'Taking the low road'
Sermon preached in St Salvator's Chapel, St Andrews on the 16th November, 2007 by The Rev Dr Jamie Walker.
Readings: Isaiah 35:1-10 & Matthew 1:18-25
Sermon
In the name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit
Brother Michael ... head swam, felt faint, people seemed to come and go, couldn't focus, disoriented, hazy, people shimmered, swam before his eyes .... 'I'm very disappointed in you, you will preach again next Sunday ' - X2 .... 'That was a wonderful sermon .. you told those who know to tell those who do not know.'
The angel, who knew, said to Joseph, who did not know, 'Mary will bear a son and you will call him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.' His name will be Emmanuel, God with us.
Sometimes the wonder of Christmas passes over us. We become inured to its message. We have heard it all before. We become blasé. We sing the carols gladly, joyfully, but too often, if you are like me, the import of the words slip past.
God with us, one of us. Utterly astonishing words! One of the early Christian writers put it something like this -
The Creator of the universe allowed himself to be created and born in the womb of a woman. The one who was clothed with all the glory of God was wrapped in swaddling clothes. The one before whom the angels hide their faces was laid in a manger, gazed at by humans and animals. The one before whom peoples tremble became himself a refugee, fleeing into Egypt. The one who owns the whole world, returned from Egypt penniless, his family making a new start. God with us! God one of us!
Some years ago I led a theology class with a good friend of mine, a Jewish rabbi. He kindly agreed to come along and the class got under way. We had been discussing for a while God's coming as a human, when he suddenly burst out, You Christians! What on earth are you saying? What utter blasphemy! How can God possibly become a man? What possesses you to even begin to think that? God would not, could not, ever become human.
The class was stunned, totally silenced, no-one knew how to respond, did not know where to look. I so admired my rabbi friend for coming straight out with it, as he believed. For him, God could never, would never, become human. It was unthinkable, inconceivable! Following a stunned silence, we slowly began to talk, but now with a reality and a sensitive honesty about our words, and with enormous respect for those who might take a different view.
God with us, one of us! That is what Christians hold to, that lies right at the root of its message. The very idea came right out of the blue! There had been clear hints in the Hebrew Scriptures, but no-one had a clue about what these meant, no-one guessed, until it happened. Only later did the penny drop. Once Jesus was born and his life developed, then the prophecies began to be seen for what they were. But to come to the way of thinking that 'God is here' took years of wrestling and challenge, of puzzlement and anger, of denial and disbelief.
For Jesus' followers, it was initially just as unthinkable and a blasphemy that God could and would become human. Slowly however their thinking began to change, as Jesus led them into an awareness of who he was. They heard in Jesus, words which seemed like the words of God. They heard Jesus forgive sins, which only God could do. They saw in Jesus' miracles, the kind of things that paralleled what God did in creation and in the exodus. They listened as Jesus talked of intimacy with God, of being one with God. They saw in his cross a man forsaken utterly by God, only for him to be resurrected from the dead. They puzzled at what his death meant, until Jesus, who knew, had to let those who did not know, into the secret of what was happening, the carrying away of our sins. As Jesus left them they felt themselves filled to overflowing with the Spirit of God, as if Jesus' own life was filling them too. They could not but say, 'God is here. God with us. Immanuel'.
The first people who learned of this was Mary, then Joseph. The announcement from the angel came right out of the blue. Neither had been expecting it, nor anyone else. Granted, expectation was rife at the time of a coming messiah, a deliverer, but no-one, no-one, expected God himself would come, that God would become flesh. That was right outside the bounds of human imagination! It had to come from outside - from those who knew to those who did not know. Jesus disclosed it slowly to his own close band of followers. Many in the crowds sensed it, but could not admit to its possibility.
We are here in Chapel today because we do admit to the possibility of God coming. This 'God is here' is the ringing note that lies behind our carols. This is what underlines our anticipation as we look forward to celebrating Christmas. And so at this time we seek to catch once again its magic, its awesomeness, its scariness too, its making the hairs on the back of our head stand up on end, its making our nerves tingle!
