Malachi 3.1-15; Hebrews 2.14-18; Luke 2.22-4o
Luke is very keen to make it clear to us how Mary and Joseph were fufilling the Jewish law in how they brought up Jesus.
If we go back to Leviticus, we learn that 40 days after the birth of a boy and 80 days after the birth of a girl, a mother must go to the priest with a lamb and a turtle-dove or pigeon, so that she may be purified following childbirth. A concession was made in the case of those who could not afford a lamb – they might bring two doves or two pigeons instead. Which is what, we are told, Mary and Joseph did.

It’s a ritual, part of Jewish law, and it may not seem that relevant to us today. But I want us to think a little this morning about what ritual of this kind is about.

I think at the heart of religious ritual is the idea of the presence of God in the ordinary, in our day-to-day lives. Giving birth, as Mary had done, though the circumstances of Jesus’s birth we all know could hardly be called ordinary, was a normal thing to do. And the Jewish laws, in all their complexity were more than anything about bringing God into daily life.

They were about acknowledging that God cannot be detached from anything that goes on in our lives.
Alan Culpepper who has written much about Luke’s Gospel says this: “The observance of religious requirements and rituals has fallen on hard times. Essential to Judaism is the praise of God in all of life. The Jewish law taught that God was to be honoured in one’s rising up and lying down, in going out and coming in, in how one dressed and what one ate.
“The pressures of secularism and modern life have reduced the significance of ritual observances in the lives of most Christians. Busy schedules, dual-career marriages, and after-school activities mean that families eat fewer meals together. Prayer before meals and family Bible-study are observed in fewer homes today than just a generation ago.

“For many, religious rituals are reduced to church attendance at Christmas and Easter and to socially required ceremonies at births, weddings, and funerals.

“The marking of both daily and special events with rituals that recognize the sacredness of life and the presence of God in the everyday is practically extinct. In the minds of many it is associated either with superstitions and cultic practices of the past or the peculiar excesses of religious fanatics.
“The result has been that God has receded from the awareness and experience of everyday life. Many assume that God is found only in certain places, in sacred buildings, in holy books, or in observances led by holy persons. Their lives, on the other hand, move in a secular realm devoid of the presence of the holy.

“Daily experiences are reduced and impoverished. They have no meaning beyond themselves, no opening to transcendence. Little room for mystery remains in the everyday as it becomes increasingly subject to secularism and technology. What have we lost by removing ritual observances from our daily experience?”

“The challenge to modern Christians, therefore, is to find effective rituals for celebrating the presence of God in the ordinary.
“We need to learn to greet the morning with gratitude; to celebrate the goodness of food, family, and friendship at meals; to recognize mystery in beauty; and to mark rites of passage. Rituals are not restrictive; they celebrate the goodness and mystery of life.”

If we keep at the heart of any ritual why we are performing it, then it has meaning. If a ritual is carried out without thought or with hearts not attuned to God, then it loses meaning.

How can we bring God more into our daily lives? Simeon and Anna were people who had managed this. Simeon is described as “righteous and devout, looking forward to the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit rested on him”. He was a righteous and devout man – that can only be said of someone who has brought God into his daily life.

And Anna “never left the temple but worshipped there with fasting and prayer night and day”.
Two different people in different situations but both had made God an important part of daily life.
What does this mean for us, I wonder? Few of us will be able to spend every minute of our day in church as Anna did in the temple. And nor would that be right. Anna’s calling was specific to her.

There are some who are called to separate themselves from the kind of daily life that most of us lead and dedicate themselves to the religious life – monks and nuns and others who live in communities dedicated to prayer and worship. That is a specific calling.
But those of us here in church today have other vocations. We have been called, in our different and various ways, to live in the world. Our challenge is to live lives dedicated to God in the contexts in which we find ourselves.

It is easy to push God out from our daily lives, especially when we are so busy. And rituals carried out for rituals’ sake are useless. But rituals that can help us increase our awareness of God can be very helpful.

They needn’t be complicated. And we needn’t be put off by the formal word ritual. Our daily lives are full of rituals – brushing our teeth morning and evening for instance, maybe going to (Barley) shop for a paper each day, walking the dog, going to and from work or school. A dictionary definition is “a set of fixed actions and sometimes words performed regularly”.

