would bring about a new world of justice and righteousness.
 
In the Christian tradition,
            and we see it here in the words spoken from Heaven at Jesus’ baptism,
this vision of Israel personified, of Israel the servant,
                        of Israel as the one who suffers and is restored,
            came to be seen as finding fulfilment in the person of Jesus.
 
It is Jesus who takes on the role previously held by Israel,
            and he does so by divine command.
 
He becomes Israel, he becomes the servant who suffers,
            and he does so in order to bring about
                        the new world of justice and righteousness,
            he does so in order to inaugurate the Kingdom of God.
 
And so back to the dove.
            In the Jewish tradition,
                        the dove was used as a symbol for Israel,
            and the descent of the Spirit as a dove on Jesus
                        provides a further clue
            that the one on whom the dove alights
                        should be understood
                        as a personification of the nation of Israel.
 
It is through Jesus that the covenant will be fulfilled.
            It is through the suffering and resurrection of Jesus
                        that Israel will be restored
            and the righteousness of God made known throughout the earth.
 
And so the voice says to Jesus,
            to the one who is to become the servant,
            to the one who is to suffer and die before restoration can come,
‘This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased’
 
And so the servant song from Isaiah is heard over the waters of the Jordan,
            as the prophetic insight of the exiled prophet in Babylon
            is proclaimed fulfilled in the life of Jesus of Nazareth.
 
            Here is my servant, whom I uphold,
                        my chosen, in whom my soul delights;
            I have put my spirit upon him;
                        he will bring forth justice to the nations. 
                   ² He will not cry or lift up his voice,
                        or make it heard in the street; 
                   ³ a bruised reed he will not break,
                        and a dimly burning wick he will not quench;
                        he will faithfully bring forth justice.
                   ⁴ He will not grow faint or be crushed
                        until he has established justice in the earth.
 
The kingdom is coming…
            and it’s a kingdom of righteousness and justice.
And it’s coming through Christ,
            the servant who is also the son of God.
 
The emperors of Rome may have claimed the term ‘son of God’ for themselves
            to legitimate their own rule over the world,
but the voice from heaven, the voice of God
            proclaims Jesus, and Jesus alone,
            as the legitimate son of God.
The earth is the Lord’s and Jesus is his son,
            and all other powers and principalities are merely false pretenders.
Their claims to divine sonship are illegitimate attempts
            to assume a throne and a kingdom
            that does not belong to them.
And so we are back to the political ramifications
            of the baptism of Jesus in the wilderness.
 
Just as the people of Israel made their exodus from the empire of Egypt
            through the wilderness to promised land;
just as the prophet of the exiles
            proclaimed the hope of a second exile from Babylon;
so Christ, in whom Israel and covenant are fulfilled,
            initiates the third and final exodus
                        from all the corrupt and evil empires of the world
            as people follow Jesus through the waters of baptism
                        into the new world of justice and righteousness
                        that is the kingdom of God
 
Jesus not only identifies himself with John’s radical rejection of conformity,
            but he is proclaimed the personification of Israel,
                        and commissioned as the rightful holder
                        of all power in heaven and on earth.
 
But, and here is the radical theological insight:
            he holds that power as a servant, not as an emperor.
 
This is where politics and theology collide.
 
Jesus, the son of God, saves the world not through conquest,
            but through suffering.
He brings new life through death,
            and hope into the darkness.
Because his kingdom is a kingdom of justice and righteousness,
            and it is breaking in upon the earth
            as others catch the vision, and join the movement.
 
And so Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan,
            to be baptised by him.
And he calls us to follow his example,
            and to join him in his radical and non-conformist vision
            for the transformation of the world.

The Politics of Power

 A Sermon for Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church

8^th January 2022

 

Matthew 4.1-17   

The fabled Delta-blues guitarist Robert Johnson died in 1938, aged only 27,
            after a troubled life wandering the Mississippi wilderness
            eking out a living as an itinerant musician.
 
