“Creation—Who cares?” (Genesis 1:1 – 2:1)

It was way back in July 1925 that one of the most famous court cases in US history took place in Dayton, Tennessee. Known ever since as the “Scopes Monkey Trial”, it centred on twenty-four year-old John T. Scopes. He was accused of introducing Darwin’s theory of evolution while acting as a substitute teacher in a high school biology class. Unknown to him, his action was contrary to the state law of the time, which made it illegal to teach evolution in any of its public schools. Scopes was eventually acquitted on a legal technicality. But the case made headlines across the United States and served to fuel one of the most tragic church squabbles of recent times. The Fundamentalist-Modernist controversy was an acrimonious division that continues in some parts of the church right down to this day.

As with so many of the quarrels that have divided Christians over the centuries, it has generated far more heat than light. It has wasted energy and resources that could have been directed to infinitely more useful and God-honouring purposes. And surely the only winner in it all has been the devil, who must rub his hands with glee.

One of the greatest casualties in this controversy is the passage we read from the Old Testament this morning: Genesis, chapter 1. Skeptics scorn it as a hopelessly primitive, pre-scientific description of how the universe has come into being. They point to it as evidence that serious science and Christian faith are incompatible. And I suspect that for many the result has been to regard what the Bible has to teach us about creation with a certain degree of embarrassment—to ignore it or leave it on the shelf to gather dust.

To my mind this is a tragedy of incalculable proportions. For the more I read from this first chapter of Genesis, the more I find myself in the presence of truths so profound I know I can never reach the bottom of them. But let’s give it a try anyway, and open our Bibles to Genesis, chapter 1, where we read, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”

These first words of the Bible take us back to the dawn of time. Cosmologists debate as to whether that means ten or twenty billion years or something in between. But numbers and statistics are not the concern that lies behind them. Rather, it is to communicate the awesome truth that before anything existed, there was God.

It is hard—I want to say that for me it is impossible—to imagine complete nothingness, absolute emptiness. The closest our author can bring us to it is with the words “formless and empty”, utter darkness. It is a stark and chilling picture. Yet even in this utter void, God is present.

The ancient Hebrews were by and large a land-loving people. For them the sea was a place of danger and chaos—and this is surely the picture conjured up by the waters at the end of verse 2. Yet the author gives us the astounding picture of the Spirit of God hovering over it all. Biblical commentators have often commented that that same word “hovering” is used of an eagle in flight.

For a number of years our family used to spend our vacation on an island in St Margaret’s Bay. Needless to say, we shared it with a number of species of wildlife, including a family of ospreys. I remember many times looking up into the brightness of the blue sky to see one of those magnificent birds wheeling silently, seemingly motionlessly, above me, and never ceasing to be fascinated by it. So it is that the stage is being set. God is silently present and about to act to bring his creation into being. And it all happens with a word.

Into the unimaginable silence of complete nothingness God speaks: “Let there be light.” In Hebrew it’s just two words, yehi or. And with those two words the Bible tells us there was light. Creation had begun.

Science

What follows is not, as some maintain, a primitive myth. Rather, it is a carefully structured rhythmic exposition of God’s creative power. Each of the first six days opens with the phrase, “And God said…” And each closes with the words, “And there was evening and there was morning…,” followed by the number of the day.

Then look more closely and you’ll see that there is a correspondence between day one and day four, day two and day five, day three and day six. It has been observed furthermore that on the first three days God introduces order into the chaos, separating light from darkness, waters from waters, land from seas. Then during the second triad of days he fills the void, setting the sun, moon and stars in the sky, causing the waters to teem with living creatures, populating the land with animals of every description. We could go further and note that on the third and sixth day there is a double creation, followed by a triple action on the seventh.

Much more could be said here—and has been. Indeed scholars have devoted their lives to it. Whole books have been written about it. But it becomes clear that what we have in Genesis 1 is not a scientific, but a lyrical representation of God’s creative power. Yet, having said that, I am convinced that the Genesis account of creation opens the door to scientific exploration in at least three ways.

The first of them is by affirming the order that underlies the universe (quantum mechanics aside for the moment). That is, that God’s creation is open to our comprehension.

Secondly, by refusing to ascribe names to the sun, moon and other heavenly bodies, the Genesis account of creation was declaring that these were inanimate bodies. Other ancient civilizations saw the stars and planets as divine beings, possessing a power of their own to affect human life. But the Bible will have none of that.

