During the week, when I read the Gospel for this morning and began to think about the theme of this morning’s sermon, I was at once reminded of a conversation I once had with some neighbours of mine. The conversation happened after they, a couple with 3 young children, had returned from a 2-week caravan holiday in Cornwall. Quite naturally I asked them had they had a good holiday to which the mother said that her and the kids had but her husband had spent most of the holiday in hospital. So, again quite naturally, I asked why, what had happened? And what had happened is that the children had come running in to the caravan one morning, very frightened, screaming that there was a snake outside. Dad had gone out to check, saw the snake and told the children not to worry because it was only a grass snake and wouldn’t do them any harm. Wanting to calm his children down though, he decided to move the snake but, when he went to pick it up, it bit him because this grass snake was actually an adder, a snake also known as a common European viper and the result was that dad spent the next 10 days in hospital!

One connection between that story and this morning’s Gospel is obvious because this morning’s Gospel begins with John the Baptist calling the crowds who went to him for baptism, a “brood of vipers.” But there’s also a more meaningful connection that’s perhaps not so obvious and which only becomes clear when we think about what John meant when he called the crowds ‘vipers’.

We know that to call someone a ‘snake’ is a very derogatory and offensive thing to do because it implies that person is untrustworthy and deceitful. When we call someone a ‘snake’ it implies that they’re hiding something, hence the term, ‘a snake in the grass’. We say that of people because just as snakes hide in the grass to ambush their prey, so deceitful people hide things from others that are unpleasant, and very often hurtful or damaging to them.

We also use the imagery of a snake to imply that people are untruthful too. We say that someone who lies, ‘speaks with a forked tongue.’ Despite Hollywood’s best effort to convince everyone that this is something the Native Americans, the ‘Indians’, said of the ‘White Man’, the origin of this saying goes back much further than America’s Wild West period. The saying is thought to originate in the story from Book of Genesis where the Serpent, or snake, lies to Eve about the consequences of eating the fruit God had forbidden Adam and Eve to eat. And it’s in light of this story that we need to read this morning’s Gospel because, in essence, it’s about people who aren’t what they seem to be, or indeed, claim to be, being told to be what they claim to be, and should be.

When John called the people a “brood of vipers”, the implication would have been that they were the offspring of the Serpent in the Genesis story. And as we read on, and John begins to speak about repentance and bearing good fruit, we find an implication that there’s something false and deceitful about the people. John calls them a “brood of vipers”, and then goes on to tell them,

“And do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham.” 

So what John seems to be saying to the people is something along the lines of,

‘You think you’re right with God because you’re children of Abraham, but you’re wrong. You’re not right with God because your deeds show you to be children of the Serpent. Being right with God isn’t a birth right; being right with God isn’t about who you are, it’s about what you do.’ 

And that’s how the people seem to have understood what John said because they asked him,

“What then shall we do?”  

John then goes on to tell them what they should do and, quite obviously haven’t been doing,

“Whoever has two tunics is to share with him who has none, and whoever has food is to do likewise.” 

And John also tells them what they shouldn’t do and, quite obviously, have been doing. To the tax-collectors, a group of people who were despised, in part at least, because of their corruption;

“Collect no more than you are authorized to do.”

And to the soldiers,

“Do not extort money from anyone by threats or by false accusation, and be content with your wages.”

Those people who went to John, would have found all this in the Scriptures and, if they really were children of Abraham, God’s people, rather than a ‘brood of vipers’ they would have already been doing what John told them to do.

Of course, the teaching we heard in this morning’s Gospel was John’s teaching and we are not John’s disciples. We call ourselves Christians because we claim to be Jesus’ disciples, and we claim to follow the teaching and example of Jesus. But don’t we find these same things that John taught, in Jesus’ teaching too? The urging to share what we have with those who have less, the urging to look to spiritual riches rather than succumb to the temptation to pursue earthly wealth and the urging not to abuse earthly power to “Lord it” over others? And don’t all these things anyway fall under the scope of the great commandment to love God and love our neighbour as ourselves? So these words of John apply to us just as much as they did to the people he spoke to. And what also applies to us is John’s warning to be the people we claim to be rather than a ‘brood of vipers’. 

