Who do you follow?

 Epiphany 3: Isaiah 9:1-4, 1 Corinthians 1:10-18 and Matthew 4:12-23

Who or what do you follow? 

A particular team or band?  A TV series or hobby?A public figure or movement?

Social media relies on followers. Verified accounts and influencers develop a strong brand identity - content, stories, expertise, hashtags, paid partnerships, lifetyles, campaigns. Data and engagement become a form of currency.

Advert - see here

Who or what we follow is important: who we get behind or support, the direction we want to go in. To follow suit isn’t just to show interest or understanding, but to copy or obey. Those things shape us and our communities - for good or ill. 

As human beings get caught up in following and influencing, perhaps these questions from William Du Bois sharpen our minds:

How shall Integrity face Oppression?

What shall Honesty do in the face of Deception?

Decency in the face of Insult?

What shall Virtue do to meet Brute Force?

Du Bois was a sociologist, historian and economist who championed civil rights - the first African-American to earn a doctorate from Harvard. He acknowledged that there were many answers - but also that some met such questions hourly and daily, others once a year or decade.

Today, Jesus invites two sets of siblings to follow him: they let go of their nets and he draws their skills into a new purpose - one which lifts the yoke of burden and breaks the rod of oppression. For in him not only is a kingdom of justice and compassion announced, is embodied and comes near. 

Matthew tells us that Jesus withdrew when he heard of John’s death. In the land beyond Jordan, he walks the way of the sea, in Galilee of the nations.

Before he begins to teach, preach and heal, before he calls disciples to follow, he fulfils the hope of Isaiah. The hope of a light that enlightens, a joy that multiples, a hope that nations and people will be set free.

Isaiah spoke in the face of oppression and exile; now that promise of God’s reign of justice and peace draws near in Jesus, God with us.

He takes up John the Baptist’s call to repentance - a radical change of life and direction that many long for. It is a call which invites us to follow suit - to get behind a movement from anguish to rejoicing. It’s a way which holds onto integrity and virtue, honesty and decency, which refuses to return force or insults with blows.  

The choice faced by Simon, Andrew, James and John is disruptive: and yet they risk the accusation of being irresponsible, foolish or impulsive by responding immediately. There’s no check list of pros or cons, no cost-benefit analysis. 

John Mosiman - see here

At that moment, they put something before family and work. They are invited into a new community - all their relationships and obligations are rooted in this deeper peace. 

Others, like them, will also respond to Jesus: touching his garment, kneeling at his feet, asking him questions, sharing broken bread. The wealthy and exploited, the enemy and the outcast, the leaders and the exhausted. Some turn away sad because to follow is too costly; others draw near, giving what they have, because here is life and love.

Jesus invites with power and with compassion. He sees us as we are and knows how to use our gifts. Those who mended and casted nets had a depth of patience, resilience and experience - now he wants to make them fish for people. 

He takes their awareness of their physical limits, their knowledge of water and weather, their attention and their dedication and he says I will make you. I will nurture and challenge, teach and perfect so that you will be who God created you to be. 

They, like us, are invited to bring their whole selves to this way of life. To follow and allow God to work with the stuff of our lives - our skills, experience, learning and memories; the anguish and the hope, the loves and dreams.

The writer Barbara Brown Taylor calls this moment a miracle story because although we might waver or hesitate, it is Jesus who makes the following possible. The God who calls us helps us to follow. In Jesus, God is capturing our imaginations as the hungry are fed, the powerful challenged, the excluded are embraced, the elderly are valued, the young raised up.

This is good news for all: whatever our age or mobility, gender or sexuality, race or occupation. 

It is good news which will make and remake us: there will be cost and blessing, surrender and risk. For this is the way of love which goes to the margins and changes the centre.

The call to us as we follow is what one commentator called a ‘social generosity’. It is a change of direction - transformed thoughts, seeking a different way: doing justice and loving kindness; seeing the fruit of power in generosity, dignity and equity; shaping a common life which rejects hate and division.

Such a way nurtures our integrity, decency, honesty and virtue through the dazzling brightness of God’s light and love. 

It is a dazzling brightness of light and love which confronts oppression, deception, insult and brute force as Jesus bears the weight of that human ill on the cross; and breaks the yoke of its power in resurrection. 

Such a way is what Paul is calling the Corinthians back to: they had allowed arguments and tribal loyalty to divide the body.  He reminds them that the foolishness of the cross stands before our eyes - as God’s love breaks the yoke of oppression.   