Thirdly, as we move into chapter 2, we find God parading his creatures before the man to give each of them a name. And that process of cataloguing and naming goes on into our present day, whether it be in the realm of subatomic particles, as yet undiscovered stars, or living beings. Surely this is much of the work of science in bringing understanding and meaning to the world we inhabit.

And so, while Genesis is a pre-scientific document, it is not as some argue, anti-scientific. To the contrary, I think we can rightly affirm that Genesis opens the door to scientific inquiry.

Art

One of the mental images that I take away from Genesis (and I am prepared to admit that this may be fanciful on my part) is of God as an artisan. In my mind’s eye I have a picture of God coming to his creation each day and adding a much-needed detail—dry ground and seas, flowers and fruit on this day, sun, moon and stars on that, fish and sea creatures on the next, animals on the next… And each day, we find God taking a moment to look at what he has done, and declaring, “It is good.”

Five times we hear it said, “And God saw that it was good.” We hear it twice on the third day, once on the fourth day, once on the fifth day, and once on the sixth. Then, after all has been created and his work is complete, we are told, “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.”

Now the word “good” in Hebrew can have a variety of meanings. It can mean good in the sense of good for something, useful. It can mean morally good, righteous. It can also mean aesthetically good in the sense of pleasant, delightful or beautiful. And I can’t help but thinking that that sense is at least part of what is meant when we read each of those five times, “And God saw that it was good.”

God takes delight in his creation—in its beauty, its majesty, its complexity. “The heavens declare the glory of God,” says Psalm 19. And in the gospel we find our Lord Jesus speaking lyrically about the flowers of the field, “that not even Solomon in all his splendour was dressed like one of these” (Matthew 6:29).

And so I believe that this first chapter of Genesis begins to lay a foundation not only for investigative science but also for artistic endeavour and for the appreciation of beauty wherever we find it. Creation calls us to stand in awe at the vastness of the night sky, at the whir of a hummingbird’s wings, at the colours of an alpine meadow, and to declare, “It is good.”

Stewardship

All of this brings us to a third lesson that this first chapter of Genesis leaves us with. It comes to us on the sixth day of creation and it has to do with your and my place within it.

In verse 26 we hear God declare, “Let us make humankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule … over all the creatures…” And again in verse 28 we are told that God blessed humankind and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”

Perhaps like me you have heard environmentalists rail against these verses, claiming that they have provided justification for an uncontrolled exploitation of the bounty with which God has surrounded us, denuding the earth of its resources. But a careful reading of Genesis 1 reveals that that just is not so. Indeed, if anything, just the opposite is true.

So what does it mean for us to rule over all creation? German theologian and ethicist Helmut Thielicke taught that we can only properly understand our rulership over creation when we place it within the wider context of God’s sovereignty. He wrote, “We are not to rule and subdue the earth because we stand above the other creatures, but only because we stand under God and are privileged to be his viceroys.”[1]

The contemporary American Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann goes a step farther and places our rulership of creation within the context of Jesus’ teaching:

The dominance is that of a shepherd who cares for, tends, and feeds the animals… Thus the task of ‘dominion’ does not have to do with exploitation and abuse. It has to do with the securing of the well-being of every other creature and bringing the promise of each to full fruition… Moreover, a Christian understanding of dominion must be discerned in the way of Jesus of Nazareth… The one who rules is the one who serves. Lordship means servanthood… The human person is ordained over the remainder of creation both for its profit, well-being and enhancement. The role of the human person is to see to it that the creation becomes fully the creation willed by God.[2]

So it is that Eugene Peterson in The Message renders these verses, “Let us make human beings in our image, make them reflecting our nature so they can be responsible for the fish in the sea, the birds in the air, the cattle, and, yes, Earth itself.”

The point comes through even more clearly when we look at God’s command to fill the earth. The verb for “fill” here has a secondary meaning of fulfilling, bringing to completion. And so part of our calling is to continue God’s work of creation, to enhance its riches, its beauty and its immense variety.

Our gracious God has placed into our hands an enormous gift in his creation. May we never cease to wonder at its vastness and complexity and to be awed by its beauty. And may we be faithful to his mandate to care for it and to tend it until the day when all creation is brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.

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[1]     How the World Began, 67

[2]     Genesis, 32-33

“God has spoken” (Hebrews 1:1-4)

Central to our Christian faith is the conviction that our God is a God who speaks. The first picture that the Bible gives us is one of chaos and emptiness. And into that emptiness God speaks: “Let there be light.” And no sooner were those words spoken than the Bible tells us there was light.

