Mother of the Lord: Ark of the New Covenant

 Preached as a sermon at Croydon Minster on the fourth Sunday of Advent, 2021. Gospel: Luke 1.39-45

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In our gospel today we see a most beautiful scene. It combines energy and serenity. It is a thumbnail illustration of some really important aspects of the Christian spiritual life. Spiritual energy combined with spiritual serenity.

 

The energy is that of Mary who sets out with haste from her encounter with the archangel Gabriel to share this wonderful mystery! It is of John the Baptist, the child in his mother’s womb, who leaps for joy in the presence of Mary and her child! It is of Elizabeth who exclaims a loud cry of proclamation, and becomes the first to articulate that Mary is Mother of the Lord!

 

And what of the serenity? It is the serenity of Jesus Christ, the still centre of the presence of the Most High in a tumultuous world. This is the serenity of Jesus who sleeps in the storm on the Sea of Galilee, and embodies the peace, the Shalom, of God.

 

So where do we go with this gospel scene? What does it speak to us of our lives?

 

First it has to take us to Christ. He is the heart of this scene even though no action or utterance of his is described, merely his presence; that is enough.

 

The energy of the scene draws solely from Christ’s presence and serenity. This might help us see the need to pay attention to Christ, to orientate our lives to notice his presence in our midst and recognise those who bear his light and life.

 

That’s what Elizabeth and John saw. Elizabeth found herself overcome by the Holy Spirit, the Spirit which inspired her to ‘exclaim with a loud cry’, ‘Blessed are you, Mary, among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb’. These Spirit given words, form the bedrock of the great and ancient prayer the Hail Mary, which combines the Archangel’s greeting and Elizabeth’s words: ‘Hail Mary, full of grace the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus’.

 

It’s Elizabeth, not a Pope or Church Council, who makes the first dogmatic statement of who Mary is: Mary is the mother of the Lord.

 

The unborn, yet totally spiritually attuned, John makes this recognition too. This clearly isn’t a run of the mill foetal kick. Elizabeth the pregnant mother knows it is more. She connects her child’s leap for joy with Mary’s arrival.

 

And this takes us into rich and fertile Biblical territory.

 

In the second book of Samuel there is an intriguing episode. The ark of the covenant was being taken from a town called Obed-edom to the city of David, Jerusalem. King David, the shepherd king (from Bethlehem, remember), offered sacrifices before the Ark and then ‘David danced before the LORD with all his might. And David was wearing a linen ephod (2 Samuel 6.14).

 

So what of the Ark and the linen ephod?

 

The Ark of the Covenant was the vessel, the box, effectively, that contained the stone tablets of the commandments, Aaron’s rod (a miraculous wooden staff) and manna from the wilderness, the bread shown to the people. For the Israelites the Ark contained the most holy of things, the presence of the Most High.

 

The linen ephod is the vestment, the robe, of the high priest. David was claiming priesthood. By heritage John the Baptist was a priest as was his father Zechariah.

 

Yet John knows that all that is contained in the Ark of the Covenant – Law, the wooden rod that buds, the Bread – everything in the Ark before which David danced is fulfilled in the true High Priest, Jesus Christ himself: John knows that Jesus is the New Covenant; John knows that just as the wood of Aaron’s rod budded into life, so the wood of the cross becomes the source of life and salvation; John knows that the Bread of Life is not the manna that goes stale, but Jesus Christ who calls men and women into abundant life.

 

Now if that is who Jesus is, the Holy Presence in the Ark, what, or rather who, is the Ark of the New Covenant?

 

The answer is Mary. This is an answer from the earliest times, for example St. Hippolytus (c. 170 - c. 236), who writes:

 

At that time, the Saviour coming from the Virgin, the Ark, brought forth His own Body into the world from that Ark, which was gilded with pure gold within by the Word, and without by the Holy Ghost.

 

Mary’s body is the bearer of the fulness of the presence of God. She is rightly the Ark of the New Covenant because within her body is the fullness of the Divine Presence, the Incarnate Lord.

 

Elizabeth knew that and declared it. John the Baptist knew that and danced before her and her unborn Son.

 

Where do we go with all this?

