Articles

'We look for a star' Anon
Saviour and Son, the star the Wise Men knew Led them to thee: at Christmas now, we too look anxiously into the silent night,
Lit by God's stars, where man's own satellites Spin between the shining spheres:
O Christmas Child, let hopes, not fears
Upon the aching world prevail,
That we, who set our smaller suns to sail
In the bright firmament of thy design,
Seek out a star divine
To follow - and on Christmas night,
Find grace and peace in sight.

As a historical event the feast of the Epiphany is hard to prove. It is only recorded in the Gospel according to Matthew. In that account we are told of the visit of the Wise Men or Magi from the East and after initial references to them Matthew does not mention them again. Was Matthew making the whole thing up and if so why?

Matthew's Gospel narrative is the most Jewish of the four accounts and he seems to be writing in a way that will convince the Jews that Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah. For example the Gospel begins

with a very Jewish genealogy of Christ, tracing his origins through David, Solomon and Abraham and drawing upon Isaiah's prophesy that:

'..a virgin shall conceive and bear a Son ..' Isaiah 7:14.

Matthew uses the account of the visit of the Magi - gentiles from the East - to emphasise to his Jewish audience Christ's ‘Jewish-ness’. The Magi are searching for the 'King of the Jews' and in stating that Jesus is the King of the Jews Matthew shows his readers that Jesus Christ is their Messiah and that he comes for both Jews and the gentiles, for as he writes, it was the gentiles who first recognised him for who he is. The Magi those representatives of the gentiles came and worshipped the new born king. The Jews represented by Herod were afraid and sought to destroy the child. In the visit of the Wise Men we also see Christ revealed to the whole world as its Lord and saviour. Yes, Jesus was born a Jew but he was not born for Jews alone.

This day also has another poignant symbol associated with it, the Star. Astrological research seems to suggest that there was a comet in the heavens at approximately the time of Christ's birth, and the comet is thought to have been so bright that it would have stood out from the other stars.

The Magi were probably astrologers and possibly magicians. Matthew is at pains to emphasise that from the point of the birth of Christ the Magi’s powers are made redundant. In finding and accepting the Christ the Magi obviously abandoned their magic and divinations. For magic is a means of getting something done when the doer lacks the strength to do it alone. It depends on the belief that in order to achieve that which the individual cannot do alone, there are forces that can be called upon to help - good or bad. What magic does is to extend one’s will and the power one has over a situation and other people. In recognising the Christ and accepting his ways one has to do away with self- will.

We are called to love our enemies, to do good, to put an end to self-centredness. Like the magi who left the tools of their trade - gold, frankincense and myrrh in Bethlehem, we too have to leave the tools of our self-will in that stable as well if we are to become true followers of Christ.

Matthew uses the story of the Magi's visit as a means of encouraging us to say farewell to all the

tricks we use to get our own way – the flattery, the deceit, the lying. We are warned to be suspicious of the magic of our personalities and to adopt as our role model the God who loves us unconditionally and indiscriminately.

The Magi were led to the one with power greater than their own, to the one who put away the need for magic. The child whom Herod feared was more powerful than any of us could ever comprehend for his influence is always good. At the visit of the Magi to the Christ child the world learned that Jesus was born for all God’s people regardless of who they are; Jew or gentile, male or female, black or white for all without exception.

Eternal God
who by the shining of a star
led the Wise Men to the worship of your Son; Guide by his light the nations of the earth, that the whole world may behold your glory. Amen.

Luke 2:41-52

Jesus said to his parents “Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” But they did not understand what he said to them (Luke 2:49-50)

How many times have we asked the question “Did you not know?” to  family, friends and colleagues and vice versa? Did you not know that I would be away?  Did you not know that they had died?  Did you not know that I have never spoken to them? immediately come to mind.  I am sure that we can all think of such occasions, such questions and how we felt.

Years ago when I began my legal traineeship I dealt with my first executry sale. An elderly client had died with no immediate family. All was going very smoothly until the day before the transaction was due to settle. For some reason I decided to go along to the house and check that everything was in order.  In particular that it had been cleared of all its furniture and personal effects. Much to my dismay nothing had been done. There had been a lack of communication. The executors had assumed that the lawyers were dealing with this. I had assumed that they were.  Thankfully we were able to instruct a removal firm at short notice.  Everything settled on time. A great relief. Ever since, in similar circumstances, I have always made sure that someone took responsibility and confirmed that it had been done. A lesson, however unexpected,  had been learnt.