Probably his most famous song is the brilliant ‘Sweet Home Chicago’,
            a song I know best in its incarnation as performed by The Blues Brothers,
but more notorious is his song ‘Cross Road Blues’,
            which in many ways came to define his mythology.
 
The song opens with him on his knees at a crossroads,
            pleading with for salvation;
but as the sun sets and no help arrives, he says of himself,
            ‘I believe to my soul, now, poor Bob is sinkin’ down’.
 
And so the myth began,
            of how ‘poor Bob Johnson’ met the Devil at the crossroads
                        and sold his soul,
            in exchange for his supposedly supernatural abilities on the guitar.
 
It was a bargain struck in the grand tradition of the Germanic Faust legend,
            whose own pact with the devil cost him his soul
            in exchange for unlimited pleasure and power.
 
And the human story, from Adam and Eve onwards,
            is littered with examples
of those who have exchanged their own integrity
            for knowledge, power, or success.
 
And so we come to the fateful meeting
            between Jesus and the Devil
            at the crossroads of history.
 
It was, I suppose, the ultimate moment of temptation.
            The offer of unlimited power and influence,
                        of wealth and adoration,
            to use as Jesus sees fit.
 
Who in their right minds could refuse such a deal?
 
I wonder if you ever have those moments when you think to yourself,
            ‘If I ruled the world, things would be very different!’
 
I know I do…
 
In fact, I’ve got a little list of Executive Orders
            ready to be issued immediately.
 
Number One:
            All doors to public rest-rooms must henceforth open outwards;
            specifically so that I don’t have to pull the door handle on my way out.
 
Number Two:
            All tables in restaurants must henceforth
                        have only three, evenly spaced, legs;
            because then, according to the milking stool principle,
                        I will never have to sit at a wobbly table ever again.
 
Now I admit I may not be setting my sights all that high here,
            but I thought I’d start with some easy wins,
            before addressing some of the more intractable problems in the in-tray.
 
So what would you do, I wonder, if you ruled the world?
            Would you end war?
                        Abolish poverty?
                                    Solve climate change?
 
I’m sure all of us are so very aware that,
            in so many ways, from the global to the trivial,
            the world is not the way the world should be.
 
But the question remains of what to do about it?
            How do we change the world?
 
I’m not aware that any one of us, any time soon,
            is going to be granted absolute executive power,
so even my daydreams about doors and tables are an irrelevance,
            let alone our grander hopes for addressing the world’s bigger problems.
 
But the fact remains that I’m still one of those people
            who wants to leave the world better,
                        or at least not worse, then when I arrived.
 
So how do we change the world for good?
 
Well, I think that if the story
            of Jesus and the Devil in the wilderness
                        were to offer us only one insight,
            it would be that seizing absolute power is not the answer.
 
We may make our Faustian bargains,
            we may even strike the ultimate deal with the Devil,
            and rise to a position of supreme power;
but the cost to our soul will always rob that power
            of its capacity to effect lasting change for good,
because the power will have come from the wrong place.
 
Power born of ambition
            will never truly serve the common good.
 
And so Jesus declined Satan’s offer
            of all the kingdoms of the world for him to rule over,
because he knew the terrible price that such power would exact.
 
But there is more wisdom on offer here
            than just the rejection of imposed imperial power,
because in his rejection of the Devil,
            Jesus rewrote the script
            of how power can be used to effect change in the world.
 
Jesus moves the game away from the desire
            to have power over people,
to a new place
            of seeking to share power with people.
 
It turns out that the alternative to taking power over others
            is not them having power over you.
 
Rather, there emerges in the life of Jesus a new way:
            the way of power shared,
                        the way of power through collaboration,
                                    power through community.
 
The empowering of the disempowered,
            and the raising up of the weak,
consistently lie at the heart of the ministry of Jesus.
 