 

First, to acknowledge Mary as the Ark of the New Covenant and proclaim her ‘Mother of our Lord and God’ places us with Christians through the millennia, from Elizabeth and John onwards. What we say of Mary is always in relation to Christ. Devotion to Mary always takes us to Christ, in moments of salvation: his Incarnation; Christ’s miracles; his passion on the cross; his Resurrection; his Ascension; the descent of the Holy Spirit; the promise of heaven.

 

Secondly, it acknowledges the human body to be worthy of bearing Christ. Our culture seems intent on splitting human identity in two: the pure me, my spirit or mind, and the less than ideal me, my body, my physicality with all its limitations and distortions. There is a lot of talk today about being ‘body-affirming’: the Incarnation of Christ which is at the heart of the Christmas proclamation is body, mind and spirit together-affirming. Christ the redeems the whole person. That’s why our expression of faith is embodied. We don’t just think our way to salvation, we speak it, we enact it in acts of devotion and service to God and neighbour.

 

Finally, we find Christ to be at the heart of all things, the serene presence who dwells in Mary’s body. We place ourselves in his presence now to receive his presence now in the way he promises to be with us in his Body, in this sacrament. We make Mary’s ‘yes’ her ‘let it be to me according to your word’ our own. We become bearers of Christ, who give birth to him in the world, having received him and welcomed him into our lives.

Towards the banquet of life

Preached as a sermon at Croydon Minster on the Sixth Sunday after Trinity. Gospel reading Mark 6.14-29

 

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It’s a nightmare for King Herod.

 

Sitting on his throne in Jerusalem, he has been hearing what Jesus has been doing ‘up North’ in the backwater of Nazareth and in and around Galilee, healing people, performing miracles and proclaiming the Kingdom, and overwhelming love, of God.

 

It’s a nightmare because people are saying that John the Baptist - who Herod had murdered - was raised from the dead and active again.

 

As we heard, Herod, found John intriguing but frightening: John was clearly good and spoke the truth but he aimed the truth at Herod.

 

Herod was a tyrant, murderer and incestuous adulterer. And John called him out.

 

John the Baptist is, of course, our patron saint. Just a couple of weeks ago our focus was on his example and prayer as a patron saint as we celebrated his birth, but now it is his death we have heard about.

 

In life as in death John the Baptist prepares the way for the Lamb of God who is slain by the powers of this world.

 

In so doing we find that this gospel reading tells us a huge amount about the conflicts and machinations of the human heart, that, if not restrained and well-directed, issue in violence and ultimately murder.

 

This was understood by the hugely influential French-American philosopher and anthropologist, René Girard. Girard, a Christian, who died some 6 years ago, was fascinated by the links between violence and religion. Girard saw the Bible as naming and unveiling the patterns of tension at the heart of human society.

 

In a nutshell, he shows how our desires can lead to conflict and how in order to resolve the conflict we create scapegoats who take the blame for what has gone wrong and in so doing we think we have made peace and somehow pleased God.

 

You might see this in two children playing. Child A and child B are playing happily. Child A sees child B enjoying her toy, so child A now wants that toy. But it’s not the toy per se, it’s that child B enjoys that toy, so child A wants it and tries to snatch it. A struggle ensues.

 

How is the struggle resolved? Possibly a parent intervenes and the desired toy is removed from both parties and peace descends. Or the children decide to resolve it themselves by smashing up the toy they both wanted and they do something else together.

 

In both examples the conflict ceases through a truce after the toy in question has been blamed and removed.

 

It happens all the more in adult society. Societies in tension find the scapegoat to blame: with Covid it was young people partying; with Brexit it was big bad Brussels and refugees; with 1930s Germany it was the Jews; with Herod and Herodias, in their adulterous affair, it was John the Baptist, which is why John was in prison.

 

When the scapegoat is ostracised, ridiculed or eradicated a truce descends under the guise of unity.

 

Yet the prophet Jeremiah noticed in Jerusalem in his day, ‘They have healed the wound of my people lightly, saying, “Peace, peace” when there is no peace’ (Jeremiah 6.14; 8.11. see also Ezekiel 13.10). Fake peace is built on the targeted victim. John becomes a truce making victim.