We all have things that we do in a fixed manner. Many people, without realising it, create rituals in their lives.

So what rituals could we bring into our lives to help us be more aware of God’s presence?

How about a prayer on waking, acknowledging the new day, that gift of God that greets us each morning? How about a prayer at mealtimes thanking God for all our blessings? Or a prayer as we go to bed, reflecting on the past day, its joys and struggles and offering both to God?

None of these need take up much time but all of them bring an acknowledgment of God into our lives.

How about consciously becoming aware of God’s creation as we walk or drive around the countryside? Or taking an hour each month – written into the diary – to go for a prayer walk?

How about finding ways to celebrate Christian festivals not only in church but at home? And I don’t just mean Christmas, but what about acknowledging other festivals at home too? Part of my childhood always contained a Candlemas party, organised by friends.

Lent is coming up. Why not try and find out more about the Love life, live Lent campaign, which is being endorsed by the Archbishops’ Council?

It’s an initiative that started in the diocese of Birmingham last year. A booklet, website and text messages, depending on which you opt for, give you something to do for each day of Lent.

The idea is that doing something positive can be as helpful and can communicate far more about God’s love than giving something up.

This is what the Bishop of Birmingham has said: “Doing something positive or generous can be as transforming as giving something up. It helps us to reflect on how we normally behave, and how we can make changes to our lifestyles that reflect God’s love more fully.”

None of the ideas are difficult. Some of them include giving up your place in a queue to someone else or letting someone into a traffic queue, watching the news and praying about what you see, saying something kind about someone behind their back, ring a loved one and so on. But they are all ways in which the love of God can be shown.

Simeon and Anna were devout people who were in tune with God and aware of God’s presence in all their life. That is all that rituals are aiming to do – to bring God into the everyday.

And we will find that as we begin to do that, we then begin to recognise God in places we might never have expected. Simeon and Anna recognised God in  the little boy brought to the Temple. Would they have done so if they had not been so in tune with God?

So, two final questions to ponder: What place does the holy have in our daily lives? How can we be more aware of God in our day-to-day living?

Nehemiah 8.1-3, 5-6, 8-10; 1 Corinthians 12.12-31a; Luke 4.14-21

I want to begin today with a quotation from a report published by the Church of England’s board for Education in 1988. The report itself was about the place of children in the Church, but I think what this passage is saying can refer to all of us, young and old.

“Imagine a group of people of all ages going on a long walk together. At times the children and adults will walk along together, talking as they go, sharing storied with first one person and then another, observing different things and sharing their discoveries.

“At times the children lag behind and the adults will have to wait for them and urge them on. Sometimes the smallest children will ask to be carried. At other times, though the children will dash ahead making new discoveries and may, perhaps, pull the adults along to see what the have found. Some adults may well behave like these children, of course.

“For all there will be times of progress and times of rest and refreshment, time to admire the view and times of plodding on, and the eventual satisfaction of arriving at their destination.

“Of course, a pilgrimage is something more than a hike. Traditionally it is a group of people of all kinds of ages united in reaching a common goal. They stop at significant places on the way. They exchange their own stories and share past experiences and memories of those who have gone before them. They look forward to the rest of the journey and to reaching their ultimate destination.”

What better description could one find of Christian unity? People at all different stages of their Christian life, journeying together, sharing discoveries, supporting the weak and celebrating the joys.

If I look around the world at Christians today, I am saddened by our inability to live together in unity. It was, after all, something that Christ prayed before his crucifixion – that they might be one. It is what Paul is seeking to describe in that letter to the Corinthians. The Corinthian Church hadn’t taken long to fall into divisions and discord.

 We are in the middle of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. Christian Unity, as I see it, does not mean to say that we all have to be the same. Paul in his letter makes clear that there are different sorts of people, but that all belong to the Body of Christ.

He highlights the importance of vulnerable people – that they have as much right – and more – to be seen as part of the body. They are the ones to whom special care must be given. How do we enable these people to be an important part of Christ’s Body? How do we enable children to be part of the Body? Or the frail and housebound? People who are sick or mentally impaired? What about those who outwardly seem strong but inside are crying out to be loved or to feel good about who they are?

Where Christian unity comes apart at the seams, it tends to be because one group sees itself as strong – or right in its practice and beliefs – and all others as weak. The strong group tend to distance themselves from the others, to put secure boundaries around their own space.

