(‘Cathedral of
Trees’, Photo: Jessica Foster)
Isaiah
55:6-13
6 Seek
the Lord while he may be
found,
call upon him while he is near;
7 let the wicked forsake their way,
and the unrighteous their thoughts;
let them return to the Lord,
that he may have mercy on them,
and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.
8 For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord.
9 For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.
10 For
as the rain and the snow come down from heaven,
and do not return there until they have watered the
earth,
making it bring forth and sprout,
giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater,
11 so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth;
it shall not return to me empty,
but it shall accomplish that which I purpose,
and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.
12 For
you shall go out in joy,
and be led back in peace;
the mountains and the hills before you
shall burst into song,
and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.
13 Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress;
instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle;
and it shall be to the Lord for
a memorial,
for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.
* * *
Matthew 1:18-25
18 Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way.
When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived
together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. 19 Her
husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public
disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly. 20 But
just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a
dream and said, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your
wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. 21 She
will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people
from their sins.” 22 All this took place to fulfill
what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet:
23 “Look,
the virgin shall conceive and bear a son,
and
they shall name him Emmanuel,”
which means, “God is with us.” 24 When
Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took
her as his wife, 25 but had no marital relations
with her until she had borne a son; and he named him Jesus.
A
‘cutting’ of tree wisdom (Genny Tunbridge)
Oak, the
Waiting Tree
Trees are as different from each other as people are; each
species has its own personality. This poem, ‘Oak’[1]
mentions the defining characteristic of ten trees – but is mainly concerned
with the long-lived, sturdy Oak. The ‘waiting tree’ has seen much, and will see
much more; deep rooted in the past, but seeing the new sunrise and still
sprouting green leaves – the Oak reminds me a bit of faithful Joseph.
Out on the hill, old Oak still stands:
stag-headed, fire-struck, bare-crowned,
stubbornly holding its ground.
Three hundred
years to grow,
three hundred more to thrive,
three hundred years to die –
nine hundred years alive.
Ancient Oak hears with ancient ears,
sees with ancient eyes; the snow
of another winter, the glow of a
new sunrise.
Birch is the watching tree,
Cherry is the giving tree,
Ash is the burning tree –
and Oak is the waiting tree.
Three hundred years to grow,
three hundred more to thrive,
three hundred years to die –
nine hundred years alive.
Knot shows through silver grain,
silver grain through bark;
but each fresh spring brings
oak-green leaves again.
Holly is the witching tree,
Beech is the writing tree,
Elder is the quickening tree –
and Oak is the waiting tree.
Three hundred years to grow,
three hundred more to thrive,
three hundred years to die –
nine hundred years alive.
Introduction
to the theme (Al Barrett)
As we continue our journey through Advent, again we hear
echoes of themes we’ve encountered in these last few weeks.
Repeated several times in the words from the prophet Isaiah
(from towards the end of that prophetic book, probably written some time later
than earlier sections of Isaiah) we hear the word ‘return’. We’ve heard much
from Isaiah over the last few weeks – words of promise and hope to the Jewish
people in exile in Babylon, longing to return home. But here, ‘return’ is less
a promise, and more an invitation, or a command, or a beckoning. Here, it is
less the people waiting for God to bring them home, and more God who is waiting
for the people to come back. This is about repentance – that ‘turning
around’, of our lives and our ‘direction of travel’; leaving behind the ways
that are deadly, and turning back to the God who is the only source of life.
But in that returning, as we’ve heard over the last couple of
weeks, it’s not just human beings and our relationships with each other that
find healing and restoration – it’s also the flourishing of the whole of
creation. The mountains, hills and trees burst into song and clap their hands,
in praise of their creator. This is a home-coming that is, ultimately, about
the whole of the created world coming to be ‘at home’, together, with God. What
a radically earthed, ecological image of ‘praise’ that’s so far from the individualistic,
‘me singing to Jesus’ activity that often goes under that label.
It’s in this dual context, then – the people of Israel
returning to God, and the flourishing of all creation – that Matthew tells the
story of the birth of Jesus. Jesus, ‘Yeshua’, whose name means ‘The Lord is
Salvation’. The root meanings of the word are to do with rescue.