Our gospel from Luke marks an important point in the life of Jesus. It was laid down by law that every adult male Jew who lived within fifteen miles of Jerusalem must attend the Passover

Professor William Barclay reminds us that “it was not through carelessness that his parents did not miss Jesus. Usually the women started out much earlier than the men. The two sections would not meet until the evening encampment was reached when they realised in horror that Jesus was not there”.  After rushing back to Jerusalem it took them three frantic, anxious and no doubt harrowing days to find him in the Temple.  We are not told who looked after Jesus during this period, who fed him, where he slept, how he felt  or if he was concerned in any way. All we know is that Jesus seems genuinely surprised that his parents would not have known that he was in “his Father’s house”.

Professor Barclay comments further “See how very gently but definitely Jesus takes that name “father” from Joseph and gives it to God. At some time Jesus must have discovered his own unique relationship with God. At this first Passover, with manhood dawning, there came a sudden realization that he was, in a unique sense,  the Son of God”.

At the beginning of this new year may we not only ponder and treasure, like Mary,  the question raised by Jesus “Did you not know?” but take encouragement and hope from Isaiah when a similar question was asked about God:-

Have you not known?

Have you not heard?

The everlasting God, the Lord,

The Creator of the ends of the earth,

Neither faints nor is weary.

His understanding is unsearchable.

He gives power to the weak,

And to those who have no might He increases strength.

Even youths shall faint and be weary.

But those who wait on the Lord

Shall renew their strength;

They shall mount up with wings like eagles,

They shall run and not be weary,

They shall walk and not faint.

It came as a bit of a shock the time I looked in the mirror and saw my mother looking back! When did I start looking like a badger? When did my hair start falling out – well apart from the 10cm long ones sprouting from the top of my ear. When did I become middle-aged and approaching 60?

Mentally, I still feel as though I’m 18 – my mind butterflying from one thing to another BUT my body with its aches and cracks certainly doesn’t feel 18 anymore. So this is what it feels like to ‘mature’?

Well, I am not sure that I really know what it does feel like to mature. All I know is what it feels like to be me. Me, a man stuffed full of memories and experiences half of which I have forgotten and much of the rest lying half-submerged in my sub-consciousness. Things that once seemed to have substance and great importance have gone passed away like; ‘Mists we on mornings see.’  to quote the poet John Clare.

Things that have in the past hurt or wounded me have dissipated and now I can’t think why they upset me so at the time. This probably sounds a bit depressing but actually I am not depressed at all by the changes in my body and mind.

One cannot halt the ageing process or even remember what one has forgotten, or regain the body one had as a youth. All one can do is celebrate who one is NOW and to give thanks to God for what is important, and what gives one joy while maintaining a desire to grab life by the lapels.

I suppose it is at this time of the year when I become conscious of what’s past. For all of us much will have happened over these past 12 months. There will be the events one wants to remember and the events one actively wants to forget. In this time of Covid memories seem a bit slippy - time has sort of expanded and contracted in different ways and what was months ago can seem like yesterday and yesterday can be long forgotten. Perhaps this is a good thing in these strange times?

The past may be remembered in a way that wasn’t quite as it was, for we do tend to remember selectively and often in our recall of those events we do embroider them. The Gospels are a good example of this. None of the four accounts are quite the same as each other. To get the full Christmas story as we know it you have to take bits from all four:

The Annunciation by Gabriel from Luke

The visit of the angel to Joseph from Matthew

Shepherds from Luke

Kings from Matthew

The Word made flesh from John

And bits of John-the-Baptist from Matthew, Mark and Luke

Each Gospel writer is sharing bits from the memories and stories about Jesus handed on to them. The bits they believed were important in helping them (and us) come to some comprehension of who Jesus Christ was. Today’s Gospel is a good illustration of what I mean. It is commonly believed that Luke was recording the memories of Jesus held by Mary, his mother. Verse 2:51b seems to be evidence for this:

“His mother treasured all these things in her heart.”

Mary was obviously remembering a time when she felt guilty for losing her son – leaving him behind in the temple. She was perplexed and amazed by what he said to her and Joseph when they did find him:

“Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my father’s house?”

Luke 2:49

This memory probably helped her come to terms with his later death but at the time it more likely confused her, so she just ‘tucked it away’ as many parents might. The fact that Mary and Joseph ‘lost’ Jesus is not that surprising, they probably assumed that he was with other members of the extended family and party of friends who would have journeyed with them to the temple at Jerusalem. The fact that Jesus wasn’t in the guddle of the pilgrims speaks of a rebellious spirit on his part – almost the behaviour of teenagers today. ‘I’m gonna do what I want to do, not what dad and mum want me to do.’ Well! Jesus certainly did his own thing.