We are invited to follow Christ every time we take bread and receive blessing. Those are urgent moments of epiphany and decision - we see who Jesus is. 

That should be good news for every Londoner: love and grace which includes. By the power of the Spirit, may we respond to the light of God’s love and shine with the radiance of Christ day by day - in every act of loving care and resistance.

© Julie Gittoes 2023

Walking by starlight

 Epiphany transferred: Isaiah 60:1-6, Ephesians 3:1-12 and Matthew 2:1-12

The James Webb infrared telescope has been described as a $10 billion gift to the world. It sees the sky at wavelengths of light that are beyond what our eyes can discern. 

Nasa’s senior project scientist was thrilled and relieved after years of hard work.

A machine showing us our place in the Universe; thousands of galaxies in a grain of sand. Images of a ‘stellar nursery’ and a ‘cosmic dance’. 

Human beings have long to scale the heights of heaven or plumb the depths of space - arts and science set on a celestial quest. The desire to know the source of life,  to see beyond where darkness and light are both alike, to know what gives our earthly stardust breath,  to measure the pulse of the very heart of God.  

Image from James Webb telescope

Today we travel towards our epiphany - the revealing of a mystery and a manifestation of love. 

This is the moment when,  U. A. Fanthrope puts it in her poem BC-AD, 

‘... three

Members of an obscure Persian sect

Walked haphazardly by starlight straight 

Into the kingdom of heaven.’

The love that flung stars into space, causing energy to pulse and atoms to form and life to be breathed into dust was made flesh and dwelt amongst us; perhaps no wonder then that cosmic signs singalled this birth.

Those who contemplated the skies not only followed a star but looked beyond it. They observed and inquired; they searched diligently and found. Then, they were overwhelmed with joy before a child, dependent on parental care and protection. 

There they knelt. There they offered gifts. 

They searched for the love that made us, and found that love with us.

Their worship and adoration left us a sign of who this child was and how he would gather nations to Godself. 

Gold: the marker of authority and kingship, yes; but found with and among us. The one who purifies a people as his own.

Frankincense: the one whom we worship and love beyond all things; opening our hearts in worship and service.

Myrrh: the king of our hearts who loves us to the end, to the grave and beyond; who brings healing to the nations, a new creation.

A mystery has been made known. 

The radiance of which Isaiah spoke breaks in that we might proclaim the praise of the Lord.  For we, with our different races, cultures and languages can seek and rejoice as we are made members of the same body, shares of the same body, as Paul puts it.

He continues saying that this wisdom, rich in variety, is now made known to rulers and authorities. 

The star-gazing wise men encounter one who is used by Rome to maintain order in an occupied land. Herod, like many rulers, rules with the assumption that all things are determined by power. He is fearful and fragile, crafty and yet intrigued; he operates through violence. 

The magi  move beyond him and walk haphazardly, as the poem puts it, into the kingdom of heaven.  For Jesus is the one who embodies God’s very self as a tiny child, as as an adult demonstrates God’s ways with the world.

Adoration of the Magi

Herod is defeated by such a person, movement and kingdom; by those who, in the words of the ethicist Stanley Hauerwas, ‘refuse to believe that violence will determine the meaning of history’. 

This story begins to shape the time we live in too. 

The magi take a different road home for the kingdom of heaven - God’s loving ways reshaping our lives - is a journey. In sleep, their imaginations have already begun to form around a more peaceable way. Their dream reveals to them that the safety and well-being of children, of the most vulnerable, cannot be left to the Herods of this world. 

We need to name that and seek alternatives, different routes for human flourishing, shaped by dreams that counter violence. Hauerwas continues: ‘God has given us gifts of bread and wine to be offered so that the world may know that there is an alternative to Herod’. 

Fed by the body body that we are to become, how can we be part of that alternative?

Perhaps in part, by doing our job; by doing what is entrusted to us - in work, at home, at school, in communities. Allowing our curiosity to be stirred, connections to be made, being attentive to where we find ourselves and acting out of what is possible or purposeful. 

And into that we bring the gift of our whole selves; and we pray that we will find the words and actions to reflect the radiance we see; that as we look around, we will be people who gather together rather than fragment, build up rather than tear down; seek the flourishing of others rather than their survival. As scientists and artists, pragmatists and dreamers, little by little a stellar - heavenly - kingdom will come. We join that cosmic dance.

May we who walk by starlight act with boldness and confidence through faith in God that the world might know a more radiant dawn. For God's love is worldly in focus, cosmic in scope.

© Julie Gittoes 2023