It seems to me that this is the exact opposite of what Paul is saying. He argues that the weak and vulnerable – whoever they may be and however we see them – are people for whom we should show a particular care.

And when we are divided, then we lose our strength. The divisions in the Anglican Communion today about the issue of homosexuality are sad. What saddens me most is that in the midst of the disagreements, love has been pushed out by some. It is possible, in Christ, to love those with whom we disagree. It’s hard but possible.

There’s a story of a wealthy Indian landowner who has two quarrelsome sons. They were always arguing and jealous of each other. He was disturbed by this behaviour and on his deathbed sought to teach them a lesson.

He called them to his bedside and divided his property between them. Then he asked for some sticks to be brought. He tied them into a bundle and asked the elder brother to break the sticks. It was impossible. They were tightly held together and none could be broken.

Then he untied the bundle and asked the younger son to break the sticks. One by one, they snapped. Now the task was not difficult at all. The father had made his point – united they stood firm; divided they snapped and broke. Weak things united become strong.

Our divisions within the Church are weakening the Body of Christ. Paul’s concern is for the Corinthian Church to remain strong in Christ, to be united, not to break apart because of dissension. It is God who has designed the Body and given everyone a place in it; who are we, then, to decide who is and who is not welcome.

In comparison with God, we are all weak. In Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians is that wonderful reminder that when we are weak, God can be strong. None of us have the monopoly of truth about God. None of us can know God fully – in the chapter following today’s epistle reading Paul describes us as seeing in a glass darkly.

So, why do we find it so hard to live alongside other Christians who differ from us in the way they like to worship, in their views over ethical issues or how we interpret the Bible?

And why do we risk so little in the cause of Christian unity?

None of us likes to move out of our comfort zone – that is why when churches discuss changing styles of worship, people become so upset and defensive. That is why people begin to be negative about Christians of a different sort. I’ve heard Evangelicals rubbish Catholics, and Catholics Evangelicals. I’ve hear conservatives speak harsh words about liberals – and liberals return the insult. Some of the language used on both sides of the ordination of women debate was far from loving and the same goes for debates about current issues between Christians.

But it is when we do move out of the comfort zone that our faith can truly grow because it is then that we rely more fully on God and less fully on ourselves.

Luke gives us a picture of what Jesus has come to do – that passage from Luke 4 we heard this morning is sometimes called Jesus’s manifesto, because it sums up so well how he saw his work: “to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.”

Jesus’s work is about bringing release and freedom. Jesus’s good news is about restoring God’s broken people, people broken as individuals, spiritually and emotionally, mentally and physically, but, when we place Christ’s words alongside those of Paul, we can see how broken we are as a Body corporate too.

Let’s think back to the quotation with which I started – all travelling together towards our ultimate destination. All Christians are on that journey towards death. We are doing that together, except that so often, we allow our differences to separate us.

Some of us are storming ahead towards eternal life; others of us are much more hesitant about our faith or only at the start of our Christian life. But the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity can remind us that, however we interpret Scripture – and that seems to be at the heart of the Church’s current disagreements – there is no getting away from the fact that in Scripture we see Jesus himself declaring unity as something to be celebrated and cherished.

When we fail to approach those with whom we disagree with a deep love that can transcend our differences, we are breaking Christ’s Body and oppressing others.

We are called to continue Christ’s work: “to bring good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.” If we as Christians do this together, we may get somewhere. If we continue not to approach the other in love in our dissensions and disagreements, we are destroying the very Body of Christ.

Isaiah 60.1-6; Ephesians 3.1-12; Matthew 2.1-12

I’m struck each year by the stories the media choose to dwell on over the Christmas period. It’s as if in many cases real news stops at Christmas – though, of course, if we look back we know that that is not the case – and they make the most of their annual opportunity to tell us how dreadful it is:
- that Birmingham City Council celebrates Winterval not Christmas – something that happened once in 1998, and the council claims that Christmas was at the heart of its winter festival anyway
- how offices have banned Christmas decorations for fear of upsetting non-Christians
- how the Royal Mail’s Christmas stamps are not depicting Christmas
- how a teacher or priest has let out of the bag that Santa Claus is not realand so on.

