It’s almost Christmas. For many churches that means nativity plays and carol services. For Dunfermline URC those will come later so this morning presented a bit of a challenge. How to preach on Christmas… before it’s Christmas.
This is what I came up with. Your thoughts and comments are very welcome.
Sermon Text (for those who like to read)
When the world was dark
And the city was quiet,
You came.
This week’s sermon almost didn’t happen. I was really busy and thinking about simply rehashing last week’s offering. But as I started to rework it I deleted it and started again. And I’m glad I did. As usual your comments, reactions and thoughts are most welcome.
This sermon was preached on 14 December, the 3rd Sunday in Advent, at Hamilton United Reformed Church.
Because of the way we arrange the Christmas story we sometimes forget that John and Jesus are the same age. Remember John is Jesus’ cousin. His mother is Elizabeth who was pregnant around the same time as Mary. When John talks about scanning the crowds he’s looking for a fully-grown Jesus. He’s not talking about a baby in a stable. He’s talking about the Messiah, coming, now.
John’s father was Zachariah, the priest. That means that John would be destined for the priesthood and yet we find him in a very different priestly role. The holy man not in the synagogue or the temple but out in the wild.
This is our first clue about this Messiah John is raving about. Jesus isn’t going to be religious in the conventional sense.
But then conventional is never astonishing is it? Conventional means tried and tested. Conventional means agreed on, decided, settled. And that doesn’t seem to describe Jesus to me. At all.
Why are you here? Today? Why did you choose to come here this morning? When you come here, what do you find? Why do you come back every week? To meet your friends? To sing songs, to listen to people me, to hear the Bible read?
Your role in this whole Sunday thing is really very passive. I decided the hymns, the prayers, the readings and the content of the sermon. Your job seems to be to sit there and listen and to sing what I tell you to.
I suppose I hope that something you will hear or sing might cause you to think about your faith, your God, your place in the world, and if it does then that’s a good thing. But if that is all that happens, if we have a nice time and are maybe stirred a little in our souls then we have completely missed the point.
Our Gospel reading today (Matthew 25: 31-46) is most definitely the point. It is the reason for our being here, although it’s sometimes hard to see the connection. Jesus tells the people listening to feed the hungry, give a drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked, and visit the sick and the imprisoned.
I’ve just finished reading Velvet Elvis by Rob Bell. I know it’s taken me a while to get round to this but I’m kind of glad I waited because I think I’m probably in a place now where it makes more sense to me that it might have when it came out a couple of years ago.
The book is full of gems. For me, Bell’s engagement with the Jewish Jesus is illuminating and helpful but the line that struck me most was:
If it’s not good news for everybody then it’s not good news for anybody.
His explanation is that if person X starts to follow Christ that should be good news for the Muslim next door or the Hindu across the road because person x will be a better neighbour.
I’ve asked the question ‘What difference does it make to the world that we follow Christ?’ in a few sermons over the past months. I think Rob Bell’s observation gives at least a place to start looking for an answer. The Good News isn’t just Good News for us. It should be Good News for the people we live with, the people we work with, the people we share our street with, the people we meet and all the people we come into contact with.
The lectionary for this week is Matthew 25: 31-46 (the sheep and the goats/i was naked, hungy, sick, in prison) and in his Chocolate teapot for 28 Nov Roddy Hamilton has posted some thoughts:
There is no way Jesus intended to start a church. Nothing he did was designed to grow a great institution that has fought over how many angels you can get on a pin head, the colour of cups in the cupboards and who should be allowed to use them, should the minister raise three fingers representing the Trinity during the benediction, should we stand for the bible, what should be the balance of hymns between traditional and contemporary etc, etc, etc. You can add to the list as you feel the need.
All Jesus did was tell folk there are forgotten folk in the world and there ought not to be, there are people who starve and there shouldn’t be, there are folk imprisoned in memories and pain and guilt and marriages and illness who should rather be free to life fully, there are people who can’t afford clothes for their own backs let alone their children’s backs and that is a shocking thing to let happen. Sort it.
The principle is dead straight forward. This is quite simply all there is to do as a church, a nation, a company of people, an individual. Here, and rarely anywhere else will you find Jesus. He never said he’d be found among those who wanted pews or those who didn’t, those who wanted everything sung with the organ or the piano, those who wanted Moody and Sankey or those who wanted John Bell.
But he did say, if you want to find me, look among the poor.
Which bit did the church fail to understand?
My answer? All of it.
We, the church, the supposed people of God, the followers of Christ, have forgotten that the Good News should be Good News for everyone. If it’s not Good News for everyone then it’s not the Good News Jesus was talking about.
Lawrence Moore’s brilliant lectionary blog Disclosing New Worlds is back! A superb resource for anyone who preaches or who wants to get some great insights and commentary on the weekly lectionary passages.
It is 90 years since the end of the First World War. We are here at the 11th hour of the Sunday closest to the 11th day of the 11th month, when all those years ago the guns fell silent for the last time in the War that was meant to end all wars; the war that was supposed to change the world because it had been so costly that we could never allow it to happen again. But of course it didn’t and just a few years later the Second World War began. So many wars. So much death and destruction.
But the memories fade with the passing of those who witnessed those terrible times. We seem not to learn.
There are only a very few men who served in the British Forces in The Great War still alive. The youngest is 106 years old. Their comrades have long since passed and they will soon follow and there will be no one left to tell us how it really was on the fields of Passchendaele where a million men died and 2 million were injured.
It seems a strange contradiction, to fight for peace. I’m sure that applying violence to resolve a problem is not what we are called to do but yet there seems little option sometimes. Throughout the Old Testament the Israelites called on God in times of war. They carried the Ark of the Covenant before them into battle. It seems that things may have changed little as leaders from around the world claim God for their side.
I’m not American. I’m Scottish and I wouldn’t trade that for anything… but I’ve said before, my dream job would be Sam’s in the West Wing - writing speeches for the President.
Obama’s speech writer is 26 years old Jon Favreau. That’s right, he’s 26. He obviously has one of the most gifted orators in the world to work with and Obama has huge input into the process, but to have a hand, or even a little finger in this shows real talent. Obama’s victory speech will, I think, come to be regarded with some of the great speeches of all time.
If you didn’t hear it, spend 15 minutes listening to what a political speech, a sermon, a lecture or a presentation should sound like:
I am Stewart Cutler, a Youth and Children's Work Trainer with over 15 years of experience working with volunteers, students and professionals in the Christian Church and in communities around Scotland.
Welcome to my blog and website where I've been sharing thoughts about God, the church, youth ministry and life since 2006.
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The opinions expressed in this website are those of the author, Stewart Cutler. They do not necessarily represent the views of his employer, the United Reformed Church, or any of the agencies he works with.
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