The pink one

This Sunday will be the third in Advent and those of a churchy nature (well, some at least) will be lighting the pink one, aka the candle for Gaudete, or Rejoice! Sunday. 

Contrary to (confused) popular opinion, this is not the one for Mary.

Once upon a time I used to think of pink as a colour for small girls' tutus, or sugary nougat, or a useful highlighter pen, but since I went into the Church, I've become aware of the liturgical weight of pink during Advent.

Advent is really purple - purple altar hanging, purple stole, purple service booklets, if you have them. And purple candles on the Advent wreath. Even those of a medium churchmanship will light the first on Advent Sunday, the second a week after, and then we come to this Sunday, which is, in most Advent candle sets at least, pink. 

The confusion arises from a clash of symbolism from two different developments of the Advent themes. A more Catholic tradition would see no flowers in churches during Advent (despite, ironically, Christmas trees going up earlier and earlier). Advent themes are, after all, sombre, being the four themes of heaven, hell, death and judgment. Some clergy attempt to stick to these themes and preach on nothing else during Advent, but with community Carol concerts and suchlike, I would imagine only the hardcore manage it (I must admit I'm already on to fluffy reindeers and how to incorporate them into the Christmas message).

Pink vestments -
puzzlingly, one of the priests appears to be combining then with fairy wings

So the pink candle represents a lightening up of Advent sombreness, a kind of 'keep going, we're almost there - rejoice!' and some clergy even wear pink vestments to boot (I admit I haven't gone this far liturgically, though if someone were to gift me a pink stole, I would not be averse...)

So far, so good. The complication arises in that at the same time as the purple, purple, pink, purple thing, there are also four themes to the lectionary readings developing each Sunday. So:

Sunday 1=the Patriarchs
Sunday 2=the Prophets (NB: this typically features a reading about John the Baptist, but that's just to catch you out...it's not his Sunday yet, it's simply to show that he was in the tradition of the OT prophets).
Sunday 3=John the Baptist
Sunday 4=Mary

And there you have it - the first mention of Mary and everyone does an immediate gender association; Mary - that must mean we light the pink one....? Because, pink for a girl, right? Also, pink vestments are worn by our more Catholic brethren (who venerate Mary) therefore pink=Mary.

You can see it on the faces of Vergers up and down the land - standing over the Advent wreath each week, taper in hand, looking uneasy and trying to work out whether to start at this candle or that, anti-clockwise or clock-wise; is it John the Baptist yet, or Mary? Where exactly are we in the Church calendar and why can't religious symbolism be a little less complex?

So, for all you C of E aficionados, just to see where you are on the pink scale, feel free to take this small season-specific liturgical/ministerial test.

On a scale of 1-10, how Advent-pink are you?

1. Never even heard of Advent (not recommended).
2. Saw an Advent wreath once on Blue Peter (it's a start).
3. Love the Advent wreath idea but our church doesn't go in for it (you've saved yourselves a lot of complicated explaining but also missed out on some nice photo opportunities).
4. We have an Advent wreath but I've no idea what the candles stand for (good job you're reading this).
5. All four of our candles are purple (ha!!! possibly more straightforward, but less fun).
6. We have the pink one but I thought it was for Mary (see point 4).
7. We have a pink candle and the pink+John the Baptist clash has always left me feeling mildly liturgically disturbed (me too, as soon as I realised the pink was not for Mary, which happened a full 3 years into ordained ministry).

The last 3, for clergy only:

8. Pink candle; pink stole. 
9. Pink candle; pink stole; pink chasuble.
10. Pink candle; pink stole; pink chasuble; pink walls throughout the vicarage.

Wherever you are on the Advent-pink scale, Happy Third Sunday in Advent.

Wade in the water

This morning at the aptly named St John the Baptist church we thought about the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan river.

Why did Jesus come to John the Baptiser to be baptised? Surely the Son of God had no need for the washing away of sin? 

The gospel of Mark records that John had been calling the people to repentance and here is Jesus standing before him asking for water baptism too.

