Haphazardly by starlight

 Epiphany 2024: Isaiah 60:1-6, Ephesians 3:1-12, Matthew 2:1-12

+ Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you.

This was the moment when Before turned into After.

So begins U. A. Fanthrope’s poem BC:AD.  She writes:

And this was the moment

When a few farm workers and three

Members of an obscure Persian sect

Walked haphazard by starlight straight

Into the kingdom of heaven.

It’s not uncommon for our journey of life and faith to feel haphazard: moments of triumph and tears, clarity and confusion. 

It’s rare for us to walk by actual starlight.

How often do you gaze upwards, seeking those sparks of light? Hard for us in north London. Easier in remote areas, on the coast, beyond the streetlights.

Then we see shimmering lights travelling billions of years to meet our gaze; stars which have illuminated the firmament for all who have been and will be born. The plough, Ursa major, Orion and the North Star - the still point for those who’ve navigated the earth and its seas. 

Image here

Today we remember those who observed a star... followed it and were overwhelmed with joy when it stopped. 

They walked haphazard by starlight: from the east, via Jerusalem, to Bethlehem, returning by a different road.  

They walked haphazard…straight into the kingdom of heaven: an experience of enlightenment, a new perspective, a striking revelation. This was an epiphany.

An epiphany rooted in their observations, deepened by the journey. A new reality, a shift in understanding, a fulfilled hope and a leap of faith. 

Their epiphany had come by means of a single star. A pinprick of light guiding them through the darkness and revealing something greater than their fears. 

It was a mystery made manifest. 

On their knees, in joyful adoration, their minds embraced the quiet, unfailing love of God; a love older than the stars, a love which holds the universe together, in a mother’s arms. 

The Lord who made the Pleiades and Orion, brings darkness into morning and draws day into night. Now, beyond the rhythms of the day, the nations have become aware of a bright new dawn. 

A dawn that sees the world as it is, with the darkness and danger that covers it; but sees that the Lord will arise.

An epiphany that is alert to the fear, threats and warnings swirling around Herod and those who cling to power, the thick darkness that broods over the peoples; but trusts that the Lord’s glory will appear. 

That child is the one of the Father’s heart begotten who comes to the world in its radiance, possibility, darkness and fear and embraces it, loves it; who will go to the depths of alienation to save it. 

In Epiphany we hear echoes of Easter: the sorrows, the joys and God’s ‘yes’ to the world; and the space we’re given to respond to such a mystery.

In Katherine Rundell’s book Impossible Creatures she presents us with such echoes of such a ‘yes’ through the lens of the children Mal and Christopher - and the magnificent, mythical world they journey through.

Image a still from Bloomsbury promotional video here

They see the erosion and darkness but press on in their quest to bring hope and restore beauty. There is friendship, courage, duty, laughter and grief: there is, says Mal, a ‘dark stretched upon dark… such purposeless sorrow’ but also ‘wonder on wonder… kindness large and wild enough to transform you’. 

At one decisive and climatic moment, there is a shout and a great ball of light in the darkness. Christopher hears it, saying: ‘it might have been fear, but it sounded, as he stood watching, exactly like triumph - like joy - like love’. 

Today’s gospel also names the fear but makes more space for the joy and for love. 

It takes us to the moment when Before turned into After.

Look around, says Isaiah, as peoples as numerous as the stars are gathered together; there is radiance and rejoicing, praises are proclaimed. 

Look around, says Paul, Gentiles are now fellow heirs, members of the same body, sharers in the promises of Christ; the riches of such grace are boundless.

A hidden mystery has been made known by revelation: the radiance of God in a child brighter than any star.

This is the strength of a glimmer of hope. We too:

walk haphazard by starlight straight

Into the kingdom of heaven. 

We are invited to notice it, to pay attention to it, to receive it; we are to be that starlight as we walk in the world with boldness and confidence. 

The biblical scholar and poet, Walter Bruggemann, loved the local church in service of the kingdom, puts it like this:

On Epiphany day,

we are still the people walking.

We are still the people in the dark,

and the darkness looms large around us, 

beset as we are by fear,

anxiety 

brutality,

violence,

loss -

A dozen alienations that we cannot manage.

We are - we could be - people of your light.

So we pray for the light of your glorious presence

as we wait for your appearing;

we pray for the light of your wondrous grace

as we exhaust our coping capacity;

we pray for your gift of newness that

will override our weariness;

we pray that we may see and know and hear and trust

in your good rule.

That we may have energy, courage and freedom to enact

your rule through the demands of this day.

We submit our day to you and to your 

rule, with deep joy and high hope. Amen.

