A Blessing in the Disturbance - Matthew 2:1-12

I don’t know about you but I don’t like being disturbed.

I’m not sure if that’s a man thing - with us only being able to concentrate on one thing at a time - as the multi-tasking women keep telling us. But it’s a fact of life for me: I don’t like being disturbed, and I have to work hard to be civil when I am disturbed in the middle of something.

Doesn’t matter if it’s work or play. It’s the same thing. When I’m giving something my full attention, and something else cuts in, that’s when my stress levels start to rise.

You’d think Christmas would be a stressful time for ministers, and generally speaking you’d be right. After all – it is our busy time of year. As everyone keeps reminding us. Everyone.

But as a general rule, I don’t mind the busyness. If I can run hard in early December I get most of the services prepared and I can get on and enjoy myself like everyone else. What I do mind is the disturbances that stop me from getting on with things. And this Christmas there have been two of them.

Firstly my computer passed away in early December and I’ve been struggling along with a steam-powered laptop since then, sending email via two plastic cups and a piece of string

And then there’s been the small matter of the longest cold snap for about 30 years, and the added joy of having the kids around the house for an extra week’s cabin fever. I mean – holiday.

My equilibrium been disturbed! But I am not alone.

On this feast of the Epiphany, Matthew tells us that Herod and the whole of Jerusalem were disturbed and it was all because some exotic Eastern mystics called Magi drifted into Jerusalem trying to find the child who’d been born as the King of the Jews.

Is Matthew going a little over the top here? The whole of Jerusalem disturbed? Well, not necessarily. In the culture of the day, this was big news.

Life in Jerusalem was a complex balancing act, where individuals and groups made uneasy truces with one another to further their own ends while keeping some sort of equilibrium.

The Pharisees hated the Romans and Herod too, but he at least, as a Jew, was one of their own and it was his money which was building the new Temple in Jerusalem. They despised him and his ways, but they needed him.

The Romans hated the Pharisees, and didn’t have much time for Herod either. But they needed him as a go-between to soften the blow of Israel’s being ruled by a foreign, pagan power.

And Herod? Well – he only cared for himself and his own desires. He’d taken the throne by force and kept it by force, and he didn’t care who he killed along the way, even his own wife. For over 33 years he had overseen a bloody peace in Israel which had earned him the accolade: ‘friend and ally of Rome’.

But the title he took most pride in was the one granted him by the Roman Senate in his earlier years, the one for which he’d fought tooth and nail against his rivals: “The King of the Jews”.

So when these Magi turn up in his palace, taking his title on their lips and asking to see the child to whom it belonged, Herod was shaken to the core.

Because if this child were the Messiah – as he suspected, and the Biblical prophesies confirmed - then his own days were numbered. If God, to whom he’d only ever paid lip service, were at work in this infant king, then the people would flock to him, and his own heirs would never inherit the throne.

And this was the buzz throughout Jerusalem. The rumours spread like wildfire. A new king? What would that mean for Herod? What would that mean for Jerusalem? How would the Romans react to new leadership? It was like someone lobbed a brick into a millpond. Small wonder the place was disturbed.

The only folk who seem remotely calm in all of this are the Magi. Confused, maybe; and blissfully ignorant of the storm they’ve whipped up; but undeterred, because they’re wise enough to admit that in coming to Jerusalem they’ve made a mistake.

We need to be careful with the text at this point. If you look at verse 2 you’ll see that when they started out on the journey all they had to go on was a new star that had come up in the east. It didn’t lead them to Jerusalem – that was their own best guess, given the star’s meaning. And as it turned out, their own best guess was about nine miles out.

But with some help from the ancient prophesies, and a further sighting of the star, they travel on to Bethlehem. And it’s there – in that one-horse town far away from throne rooms and marbelled halls – that they find the new baby boy for whom these gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh were so carefully chosen.

I wonder if that’s when the wise men were disturbed. When they realised that something of a new order was happening in the world – an order which doesn’t triumph through might of arms, or wield power like a sword. But conquers through servanthood, submission and love.

TS Eliot’s poem “Journey of The Magi” certainly ends on that note.
Eliot writes as one of the Magi, describing their journey on the way to Bethlehem, and closes with these words:

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we lead all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I have seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation....

No longer at ease. Disturbed.

I don’t like being disturbed, and neither do you, I guess.
But sometimes it’s exactly what we need.
Sometimes there’s a blessing in being disturbed.

There could have been a blessing for Herod. He could have done things another way. He could have used this visit from the Magi to salvage something from a ruined and dissolute life and become a part of God’s plan. He could have been blessed in his old age. But he chose not to be.

And there was a blessing for the Magi. They found what they were looking for in Christ, and though it meant the painful death of some old ways of being, it meant the birth of something new and better.

Sometimes there’s a blessing in being disturbed. I wonder if you’ve ever seen things that way.