But the angel has more. Call him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins. That too makes the hairs on the back of our head stand up on end! We had never realised that we needed saving, never realised that we needed God¿s forgiveness, until we hear that God has come to forgive! We discover, though we try to lead decent lives, that all too often we live in shady world of moral fudges, of compromises, or shadowy self-centred decisions. But with God here, we begin to discern we do have nasty habits of hypocrisy and deceit, of subtly manipulating others to our own ends, of telling half truths and spinning the rest. When we discover that God is here, we wake up with a start.
The startling thing is that in God's coming, as one Biblical commentator has put it, God says YES to us! That is his first and last word to us. A resounding YES! You are loved! Together with this YES, there is a NO, a NO against sin, a NO against our insincerities, our hypocrisies, our rejections of God. Jesus has come to carry out what his name means, for he will save his people from their sins. God took the low road, in the sense that he came to join us. He did not stay in heaven, aloof, unmoved by our plight. But he stooped, and walked where we walked, in our kind of body. But more than that, he took the even lower road into our plight before God, into our sins in order to carry them away, in order that we can hear God's NO to our sins, but also supremely God¿s YES to us, each one of us.
I wonder if you have been following the news story over this last week of the canoeist presumed drowned 5 years ago, who has now emerged, having been in hiding and in disguise for all that time. We have heard of his wife, back from Panama, as if in exile, desperate to get back in touch with her children that they have deceived for 5 years. The children apparently want nothing to do with them. They have been terribly deceived by their parents, sinned against, and they are saying NO to any contact, NO to any dealings with them ever again.
God never says that kind of NO to us. No matter who we are or what we have done, overwhelmingly he says his YES.
The reading from Isaiah 35 strikes that note. Israel were in exile, languishing far from temple and homeland, forgotten, they thought, by God. In their exile they wept bitter tears, their harps were attuned to songs of sorrow and pain. Jerusalem, their homeland, lay distant, unobtainable.
And then a prophecy is heard. News comes of a road. The voice of the prophet Isaiah rang out. Strengthen the weak hands, and make firm the feeble knees. Say to those who are of a fearful heart, `Be strong, do not fear! Here is your God. A highway will be there, and it shall be called the way of holiness. And the ransomed of the Lord shall return and come to Zion with singing; .. they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.
For Israel, as they heard the message, hope began to spark in their faces, their shoulders lost that stooped shape, their eyes lost that hunted and haunted look. They began to look forward. The highway arrowed its way straight from Babylon to Jerusalem. The message spread from person to person, 'We're going home - going home.' Instead of songs of despair, new songs emerged of freedom, of joy in the presence of God, of joy in one another's company. Celebration reached deep into their souls, a thrill in God's presence with his people, his deliverance.
Today our carols are like those. We too celebrate today. Let me continue in the theme of that early Church writer, as we catch the wonder of God taking the low road -
He who made the rivers and seas, was himself baptised in the River Jordan. He who made the light to shine was treated with contempt. He upon whose word hung the heavens and the earth, was himself hung on a cross of wood. He who had set people free was nailed to a cross. He who had given living water to people to drink, was given vinegar to quench his thirst. He who created humankind, was put to death by humans. He who had set free the lame and the paralysed was bound in grave clothes. He who had given sight to the blind had his own eyes closed shut as a dead man. He who had given life to the world was himself laid in a dark sealed shut tomb.
All this revealed the words the angel spoke to Joseph, Call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins. Call him Immanuel, God with us.
It is a word for us today - a word both for those struggling with life, and a word for those enjoying life. It is a word for those who are down, and for those who are at peace. It is a word of God who comes near to us, no matter what we are feeling, a God who accepts us as we are, who comes alongside us, to comfort, to give his strength, to forgive, to give his peace, to say YES.
As Christmas approaches, here is something worth shouting about or whispering about. God with us, for us, on our side, among us, in us.
And so let those who know tell those who do not know. Let those of us who have discovered this source of food for ourselves pass on to others that source. Let those of us who have begun in a little way to see the love of God share that love, that YES, with those around us.
Amen, and now unto him who is able to do far more than anything we can ever imagine or think, to him be glory in the Church for ever and ever, Amen.