So it continues over the six days of creation: “God said…”, “God said…”, “God said…” And each time we hear the refrain, “And it was so.” “And it was so.” And it was so…”

Our psalm this morning affirms that God’s voice, which brought everything that is into being—from the farthest reaches of the universe to the tiniest subatomic particle—continues to echo through his creation:

The heavens declare the glory of God;
     the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
Day after day they pour forth speech;
     night after night they reveal knowledge.
They have no speech, they use no words;
     no sound is heard from them.
Yet their voice goes out into all the earth,
     their words to the ends of the world…

The vastness of the night sky, the daily warmth of the sun: these and a countless array of natural phenomena all work together to reveal the God who is behind them. “Lord, our Lord,” we read elsewhere in the Psalms, “how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory in the heavens.” (Psalm 8:1)

John Polkinghorne, who enjoyed a long career as a theoretical physicist at the University of Cambridge, would agree. He has written,

The universe, in its rational beauty and transparency, looks like a world shot through with signs of mind, and, maybe, it’s the ‘capital M’ Mind of God we are seeing … an origin in the reason of the Creator, who is the ground of all that is.[1]

If John Polkinghorne observed God’s creation from a macro-level, Francis Collins has investigated it on a micro-level. He is the geneticist who led the team that sequenced the human genome. He has observed, “The God of the Bible is also the God of the genome. He can be worshipped in the cathedral or in the laboratory. His creation is majestic, awesome, intricate, and beautiful.”[2]

Is it any wonder then that Jesus used the things of nature to unfold the secrets of the ways of God? A mustard seed that grows to be the largest of garden plants, a measure of yeast that is folded into a lump of dough to make it rise, the buds on a fig tree announcing that summer is near, a cloud rising in the west heralding rain, the lilies of the field more beautifully arrayed than King Solomon in all his splendour…

Yet studying the phenomena of the natural world can lead us only so far. Job acknowledged this way back in the Old Testament. After reflecting on the remarkable works of God’s creation, he proclaimed,

These are but the outer fringe of his works;
     how faint the whisper we hear of him!
     Who then can understand the thunder of his power?
(Job 26:14)

So, as we move into the latter half of Psalm 19, we find that there is an additional, fuller, way in which God has chosen to reveal himself, and that is through the words of Scripture:

The law of the Lord is perfect,
     refreshing the soul.
The statutes of the Lord are trustworthy,
     making wise the simple.
The precepts of the Lord are right,
     giving joy to the heart.…
They are more precious than gold…
they are sweeter than honey…
     in keeping them there is great reward.

Classic Christian teaching has always acknowledged that God addresses us both through his creation and through his divine word. One of the basic formularies of the Christian Reformed Church is the Belgic Confession, written in 1561. Here is what it says about the ways in which God reveals himself:

We know God by two means: First, by the creation, preservation, and government of the universe, since that universe is before our eyes like a beautiful book in which all creatures, great and small, are as letters to make us ponder the invisible things of God: God’s eternal power and divinity… Second, God makes himself known to us more clearly by his holy and divine word, as much as we need in this life, for God’s glory and for our salvation.

Creator

All of which brings us to the opening verses of the letter to Hebrews, from which we read these words a few moments ago: “In many fragments and in many fashions in the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets,”—and here comes the critical word—“BUT in these last days he has spoken to us through his Son.”

Yes, God reveals himself through his creation. Yes, God has revealed himself through the words of his prophets. But it is in Jesus that we find God’s fullest and final revelation. Then the author (who is anonymous) goes on to list a series of astounding claims as to why this is so—why we look to Jesus as God’s ultimate expression of himself. I think we can summarize them under three headings.

The first is “Creator”. Somewhere along the way, as they walked with Jesus (and I suspect it was at a different point for each of them, or perhaps more accurately through a whole series of experiences) those first companions of Jesus came to the conclusion that this man, though made of flesh and blood as they were, was also something more—considerably more. Dare I say, infinitely more?

We see it in the gospels when Jesus asked them, “Who do people say I am?” The answers quickly rolled out. “Some say John the Baptist,” said one. “Others say Elijah,” piped up another. “And there are others who say you are Jeremiah or one of the prophets,” added yet another. Then Jesus looked them in the eye. “But what about you? Who do you say I am?” It’s not there in the gospels, but I always imagine a long silence at this point, until Peter, who seems always to have been the first to speak, blurted out, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” (Matthew 16:13-16).