And far from offering an example of unalloyed weakness,
            his life creates the possibility of a new way of being human,
            where the rules of using power to effect change are re-written.
 
Until this moment, power over others
            often appeared to be the only option.
 
But Jesus calls followers to work with him
            to expose the lie of the false narratives
            by which societies construct themselves.
 
You see, power over others is Satan’s great deception.
 
We are deceived if we come to believe
            that our desires are God’s desires;
and that in doing our will, we are doing God’s will.
 
Such distortion of desire will always open the door to hell,
            because it displaces God from the centre of creation,
                        replacing him with an idol made in our own image,
                        through which we exercise our power over others.
 
Jesus knew that it was relational power
            that will be the game-changer, as well as the world-changer.
 
Because power held in relationship
            is never about ‘me’, and ‘my desires’;
            it is always about the other.
 
Selfless power, as seen in the life of Jesus,
            is what makes the real difference.
 
Jesus consistently gave away power,
            seeking to build others up
            rather than asking them to worship him.
 
And the church that he calls into being
            is, or at least should be, the supreme example
            of a collaborative community of shared power,
against which not even hell itself can triumph.
 
Jesus does not want to change the world on his own,
            but in relationship with others;
and so, it seems to me, that those who follow Jesus
            should follow his example.
 
The church of Christ should never seek power over others,
            no matter how pure we may think our motives to be;
and I would suggest that those times
            where Christianity has done its deals with power
                        to get its message heard more widely,
            have resulted in a dilution of the radical message
                        of the one who came to expose
                                    the lure of power over others
                                    for the insidious lie that it is.
 
So when we find ourselves at our own crossroads of temptation,
            or abandoned in the wilderness of our deepest need;
when we face our own moments of crisis and decision,
            I wonder what choices will we make?
 
Can we, I wonder, be so shaped by our engagement with the story of Christ,
            that our natural inclination will be to follow his path
                        of rejecting power over others.
 
Can we embrace the new way of being human
            that he opens before us?
 
For Jesus, this meant a move, a decisive change,
            and Matthew symbolises this change
            by telling us that Jesus moved from Nazareth to Capernaum.
 
This is more than just a decision to relocate to the seaside,
            and it’s more than minor detail from Jesus’ back-story.
Rather, it’s a move from the centre to the margins,
            from the urban centre of Nazareth
            to a fishing community by the shores of Galilee.
 
Matthew’s invited us already in his gospel
            to start paying attention to the places where Jesus lives,
and has been giving us quotations from the prophets
            to help us interpret these geographical signifiers.
 
So we started with the holy family in Bethlehem, the ‘city of David’,
            - a place for a King to be born,
and Matthew told us that this was in fulfilment of the prophecy of Micah (5.2)
 
            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. (Matt. 2:6)
 
Then we saw Jesus travel to Egypt to escape the murderous intentions of Herod,
            something Matthew tells us is in fulfilment of the prophecy of Hosea (11.1):
 
            This was to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet,
            "Out of Egypt I have called my son." (Matt. 2:15)
 
Then Jesus returned from Egypt and bypassed Bethlehem,
            to spend his childhood years in Nazareth,
with Matthew claiming that this was:
            so that what had been spoken through the prophets might be fulfilled,
            "He will be called a Nazorean." (Matt. 2:23)
Although no-one is sure quite which prophets Matthew is referring to here!
 
And then we get to Jesus the adult,
            at the beginning of his ministry,
and he makes his decisive move to the margins,
            to Capernaum of Galilee.
 
Once again Matthew is clear that this is in fulfilment of prophecy,
            this time from Isaiah (9.1-2):
 
            He left Nazareth and made his home in Capernaum by the sea,
                        in the territory of Zebulun and Naphtali,
             ¹⁴ so that what had been spoken
                        through the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled:
             ¹⁵ "Land of Zebulun, land of Naphtali, on the road by the sea,
                        across the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles--
             ¹⁶ the people who sat in darkness have seen a great light,
                        and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death
                        light has dawned." (Matt. 4:13-16)
 
This passage from Isaiah is often part of our Advent readings,
            where it is used to express the light of Christ
            coming into a world of darkness at his incarnation.
 