© Julie Gittoes

So, this is Christmas

 Midnight Mass 2023: Isaiah 52, 7-10, Hebrews 1, 1-12 and  John 1, 1-14

+ Today, in between the hospital and the crib service, this song came on the car radio:

So this is Christmas

And what have you done?

Our hopes might lie with John and Yoko: having fun with our nearest and dearest, the old and the young.

And so this is Christmas

For weak and for strong

For rich and the poor ones [but]

The world is so wrong

Tonight, the  atmosphere in Bethlehem is heavy with absence. 

A smaller celebration this year. No tourists or pilgrims filling the Manger Square; no carols or market stalls.  The city is empty from happiness, from joy.

There is a nativity scene: with the newborn Jesus surrounded by rocks and barbed wire.  

A Lutheran pastor in Bethlehem, the Munther Isaac, says: ‘the birthplace of Christmas is the place in most need of peace, justice and equality’. 

The holy child is birthed amidst the rubble of Gaza; birthed in the rubble of the kibbutzim too.

The Dean of Jerusalem reminds us that  Jesus was born in Bethlehem at a time of ‘terrifyingly brutal’ occupation by Rome and their ‘tyrannical client king, Herod’. He was born of a woman, born under the law, born a Jew.

Image of Bethlehem Nativity from Newsweek

In the words of Hebrews, the one who ‘sustains all things’ by a ‘powerful word’ comes to us in solidarity with pain and brokenness: the Word becomes flesh in a wordless infant.

God’s very being is with us in weakness and vulnerability. Not known or accepted - and yet in this new life the impossible is made possible. In the most unpromising circumstances a glorious light dawns in our world. 

For John - the Evangelist rather than Lennon - this is Christmas: ‘light shines in the darkness: and the darkness does not overcome it’.

Fearful times demand defiant acts of faith: to scan the skies for a glimmer of light, however faint and flickering, which might just be enough to form the basis of hope. 

The words we hear tonight are that spark; that fragile flame. It’s a story that invites us to let go of nagging fears, forgives old hurts and remakes our hearts and minds. 

Writing in the diary column of the New Statesman, Jeanette Winterson acknowledges our struggle to live in and carry this light but she says ‘that doesn’t mean the light is not there or that we are not drawn to it’.  

Dare we lay aside false gods - power that coerces, wealth that consumes, selfishness that makes life unsustainable? Dare we ask for what we need this Christmas - for comfort in grief, friendship in loneliness, acceptance that we are loved? 

The story of this night in all its beauty and mystery offers us new life in our fears and hopes.

It invites us to be messengers announcing peace, good news, salvation, healing - the reign of God with us. It invites us to sing - for comfort in ruins, for redemption in cities, for all nations to see the peace that is the salvation of God.

A few nights ago, Noa and Mira Awad - a Palestinian Israeli and a Yemenite Jewish Israeli - performed together at the Berlin Philharmonic Concert Hall.  They sang the words Think of Others by  the poet Mahmoud Darwish in Hebrew, Arabic and English with the refrain ‘if only I were a candle in the dark’.

The poem asks that in the midst of wars, we do not forget those who seek peace; that as we return home, we do not forget the people of the camps; as we sleep, that we think of those with nowhere to sleep; as we liberate ourselves, to think of those who’ve lost the right to speak.

Being a stubborn candle in the dark.

So this is Christmas

The fullness of God’s love in an infant - in a world such as this - drawing out of us a depth of solidarity, transforming us and stirring us to loving action. 

So this is Christmas

The fullness of that same love in fragile bread, in rich wine, in words of blessing: Christ’s body given for us in our brokenness,  calling us into solidarity - knowing the power of our voices, as messengers of peace, holding onto the light. Being a stubborn candle in the dark. This is Christmas.  Amen.

© Julie Gittoes 2023

Divine possibility

 24 December, Advent 4: 2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16, Romans 16:25-end and Luke 1: 26-38

Wham may have made it to Christmas number one (39 years after they debuted ‘Last Christmas’), but Mariah Carey has been repeatedly accorded the title “Queen of Christmas”. 

On the one hand she’s attempted to trademark the monika and been denied; on the other she’s said that she’s neither created nor wanted the title, that that was other people. She told Zoe Ball on BBC Radio 2, that Mary is the “Queen of Christmas”.

Image here

For someone who started making music out of necessity - to survive and to express herself - Mariah Carey says that creativity not only gave her a sense of worth, but also taught her that ‘all things are possible with God.’

Divine possibility. 

That is where we find ourselves on this final day, in the final hours of Advent. 

There is the possibility of life where there was none.

In the ordinary, there is an unexpected greeting.

In the face of confusion, do not fear.