The events that followed Jesus’ crucifixion only served to heighten and confirm this growing conviction. “My Lord and my God!” were the astounded Thomas’ words as he gazed on the wounds in Jesus’ hands and side (John 20:21). And as Jesus met with his followers for the final time, Matthew tells us that they worshipped him (Matthew 28:17).

So it is that scarcely a generation after all these events the apostle Paul could write to the believers living in Colossæ,

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. (Colossians 1:15-17)

Radiance

We look to Jesus, then, as a participant with the Father and the Holy Spirit in the creation. To add to this, the author of Hebrews tells us that Jesus is “the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being”. That word “radiance” is found only in this one place in the New Testament. It is related to the word for dawn. So the picture we are given is of the clear brightness of the morning sun with its spreading rays gleaming over the eastern horizon, bringing light to a world that has been shadowed in darkness.

Yet even that image fails to convey anything like the fullness of the radiance that is found in Jesus. What we are talking about here is nothing less than the shekinah glory of God. It is what Moses witnessed as he stood before the burning bush. The Bible tells us that he had to hide his face because he was afraid to look at God (Exodus 3:6).

Many years later, as he met with God again on the peak of Mount Sinai, Moses made a bold request—that God would show him his glory. To this the Lord replied, “I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the Lord, in your presence. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. But, you cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live.” (Exodus 33:18-20)

Such is the indescribable radiance of the glory of God. And that is the radiance that we find in Jesus. “No one has ever seen God,” writes John in the introduction to his gospel, “but the one and only Son, who is himself God, who is closest to the Father’s heart, has made him known” (John 1:18).

Peter, James and John caught a momentary glimpse of that radiance as they stood with Jesus on the mount of the transfiguration. The gospels tell us that there Jesus’ face shone like the sun and his clothes became dazzling white, as bright as a flash of lightning.

The apostle Paul observed that when Moses returned from God’s presence to meet with the people, the change in his face was such that he had to cover it with a veil. “But,” Paul adds, “whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away… And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit” (2 Corinthians 3:18). It is impossible to experience the radiance of Jesus and not find ourselves being profoundly changed.

Sacrifice

The picture of Jesus that the letter to the Hebrews gives us, then, is a glorious and exalted one: Jesus the mighty author and sustainer of creation; Jesus, the pure radiance of God’s indescribable glory. You might think there would be nothing left to say, but there is. And that is this: that this same Jesus came into our world for one purpose—to bring us purification from our sins.

Jesus, whose power brought galaxies into being, emptied himself of all power to offer up his life for you and for me. Jesus, whose radiance shines into eternity, willingly submitted to the ugly darkness of the cross. As Graham Kendrick has put it in the words of his powerful hymn, “hands that flung stars into space to cruel nails surrendered…”

This is the message that rings through the entire thirteen chapters of the Letter to the Hebrews. Indeed it has been described as the crimson thread that runs through the whole of the Bible. “I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified” wrote the apostle Paul to his fellow believers in Corinth (1 Corinthians 2:2). And again, to the Galatians, “May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world” (Galatians 6:14).

One of the last pictures that the Bible gives us is of a vast crowd of people—women and men and children beyond counting, from every tribe and nation, race and language. They stand around the throne of the Lamb of God and together their numberless voices thunder,

Salvation belongs to our God,
who sits on the throne,
and to the Lamb. (Revelation 7:10)

Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain,
to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength
and honour and glory and praise! (Revelation 5:12)

From its opening words to its last, the letter to the Hebrews is a call to worship, but not just the formal worship that we offer here on Sunday mornings (although that is a vital part of it). It is the worship of a heart overwhelmed with gratitude to the Lord of all creation, who shines with the pure radiance of the uncreated God, and who has trodden the road of pain and death, and by his sacrifice to claim for himself the likes of you and me.

Love so amazing, so divine,
Demands my soul, my life, my all.

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[1]     Quarks, Chaos & Christianity, 25

[2]     The Language of God, ch 10

“Why did Jesus have to be baptized?” (Matthew 3:13-17)

My Oxford Dictionary defines the word “eccentric” as “odd or capricious in behaviour or appearance; whimsical”. I suspect there are a number of us who have had either friends or relatives they might describe as eccentric. I had an uncle who at one time ran a Shell gas station. Whether it was to save money or because he liked the colours, I don’t know, but he painted the exterior of his house in the same yellow and red. The neighbours didn’t like it, but it sure made it easy to find.