But for Matthew, this isn’t a prophecy that’s fulfilled at Jesus’ birth,
            rather it’s fulfilled after Jesus’ temptation, as he moves to Galilee.
 
Did you notice the slightly strange way Isaiah describes Galilee?
            He calls it ‘Galilee of the Gentiles’,
                        because this portion of land was taken from Israel
                        by the foreign empire Assyria during the 700s BCE.
 
This is marginal territory,
            barely even Israel.
 
And yet this is where Jesus moves to make his residence,
            as this child born of David’s line becomes and adult at the margins of society,
            living in disputed and occupied territory.
 
And it is there, in Galilee of the Gentiles,
            that Jesus starts to call his followers.
 
This is the ultimate repudiation of the temptation that preceded it,
            as Jesus walks away from any vestiges of claiming ‘power over’,
            to start building the ‘power with’ that is going to change the world.
 
Israel of the first century was an occupied country,
            and the temptation to raise a rebellious army,
                        to storm Jerusalem and claim David’s throne
            is going return to Jesus and his followers again and again
                        as they make their way through the gospel.
 
And so Matthew is clear:
            it begins at the margins,
            and it stays at the margins.
 
The path of Christ is not a path to power over others,
            it is always a path of peace, justice, and righteousness.
So Jesus calls people to repent of their authoritarian dreams,
            and to discover the true power to transform the world
            that is found only in collaboration with others.
 
I sometimes describe Bloomsbury
            as an ‘eccentrically central’ church,
and what I mean by this is that we are church not only in the centre,
            but also at the margins.
 
We seek to model in our community the call of Jesus
            to share power with those whom others would disregard.
We reject the temptations to power and glory,
            and instead seek the glory of service to others.
 
And as we start a new year,
            my prayer for us is that we will continue to live out our vision statement,
                        of provoking faith in the heart of London,
            as we take our place alongside others
            in bringing the world as it should be into being in the midst of the world as it is.
 
And my challenge for all of us is to recognise that this doesn’t happen by accident.
            Jesus had to move from one place to another
                        to start building his kingdom through calling his disciples.
            And there will be things we are called to do
                        which will involve change in us, too.
 
Maybe we will commit ourselves to becoming more involved
            in the work Bloomsbury does with London Citizens
            in addressing the needs of the most vulnerable in our city.
 
Or maybe we will commit ourselves
            to taking the training offered by the Welcome Directory
to find out more about how we can welcome those
            who have been released from prison.
 
Or maybe we’ll attend the Churches Together in Westminster meeting
            in a couple of weeks,
to find out about how communities of faith in our area
            are responding to the impact of the increasing needs faced by so many.
 
Or maybe we’ll simply commit ourselves to being at church more regularly,
            being present to one another in fellowship and community
            as we build a community of welcome and inclusion.
 
In the name of Christ, and for his sake,
            we are called to live and work collaboratively,
                        across all borders and boundaries;
            we are called to find allies in unexpected places,
                        to treat the other as our brother or sister,
            and to share together in the mystery
                        that is power held through powerlessness,
            for the transformation of the world for good.
 
Amen.

Room at the Inn

A Reflection for Christmas Day 2022

Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church

 

The Birthplace of Jesus, Church of the Nativity, Bethlehem

Luke 2.1-20
 
Have you seen the wonderful musical Come from Away,
            which has been playing at the Phoenix Theatre near Bloomsbury
            for the last few years?
 
If not, then it’s about to close on 7^th January,
            so you don’t have long left to catch it!
 
It’s a Canadian musical, and is based on the events
            in the small Newfoundland town of Gander
            during the week following the September 11 2001 terror attacks.
 