But it doesn’t begin there and it doesn’t end there either.

It begins with God’s love for the world: calling into life with creativity, freedom and possibility; choosing a people, inviting obedience, recalling to mercy.

David longed to build a house of cedar as a temple for the Lord. But a wandering people had trusted in a God who was with them, behind and before. 

So instead, he was to build up a people in his name, establishing a kingdom. 

Included in this household and lineage of rebellion and blessing, of exile and hope, was Joseph.

And into the life of his beloved Mary to whom he was betrothed, there comes a moment of divine possibility.  

The God who had dwelt and moved amongst a people now dwells with us, pitching a tent, tabernacling with us in our flesh.

We know the story so well that the remarkable risks sounding inevitable: the greeting, the doubt, the plan, the questions, the reassurance, the consent. 

Possibility hovers in the gaps in the story - humanity had waited in time for our Lord and Saviour; the eternal one waits for Mary’s “yes”.

We rush to crown her “Queen of Christmas” rather than letting the divine possibility unsettle us a little. 

First, Mary is greeted as “favoured one”.  She is perplexed; she turns the words over in her mind. 

She is told not to be afraid; that she has found favour with God. Why? Because she will conceive a son who fulfils the hopes of David’s line. 

And yet, for all the hope of an everlasting kingdom, for this young woman such favoured status meant risking everything: her marriage, her reputation, her community, her life. At the very least she would be shamed and shunned, accused and abandoned. 

There’s a carol, popular at school services, called “Mary did you know?” It asks if she knows that the child she will deliver, will soon deliver her.

To answer those questions with a “yes” holds together the angel’s words with an inner conviction, trust, imagination and vision: the stuff of her heart and the stuff of the divine possibility formed by scriptures, history, prayers and hopes. 

That “yes” was courageous: from first trimester to pangs of labour; from Jesus' first sign at a wedding in Cana to the scandal of the cross he carried; from his last breath and burial to his risen body breathing peace.

Second, Mary asks a question - how? How can this be? - before she gives her consent - letting it be, according to God’s word. 

Annunciation

In a moment depicted by artists whose paintings hang in galleries and are reproduced on Christmas cards, time stands still: weighty, spacious, the epitome of a pregnant pause, the possibility of life where there was none.

We too  imagine her body language: eyes down cast or turning towards the door or closing slightly; hands clasped or holding a book, beckoning or silencing; leaning into the doorframe or a chair taking her weight. Eternity in that moment crowns her queen; but painters give her time to think, refuse, reconsider just as the angel gives freedom to consent.

The Holy Spirit moves in those moments - overshadowing, conceiving the holy; the creator created within her womb. Did she know, the child would be the great I am? Yes, just as divine possibility had brought life out of Elizabeth’s barrenness.

Nothing is impossible. All things are possible. With God.

But then the angel departs as she utters her yes, here I am: servant, handmaid of the Lord; espoused, expectant mother.

This  is where we find ourselves on this final day, in the final hours of Advent. 

The possibility of life where there was none.

Did she know that her baby would save us? 

She certainly knew enough: enough to keep saying ‘yes’ to God; to sing her own song, to pray for a changed world; to labour to bring God’s speechless word to birth. 

The mystery has only just begun. 

Kept secret for long ages and now disclosed; told by the prophets and made known to us gentiles.

Mary, Queen of Christmas models obedience of faith.  Teaching us what we want for Christmas, the one thing we need - our great salvation in Jesus Christ.

She teaches us to say ‘yes’; to sing our songs of justice; to pray for a changed world; to labour in love for a lasting peace. In the power of the Spirit, to seek the everlasting kingdom of Christ. Amen.

© Julie Gittoes 2023

Comfort?

 10 December 2023 - Advent 2: Isaiah 40:1-11, 2 Peter 3:8-15a and Mark 1:1-8

Image: a still from the sound of music YouTube

Maria famously begins her list of favourite things with: Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens, bright copper kettles and warm woollen mittens, brown paper packages tied up with strings.

Her list goes on: ponies and strudels, doorbells and snowflakes.

In the film, the song occurs in a scene with the children afraid of a thunderstorm; in the original, it’s sung as Maria prepares to leave Mother Abbess to join the Von Trapps.

In both cases, Maria is looking for comfort in ways that are familiar to us.

How many of us had - or still have - that favourite teddy, soft toy or blanket?

Or perhaps it was a favourite story - a piece of music or a film? 

Maybe there’s a place we go to find consolation: the hills or coast, a particular cafe or comfy chair.

Or we reach out to a friend, mentor or someone who gets us.