 

One of the famous elements of the murder of John the Baptist is the dance that Salomé performs for Herod and his confederates. It is a parody of the joyful dance of the unborn John the Baptist, dancing in his mother’s womb as he recognised the presence of Christ in the Virgin Mary.

 

The idea of Salome, a young girl, dancing for these drunken, lecherous men is deeply disturbing and what we would recognise today as abusive and exploitative.

 

Salome is reputed to have danced the dance of the seven veils, yet what is truly unveiled is the violence of the human heart when unchecked, the tendency to create the person or people to blame, to deflect from our own malice and ill will.

 

It may not lead us to murder, but who are the others we blame so as to avoid taking our responsibility in life? What is the underlying grievance in our hearts that bursts out in running others down? How do we use our criticisms of other people to mask our own frailties and vulnerability?

 

What Herod found was that the truth is not satisfied with false truces and is no respecter of earthly power. That’s why when Jesus was doing his deeds of power, that were not about violence but about restoration of life in its abundance, Herod was unsettled and got his nightmarish flashback about how he had killed John.

 

The truth of God will not be snuffed out by tyrants.

 

True fellowship, society and community is built not on violence followed by fake truces, but is grounded in forgiveness, love and identification with the victim.

 

What the gospels unveil is that Jesus Christ is the victim who makes peace and forms peace in the human heart. Jesus Christ deconstructs the myths we live by because the victim is the one in control and not the victimiser, the Herod, the Pontius Pilate, the you or the me.

 

The way of discipleship is precisely to open ourselves to saying I will not create scapegoats and victims. I will desire only Christ, in a way that is not in competition with others, but fixing my eyes on him is about truth, love, peace and life in all its abundance.

 

John the Baptist famously declared, ‘Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world’ (John 1.29). Jesus Christ is the Lamb, the victim, who through his resurrection draws us from the culture of death, blame and malice.

 

 At Herod’s feast the culture of death, retribution, rivalry and scapegoating prevailed. In Jesus Christ’s Eucharistic banquet, the culture of life, reconciliation, communion and embracing of the victim is celebrated.

 

That is not the stuff of nightmares, but of our deepest, heartfelt desires.

'His name is John': a patronal festival homily

Preached as a sermon at the Minster Church of St John the Baptist, Croydon. Readings: Isaiah 401.1-11; Luke 1.57-66,80

 

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‘His name is John’! And the name John means ‘the Lord is gracious’.

 

Today is our patronal festival, that is to say the festival when we celebrate our patron saint.

 

And that patron saint is St John the Baptist.

 

A patron, according to the dictionary, can be a couple of things.

 

First a patron is ‘a customer, especially a regular one, of a shop, restaurant or theatre’. That doesn’t sound quite the sort of patron we’re talking about here. John the Baptist doesn’t drop by to take in a show at the Minster: he’s not that sort of patron.

 

Another definition is ‘a person who gives financial or other support to a person, organization, cause, or activity’. Well, John doesn’t give us any financial support, he’s not on the direct debit planned giving scheme and he doesn’t use GiftAid. So what are we talking about here?

 

A patron saint has a deeper function and gives other support.

 

As Bishop Rowan Williams says, ‘Patron saints are not there to be benign mascots; they are given so that nations and groups and individuals may have identifiable friends in the company of heaven who will give a particular direction and sharpness to the challenges of the gospel.’

 

What a beautiful thought, that here at this church, we have an ‘identifiable friend in the company of heaven’.

 

The Christian understanding of the Communion of Saints isn’t of a mush of people who have died, like drops making up a pool, but individuals whose identity is magnified as they praise God and pray for us on earth. So we can have an identifiable friend in heaven.

 

That patron saint, our identifiable friend in heaven, prays for us: there is nothing more encouraging than to know that your friend, living or departed, is praying for you at the throne of grace.

 

Our identifiable friend in heaven is an example to us in the living out of the gospel: there is nothing more inspiring than the example of a friend. A Christian friend’s life helps us in being a Christian.

 

And as Rowan Williams says, our patron saint, our identifiable friend in heaven, ‘gives a particular direction and sharpness to the challenges of the gospel.’