In the aftermath of the aeroplanes hitting the Twin Towers in New York,
            all airspace over the United States was immediately closed,
but the problem as there were already planes mid-flight across the Atlantic,
            without enough fuel to return.
 
So these planes, 38 of them, carrying approximately 7,000 passengers,
            were ordered to land unexpectedly
            at Gander International Airport.
 
There is a large runway used for refuelling stops,
            but in absolutely no way at all was the town geared up
            for all those who suddenly needed housing and help.
 
The characters in the musical are based on
            actual Gander residents
            and the stranded travellers they hosted and fed.
 
The show has been described as
            ‘the most heart-warming musical ever written about logistics’,
and it’s genuinely a show that makes you laugh and cry at the same time
            as it depicts the astonishing welcome given by the small local community
                        to people stranded far from home,
            set against the backdrop of an international terrorist incident.
 
In a moment I’m going to play us one of the songs from the show,
            but first I probably ought to explain
            why I’m showing this on Christmas day.
 
The thing is, I think something similar to this,
            albeit on a slightly less international scale,
was what was happening in Bethlehem,
            at the time of the birth of Jesus.
 
Let me explain…
 
We sometimes get the idea that the ‘inn’ in Bethlehem,
            at which there was famously ‘no room’ (2.7)
was a sort of ancient equivalent to a modern hotel:
            the kind of place where, once all the rooms are taken,
            a ‘no vacancies’ sign gets put in the front window.
 
But actually, the Greek word here means ‘guest-chamber’,
            and what we’re actually talking about is a place in the house,
                        maybe a bedroom,
                        or possibly just a corner of a communal sleeping room,
            where visitors from the extended family could stay when in town.
 
You see, the ancient world was a place which ran on hospitality,
            it was culturally essential for people to offer hospitality,
            particularly to those from their wider family networks.
 
And Joseph’s family were from Bethlehem,
            so under normal circumstances it would have been simple
            for him and Mary to find a place to sleep there;
and the idea of refusing a room to a pregnant woman
            would have been an unthinkable breach of hospitality.
 
But these were not normal circumstances,
            they were anything but normal,
because the Roman Empire had altered the circumstances entirely.
 
We know that this story is set against the backdrop of the Empire,
            because Luke makes it clear for us.
 
He does so in 2.1 by telling us that these events happened at the time
            when the Emperor Augustus issued a decree
            that all the world should be registered.
 
This is the Roman Empire at its most intrusive:
            I mean, we worry today about data-gathering,
but Caesar Augustus knew a thing or two about this mechanism of control:
            and he wanted every person to be registered,
            primarily so that every person could be taxed.
 
And for this to achieved,
            all people were required to register in their ancestral town,
            regardless of where they actually lived.
 
This outlandish demand of the Empire
            placed an unreasonable burden on every person in the land:
people had to travel who should have remained at home,
            and some towns suddenly had such an influx of visitors
            that the normal rules and expectations of hospitality
                        were stretched beyond breaking point.
 
So let’s now hear the song ‘Blankets and Bedding’ from Come From Away,
            as the locals of Gander frantically scramble to offer hospitality.
 
https://youtu.be/IWpqrhh-rKg
 
If a stranger ends up sent by fate…
Are we gonna be ready?
Well, we have to be, don’t we!
 
Sometimes the world makes impossible demands of us:
 
Maybe 38 aeroplanes land in a small town in Canada.
 
            Maybe the Empire orders everyone to their home town for a census.
 
Maybe there’s a war in Ukraine and people need urgent hospitality.
 
            Maybe there’s an evacuation from Afghanistan and people need rehousing.
 
I think that the story of Mary and Joseph in Bethlehem,
            being given somewhere to sleep with the animals
            because there was literally no room in house,
is the story of a community making do in extremis,
            of people refusing to turn away the pregnant young woman,
            refusing to give up on their values of hospitality
                        despite all the pressure to do so.
 