All these things bring comfort in their own way

Psychologists refer to “comforters” as transitional objects - bridging the gap between dependence on a parent to being about to soothe or settle and comfort ourselves. 

We might outgrow them over time, but we don’t outgrow the need for comfort. When life ‘stings’ or when we feel sad, thinking of our favourite things can be comforting; then, as Maria puts it, we don’t feel so bad. 

Today’s readings are full of cries and comfort. 

Words of reassurance are  met with a voice that cries out; a voice that calls us to ‘cry out’; and the content of such cries do not sound comfortable.

In our Advent waiting comfort is sought in a wilderness place: a place where the glory of the Lord will be revealed, but so too is our human frailty like withered grass and a faded flower.

Isaiah, like prophets before and after him, knew that the wilderness could be a place of captivity, exile or journey. He and they also knew that wilderness was an experience of loss, trauma or hardship;  trust betrayed, justice denied, compassion withheld, penalty paid.

It is in this place that God speaks with tenderness.

It is in such a place that a way is prepared for the Lord.

And the promise of consolation comes: comfort, O comfort my people!

These words come not in the midst of a thunderstorm, or moving from the convent to the world, but to those who are under occupation. 

Whether it’s the Babylon of Isaiah or the Rome of John, pleas for comfort are heard in the wilderness places, where human rule and power limit freedoms and flourishing. 

We’re invited to go there in Advent: what might we find in the wilderness? Are there hidden joys - or hearts redirected to comfort others?

There is something about the wilderness that strips away our illusions of self-reliance; we’re freed from the dazzling worldly prizes which consume us, or the securities that insulate or separate us from the other : there is a level of vulnerability and risk; we have to wait on God, watching for signs of God’s presence.

That place of vulnerability and risk might also turn our hearts away from selfishness and back towards our first loves. To love God with all that we are - but also to love our neighbour with the love we ourselves are held in.  

That turning back is what we mean by repentance: watching and waiting in the wilderness - be it a place or a season - draws us near to the comfort and consolation of God. As we acknowledge what is in our hearts, we are moved to sorrow, penitence and the desire for change which embodies hope.

The wilderness is a place of grappling with all that separates us from God and each other - what in shorthand we call sin. We are confronted with the pain of what that separation, selfishness and sin does to us and to others.

As God draws near to comfort us in that place, knowing the cost and the harm, but also reminding us that we cannot fix this on our own. Our watching and waiting in the wilderness might be a place where we can confess our need and be made whole: delivered from what oppresses us, free from what preoccupies us, forgiven for what burdens us, healed of what harms us..

The wilderness is a ‘levelling place’: we glimpse a different kind of landscape.  Isaiah speaks of valleys being lifted up and hills made low; of the uneven and rough places made smooth; the crooked path made straight. 

Isaish paints a picture which allows us to reimagine the landscape of the world: not to take away its beauty, awe and wonder, but to enable us to see where we stand - to see what the world could be like. It is on this even highway that all flesh shall see God; all flesh be restored, healed, saved.

Voices cry out where there is inequality, oppression and injustice; voices cry out at our human frailty. Voices also cry out for justice, righteousness, healing, freedom, renewal; for penitence, faithfulness, loving mercy, forgiveness and a new hope.

Philip Kolin’s poem describes John as a prophet of fire and repentance. His voice is a flame igniting something in us -  the waters he stood in, waves engraved with grace. Sin and woe are plunged into the darkness of those waters where life is rebirthed towards the light. Each honeyed syllable of his message opens hearts and unburdens souls.

Yet he knew that he was preparing the way for the one who was coming into the world: the one who fulfilled the hopes of the prophets - a light to lighten all nations. 

In Jesus, God draws near to us in the wilderness, when life stings; when we feel sad and need comfort. In flesh of our flesh, he is our comforter, coming to feed us; gather us up and carry us; leading us out of a wilderness to a more level place.

This is the good news with which Mark chooses to open his gospel: this good news is a regime change amidst all the empires, powers and dominions of this world.

In his poem “The British”, the late Benjamin Zephaniah spoke about the sheer difference and blended life of our nation. Leaving those ingredients to simmer, he spoke of how, as they mix, languages flourish, binding them together with English. 

He allows for cooling time and suggests we add some unity, understanding and respect for the future, serve with justice and enjoy. He notes all ingredients are equally important - to treat one as better leaves a bitter taste. He offers us a warning too - which might be a wilderness levelling place - but also a comforter of what is possible there.

Warning: an unequal spread of 

justice will damage the people 

and cause pain. Give justice and equality 

to all. 

May this Advent be one where we find comfort in the desert, for the sake of God's kingdom.

©  Julie Gittoes 2023