Remember the history of the people of Israel, of being enslaved, being invaded,
being captive in exile. But the word also has resonances that suggest ‘being
brought into a wide, open space’: a space to breathe, to flourish, to praise.
This is what God is bringing, with Jesus, Matthew tells us.
But underneath all this talk of return and repentance,
salvation and praise, is a fundamental truth about God, that isn’t named
explicitly in either of this week’s readings, but can be seen and heard between
the lines. And that truth is love.
God longs for us to return to her, because she loves us,
desires us, aches for us. God longs for us – and all creation – to sing out in
praise not because God is a narcissist that needs our worship to make him feel
good about himself, but because that ‘bursting into song’ is about our
flourishing, our coming to fullness of life, together – and that is what God
longs for us, and delights in. ‘Emmanuel’ – the other name for Jesus given here
in Matthew’s story – means ‘God is with us’. God longs to be with us,
and for us to be with God – that could sum up the whole ‘big story’ of the
bible.
There is another glimpse of love in this week’s readings. In
Joseph, the humble descendant of the famous king David, we see an obedience
that comes out of love: out of love for God, Joseph does what God’s messenger
has told him to do. And everything he does (and doesn’t do), seems to come out of
a deep love for Mary too. If Jesus is ‘love made flesh’, then that love is a
unique mix of God’s, and Mary’s, and Joseph’s.
Reflection (Genny Tunbridge)
Who would have thought that there
were so many trees in the Bible! When we chose the theme ‘Trees of Life’ for
our discipleship journey, there were some immediately obvious places in the
Bible where trees are important (the Garden of Eden, Revelation, the shoot from
Jesse’s stump), and we knew there were more – but week by week I am surprised
to see just how much there is in our readings about plants and trees, even in
texts I thought I knew well. Looking at
scripture with new eyes (eyes that are alert to spot trees) brings use new
insights and deeper understanding. Perhaps this is one way that we are seeking
to do what Isaiah urges us, returning to the Lord as we return to
scripture afresh and see new things.
After all, this is what happens when
we return – we see things differently. A ‘there-and-back-again’ walk is just as
interesting and rewarding as a circular one, since things look very different
when seen from the opposite direction, and the new perspective gives us a
fuller understanding and appreciation of what lies in our path.
For Joseph, it was a dream that made
him change direction, turn around from the path he had chosen and go back.
Instead of quietly setting aside Mary and their engagement, he was now resolved
to embrace Mary and the mysterious child. The angel’s message opened his eyes,
so that instead of seeing the pregnant Mary as a disgrace to be rejected, he
was able to see God’s love at work in her and in their lives.
For me, it was a virus that made me
change direction and return – not the current virus, but a nasty flu 11 years
ago which has had long-lasting consequences. My body slowed right down,
requiring a change of pace and a change of direction. Having to give up full
time work and find a new way of life led to me returning to Birmingham (where
I’d enjoyed my training, years before). It’s also led, in the gentler pace of
life which I’ve had to embrace, to me returning to old loves which had been
squeezed more and more out of my life due to pressure of work and losing myself
under the burden of heavy responsibilities.
Cooking and baking, art and craft and making all kinds of things,
sharing life with friends in community, spending time out walking and getting
close to trees – all of these were things which I’d increasingly lost sight of
in my old life. But in these past six years, thanks to my change of direction,
I have rediscovered the joy and fulfilment they bring me, and – despite the
frustrations of limited energy – I am feeling restored to nearer my true self.
And much more than that: on this
return journey I’m not only re-claiming old loves but discovering new things
about how they connect with each other, and how they connect me with other
people, and how much all of this matters to God. I like Isaiah’s image of God’s
relationship with us being like rain and snow sent to water the earth,
eventually bringing forth life-giving crops. God showers gifts and interests,
loves and abilities in each of us, seeds them deep within us. They may take
time to emerge: we ourselves, or the conditions in which we live, may suppress
and squash them. But if allowed and encouraged to flourish, they will
‘accomplish God’s purpose’ and grow thirty or a hundred-fold, overflowing to
share joyfully with our human and non-human neighbours.