Yet, once Jesus had been found and he had explained why he had been disobedient he dutifully went home and would appear to have been more considerate to his parents’ feelings for the next couple of decades. Apart from this account we don’t know much about Jesus’ childhood and young adulthood – his so termed ‘hidden years’. Obviously, he had a life but the Gospel writers did not think it of great significance that they needed to record it.

As I said earlier, we remember that which we believe to be important and that which we believe to be important and that which helps us make some sense of the jumble that life is. In fact, I find it quite comforting that the Gospel accounts, well all scriptural accounts, are selective in what they say and don’t say – you can’t take what they say as literal, you have to interpret them and read them in context – but also it tells me that it is okay for my memory to be selective too.      

What is important is what the Gospels, actually do say, for if only things of significance are recorded then they are recorded for a reason and it is that ‘reason’ that we spend our lives exploring. Theology is really nothing more than the exploration or thinking about of God but what a rich and exciting adventure that is and it is a journey of discovery that we live as much as think.

As we live our lives, our experiences help shape who we are and how we interpret the world around us and how we discern who God is, in it all. Jesus is the key to our understanding because he like us lived a human life, exploring who he was and who God is. If Jesus is the template for humanity that we Christians use to make sense of it all then we should pay close attention to what he said, did and has inspired others to do and say. St.Paul, in the Epistle to the Colossians encourages us to:

‘Let the Word of God dwell in you richly.’    Luke 3:16a

and to do everything in the name of Jesus. Paul had sussed that by following Jesus we are given a framework around which to build our lives - a framework that could enable us not to make too much of a hash of it either:

'To love one another with patience, fore-bearing and forgiveness..’

and to love oneself as well. For unless you can begin to do that you can’t fully love anyone else including God.

There is one thing more, as I read them, today’s readings also tell us that we can always start again, that we can wipe the slate clean of past mistakes and have another go. Like Jesus being forgiven for wandering off, we too are always give another opportunity to get things right, to start afresh – why? Simply because we have worth, we are valuable to God and loved unconditionally.

Let the coming year be a new start for you, another opportunity to have ago at making sense of this life we live. Go into 2022 with hope and an expectation that you might get it more right than before, but don’t worry if you don’t – you’ll always have the opportunity to have another go. Because we have a God who loves us so much that we are always given a second chance again and again to get things right. Jesus learned his lesson and didn’t distress his parents again until began his ministry as an adult and his parents learned that their son was more than special and was someone who would always surprise them.

Luke 2:1-20

My father was a legendary wrapper of presents. We learned over the years that he would put as much trouble and artistry into the wrapping of a tiny gift, including the single walnut whip which he knew was my mother’s favourite Christmas chocolate treat, as into any more elaborate or expensive offering. We came to understand that the size of any parcel which he presented to us was not necessarily a guide to its contents. One spectacular example, a feature of either my seventh or my eighth Christmas, was what appeared to be an enormous package. Excited investigation, constrained somewhat by my mother’s view that Christmas wrapping paper should most definitely be recycled, revealed a sequence of nested gift-wrapped parcels, one inside the other and each, like Russian matrioshka dolls, smaller than the last. The enormous package eventually turned out to contain my very first wristwatch.

Christmas presents us with a gift which is the opposite of the one I have just described, the gift of a new-born baby. A tiny parcel, easily underestimated, but with world-transforming potential. The importance of his birth would not have been apparent to the shepherds had not the angel given them a sense of its cosmic significance, a glimpse into the future.

“…to you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, who is the Messiah, the Lord.”

The angel’s message to the shepherds, and to us, is that this is a gift which will grow in greatness and significance. Every stage of the life and ministry of Jesus presents us with a larger and more wonderful gift, culminating in his self-giving on Calvary, his Resurrection and Ascension and we shall unwrap and contemplate these gifts in the coming months.

Returning to my first wristwatch, that gift seemed to offer a kind of certainty about time. From now on, wherever I might be, a glance would show me what time it was. I was soon to discover that Time is more mysterious than that. For a child, anticipated joys, the end of term, birthdays, Christmas itself, always seem a long time coming. As we grow older, time seems to pass more rapidly though certain experience, notably enjoyable holidays, seem to slow it down and other experiences, including the present pandemic, can make the recent past seem oddly remote.

Time is a mystery which we inhabit without understanding it, and our only way of engaging with the mysterious is through metaphor. There are two metaphors concerning time which can help us to celebrate Christmas, God in Jesus coming alongside us in time and experiencing its changes and chances as we experience them. Both these metaphors can, I believe, help us to grasp why the birth in obscurity of a particular baby just over two thousand years ago is an event that changed the world, an event that shapes and sustains us.