Like Gander in Newfoundland in 2001,
            the people of Bethlehem 2,000 years earlier
            found somewhere for Jesus to be born.
 
It wasn’t ideal, but it was enough.
 
And I wonder what this ancient story says to us,
            as we contemplate our place
in a world where people continue to find themselves in extreme situations?
 
Will we capitulate with the cultural pressure to  ‘batten down the hatches’,
            looking after our own, and leaving others to do the same?
 
Or will be rediscover the values of hospitality, in our own lives,
            but also in our communal life together as a church community,
                        and as a nation more widely?
 
I think the way people rallied round to care for the poor and vulnerable
            during the years of the pandemic,
tells me that these values of hospitality,
            of making things work in a time of need and crisis,
are still very much part of who we have the capacity to be,
            because they are, fundamentally, part of what it means to be human.
 
Jesus was born into a town in crisis,
            and yet the angels sang of his coming
            as news of great joy for all people.
 
Sometimes, out of crisis comes the blessing of God.
 
So this Christmas, as we contemplate the Christ-child in the manger,
            I wonder if we can hear a challenge to us:
asking us how we will welcome the Holy Family into our lives?

Joseph’s Dream

A sermon for Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church

18 December 2022

 

Dream of St Joseph, c. 1625–1630, by Gerard Seghers

Matthew 1.18-25; 2.13-23

I’ve heard it said
            that you should never trust what you remember from a dream,
because the boundary between reality and fantasy
            stretches thin in the hours of darkness.
 
But for me, dreams have always seemed somehow more real
            than the events of the daytime.
 
Maybe it’s because my name is Joseph?
            My parents called me after the great dreamer of old,
                        whose teenage dreams of sheaves in a field,
                        and of the sun, moon, and stars bowing down before him,
            created in him some capacity to see beyond the now,
                        to futures yet to be,
            and which led to him interpreting the dreamings
                        of none other than the Pharaoh of Egypt himself.
 
So yes, if you want to call me ‘Joseph the dreamer’,
            that’s fine by me, they’ve called me that all my life.
 
I have had many dreams,
            but chief among them was my dream for a family;
            of a wife, children, a home of happiness and contentment.
 
And it seemed as if that dream was coming true
            when I became engaged to Mary:
            a young woman from a respectable family.
 
I paid her father the required betrothal payment,
            and then began the period of waiting
            for the appointed time of the marriage to arrive.
 
Poor Jacob had to wait fourteen years before he could marry his Rachel,
            but unlike Laban of old (Gen. 29),
                        Mary’s father was an honourable man:
            so there were to be no surprise substitutions or unexpected delays
                        - we agreed the standard one year betrothal.
 
But the dream didn’t last long:
            my Mary was found to be with child,
            and thing is, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t mine.
 
And then, to make it worse,
            the law is very clear on what should happen next.
I even went to the synagogue
            and asked the Rabbi to check the scroll of the law for me:
He read to me:
            ‘If evidence of a young woman’s virginity is not found,
            then they shall bring her to the entrance of her father’s house
            and the men of the town shall stone her to death.’ (Deut. 22.20-21).
 
Whoever heard of such a thing?
            Surely no-one would do this these days!
I mean, the Romans would never allow it, would they?
 
But I could still imagine the scandal
            that would engulf Mary and her family if news of this got out,
            and none of that was part of my dream.
 
So I found another way:
            I would relinquish my claim on Mary,
                        leave her father with the betrothal payment,
            and have a private bill of divorce drawn up and signed by two witnesses,
                        leaving Mary free to marry another,
                        maybe even the father of her child?
 
Such things matter to people,
            and they mattered to me.
 
Children should surely be with their parents, everyone knows this;
            society relies on fathers taking responsibility for their own children,
            it’s always been this way.
 
And then I had one of my dreams,
            and this one was more real, more vivid, than any I’d had before;
and it seems I’m to be a father after all,
            and with Mary too.
 