How do you react when you find yourself disturbed by someone or something that challenges your way of viewing the world?

Do you cling on to old certainties and ways of thinking even if they’re flawed? Or do you open yourself up to the possibility that there might be a new way to see things that brings a blessing?

Some of the things I’m going to tell you now are going to disturb you and I wonder what your reaction will be.

In December, our former Presbytery Clerk gave a report to the Presbytery after he attended a conference with the Ministries Council. This is a flavour of what we heard that evening:

The Ministries Council are to report at this coming General Assembly a deficit in the region of 6.1 million pounds.

The General Secretary of the Ministries Council said that to balance the books, the church would have to reduce its wage bill by just over 100 posts on top of the 230 that had been promised in the Presbytery Plan agreements. This would reduce the number of paid posts from around 1230 to nearer 900 posts. Presbyteries will be forced to make difficult decisions in the light of this hard fact. (In other words, some congregations will have to face union, linkage or dissolution).

If the church carries on as it is today and does nothing to address this situation then in 5 years time the reserves will be down to cover 6 months costs and in 7 years time, they will be exhausted. That’s by 2017.

If income increases by 1.5% above inflation it gives us another 2 years. If we reduce the minister’s income by 1% per annum for the next 5 years it gives us a further year and if we reduce the number of charges and ministry posts by 1.5% per year it gives us another 3 years.

While you take that in, let me say this is not the worst case scenario, This allows for giving to remain at levels comparable to what they are today, and with a little rise in inflation over the next 10 years. We were told that much of the income of the church is based on givings from retired people and that those who are retired now are the ones on better pensions than those who may retire in the next 10 years. It really is that serious.

Disturbed?

Me too. This is what I’ve given my working life to.

So where’s the blessing?

Well as I’ve thought about it I’ve come to realise that maybe the blessing in all of this is the death of Christendom.

What do I mean by that?

Well in the early years of the church, people knew very clearly that being a Christian was a way of life. It wasn’t about being a member on a piece of paper somewhere – it was a costly decision to live your life in community with other believers. Worshipping together, eating together, praying together, serving together. That’s what it meant to be a Christian. You couldn’t belong to the community and not be involved in that way. There were no half measures. No hangers-on. It was a counter-cultural movement and one that was often persecuted because its people thought and acted differently from the rest of society,

And then in 312AD Constantine – the Roman Emperor - converted to Christianity, and suddenly it was both safe and popular to be a Christian, in name at least.
Believers didn’t have to meet secretly in homes any longer. Great churches and cathedrals sprang up across the known world. Power bases were constructed and defended. Resources plundered and hoarded. Christianity became the norm. If you were born in a particular country, you were, de facto, a Christian. It was the beginning of nominalism. Christianity by default rather than by choice or by practice.

Before you knew it, Christianity had stopped being a movement and had become an institution. An enterprise. This was Christendom, and more often than not its ends were spread as much by the sword as by the preaching of the gospel. Witness the crusades. Witness the inquisition. Witness the rabid persecution of minorities. All in the name of the Christ who preached love for enemies. And hardly anyone saw the irony.

Now thank God that good seed grew up alongside the bad, but the truth is that the needs and diktats of Christendom ruled life on our continent for the last 16 centuries.

But we are the generation who are living through its demise. Since the mid 19th century the institutions have been crumbling. The established churches are being pushed to the margins. You’ve seen it happen. We’re becoming peripheral all over again. And some of us are saying AMEN to that.

Because the Magi found God, not in the corridors of power, or the hallowed halls, or the Jerusalem Temple. They found God at the margins. And maybe we’ll find him there too. Maybe this disturbance will finally focus our minds on what it really means to be a man or woman who follows Jesus Christ.

It will feel like death, but Godwilling it can also be a birth.

But for that birth to happen, our denomination, and others like it, will have to ask some hard questions.

We'll have to ask questions about our buildings.

Why is it that nationally, in these disturbing times for the church, tiny congregations cling to their decaying buildings instead of clinging more tightly to the God in whose name those buildings were raised? The church existed and thrived for its first three centuries without buildings. The persecuted churches in China met in secret for decades, moving from home to home, and their numbers grew exponentially. Are we discovering in this time of disturbance that rather than being the place or worship, our buildings are actually the object of our worship?

We'll have to ask questions about our commitment to worship.

The Presbytery of Edinburgh carried out a survey in March of last year and measured church attendance across the city on one particular Sunday. 11,000 people attended Church of Scotland worship out of a population of 450,000. 2.5% The vast majority of church members weren’t there.

Why is it that on a typical Sunday in our own congregation – and in relative terms we’re doing well! – ¾ of our membership is nowhere to be seen week after week?

And we'll have to ask questions about our financial commitment to the church.