 

You can certainly say that of John the Baptist.

 

Before I came to Croydon, I have to confess that I hadn’t really thought a huge amount about him, other than that he was a bit weird, somewhat off putting and rather remote.

 

I was, of course, aware of his high profile during the season of Advent, when he is identified as the one who proclaims the coming Christ and fulfilling the text of our first reading: John’s is the voice crying out in the wilderness, ‘prepare the way of the Lord’.

 

But since I have been here I have pondered John much more. I ask his prayers for me, for you and our church. He has become my friend in the Communion of Saints!

 

And his example stirs and inspires me in my ministry here, and I hope all of us in our Christian faith.

 

Accounts of John begin with his childhood: let us rejoice in the presence of children and young people in our midst and ensure they are served and nurtured: that is a gift adult disciples can give to the young.

 

John the Baptist takes us to the heart of the matter, away from the fripperies and distractions: John leads us to a deep encounter with Jesus Christ.

 

John knows that his mission and ministry is to point people to Jesus Christ. And that he does.

 

He makes himself unpopular by speaking the truth, rebuking those who exploit the poor, and the tyrant King Herod, to the cost of his life.

 

What integrity. John the Baptist puts the grit back into integrity!

 

John is intensely humble and aware of who he is, ‘I am not worthy to untie the thong of Christ’s sandal’.

 

John’s blunt and direct: turn away from sin; turn to God.

 

In all of that John does not want to get in the way of his message: ‘Christ must increase; I must decrease’ (John 3.30). A bit like St Paul saying, ‘it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me’ (Galatians 2.20)

 

Ultimately John tells us to look beyond himself to the very heart of the matter, to the depth of the mystery of God revealed in the one he calls the ‘Lamb of God’: it’s my message, not me.

 

John says to us, as our gritty, personal friend, ‘Behold. Look. See. The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world’.

 

We sing John’s words at every Eucharist, ‘O Lamb of God, you take away the sin of the world. Have mercy upon us. Grant us peace’. In doing so we adore Jesus Christ; and John’s task is realised.

 

For this is where we come to behold, and to meet, Jesus Christ in his word and sacrament.

 

In John the Baptist, we have a friend in heaven, whose powerful prayers we ask for in our daily lives as disciples of Christ and in the ministry and mission of Christ’s church.

 

V. Pray for us, O glorious St. John the Baptist,

R. That we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.

'This is the Christ' A homily for the Baptism of Christ

 First preached as a homily at Croydon Minster 10th January 2021.

‘This is the Christ, the Chosen of God,

the one who will bring healing to the nations’

(Antiphon to the Benedictus in Epiphany, Common Worship: Daily Prayer)

 

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‘Behold!’ - says John the Baptist – look, feast your eyes: this is the Christ.

 

Today, at the river, John fulfils his title and baptises Jesus in the waters.

 

In water - the signifier of life, creation and renewal - is where your rebirth, and mine, takes place.

 

Baptism washes us clean from sin and we are born into the life of Christ. So Jesus does not need baptism from John, except to reveal himself to us, to make the waters holy and to promise abundant life.

 

Here is the life of the Blessed Trinity. The Father-Creator speaks; the Spirit descends - as at the creation – and the Word, from the beginning, in flesh stands in our midst.

 

The divine life is seen on earth so that human life may be transformed and renewed, reflecting the ways of heaven which is now torn open so that we can see God’s ways, the ways of heaven.

 

Life in Christ means that we are set on fire with faith, hope and love which flows from God, within and amongst us, spilling out into the world which is already his. His grace flowing before us transforms, renews and heals his distorted and disfigured creation.

 

The Baptism of Christ reveals that if anyone is in Christ there is New Creation (cf 2 Corinthians 5.17).

 

The light of the first day of the Creation shines out today, because ‘from sunrise to sunset this day is holy, for Christ has risen from the tomb and scattered the darkness of death with light that will not fade’ (Preface for Sundays in Ordinary Time, Common Worship).

 

And now, heaven is torn open, bread is broken, hands outstretched and Christ’s body presented to us afresh so that again we are transformed, renewed and recreated in his love.