This child of hers would become mine,
            and through me he too would become a son of David and an heir of Abraham.
 
Well, I’ve had worse dreams.
 
Despite it all, I still wanted Mary,
            and an early child in a marriage is no bad sign of blessings to come.
 
Not all families have straightforward stories,
            and many great men have had complicated origins.
 
After all, Plato, Alexander the Great,
            Romulus, and even Caesar Augustus
            were all said to have been conceived from the gods;
and within our own Hebrew Bible
            we have the stories of Sarah, Leah, Rebecca and Zipporah
each being visited by the Lord
            before conceiving their sons
            Isaac, Reuben, Jacob, Esau and Gershon.
 
Did I really believe the angel’s claim
            that Mary’s child was conceived of God?
 
Does it matter?
 
I just know that I heard the call of God
            to be a husband and a father,
            and my dream began to merge once again with my life.
 
A family, it occurred to me as I lay in my bed that night,
            is something called into existence by God,
            not willed into being by a man.
 
And I resolved that this son of mine,
            for such the angel had said he would be,
would be mine more truly
            than if I had made him myself.
 
I’m told that parents who adopt a child often feel this way,
            as if the act of choosing somehow matches
            or even exceeds the act of creating.
 
After all, are we not all God’s children,
            chosen in grace and adopted into love?
 
Is this not what it means to be part of God’s family,
            God’s chosen people?
 
One of the privileges of fatherhood is that of naming the child,
            and my angel helped me here too,
            echoing to me words spoken in dreams to others.
 
You understand, I have made something of a study of these things,
            and according to our traditions,
            the Lord came to Moses’ father in a dream, telling him that
                        ‘this child… shall deliver the Hebrew race
                        from their bondage in Egypt’ (Josephus, Ant, 2.215-16);
and similarly the great hero Samson’s birth
            was revealed by an angel in a dream,
            telling his mother that she would ‘conceive and bear a son…
                        [and that] it is he who shall deliver Israel
                        from the hand of the Philistines’ (Judges 13.5).
 
So the angel in my dream told me
            that my betrothed would bear a son
            who will save his people from their sins (1.21),
and that I should call him Jesus,
            after Joshua of old who led the people of God after Moses,
            into the safety of the promised land.
 
I have to admit, at this point in the dream
            I nearly woke myself up.
 
I mean, taking on a child and a woman I love is one thing,
            but comparisons with Moses, Samson, and Joshua
            are something else altogether.
 
But the angel hadn’t finished with me yet.
 
This talk of salvation needed some explaining,
            because the Romans and the Greeks
                        had already declared their gods of Asclepius and Zeus
                        to be the saviours of the people,
            and the emperors of Rome
                        exercised this salvation on their behalf.
 
Any suggestion of an alternative saviour
            born from among the Hebrew people
            could quickly become treasonous,
and no son of mine was going to face that fate
            if I could help it.
 
Enough with this angel and this dream,
            it’s time for some sober reality now in Joseph’s family.
 
Except the angel wouldn’t let me go,
            and for a time our spirits wrestled
as the angel sought to keep my dream alive
            and I tried to break free.
 
But then the angel spoke again,
            this time quoting from the book of the prophet Isaiah,
speaking words originally shaped for the evil King Ahaz of Judah,
            way back before the Babylonians
            laid waste to Solomon’s temple (2 Kings 16.1-20),
at the time when the Assyrians
            were besieging the northern kingdoms of Israel.
 
Isaiah prophesied to Ahaz
            that a young woman was with child and would bear a son,
            whose name would be Immanuel,
and that this child would be a sign of either deliverance or destruction,
            before the child reached maturity (Isa. 7.14-16).
 
God had offered Ahaz a possibility of deliverance,
            and whilst the child of promise had indeed been born to his wife,
            his faith had faltered and Judah and Jerusalem too had fallen.
 