Why is it that a typical Presbyterian Church in America, with a membership of 100, can afford to staff three full-time church workers? Preacher, pastor and youth worker. They all have them. I've known that for a while, but two American colleagues have confirmed it in the past month. And over here we’re looking at losing 330 ministers! What does that say about our financial commitment to the church? Where does the difference lie? In the fact that the majority of our American brothers and sisters tithe - it's as simple as that. They can do more because they give more.

So bring on the end of Christendom, I say. If that means a sharpening of vision, a deepening of commitment, a refocusing of priorities, a stripping of the deadwood, then bring it on. Because something has to change. We can't go on like this for much longer.


May God bring us a blessing in this time of disturbance.

And may God bring us out of the crumbling palaces of Christendom and lead us, by a kindly star, the extra nine miles to Bethlehem.

Awareness - John 1:10-14

At the risk of seeming indulgent, I want to share a poem with you: one I wrote a few weeks ago.

I share it not because I want you to like it (though I do!), but because I think the way it emerged has something to say to us, especially in light of this morning’s reading from John’s gospel.


Gale

I’d share that moment with you if I could;
the morning sun straining through scudding cloud,
swathing the wind-scoured fields in shifting light.
And yet for all her wintery glory bright
The trees and scrawny bushes bowed
Not to her, but to another.

A gale swept in, swept clean across the coast.
And from my armchair, safe, I sensed its power
in throaty gusts that made the rafters groan
and toppled heavy plant pots – left them prone
and helpless, ‘mid spilt earth and flower.
Their squat stability undone.

The skeletons of climbing frame and swing
keened, as raw elemental air raced through;
shuddering with the strain of staying still.
The lengthening grass preferred to bend, its will
less hardened; rippling like the blue
green sea that swells beyond the dunes.

Strangely moved, I sat transfixed and silent,
breathing shallow lest the spell be broken.
Embraced in peace, when outside all was rage
I lost myself in wonder for an age,
knowing truth was being spoken
in words no ear could understand,

but heart could fathom. The unrepentant
wind was chiding; calling all who live too tame
to wildness. Not to shush the soul’s long sighs
to sleep, but send them skirling through the skies,
airborne, breath-born. Given a name.
Lifted, like a child’s giddy kite.

I’d share that moment with you, but it’s gone.
Swept off on that same breeze to who knows where.
Yet traces linger; a yearning for more
of all that we call life. I slid the door
and stepped into the swirling air
where dry leaves danced in ecstasy.


So how did that poem emerge?

Well, in our house Monday to Wednesday are the quiet days. It’s usually on those mornings that I get a little bit of peace and quiet to read and pray if circumstances allow.

And I remember the morning in question very well – I’d sat down to pray but kept getting distracted by this howling gale. But after a while I began to feel that that God was saying to me – ‘Just sit and listen. There’s something in this for you’. So that’s what I did. I just sat and listened for a while and paid attention to what was going on around me.

I started to feel the pressures of all the things that needed done weighing down on me, but I stayed with the experience and in time the thoughts and feelings I had resolved themselves into the right words, with verse 5 being especially important to me.

The Spirit was saying: “Where do you live too tame? What sighs are you shushing to sleep? What kites do you need to set flying?” And I’m still trying to work through the answers to those questions.

So how did that poem come about? I felt a prompting which I could easily have ignored, but I gave it my attention and out of that reflection something true was born. Something that’s changed and continuing to change me.

What I’ve just described is really the kind of territory that real poets work away in. They have this practiced ability to see the profound in the ordinary. And it’s a gift, but they have to work at it too, like any skill.

They start with Grecian urn, a field of daffodils, a battlefield, or a road through the forest which happens to split in two, but they name them and describe them in a way that brings out their eternal truths and makes a deep connection with the reader or the hearer.

So what’s all that got to do with us? This is church, not poetry class!

Well here’s the crux of it. I’ve come to recognise that poetry and lived faith both rely on one central discipline. The discipline of awareness.

It’s that awareness, that disposition that makes you look beneath the surface to find the truth of things, that really matters.

The Jesuit Priest Anthony De Mello writes

“Spirituality means waking up. Most people, even though they don’t know it, are asleep. They’re born asleep, they live asleep, they marry in their sleep, they breed children in their sleep, they die in their sleep without ever waking up”.

He’s describing the person who goes through life unaware - seeing nothing except what’s immediately in front of them, and missing everything else– God included.

They might live what the world calls successful lives. But they’ll be two dimensional lives. There’s no depth to them.

John’s words to us this morning are a warning not to fall into that trap, and a promise of what can happen if we avoid it.

“The Word was in the world” John tells us at verse 10. And we’ve heard that kind of thing so often over the Christmas period.

Getting this message across was so important to him.