John knew his place though. He knew his baptism would give way to baptism in the Holy Spirit, offered by the Christ. As Jesus came up out of the water the heavens were 'torn apart' and the Holy Spirit rested upon him in the form of a dove. It's just what Isaiah longed for: 'Oh, that you would tear the heavens and come down' - the word for 'tear' is skizomenous, suggesting a violent opening of the skies for the Spirit to be revealed. Mathew and Luke water this down (excuse the pun) to 'open'. It the same word used in English for 'schizophrenic' - a personality disturbed by something. The only other time it appears in the New Testament is when the curtain of the Temple is torn in two at the point of Jesus' death, a point not lost on at least one artist whose depiction of the baptism of Christ foreshadows an obedience 'even to death on a cross':

Original painting by Daniel Bonnell http://www.bonnellart.com/www.lifeonthenile.com/Paintings_1995-2000.html

The Holy Spirit is the empowering one, the one who calls us to wade deeper in the water, as Ezekiel was called to go from ankle deep to chest deep through the river of life. We plopped our stones into a bucket of water as an act of discipleship and decision at the beginning of a new year. To go deeper. To be filled with the Spirit in the middle of the mess and muddle of life. To wade in the water with Ezekiel and to identify with Christ in his obedience to whatever God brings. 

Baptism is expressed in many ways; often in our church it's a few drops on the head of a gurgling baby. At the beginning of the year, still in Epiphany, it's good to imagine being out of our depth, to consider overwhelming, the tearing of something familiar to let in something wild and holy.

No more Mr nice guy

Isaiah 64: 40: O that you would tear open the heavens and come down
John 1:23 I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness,
“Make straight the way of the Lord".


Sermon for Advent 3

It’s sometimes the case that when a new minister comes to a parish, or there's a new doctor in the local surgery, or a new class teacher in the primary school: people want to know, are they nice?

Being nice is hardly an epithet appropriate to John the Baptist – although in John he is more sympathetically portrayed than in Matthew and Luke – where he utters the immortal words, not normally printed on evangelistic leaflets, ‘you brood of vipers!’ to the Pharisees that come to him for baptism.

But let’s give him the benefit of the doubt this Advent and ask what was so memorable about his message, and what can we take from it for ourselves.

So, three things about John the Baptist and his message:

    1.     He sees himself as preparing the way.

Advent is a time of preparing the way – for Christ to be born amongst us again - and a time to think about his second coming too.

For John the Baptist, 'preparing the way' was figurative for getting people ready for the coming of the Messiah.

He didn’t go along the path in the desert with a broom, sweeping the sand off the path so Jesus could walk on by; his preparation was spiritual.

And it’s the same for us.

In many respects the Christian life is about preparing the way, year in year out.

What we prepare is our hearts, to receive Christ – as the hymn says ‘where meek souls will receive him, still the dear Christ enters in.’

So it’s not just at Advent that we prepare our hearts for Christ – it’s really all year round.

Preparing a way in your heart for Christ is as good a description of discipleship as any, in fact.

Here, the heart is the centre of our personality, the driver of everything we are – ‘man’s entire mental and moral activity, both the rational and emotional elements. In other words, the heart is used figuratively for the hidden springs of the personal life’ (from http://www.awakentoprayer.org/heart_in_script.htm).

But what does preparing your heart entail?

This question leads us to the second point about John the Baptist:

    2.     He calls people to repentance.

Because the best (and in fact the only) way to prepare for Christ is through repentance.

Repentance is not an entirely easy topic, even for Christians, perhaps especially for Christians, as we can become overly familiar with the confession we say in church week by week.

What does repentance look like for someone who’s been a Christian a long time?

In some ways, it’s easier to imagine someone who’s been estranged from Christ over something quite major, coming suddenly to value repentance.

What of all of the small sinners, who can’t recall the last time they truly felt sorry for anything.

Here it can be helpful to find a spiritual advisor, someone who knows how to discern God’s work in your life and who will suggest ways in which the arteries of the spiritual heart may have got clogged up along the way.

Another way is to read inspiring literature, to see how someone else a bit further along the path has grown in the ways of discipleship.

One such writer for me has been the elderly American pastor Gordon MacDonald, whose book A Resilient Life, really spoke to me this year.

His description of repentance is apt as we think about John the Baptist, out there in the desert.

He writes of a meadow, which he and his wife bought to clear and develop.

First the meadow needed to be cleared of boulders – these were big things, obvious from the surface, and a hindrance to planting.

They were relatively easy to see, and therefore easy to remove.

Then came the middle sized rocks, also fairly easy to see and to remove.

Finally, there were small pebbles scattered over the meadow – there were more of these, and they were less serious, but eventually they were cleared too.

He likens all this to the obvious things in our life that need attention – and the less obvious things, though still seen by God.

Then he takes the clearing of the meadow metaphor one stage further.