The message to me was clear:
            my child of promise would succeed where Ahaz’s had failed,
and my task was to keep the faith,
            to hold onto the dream of a better future for God’s people.
 
What such a future might look like
            not even I can begin to imagine,
            but I have some convictions about what it won’t be.
 
It seems to me that for too long
            those called and chosen by God to be part of God’s family
            have lived under a system of domination.
 
From Egypt to Assyria,
            from Babylon to Greece to Rome,
the world’s kingdoms have existed in opposition
            to God’s dream of people living in peace
                        and justice and righteousness.
 
And for too long,
            God’s people have resisted God’s dream of a better future,
being led astray by the competing dreams of power and privilege,
            that have their origins in the nightmares of imperial aspiration.
 
So what did the angel mean
            when they said that my child would save God’s people from their sins?
 
This may be one of those things that, as Mary sometimes puts it,
            we just need to treasure in our hearts.
 
But it seems to me that God’s salvation
            must surely look like an alternative empire,
a way of existing in the world
            where the dominating powers of Rome, Babylon, and Egypt
                        give up their claims on human lives,
            and people are freed to experience life in all its fullness.
 
But here, I’m dreaming again,
            and how this is related to my child, only time will tell.
 
But I can tell you, however,
            that the angel hadn’t finished with me yet.
 
I did as I had been asked,
            and took Mary as my wife, and Jesus as my child,
and we stayed in Bethlehem,
            intending to return to Nazareth in due course.
 
But then the system of domination flexed its muscles against us,
            as our own king, the great Herod,
                        heard from travellers form the East
            that a child had been born
                        who embodied a new vision for what God’s people could be,
                        a vision that threatened his carefully negotiated power
                                    as a puppet king of Rome.
 
And so at the angel’s command,
            and like my namesake Joseph of old,
we set off for Egypt - of all places -
            to escape Herod’s murderous intent (2.13).
 
I heard later what Herod did to the babies of Bethlehem,
            as he channelled Pharaoh in destroying the children of the Israelites,
            and my heart breaks for those children and their parents (2.16).
 
Why did my angel not warn them too?
 
I have no answer,
            just a hope that in the salvation of our child
                        will come, as with Moses of old,
            some consolation for all those who mourn in Israel,
                        for Rachel who weeps for her children (2.18).
 
Moses led the people out of slavery in Egypt,
            can our son in some way also lead people
            out from their own imprisonment to forces of evil?
 
Is this what the angel meant
            by saying our child would save God’s people from their sins (1.21)?
 
I thought then that I had heard the last of my angel,
            but to my surprise one night I he came back to me in another dream,
            telling me that it was time to return to our homeland (2.19-20).
 
We set off, and trust me, it’s a long journey.
            It didn’t take us forty years like it did Moses
                        and the people of Israel after the Exodus,
            but it was no easy thing to do.
 
As we neared Judah,
            we heard that Herod’s cruel son Archelaus had replaced his father,
            having gone to Rome to be confirmed as king in his place.
 
Did you know that a delegation of Jews went after Archelaus
            to appeal to the Emperor,
            saying that they did not want him as their ruler?
 
The angel came to me one final time, in another dream,
            as we journeyed up from Egypt.
 
The angel told me that we should avoid Judea and Jerusalem,
            and so we made our way north, to Nazareth in Galilee (2.22),
where we now live in peace with our wonderful child of promise,
            and our other children too.
 
I haven’t had any more dreams with angels since those days:
            maybe four angelic visitations is enough for anyone,
            even a dreamer like me.
 
But I do still dream,
            and I try to encourage my child to dream too ,
to dream of a world where men like Pharaoh and Herod
            no longer control the lives of people,
where God’s family is a people where all are welcomed
            and even those born in disgrace are adopted in.
 
Together we dream of a future
            where the power of evil over people’s lives is broken,
            and where God’s purposes of liberation are accomplished.
 
This is my dream, of God with us,
            and I invite you to join us in dreaming it into existence.