A Sermon for the Solemnity of The Immaculate Conception of Mary

 

First preached as a sermon at St Michael & All Angels, Croydon, with members of the Cells of the Society of Our Lady of Walsingham in Croydon (St Alban’s, South Norwood, St Michael’s, Croydon & Croydon Minster). Readings: Genesis 3.9-15,20; Ephesians 1.3-6,11-12; Luke 1.26-38. 8th December 2019.

 

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The Immaculate Conception of Mary is a great gift to the Church and, indeed, to all humanity. It is the most optimistic of dogmas, because it says that by God’s grace human beings can be freed from the grip of sin, through our sharing in the life of the Word Made Flesh: Jesus Christ - Son of God, Son of Mary - the incarnate, crucified, risen and ascended Lord. This possibility of God’s grace first moved as Mary was conceived and knit together in the womb of her mother St Anne.

 

Our gospel reading today is St Luke’s account of the Annunciation, which is not to be confused with the Immaculate Conception of Mary, although it often is: the Annunciation is about Christ being incarnate within the womb of Mary, the unborn Saviour, the Word Made Flesh, resting in the immaculate shrine that is Mary’s body. And you will recall that when the pregnant Mary visited her cousin Elizabeth, the child in Elizabeth’s womb leapt for joy as the Mother of the Lord entered into her presence (Luke 1.39-45). That dance of the unborn John the Baptist echoes the unrestrained dance of David before the Ark of the Covenant in the Second Book of Samuel (2 Samuel 6, esp 6.14). David danced before the presence of God in the Ark of the Covenant; John dances before the presence of God, in Christ, in the shrine of Mary’s body.

 

The Immaculate Conception of Mary is about preparing the shrine in which the Christ will gestate and from which he will be born; for which all generations will call her blessed (Luke 1.48).

 

For some the Immaculate Conception makes them queasy. Isn’t it too much about Mary? Doesn’t it make out that somehow she’s not quite human, just a bit too perfect? Isn’t it all a bit Roman Catholic?

 

Too much about Mary? On one level it’s nothing to do with Mary! It’s about God’s grace, of which she is described as being full of: ‘Hail Mary, full of grace’, the archangel’s greeting. On another level it is everything to do with Mary; she is the person, the woman, chosen to be the mother of the Saviour.

 

The initiative is with God in choosing this particular daughter of Zion. That is why Mary is an exemplar of being a Christian, one who is open to the movements of God’s grace, saying yes, not no. After all, Eve – the mother of all the living, as her name means (Genesis 3.20) - was created without sin, placed in the Garden of Eden and yet, with her husband, said ‘no’ to God and ‘yes’ to the serpent. As we see in statues of Mary, the Immaculate Conception, she tramples down the serpent, reversing the transgression of Eve and bearing in her womb the New Adam.

 

Doesn’t it make out that somehow Mary’s not quite human, just a bit too perfect? There have been aspects of Marian devotion that have seemed to disconnect Mary from being human. This is often seen in art, but not in the New Testament or in the dogmas of the Church. Jesus was ‘born of a woman, born under the Law’ (Galatians 4.4); scripture and dogma insist on the humanity of Mary (otherwise how would we claim Christ’s humanity as well as his divinity?) Mary was a woman living in a broken world, but one who was freed by grace to act in a different way from Eve so that the bitter reality of human sin could be reversed.

 

What is more, the Immaculate Conception is not about Mary being conceived in a way that had no human agency. The dogma of the Immaculate Conception is not saying that the act of physical love is wrong, dirty or deficient. Anne and Joachim, as husband and wife, conceived their daughter in the way that any one of us is conceived; they slept together, they procreated, or whatever nice way we want to put it. Mary was human in her DNA; a woman in her chromosomes; and a child of God by grace.

 

Too Roman Catholic? The understanding that Mary, daughter of Anna and Joachim, was immaculately conceived is long held in Christianity, drawing from the gospels, of which more anon, and wider early tradition. Orthodox Christians don’t like defining things, but they still celebrate Mary’s conception as marking out her unique vocation to be the Theotokos, translated literally God-bearer, or Mother of God. Similarly, for Anglicans The Book of Common Prayer (1662) may not use the word ‘Immaculate’ but it still marks in the Calendar the observance of the ‘Conception of the BV Mary’ on 8^th December each year, and that predates the Marian Dogma of 1854 in which Pope Pius IX defined the Immaculate Conception.