I don’t know if the statistics would bear me out, but it seems to me that the greatest concentration of eccentric people is to be found in the British Isles. There was, for instance, an officer of the British army in World War 2 known as “mad Jack Churchill”. He lived by the motto, “Any officer who goes into action without his sword is improperly dressed”—and the sword he was referring to was the Scottish broadsword. In addition to his sword, he occasionally used a longbow. Early in the war he ambushed a German patrolman, shooting him with a barbed arrow. His shot earned him the title of the only British soldier to have felled an enemy with a longbow during the war.

Delving farther back into history, there was William Buckland. He was a clergyman and a brilliant geologist and palaeontologist, who lived in the early nineteenth century. He was known to have occasionally delivered his lectures on horseback and his obsession with the animal kingdom knew no bounds. The result was that his home was literally a zoo. Besides this, he was famous for eating animals of every species and placing them before his dinner guests. Various people who sat at his table recall being served panther, crocodile and mouse. Among the few creatures that did not suit his taste buds were moles and bluebottle flies.

Perhaps he was not as far along the eccentricity spectrum as William Buckland or Jack Churchill, but I do believe there is an argument that the man we meet with in this morning’s Bible reading falls somewhere into that category. He is John the Baptist (or John the Baptizer). Matthew describes John’s clothes as being made from camel’s hair with a leather belt around his waste, and that he lived on a diet of locusts and wild honey. (As an aside, locust eating probably wasn’t all that eccentric. Locusts were commonly eaten by the poorer people of that region and were an efficient source of protein.)

John’s message was uncompromising. He had no fear about exposing the hypocrisy of religious leaders, the corrupt practices of the tax collectors or the bullying tactics of the Roman soldiers—and ultimately his fearless denunciations would lead to his death. At the same time there were those who found John’s challenging message of repentance deeply attractive. And they came in droves to the grassy banks of the Jordan River.

However, John always recognized that his mission was only an anticipation of something far greater. And he knew its fulfilment was around the corner when one day he spotted Jesus in the crowd. “I baptize with water,” he said, “but among you stands one you do not know. He is the one who comes after me, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire” (John 1:26-27; Matthew 3:11-12). Then something that had never entered John’s mind began to happen. Jesus walked forward and stepped down into the water. John was aghast. “I’m the one who needs to be baptized by you,” he protested. “So what are you doing coming to me?”

And that’s the question I want to ask this morning. Why did Jesus feel the need to be baptized? And what did he mean when he said it was “to fulfil all righteousness”? I think the answer is threefold.

Submission

In the baptism of Jesus the gospels give us a unique picture of the Holy Trinity. As the Son emerges from the water, we see the Holy Spirit coming down as a dove and alighting on him, and we hear the voice of the Father pronouncing, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.”

Before I say anything else, let me state that at the heart of the doctrine of the Trinity there will always remain a mystery. We can skirt around the edges of it, but we can never fully penetrate it. Theologians have sought to clarify it, yet sometimes their explanations can leave us more confused than when we began. The most helpful approach I have found is through the picture of a dance. Eugene Peterson put it this way:

Imagine a folk dance, a round dance, with three partners in each set. The music starts up and the partners holding hands begin moving in a circle. On a signal from the caller, they release hands, change partners, and weave in and out, swinging first one and then another. The tempo increases, the partners move more swiftly with and between and among one another, swinging and twirling, embracing and releasing, holding on and letting go. But there is no confusion; every movement is cleanly coordinated in precise rhythms … as each person maintains [their] identity. To the onlooker, the movements are so swift it is impossible at times to distinguish one person from another; the steps are so intricate that it is difficult to anticipate the actual configuration as they appear.[1]

So it is, at the baptism of Jesus, that for a brief moment in time the curtain is lifted and we are given a glimpse of the eternal dance of the Trinity—a still shot, if you will. Here we see the Son empowered by the Spirit in humble and willing submission to the Father. And that is Jesus’ posture not only at his baptism but throughout his ministry, and indeed through eternity.

We hear it repeatedly from his own lips: “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work,” Jesus told his followers (John 4:34). “I do not seek to please myself but him who sent me” (John 5:30). “I love the Father and do exactly what my Father has commanded me” (John 14:31). And we see his unwavering commitment to that purpose most poignantly demonstrated in the Garden of Gethsemane on the night before his crucifixion. There we find Jesus falling with his face to the ground as he prays, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will” (Matthew 26:39).

As Jesus stepped down into the Jordan to be submerged under the water, then, it was not as an act of repentance as John supposed, but as a public witness for all to see, to his complete commitment to the Father’s will. As he would later tell his followers, “I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me” (John 6:38).