He writes, ‘when we cleared the field of its rocks and boulders, and cut back the vegetation so that the grasses could grow, we didn’t anticipate one thing that the locals could have told us if we’d asked. We didn’t know that underneath the soil (shallow as it is) were countless other rocks and boulders, each of which would make their individual appearance in time. As the winter frost went deep into the ground each year, it would thrust up many of these rocks and boulders. In the spring I would climb on my tractor mower and suddenly hear the blade hit a rock I’d never seen before. When I checked, I would be surprised to see the face of a rock peeking up from the soil. I hadn’t known it was there before. And when I tried to pry the rock loose, I often discovered that it wasn’t a rock, it was a boulder – much bigger than a breadbasket – and it had been there all the time’ (p. 122).

Repentance means we take seriously those things below the surface that only the Holy Spirit can point out to us, though we need to be willing and keen for this to happen, and to take steps to make it happen.

So John the Baptist prepares the way; he calls his hearers to repentance, and finally,

    3.     He points to Jesus.

Do our lives point to Jesus?

We’ve already mentioned that in John’s gospel we have no ‘brood of vipers’ speech – just John pointing to someone else.

This is John stripped down to the bare essentials – he points beyond himself to Christ - a mere signpost.

His life is in exact contrast to the self-promotion of our culture.

And before we run to judge our culture, when did we last do something, perhaps an act of random kindness, that went entirely unnoticed, and feel happy with that?

It’s not that easy to point beyond ourselves, to let someone else take the credit.

But it is the calling of every Christian.

We point, not to ourselves, but to Christ.

Could someone look at your life and see the connection between your faith in Christ and the fruits of the Spirit in you; see love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, goodness and self-control?

Do you have a holy frustration for God, akin to that of Isaiah, who cries out, ‘O that you would tear open the heavens and come down!’?

As we approach the final countdown to Christmas, let’s learn form John the Baptist, who, though he may not have been 'nice', knew that we need to prepare the way of the heart; who called his hearers to repentance and who pointed beyond himself to the Christ who was coming, and is coming still.

Amen.

Any Questions?

Second Sunday after Epiphany

John 1:35-39

The next day John again was standing with two of his disciples,and as he watched Jesus walk by, he exclaimed, ‘Look, here is the Lamb of God!’ The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus. When Jesus turned and saw them following, he said to them, ‘What are you looking for?’ They said to him, ‘Rabbi’ (which translated means Teacher), ‘where are you staying?’ He said to them, ‘Come and see.’ They came and saw where he was staying, and they remained with him that day. It was about four o’clock in the afternoon. 

We live in an information saturated age.

In the age of Google, questions and answers are reduced to questions requiring information and the 'answers' which give you that information. 

What a search engine does, when you type in a question, is match your words as exactly as possible to places where you might best be able to find the answers.

But it’s not fail safe, and it’s shallow.

If, in a moment of existential angst, I type into Google, ‘What is the meaning of my life?’ I get, initially:

 ‘"My Life" is a song by American rapper 50 Cent and the second official single of his forthcoming fifth studio album Street King Immortal’, and a link to his song…

After that, I might be luckier and find a second entry, encouraging me to ‘Take the ‘three minute Chakra test’.

Or the third entry: ‘How to discover your life purpose in about 20 minutes’.

A simple search for information cannot give me what I really seek.

Our gospel today has at its heart a question asked by Jesus, which is not answered; and a question asked him by some disciples, which he answers in a certain way.

I’d like us to look at these questions and answers and what they reveal about how Jesus deals with us.

We’re still in Epiphany, still thinking about how God is revealed in Jesus Christ.

We’ve seen how the Magi discovered that God was revealed in the baby in Bethlehem.

We’ve seen how Christ was revealed in his baptism.

And now we come to John, who’s always the odd one out.

His is the one gospel where the baptism of Jesus is not narrated, but alluded to.

So, instead of a riverside scene, such that we tried to imagine last week, with Jesus going down into the not so clean Jordan, here we have the event commented upon by the Baptizer himself.

The passage opens with John looking up and seeing Jesus walking towards him.

He is quick to comment: ‘Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!

He has recognized Jesus for who he is and he wants to testify to his real nature, until people understand.

It’s easy to forget that at this point John still had his own disciples, but that was about to change...

We’re told, ‘the next day John again was standing with two of his disciples…'

Again he watches Jesus walk by and again he testifies: ‘Behold, the Lamb of God.’