 

So there is an ecumenical consensus that Mary matters and that she is a pattern for Grace and Hope in Christ, as the document of that name from the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC) put it in 2005. That document shows a remarkable convergence of Marian teaching - perhaps ‘more honoured in the breach than the observance’ - between Anglicans and Roman Catholics. We shouldn’t ignore that not all Anglicans would assent to ARCIC, and, we shouldn’t gloss over differences, but we could all agree, I hope, with Pope St John XXIII, that ‘the Madonna is not pleased when she is put above her Son’. ARCIC acknowledges that there are deep and important roots to what we celebrate, today, in the Immaculate Conception of Mary:

 

In view of her vocation to be the mother of the Holy One (Luke 1.35), we can affirm together that Christ’s redeeming work reached ‘back’ in Mary to the depths of her being, and to her earliest beginnings. This is not contrary to scripture, and can only be understood in the light of scripture. Roman Catholics can recognise this in what is affirmed by the dogma – namely ‘preserved from all stain of original sin’ and ‘from the first moment of her conception.’ (Mary: Grace and Hope in Christ: An Agreed Statement. ARCIC. p. 57-8)

 

So what? So this teaching is agreed by Anglicans, with Roman Catholics, to be consistent with scripture and understood in the light of scripture. Perhaps then we should ask, ‘so what’? What does this dogma of the Immaculate Conception mean for us today?

 

The Immaculate Conception of Mary is about salvation, preparation and the human body as the dwelling of the Most High. It tells us that the journey of holiness is precisely to restore in us the image and likeness of Christ.

 

Mary’s conception, without sin, points to us the possibility of the redemption of human flesh as the dwelling place of God. Indeed in the Mass we receive the Body of Christ into our bodies, such that they become shrines of God’s presence. We are, as it were, a monstrance, a vessel that carries Christ, reveals Christ to the world and imparts Christ’s blessing to all creation.

 

In this season of Advent may we be prepared to receive Christ afresh in his coming again in glory, as surely as he came into our midst born of Mary, Mother immaculate, Mother of the Saviour, Mother of God. Amen.

'Prepare the Way of the Lord' A Homily for Advent

 A sermon preached at Croydon Minster at the Service of Words and Music for Advent on the Second Sunday of Advent. Gospel Luke 1.5-25

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‘Prepare the way of the Lord. ‘

 

That is the title of this service of words and music for this great season of Advent.

 

It is also the opening message of St Mark’s gospel when the evangelist has announced ‘The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.’ (Mark 1.1).

 

Having made that wonderful statement, Mark goes on to quote Isaiah to say that a messenger is being sent ‘who will prepare your way’ (1.2) and that a voice will cry out in the wilderness ‘Prepare the way of the Lord’ (1.3).

 

Advent is a time of preparation, of clearing out distractions, being ready, alert so that the Lord’s way may be prepared.

 

It calls for you and me to have a posture of preparation. So what’s your Advent posture of preparation?

 

Is it the preparation of the athlete: on your marks, get set…?

 

Is it the preparation of the artist: with the canvas tight, with paint on the brush ready to make the first strokes?

 

Is it the posture of the musician, the violinist with bow poised above the strings, or singer having taken a breath, ready for the conductor’s hands to summons the music from you?

 

That moment before the starting gun, before the paint is smeared on the canvas, before the conductor’s baton moves – that is Advent, a moment held over these four weeks, and it’s a moment of expectation of what is to come, or rather Who is to come.

 

We stand, as the poet Malcolm Guite reminds us, between two comings: the coming of Christ as incarnate, Word made flesh, born in Bethlehem and the coming of Christ in glory at the consummation of all things.

 

Preparation, expectation, attention, waiting, yearning is our response to God’s initiative to come amongst us.

 

This church of all churches, dedicated as we are to St John the Baptist, should be imbued with Advent character: expectant, attentive, prepared and proclaiming.

 

John is an intricate and complex character, born of the priestly line, and therefore by heredity a priest, and yet also standing clearly in the tradition of the prophets.