Solidarity

There is a second purpose that underlies Jesus’ baptism. That is, that it was not only an act of submission to the Father’s will but also an indication of his solidarity with the human race—with you and with me. Jesus was demonstrating in a visible, physical way that he is one with us, one of us.

Some of you may remember when the Queen visited Halifax in 1994. Part of her itinerary was to take her along Barrington Street. At that time Barrington was already well down along its slide from its former glory in the first half of the century. “Seedy” and “run down” would be a kind way to describe the way it looked. So the government spent thousands of dollars on temporary cosmetic improvements to some of the surrounding buildings. The result was that the street took on the appearance more of a movie set than of a real place. For some reason someone among the powers-that-be was of the opinion that the Queen should not be exposed to things as they really were.

Well, not so with the Son of God. When Jesus came to our world, he did not come as a visiting dignitary. The opening verses of John’s gospel emphatically tell us that the eternal Son of God became flesh and made his dwelling among us (John 1:14). As preachers such as myself are keen to point out, a literal translation of that verse is that “he pitched his tent among us”. What that means is that Jesus did not just come for an overnight visit—touch down, see a few of the sights and then fly off again. And he did not live in a palace, surrounded by all the luxury that this world is able to provide. No, he came as an ordinary man and over the course of thirty-three or however many years, experienced all that it is to be human.

Being baptized in the muddy waters of the Jordan was for Jesus a concrete way of conveying that this was what he was doing. As he plunged under the water, he was physically identifying with all those who were responding to John’s message—not standing on the bank in silent observation but throwing himself in with our lot, becoming one with us, immersing himself in our condition and all that that entails.

Sacrifice

Jesus’ baptism, then, was an outward and visible sign of his total submission to the Father’s will. And it was a sign of his solidarity with you and me in our human lot. But I believe there was also a third meaning to be found in what he did that day. And it is revealed in a couple of conversations he had with his followers some time later.

The first of them came while Jesus was teaching a large crowd. He had warned them in a parable of how they must be ready for the coming of the Son of Man. At that point Peter came to him privately and asked if the parable was just for them or for everyone. Part of Jesus’ response consisted of these words: “I have a baptism to undergo, and what stress I am under until it is completed!” (Luke 12:50) I can only imagine that Peter must have been mystified by those words. Nevertheless they stuck with him and lodged in his mind.

On another occasion two of Jesus’ followers came to him asking, “Let us sit at your right hand and the other at your left in your glory.” To which Jesus replied, “Can you drink the cup I drink or be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with?” (Mark 10:38) Again Jesus’ words were met with incomprehension.

Yet, while the disciples failed to grasp the implications of what Jesus was saying at the time, it became clear to them later that what he had been referring to was his death. So it was that, even at this beginning point in his ministry, there loomed before him the shadow of the cross. As Jesus descended into the waters of the River Jordan, he was also looking ahead to the day when he would be plunged into the deeper waters of death—when he would willingly offer himself up for you and for me on the cross.

There he would take upon himself not only our humanity but our sin. There he would bear the full weight of our waywardness and rebellion. And he did it so that you and I might be freed to be the men and women that God created us to be, to be human in the truest, fullest sense. He did it so that you and I might join in the joyful dance of the Trinity and one day hear our Father’s voice pronouncing, “This is my beloved son, this is my beloved daughter…”

Today, as we remember the baptism of Jesus, may it help us to recognize him as the one and only Son of God, completely submissive to the Father’s will. May we know his presence, walking alongside us, sharing our joys and our pains, our hopes and our disappointments. And may we live in gratitude that the road that began with his baptism was the road that led him to Calvary—that he was pierced for our transgressions and that by his wounds we have been healed.

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[1]     Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places, 44-45

“The Dark Side of Christmas” (Matthew 2:1-18)

 It’s going back quite a few years now, but I suspect there are some in the congregation who can recall the film My Big Fat Greek Wedding. One of its more memorable characters is Gus Portokalos, the father of the bride. At one point in the story Gus makes the claim, “Give me any word, any word, and I show you how the root of that word is Greek.” “OK,” someone pipes up from the back of the car, “how about the word ‘kimono’?” “Kimono, kimono, kimono,” Gus mutters to himself. You begin to wonder if he hasn’t been stumped. Then he triumphantly shouts, “Ha! Of course! Kimono is come from the Greek word cheimónos, is mean winter. So, what do you wear in the wintertime to stay warm? A robe! You see: robe, kimono. There you go!”