This time it’s enough to make two of his followers turn from John and go after Jesus instead.

Jesus notices this, turns, and asks them a question.

Here is that question at the heart of the passage...

Different translations inevitably render it differently, but the sense of the question is ‘What are you looking for?’, or better, ‘What do you seek?’

As one commentator points out, a lot hangs on the way we phrase things: you ‘look for’ your glasses; you ‘seek’ the meaning of life.

To seek is a word associated with the Magi: they sought the King; they sought what the star meant; they were seekers.

Seekers is also a term used in reports on mission in the UK about which groups the church is effective in reaching and which groups it isn’t.

Spiritual seekers are at home with the spiritual quest for meaning, but they don’t necessarily think the traditional church can offer anything to this search.

Unlike Google questions and answers, ‘What do you seek?’ coming from the lips of Jesus, is a profound, 'meaning of life' question, and one which many people never really ask themselves.

It’s one of those bits of the gospel that is best slowed down, 'seen' in slow motion and pondered over.

When we read about Jesus in the New Testament, we can race through, jump over bits, miss their significance.

That’s why the reading out loud of Scripture in public worship is important.

Although it’s good to have the written word, the word that is heard can reveal something new for us.

I’d like to re-read that part of the gospel and see if, in your mind’s eye, you can slow it down to that one question, and then, imagine Jesus asking it of you, today.

Here we go: it might help if you close you eyes.

‘The next day John again was standing with two of his disciples, and as he watched Jesus walk by, he exclaimed, ‘Look, here is the Lamb of God!’ The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus. When Jesus turned and saw them following, he said to them, ‘What do you seek?’’

It’s easy to miss that this question coming from the lips of Jesus is the very first thing he is recorded as saying, in this gospel.

In fact, for someone who is presented as the Word of God, Jesus has been pretty silent up till this moment.

‘What do you seek?’ is a fair question though, because so many, when presented with the life of Jesus, sought something other than what he stood for.

They sought political freedom, they sought to control him and they sought to control who could be saved.

‘What do you seek?’ he says to these disciples of John, who now appear to be following him.

It’s like today – people go to church for many different reasons – they like the music, they like the sense of history, the building; they are upset about a loss, or want to celebrate something happy, like a birth.

To all these people, and to us, who think we know why we’re here, Jesus still asks: ‘What do you seek?’

And He asks it repeatedly in life, in different stages.

I recall a period of life when spiritual things seemed a bit of a struggle.

I'd been a Christian for 18 years, had three small children, went to a big, lively church and a midweek bible study group for Mums. I had read the bible and I knew you were supposed to pray every day.

Not being a morning person and having small children meant I never found time to pray in the morning, so I decided I would try and sit down when they had gone to bed, at about 8pm each evening.

I would go into my room, sit on the bed, relax, and try and read a portion of the bible and pray, but it was hard work, partly because I was always tired but also because I wasn’t very challenged in my Christian life.

I’d been going to the same type of church for about fifteen years – I’d heard a lot of similar sermons and wasn’t sure, apart from looking after small children, what my role in the body of Christ really was.

I remember looking up from the bible one evening, looking out of the window as the evening drew on, and thinking ‘Is this it?’

It was a ‘meaning of life’ question.

I meant, ‘is this what being a Christian is always going to be like?’

Flat and same-y…?

If I was asking this question of God, I now believe He was asking it of me first.

Theologians call that ‘prevenient grace’.

He asked first, calling deeper, as He always does.

‘What do you seek?’

‘Is this all there is?’

Looking back with hindsight at what happened after that, in my life, and the life of our family, I can see that it was in many ways the end of a settled stage and the beginning of something very different, which eventually led to Ordination.

God knew this: I didn’t.

What was at the bottom of my apparent dissatisfaction was that fundamental question ‘What do you seek?’

The disciples’ answer to Jesus’ question is not recorded in our passage – it would take them a lifetime to work out.

But in any case, they, walking along behind Jesus and trying to work him out, now ask a question back.

‘Rabbi, where are you staying?’

It could be a request for information (like ‘where is the tomato purée?’- a question I always find myself asking in a new supermarket), or it could be they were trying to build up a picture of this man, this Lamb, about whom John was so enthusiastic.

And Jesus does give an answer, but it’s not an answer for information, it’s an invitation to come.

It’s the same for us:

‘Come and see’.

Come and spend time with me.

Come and let’s talk.

Come and let’s eat.

What do you seek?