Is this kind of ‘returning’ really
what our Isaiah passage means? The
prophet is talking about repentance, and uses strong language to describe those
who are not on the right path, calling the ‘wicked’ to ‘forsake their way’, and
the unrighteous their thoughts. Was Joseph ‘wicked’ when he was minded to
divorce Mary? Matthew describes him as ‘a righteous man’; he was following
God’s law as best he understood it and believed he was doing the right thing –
but God sent an angel to show him he was nevertheless on the wrong path and
needed to change. Was I unrighteous when I was working too hard and had no time
for friends or trees? I believed I was serving God faithfully and doing what
God required of me, but I still managed to get onto a path that was taking me
(I now see) away from a flourishing life and further from rather than closer to
God. In words from a song I love called ‘Crossroads’ by Don McLean: ‘They walk
one road to set them free/And find they’ve gone the wrong direction’. From the
example of Joseph, and from my own experience, I am reminded being
well-intentioned and seeking to live a godly life are no guarantees of being on
the right path. Repentance, and the invitation to return to God, is not just
for the deliberately wicked but for all of us – and it is an invitation that is
renewed again and again, as we all, all too easily, will continue to take wrong
turnings believing them to be right.
I find this understanding helpful
when thinking about some of the ways we are learning that we need to change our
thinking and our actions in our world today. The challenging, moving
reflections during our Black History Month opened the eyes of many of the white
members of our church (including mine) more fully to the reality of racism and
to see that well-intentioned ‘colour-blindness’ was part of the problem and
needs to change. And the way most of us have lived in relationship to the
natural world for years, though it has not been deliberately destructive, has
been thoughtlessly unaware and unsustainable and needs to change.
Turning, returning, we are learning
to look at each other – and at trees, and soil and birds and rivers – with new
perspective, with a fuller understanding, something closer to God’s perspective
– with love. God is always calling us home when we get lost, and waiting (like
the father for the prodigal son) to feast with us joyfully when we stumblingly
return.
Reflection (Ros Sheppard)
One thing is certain is that this year,
Christmas 2020 is going to be different! The effects of COVID-19 have affected
all of us. Life has changed fundamentally at a deep level and there is a sense
that will things never be the same again…
The theme for this week is ‘Return to the Lord’.
Return means to go back to somewhere. It implies we are not in the place we
should be and that we should return to that place just as we return home after
a holiday, or an evening out.
But what if that place is somehow different, the
same but different? We all long to return to ‘normality’, whatever
that means, but we know things will not be the same again.
We have lost loved ones, jobs have been lost, relationships
have changed and been damaged, in some cases irretrievably so. Communities have
changed, shops have closed in the main streets. Schools have worked under
tremendous pressure. Hospitals have become stressful and difficult places.
Nurses and Doctors have given their all. The list goes on.
The place we return to will be different in
some way, but we do not know how it will be different.
Some questions for reflection:
1 Is there anything you would like to
return to that no longer exists? A place, a relationship, a job, a way of life.
How
does it make you feel?
How might you cope with it in your daily life?
2 What do you long to see as we return to
something of how our lives were before COVID-19?
What do you look forward to? What do you think
might be difficult and what strategies might you have to cope with that?
Consider these words of Isaiah:
“Seek the Lord while he may be
found; call on him while he is near. Let them turn to the Lord,
and he will have mercy on them, and to our God, for he will freely
pardon.” (Isaiah 55:6,7b)
Think of ways of using them in your personal
meditation and prayer time as you reflect on what shape your individual return
might take. Maybe read the words slowly, pause, and read them again, gently
seeking God and being aware of any particular words or phrases that may stand
out for you.
The gospel reading Matthew 1:18-25, reminds us
once again of the events of the birth of Jesus, that God came to be with us and
to share in our humanity. The story is familiar to us. God at work through two
very young people, betrothed to one another but not yet married, with an
unexpected pregnancy. Mary is obedient to Gods prompting and full of joy,[2]
and Joseph displays much kindness, compassion, and fairness towards Mary (Mat.
1:19). Joseph took Mary as his wife but had no marital relations with her until
she had given birth to Jesus (Mat. 1:24-25).
This reading reveals to us two key identities
and descriptions of Jesus.
The first one is that he is given the
name Jesus as he will save people from their sins (Mat. 1:21).
These are not just our own personal sins and
wrongdoing that we may feel we commit but they are also the sins and wrongdoing
of others, both of individuals and of policies and structures created by the
government and those in power. The line in the Lord’s prayer, “forgive us our
sins as we forgive those who sin against us”, reminds us that we have sinned,
but we have also been sinned against. The sinning against may be stronger and
more real for some of us at this time.