Well, perhaps unbeknownst to many of us, today we enter the season of Epiphany—and unlike “kimono”, “epiphany” really is a Greek word. It has to do with showing forth or making an appearance. By and large the only time we hear the word nowadays is on those rare occasions when someone might say, “I just had an epiphany,”—by which we might understand they had something like an “Aha!” moment, a flash of insight when suddenly something became clear.

That actually comes pretty close to the meaning of the church’s season of Epiphany. It begins with today’s reading about the journey of the wise men and how Jesus was made known to people from outside the Jewish nation for the first time. It will continue next Sunday with the account of Jesus’ baptism and of God the Father’s pronouncement that Jesus was his beloved Son. And so it continues, until we come to the mount of the transfiguration, where Jesus is revealed to Peter, James and John in all his heavenly splendour.

Yet to observe the season of Epiphany in that way is really to recount only half the story. Running side by side with the account of Jesus’ glory there is another narrative: the context of the dark world into which that light shone. If we take a moment to examine them closely, we find that surrounding those charming scenes on our Christmas cards of angels and shepherds and the wise men presenting their gifts there was a sinister world of hardship, shame and squalour.

The Darkness of Bethlehem

Those of us who watched the “Walking the Road to Bethlehem” video series during Advent were given a different perspective on the events surrounding Jesus’ coming. Let’s begin with Mary and Joseph. Nazareth, where they lived, was a village of fewer than five hundred people and news of Mary’s premarital pregnancy would have spread like wildfire. Although they had both been visited by angels, there was no one in Nazareth who would have believed that Mary was a virgin. In the eyes of the townsfolk her condition would have been a scandal, the subject of endless rumour and chitchat, bringing shame to her and embarrassment to Joseph.

And months later, when they came to Bethlehem, what about the manger where Jesus was laid? It is easy to forget that what we are talking about is a feeding trough for animals. It could not have been the least bit sanitary. Yet it was the only thing available. I wonder what was going through Mary’s mind as she laid her tiny baby down in it. Did she and Joseph have to shoo the animals away as they came in search of food?

Then there were the shepherds. They were not clean-cut farm boys, as we might like to imagine. Rather, as Adam Hamilton pointed out,

They were typically uneducated, usually poor, and, since they lived among animals in the elements, sometimes smelled of dirty sheep… Shepherds were tolerated but not always esteemed by their neighbours.[1]

In fact, Hamilton was being kind. First-century rabbis classed shepherds with thieves and cheats. Their roving life gave them the opportunity to steal from the flocks and they were known to take advantage of it. They had what one commentator has described as an “unfortunate habit of confusing ‘mine’ with ‘thine’ ”.[2] For that reason, to buy milk, wool or kids from a shepherd was forbidden, because more than likely you would be receiving stolen goods.[3]

This morning we read of the visit of the magi. Behind that story there lies the evil shadow of King Herod, sitting on his throne in Jerusalem, less than ten kilometers away. History records Herod as an insanely jealous, paranoid, ambitious and despotic ruler. He maintained a personal bodyguard of two thousand soldiers and employed secret police to keep a watchful eye on the common people. He banned anything that smacked of opposition and would have it put down by brute force. His insatiable thirst for power led him to a series of ruthless acts, including the execution of his wife, his brother-in-law (who also happened to be the high priest), three of his sons, three hundred military leaders, and many others.

So it is that this morning’s reading concludes with a horrific act of violence. It is a scene not depicted on any Christmas cards that I know of. It is not re-enacted in children’s Christmas pageants. Yet it is part of the real world into which Jesus was born. And as a result Mary and Joseph are forced to take another journey, this time to flee with their infant child as refugees to Egypt.

Thus before he reaches the age of two, we find Jesus already the subject of rumour and innuendo, homeless, in the company of the lowest of the low, threatened, persecuted, and a refugee. As we follow the gospel story, we find him hungry, thirsty, tempted, caught in a violent storm at sea, grieving over the death of a friend, in such intensity of anguish that his sweat becomes like drops of blood falling to the ground… So it is that the author of the Letter to the Hebrews can claim that in Jesus, “We don’t have a priest who is out of touch with our reality. He’s been through weakness and testing, experienced it all” (Hebrews 4:15, The Message). “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.”

Darkness Today

The apostle Paul summarizes it in his famous hymn in Philippians, chapter 2:

Although in very nature God,
     he did not consider equality with God something to grasp;
rather, he emptied himself
     by taking the very nature of a slave,
     being made in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
     he humbled himself
     by becoming obedient to the point of death—
              and nothing less than death on a cross!