It’s not that, in some cases, there are not good reasons why Christians should oppose these things and speak out against them, but we need to be very clear about why we are doing so. This year, as I’ve been preparing for this Epiphany sermon, it’s the last one of the things I’ve mentioned that I’ve been reflecting on. Christians have differing views on the validity or not of allowing children to believe in Father Christmas. He is not, in spite of what some children come to think, part of the Nativity. He isn’t a real character but one of myth and legend, and, as we know him today, not even ancient legend, but a creation of the Coca-Cola company, though, of course, his roots are in Saint Nicholas.But whether we agree or not with the myth of Santa Claus, we must recognise that we do the same thing when it comes down to the Epiphany story.

I’m sure most of you will have sung the carol “We three kings” this Christmas. Let’s think about it and what it says. First of all, we do not know how many kings there were. Matthew tells us that they presented three gifts, not that there were three kings. Second, they are not kings. The word Matthew uses is magi – wise men, astrologers, sorcerers. They were people who looked to the stars to explain things, whose subjects were technical and involved research – perhaps they were a little more like a modern scientist than a king. The kings part probably originates from Isaiah 49.7 and Psalm 72, where the word is used. But, though the facts are not clear, we continue to sing the carol because it proclaims a message about Christ which none of us dispute.

And, of course, most Christians think of the wise men as Caspar, Melchior and Balthasar, even though these names were added to the tradition at a much later date. The wise men weren’t three, they weren’t kings and we don’t know their names.

So, what can we take from the Epiphany story? I think there is much, and its inclusion in the pages of Scripture mean that we should reflect on it. When Herod called the chief priests and scribes together, they quoted the words of Micah the prophet: “And, you, Bethlehem in the land of Judah, are by no means the least among the rules of Judah, for from you shall come a ruler who is to shepherd my people Israel.”

How familiar are we with the words of Scripture?

The magi when they found Jesus knelt down before him and paid him homage. The word homage comes, I’ve discovered, from a Middle English word, originating from a feudal ceremony, in which a man acknowledged himself to be the vassal of his lord. It was about making another person lord of one’s life. We don’t know what happened to the magi after they returned home. T. S. Eliot imagined their response in his famous poem, The Journey of the Magi:

“Were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death,
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.”

Is our first response to the Christ-child to make him truly Lord of our lives, putting to death those things which belong to our former life? The magi offered gifts – precious and symbolic. What gifts would you bring to a king?

Some examples of presents given to our royal family include the Queen’s receiving 2 tortoises from the Seychelles, an elephant called Jumbo to mark her Silver wedding anniversary, and a canary from Germany. Prince Charles received 2394 gifts between 1999 and 2001, which included 5 animals, 15 sets of arms or armour, 249 CDs, videos and tapes and 12 toiletry items.Not much help for the King of kings, who existed before the foundation of the world. But we too are called to offer gifts. Matthew tells us that the wise men offered treasures.

We may not be rich or well endowed with what we might at first sight call treasure, but treasure can take many different forms. We can give, above all, our hearts, as the carol “In the bleak mid-winter” reminds us:

What can I give him, poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd, I would give a lamb.
If I were a wise man, I would do my part.
Yet what I can I give him, give my heart.

In paying homage to the Christ-child, the wise men were showing that, even if only for a moment, they were giving themselves to Jesus.

Giving our heart, though, can be a cop-out if it is not translated into action. Our gifts to the Christ-child, as the adult Jesus makes very clear, include a care for the poor and outcast, a seeking after justice for those who are oppressed, a speaking up for the voiceless. What gifts do we give the Christ-child?

And, lastly, this morning, I want us to reflect on the fact that the wise men were explorers. They didn’t sit at home once they’d seen the star but followed, trusting themselves to its leading. They didn’t allow Herod to prevent them from going on their way, and they were open to the leading of their dreams to go home another way.

Our faith is a journey of exploration. When we make the decision to follow Christ, important though that is in the first instance, we can’t stop moving there and stand still for the rest of our lives.

Living a life of faith is a journey of discovery and explanation. It’s a journey of growth and development, and usually the only thing hindering that is that we don’t give that exploration the time or attention it deserves.

Familiarity with Scripture, worship of the Christ-child, gifts and exploration – our paths will be different from those of the wise men, but perhaps in this new year, we might consider what they have to teach us, and how our paths might take account of those four important aspects of faith.