Article
- Date:
- Sunday 8th January 2023
Year A, The Epiphany - Place:
- Holy Trinity, Cuckfield
- Service:
- Evensong
- Readings:
- Isaiah 60.1-0
John 2.1-11
It was Lancelot Andrewes, the second most distinguished Bishop of Chichester after Saint Richard Himself who, in a Christmas Sermon of 1622 before King James I on the Epiphany, coined the phrase "It was a cold coming they had of it" which TS Eliot used in his great poem the Journey of the Magi, one of many intriguing poems on the subject for, although the shepherds are very picturesque in their way, particularly when lit by and entertained by the heavenly host, the protagonists in the Epiphany are exotic men of mystery. There has been much speculation about whether they were wise men or kings, how many there were and from whence they came. I don't suppose it matters much in the end but, for what it's worth, I am convinced they were rulers of some sort because no wise man worth his salt would have anything to do with gold which could only be got as the result of the use of slave labour and the loss of much blood. Indeed for me it is their very venality, their pomp and circumstance, which lends such importance to their worship of the Christ child; it would be nothing much for wise men to worship the Messiah; but this 'fall' from gold to grace is deeply attractive and it speaks to our times.
There is a great deal of easy talk in Christian circles about the evils of the consumer society, the power of money and the lowering of standards as if this were happening in a world at the other side of our windows of which we are unhappy, helpless spectators; but insidious self-delusion is much more dangerous than pantomime villainy. We have all, more or less, bought into the consumer society; and when we come to worship the Christ Child, we don't bring him our gold, we leave it at home, persuading ourselves that the world of gold and the world of God are totally separate worlds.
But for all these men had a hard time reaching Jesus, what with the bad weather, the hostile receptions, the indifferent eating and sleeping arrangements, and the fractiousness of camels, hardship is relative; I venture that they did not have such a bad time, for instance, as Christians from Western Europe walking to Jerusalem in the 12th Century. Likewise, for all our current woes, our hardship is relatively light compared with that suffered by most people in the world. We all know this, so what's the point. Surely designing league tables of hardship; does not get us anywhere?
The point for me is that, for whatever cause, these men were drawn by an irresistible power to get out of their comfort zone, their palatial and jurisdictional comfort zone, to go out into a world from whose unpleasantness they had been protected; and instead of giving and receiving ceremonial presents in one palace or another, they made gifts to a child with mysterious properties they did not claim to understand; and then they went home, older and, Eliot suggests, just a little wiser.
My point is neither subtle nor difficult: if we are to worship this mysterious child then we need to get outside our own comfort zones, not least because the knowledge of that child within our own country is vanishing fast. I think we can safely say that our country has almost completely lost any notion of the Christian significance of Easter but Christmas is rapidly going the same way so that Nativity Plays are on a par with pantomime: a cruel innkeeper, a desperate young couple, angels, shepherds, Herod the Villain and three exotic kings. The only difference is that the Nativity Play has an untidy ending and it seems not to all end happily ever after but, still, I am struck forcibly by the way that Christmas seems to have got cut off from the rest of Christianity; but, for all that, it's our last hope. Without it we will be an ageing, shrinking sect.
What, then, are we to do? Well, for a start, we have to admit that what we are doing now, what we have been doing throughout our lifetimes, is not really working, so the first answer has to be trying something new or, in my earlier phrase, we have to get outside our comfort zone. Here I am not suggesting that we abandon our homes and start making mad expeditions but what I am suggesting is that we each need a new perspective on our Christian faith: we need to read different books of the Bible, different translations, different commentaries, different works of study. We need to consider a worldly subject we have not considered before, not something that is only of private use but something of public use. When we make a moral decision about politics, how much do we really know? Do we ever try a different newspaper, do we ask why some countries are rich and others poor, do we even know the most fundamental facts about places in the news? Do we know the history of our country's relationship with countries currently in trouble? Do we think that we can know our own history if we leave out big chunks that are unpalatable? These may seem to be distant concerns from our church but our church too often seems distant from the world.
We, the most educated people who have ever lived, are sleep walking into global disaster and moral bankruptcy for want of a little intellectual and spiritual effort. We don't think enough and we don't pray enough. We don't ask enough questions and we accept too many glib answers without being clear what they mean. We love our Church dearly but not fiercely. And perhaps, too, we love it too much as it is and not as it might be.
These are hard words for hard times but I have never felt that the world needs to lay its gifts at the feet of Jesus as it does now. So many of us are little kings. So many of us have so much. But we cling to our palaces and our ceremonies. We don't, in the modern terminology, get out enough. Let this be our year of journeying, of exploration, of learning something new, of knowing what to give and how to give. Nothing is too small but if we each do something, the change will be very great.