The first metaphor is music. The French philosopher Henri Bergson likened every human lifetime to a melody – each unique and distinct, containing more than a few bum notes and yet contributing its voice to something much greater, the whole music of creation. The minutes and hours in which our days are measured slip irretrievably into the past but when we listen to music, we experience time in a different way. We don’t think that the first few notes of a tune are lost to us, for we experience them as part of a whole. In Jesus we see the perfect human life, the perfect melody. Nothing can silence that melody, and we who are willing to listen can be enriched, encouraged and strengthened by it. The baby of Bethlehem, the man of Nazareth, the preacher and healer of Galilee, the victim on Calvary and the Risen and Ascended Christ are part of our present.

And so are the rejoicing angels of today’s Gospel:

“Still through the cloven skies they come
With peaceful wings unfurled,
And still their heav’nly music floats
O’er all the weary world;”

Edmund Sears, who wrote that carol, also offers us the second metaphor:

“beneath the angel-strain have rolled

Two thousand years of wrong.”

For the verb “rolled” suggests a stream or a river and I think it is very helpful to think of time in that way. Wristwatches may divide time artificially and conveniently into seconds, minutes and hours, but rivers cannot be thus divided. They flow continuously, and the water we taste is flavoured by whatever has entered the river upstream of us.

The coming into the world of Jesus, his life, ministry, death and resurrection are upstream of us in time but nourish and sustain our present.

Contemplating the mystery of Time, the poet W.H. Auden wrote these words”

“Time is our choice of How to love and Why”

At Christmas we welcome once again the coming of Jesus, who supremely shows us how to love and why and, in so doing, encourages us to make best use of the gift of Time.

May your Christmas time be blessed and may it lighten the obscurity of a future which is safe in the loving hands of God.

And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfilment of what was spoken to her by her Lord (Luke 1:45)

One of the exhibitions which is presently on at The British Library, London is entitled “Elizabeth and Mary: Royal Cousins, Rival Queens”. In the introduction it entices us by saying “step back into a dangerous world of plots, espionage and treachery to explore the turbulent relationship between Elizabeth I and Mary, Queen of Scots in their own words”. Although they never met, their fates were intertwined.

In our gospel reading we have two women, also named Elizabeth and Mary. Unlike Elizabeth I and Mary, Queen of Scots, their lives could not have been more different.

Luke records that Elizabeth is a member of the priestly house of Aaron, and therefore appropriately married to Zechariah, also of a priestly family. She is a relative of Mary, although the exact relationship is not spelled out.

The Bible gives us very little biography for Mary. She is a “young girl” newly betrothed to Joseph when the visit of the angel turns her world upside down.

As we discover, Zechariah and Elizabeth had not been able to have children, until in old age Gabriel announced the promise of the birth of a son who would become John the Baptist. Elizabeth appears to be more trusting than her husband giving thanks for the quiet work of God’s grace.  Gabriel then reveals Elizabeth’s pregnancy to Mary as a sign that God’s promises are to be trusted and will be fulfilled. Did you notice that Mary went in haste to visit Elizabeth when she heard this unexpected news?

In his recent book “An Advent Book of Days”, Gregory Cameron, Bishop of St Asaph, Wales, writes that “the story of the obvious love and compassion between these two women may cause us to think of the rewards of links in our wider families, but it also reminds us that great comfort and strength can be derived from finding fellowship with those who are walking the same path in life – whether joyful or sorrowful. There is a sense in which God does not wish to leave us abandoned and lonely in the story of our lives, and we can look for, and be ready to offer, hospitality with those who share our experiences”.

The theme in the early chapters of Luke’s Gospel is that God is faithful and keeps his promises – to Zechariah, to Elizabeth, to Mary, to the people of Israel themselves. These stories of faithfulness reinforce one another: as God has been faithful in providing for one, so he will provide for the other.

In Advent, Mary and Elizabeth greet each other and invite us to take comfort in their hope and their witness to God, the life-giver, who has come to be with the humble and meek.

As we celebrate the Visitation and Mary’s response to Elizabeth’s greeting in the unexpected and gracious words of the Magnificat, may our hearts be filled with praise for God’s faithfulness.

And as we approach Christmas this year with its various uncertainties and challenges, may we too take delight in those words spoken by Mary “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord. My spirit rejoices in God my saviour”.   

Lord God, who enabled Elizabeth and Mary to recognise in one another the work of your faithfulness, give us companions in our journey through life, who may encourage us, and whom we may encourage, for in the giving and receiving of life, friendship and mercy there are reflections of your own goodness.