If the historians are right, John would have been in his late 80’s or even early 90’s when his gospel was written. He was one of the last people living to have seen Jesus and spent time with him. And he wanted to leave us in no doubt about what had happened in the Christ event.

This was the Word – the Life – coming to be with us. Focused into one particular human being called Jesus. Living among us, as one of us. Above all – that’s what John wanted us to understand. It really happened. We’ve seen him, we’ve touched him, we’ve spoken with him. It really happened.

So the word was in our world, but the world did not recognise him.

And isn’t that an interesting choice of word on John’s part. It’s not ‘didn’t see him’ or ‘didn’t understand him’ or, ‘didn’t obey him’. It's didn’t recognise him.

You only recognise someone if you have some kind of idea what they look like.

If I sent you off to the airport to pick up my dad, you wouldn’t have a clue who to look out for. But if I showed you some pictures and told you to look out for a guy with a dodgy leg who looks like Clark Gable, you’d probably find him!

The fact that John uses that word recognise tells us that something within us is able to recognise the presence of God. The Psalmist puts it this way: “deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls.” The depths in us reaching out for the depths in God, and vice-versa.

The writer of Ecclesiastes says the same kind of thing when he writes that that God has placed eternity in peoples’ hearts.

And most of us know that in our own experience. We know what it feels like to sense the voice of conscience within ourselves; or to feel a strong, unaccountable tug on heart strings because of something we’ve seen or heard; or that quickening of spirit we sense when something strikes us as true, and true particularly for us.

I heard the Archbishop of Canterbury being interviewed on the radio over Christmas and someone phoned into ask what God’s voice sounds like, and he answered in those very same terms.

And the way to sense that voice is to allow ourselves to be still for a moment and give God our attention.

I’d guess that’s why – when the word was in the world – the world didn’t recognise him. Most of the folk around him weren’t awake and weren’t aware.

I don’t know about you, but I’m convicted by that. I’m pretty sure I sleepwalk through most of my days. Reasonably effectively, I hope, but sleepwalking all the same.

I coast along on the tramlines that are set out for me by routine and responsibility, and it’s only with a great effort of the will that I lift my eyes from those tramlines and try to discern where God is in the middle of it all.

And yet, when I do, it’s those moments or hours that make all the difference. They're the times when I feel I’m really living. It’s a bit like slipping on your 3D glasses when you go to the movies these days, Things suddenly takes on new depth.

You know, I don’t want to live a life in two dimensions. I don’t want to sleepwalk through my three score years and ten. I want to know God. I want us to know God as a church community. Not as past history, but as real presence.

How do we get there?

By staying awake – by cultivating awareness in the midst of all the ordinary things we need to do every single day of life.

If poetry is discerning the profound in the ordinary and everyday, maybe lived faith is discerning the divine in the ordinary and everyday.

The writer and pastor Eugene Peterson tells a story about this.

Peterson was at a stage in his ministry when he was getting frazzled, and he and his wife decided to try and get away camping for a few days to help him clear his head.

But even with that plan in place, there were still lots of last minute things to do – phonecalls he had to make, letters to write and post, marked exam papers to get back to the faculty and lastly a hospital visit with parishioner who was having an operation later that day.

The man concerned was a bit of a grouch and Peterson knew it wouldn’t be a good visit. All he’d hear was a bunch of moans, and sure enough that’s exactly how it turned out.

Tired and angry, but having done his duty, he walked out of the hospital, scrunched up his list and threw it with some venom into the bin.

That night, under the stars in his tent, he had a dream. The kind of vivid dream through which God speaks sometimes.

In his dream, Peterson was walking past a bookstore when he saw a new bestseller in the window called Lists – and it was written by a childhood friend of his called Geri Ellingson. He was thrilled because he hadn’t even known that Geri was a writer.

He bought a copy straightaway and took it home to read. But much to his surprise it was just a set of lists! Shopping list, Christmas Card list, DIY jobs – nothing but lists!

He writes: “When I woke, I knew immediately the meaning of my dream: lists are best-seller material. In my hurry to recover the essentials of spirituality in my life – a sense of the presence of God, a spacious leisure for savouring grace – I had thrown out the raw material for it – my list. The items that I thought were interfering with the holiness of my vocation were the very materials of its holiness.”

Do you see what he’s saying? It’s not really about becoming a chin scratching poet or a reclusive mystic. That’s my bent – it’s probably not yours.

It’s about doing what you do every day in life – whether that’s teach kids, make dinner, drill oil, push paper or tend fields and animals. But doing it with awareness. Awareness that the God of the universe goes with you and ahead of you into all that the day holds. Recognising that the word who WAS in the world IS in the world. In YOUR world. Waiting to be discovered there in ways you might never have expected and might well miss if you aren’t paying attention.

So the next time you get that inkling that God’s speaking to you, however it comes, stay with it. Stay with it until the truth it holds for you becomes clear. It might just change your life.