A 3rd question for reflection:
What sins
and injustices do we feel have been committed against us and against our
community and neighbourhood during this time of COVID-19? How do we feel about
this? How might we deal with our feelings?
Secondly, Jesus will be called Emmanuel,
which means God with us (Mat. 1:23).
One of the central struggles and difficulties
for many of us, during this time of lockdown has been that of loneliness and
isolation. For many weeks, meeting friends, families, work colleagues in ‘real
life’, has not been possible, and there has been a great deprivation and denial
of human contact, something which is essential for us to grow and flourish as
human beings. It has been a real struggle.
Emmanuel – God with us, assures and affirms us
that God is with us. We may not feel it, believe it, or even want God to be
with us at times. But if we profess faith in God and belief in Jesus through the
gospels then as we follow and journey in faith, this is simply a fact and is
the truth. God wants and longs to be with us, it is his purpose, his destiny,
his deepest desire, and we need to hear that very deeply.
As we seek of ways of returning to something
of what our life was like before COVID-19, and as we come to terms with the
injustices of how this has been handled, let us know absolutely, profoundly and
completely that God - Emmanuel, is with us in all this and will never let us
down.
O come, Thou Day-Spring, come and
cheer
Our spirits by Thine advent here
Disperse the gloomy clouds of night
And death's dark shadows put to flight.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.
Reflection (Gill Burrill)
When I was around 15 years of age, I was
invited by a school friend to go to a church youth group at a Gospel Hall in
Greenford Middlesex. I really enjoyed it and went most Saturday evenings. At
the end of the evening there was usually an epilogue, where one of the leaders
would talk about Jesus and we were invited to give our lives to Him.
On Bonfire night in 1970, as I sat around the
bonfire listening to the testimonies of other young people, I felt God calling
me to repent of my sins, to believe in Jesus and to ask for the gift of salvation.
I was baptised with full emersion in May 1971.
I went on to have an active Christian life,
involved in outreach and teaching in Sunday School. I continued to worship at the Gospel Hall
until I was 21, when due to my elder sister’s marriage break down and
subsequent nervous breakdown, I moved to Tamworth to support her.
Even though I still had a faith, I stopped
attending church and it wasn’t until I was married and had my two children that
I started to think about returning to church as something was telling me that I
should introduce Jesus to them.
Initially we attended the URC and then Hodge
Hill Gospel Hall and then finally to PJ where we have worshipped for the past
27 years.
One of the things I have struggled with in my
Christian Life is the act of repentance. I thought that to repent was not only
to be sorry but not to commit that same sin again. I have to confess
that amongst other things, I am very quick tempered at times. I say “sorry” to
God, but then more often than not I lose my temper again and then I feel so
guilty. I asked myself “If I keep making the same mistakes over and over again
would I have that salvation that I asked for as a young girl?”
During this pandemic like many of us, I have
had more time to pray and study the bible and my thoughts have kept coming back
to this same question. The bible warns us that we shouldn’t keep sinning so
should we have to repent over and over again?
I believe that God has spoken to me through
his word. We are not perfect and will go astray but when we get to the point
where we are truly sorry and we admit that we have no option but to cast our
cares upon him, He is waiting.
Jesus taught us to pray to Abba Father. The
word children use to address their dad. A child’s relationship with their
father is full of closeness love and trust.
God has erased that insecurity from my mind. I
don’t need to worry. I became His child at that moment of repentance on that
Bonfire night many years ago. God has hold of me and will never let me ago.
A
prayer for this week:
“Prayer of the Farm Worker’s Struggle” (César Chávez)
Show me the suffering of
the most miserable;
So I will know my people’s plight.
Free me to pray for
others;
For you are present in every person.
Help me take
responsibility for my own life;
So that I can be free at last.
Grant me courage to
serve others;
For in service there is true life.
Give me honesty and patience;
So that I can work with other workers.
Bring forth song and
celebration;
So that the Spirit will be alive among us.
Let the Spirit flourish
and grow;
So that we will never tire of the struggle.
Let us remember those
who have died for justice;
For they have given us life.
Help us love even those
who hate us;
So we can change the world.
Amen.
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