 

The priest offers sacrifice to God for the people; the prophet represents the voice and vision of God back to the people.

 

Priesthood and prophecy are not at odds: Isaiah’s own call came in the Temple as the presence of God, in incense, filled the house. Likewise, Jeremiah was a prophet born from a priestly line and yet called to be a prophet too.

 

‘Prepare the way of the Lord’ is a prophet’s cry; receiving and making present the Lord is the priestly task.

 

It’s in the Temple that Zechariah encounters Gabriel, the archangel, like the prophets before him, telling him of the birth of the one who will prepare the way of the Lord out in the wilderness. Zechariah, husband of Elizabeth, is John the Baptist’s father. This news struck Zechariah dumb!

 

After John’s birth Zechariah rejoiced and burst into song.

 

Usually in the evening at Evensong we hear the Song of Mary and of Simeon, the Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis. Tonight, this service will close with a canticle usually associated with the morning, the Benedictus, the Song of Zechariah, which speaks of preparation and what is to come:

 

And you, child, shall be called the prophet of the Most High,

for you will go before the Lord to prepare his way,

To give his people knowledge of salvation

by the forgiveness of all their sins.

In the tender compassion of our God

the dawn from on high shall break upon us,

To shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death,

and to guide our feet into the way of peace. (Luke 2.7-10)

 

May we be prepared to meet the one who comes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

'The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, Son of God'

 

A sermon preached at the Parish Eucharist at Croydon Minster on the Second Sunday of Advent. Mark 1.1-8

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Where did it start? What are the origins? Where did all this come from? Detecting the beginnings of something is always an intriguing exercise.

 

Explorers have long sought out the source of great rivers, to discover the beginnings, the very spring from which a trickle becomes a stream, which becomes a mighty river.

 

Astronomers follow the dream of the ancients to gaze into the heavens to uncover the very beginnings of the universe.

 

And what of the beginnings of Jesus Christ?

 

St Matthew begins his gospel with a genealogy detailing the generations of ancestors of Jesus, ‘who is called the Messiah’ (cf Matthew 1.1-16), and he then tells us that after his birth in Bethlehem Jesus is visited by the Magi.

 

St Luke sets out, in his words, an orderly account, ‘from the very first’, and - after telling us of the birth of John the Baptist - takes us to the beginnings of Christ’s earthly life through the Annunciation to the Blessed Virgin Mary, when the Most High overshadows her to be the Mother of the Lord.

 

St John in his magisterial opening to his gospel declares: ‘In the beginning was the Word’. He connects who Jesus is with the Creation itself. He echoes the opening of Genesis en archē, ‘in the beginning’. Jesus Christ is the Word who was in the beginning with the Father: he is God and not a creature, begotten, not made.

 

St Mark does not give us a Nativity account: there is no Bethlehem, no star, no shepherds or wise men: not the beginnings we’re used to!

 

St Mark simply states, ‘The beginning (archē) of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God’ (Mark 1.1).

 

He tells it in punchy form. This is the beginning of the gospel and this gospel of he who is ‘Son of God’.

 

The Son of God, the Son of Man, the Son of Mary comes to fulfil the promise made through the prophets and heralded by John the Baptist preparing the way.

 

Christ is the source; Christ is the beginning and Christ is the fulfilment. From this beginning, rooted in God’s timeless promise, the gospel unfolds.

 

This gospel is of liberation from the constraining powers that obscure our vision of God, that impede our growth in holiness embodied and fulfilled in Christ and that draw us into the very presence of the Most Holy Trinity.

 

John the Baptist’s ministry - of calling hearers to a baptism of repentance and forgiveness of sins - is a necessary preparation, a preparation for something already begun from the heart of God.

 

John’s preparation is, in the terms of the prophet Ezekiel, about receiving hearts of flesh in place of hearts of stone (Ezekiel 11.19; 36.26). Repentance is a movement and reorientation of the heart: oh, for warmed hearts ready to receive Jesus Christ and the gospel!

 

So it begins here and we are invited to begin afresh the journey with hearts and minds renewed and set on the way of Jesus Christ: this is our Advent journey of expectation.