Jesus knows what it is to be poor, oppressed, homeless, a refugee… And so he stands beside such people; he stands beside you and me today. He is with us, not just for the good times, but in our moments of weakness and need, in our moments of doubt and sorrow, in our moments of anguish and grief. As we pondered in the sermon a couple of weeks ago, Jesus is Immanuel—God with us.

In the church where last served I had my eyes opened to what that means in extreme terms. One Christmas Eve we had the privilege of being “invaded” by the first of what became more than a hundred refugees. They were Karen people from Burma and they are among the most persecuted minorities in the world.

This past Friday Burma marked the seventy-first anniversary of its independence as a nation. Not one of those years has passed when the Karen people, along with other ethnic minorities, they have not been hunted, tortured, forced out of their homes and villages, and slaughtered by the Burmese army. They have been subjected to bombings, sniper shots, machine gun fire, torture, germ warfare and chemical attacks.[4]  Some of my parishioners had seen their relatives shot down in front of them. Others bore machete scars and bullet wounds. Still others had found escape only by risking their lives to walk through minefields. And when they reached the supposed safety of refugee camps in neighbouring Thailand, the Burmese army continued to shell them.

Yet through all of this they never lost their love for Jesus—and, more importantly, their confidence in Jesus’ love for them, Jesus’ presence with them. To hear them sing some of the old favourite hymns like “Take my life and let it be” or “O Jesus, I have promised to serve thee to the end”, and to see them come humbly and faithfully to the Lord’s table, for me was a deeply moving experience. They had known what it was for Jesus to dwell with them in the darkness.

Never Alone

It’s my sincere hope that 2019 will be a year of blessing for all of us. Yet inevitably there will be times of darkness. My prayer is that, as Jesus stepped into the darkness of Bethlehem twenty centuries and more ago, so you may know his presence with you both in the good times and in those moments when darkness seems to be closing in your life.

So allow me to conclude with a story:

At the end of time, billions of people were scattered on a great plain before God’s throne. Most shrank back from the brilliant light before them. But some groups near the front talked heatedly—not with cringing shame but with belligerence.

“Can God judge us? How can God know about suffering?” snapped a pert young brunette. She ripped open a sleeve to reveal a tattooed number from a Nazi concentration camp. “We endured terror, beatings, torture, death!” In another group a man lowered his collar. “What about this?” he demanded, showing an ugly rope burn. “Lynched for no crime but being black! We have suffocated in slave ships, been wrenched from loved ones, toiled till only death gave release.”

Far out across the plain were hundreds of such groups. Each had a complaint against God for the evil and suffering he permitted in his world. How lucky God was to live in heaven where all was sweetness and light, where there was no weeping or fear, no hunger or hatred. What did God know of all that people had been forced to endure in this world? “God leads a pretty sheltered life,” they said. 



So each of these groups sent forth their leader, chosen because he or she had suffered the most. A Jew, a slave, an untouchable from India, a 
person from Hiroshima, a prisoner from a Siberian gulag, a horribly deformed arthritic, a thalidomide child. In the centre of the plain they consulted with each other. At last they were ready to present their case. It was rather simple: before God could be qualified to be their judge, he must endure what they had endured. Their verdict was that God should be sentenced to live on earth—as a human being!

“Let him be born a Jew. Let the legitimacy of his birth be doubted. Let him champion a cause so just, but so radical, that it brings down upon him the hate, condemnation and efforts of every major traditional and established religious authority to eliminate him. Let him try to describe 
what no-one has ever seen, felt, tasted, heard, or smelled: let him try to communicate God to human beings. At the last, let him see what it means to be terribly alone. Let him be betrayed by his closest friends. Let him be indicted on false charges, tried before a prejudiced jury and convicted by a cowardly judge. Let him be tortured and let him die! Let him die the most humiliating death—with common thieves.”

As each leader announced a portion of the sentence, loud murmurs of
 approval went up from the assembled throng. When the last had finished pronouncing sentence, there was a long silence. No one uttered another word. No one moved. Suddenly all knew that God had already served his sentence.[5]

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[1]     Adam Hamilton, The Journey, 113

[2]     Leon Morris, The Gospel According to St Luke, 84

[3]     Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, 902

[4]    See Andrew Boyd, Baroness Cox, A Voice for the Voiceless, 215-257

[5]     Author unknown