One of the great criticisms levelled at Christians is that of hypocrisy, I’m sure we all know that. It’s not always true, but sadly, it very often is. But I think one of the great misunderstandings people have of the Church and of Christians stems from the Church’s own practices and lack of teaching. These days the Church itself refers to the sacrament of Baptism as ‘Christening’. But that gives a false impression of what being baptised means. Using the term ‘Christening’ rather than baptism, gives the impression that once a person has been baptised, they are, as if by magic, a Christian. But that is totally wrong. It’s the kind of thinking John criticises in this morning’s Gospel. The kind of thinking that allowed people to think they were right with God simply because they were Jews, ‘children of Abraham’. So, we have people today thinking that they’re Christians simply because they’ve been baptised.

But being baptised doesn’t make a person a Christian, it makes them a member of the Church. And it’s as a member of the Church, and by coming to Church where the baptised start to become Christians by learning what being a Christian means which is, living their lives according to the teachings and example of Jesus Christ. That’s a misunderstanding that can, and does, lead people to think that they’re right with God simply because they’ve been ‘Christened’. But it’s a misunderstanding that leads to another, greater misunderstanding.

People often do think, and say, that they’re Christians simply because they’ve been ‘Christened’. But if those people never come to Church, if they never learn the teachings of Jesus, they’re not Christians, they can’t be. But because they think and say they are, other people can, and do, see them as Christians. And so others can and do see them as examples of what Christianity is all about.

And I think many accusations of hypocrisy that are levelled at Christians and give the Christian faith and the Church a bad name, are actually examples of un-Christian behaviour by people who claim to be Christians but whose Christianity, in reality, has never gone any further than their baptism.

But in addition to that, the misunderstanding about baptism also means that people think the Church is full of Christians, people who should be paragons of virtue and shining examples of Christianity. But the Church isn’t like that. What the Church is really full of is people who are at various stages along the road to becoming Christians; the Church is full of people who are trying to learn how to be Christians and, like all learners, at whatever activity, they make mistakes. And so accusations of hypocrisy aimed at people who do come to Church are often the result of people who’ve not done what they should, or done something they shouldn’t, because they haven’t yet learned enough to know better.

As always though, there is a flip side to this. Those of us who do come to Church can’t allow ourselves to think we’re right with God simply because we come to Church. We have to understand and remember, always, that whilst we come to Church to learn how to be Christians, being a Christian is something we do outside the Church too. Being a Christian is something we have to be, and try our very best to be, always and everywhere. If we don’t do that, especially when we do know enough about the teachings of Jesus to know better, then accusations of hypocrisy aimed at us, may well be right. If we don’t do that, especially when we know enough about the teachings of Jesus to know better, then we’ll become a ‘brood of vipers’, false, deceitful people who are claiming to be something we’re not.

In this morning’s Gospel, John asks the people a question;

“You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?”

The answer is that John himself warned us, and so did Jesus. And we know where to go to escape what John called “the wrath to come”. We go to Jesus, to learn from him and to follow him so that we can, truly, call ourselves ‘Christians’ and children of God.

Amen.  

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The Propers for Advent 3 can be found here.

Not too long ago, reports emerged about some rather curious things that the archbishop of Canterbury had been saying. As it was told to me, and I’m sure to many others, the archbishop had said that doesn’t believe in God but does believe in Jesus. That’s a rather curious thing for any priest to say, let alone for an archbishop to say. In fact it’s a curious thing for any Christian to say because we believe that in God as a Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit and we also believe that Jesus is the second person of the Trinity, the Son. So, if someone doesn’t believe in God, but does believe in Jesus, it begs the question who do they think Jesus is? If they don’t believe in God, they surely can’t believe that Jesus is the Son of God, and neither can they believe that he is God incarnate, the Word made flesh, as St John puts it in the prologue to his Gospel, the one whose birth as a human child we’re preparing to celebrate in a few weeks’ time.

When I was told about what the archbishop had said, I did find this a very, very strange thing for him to say and so I decided to see I could find out just what the archbishop had said and, perhaps more importantly, what he meant by what he’d said. The first thing I found out was that these comments weren’t made recently. The archbishop had made them in an interview for the BBC in 2014 so quite why this report should reappear now, I’ve no idea but nevertheless, it has. The archbishop’s comments were made in answer to the question of whether, as a prominent faith leader, he ever had doubts. The archbishop said that he did, in lots of ways. But what’s really caused the issue I think is that he went on to say that, during prayer a few days earlier, he’d said to God, “Look, this is all very well but isn’t it about time you did something – if you’re there…”, which he did accept was something people wouldn’t expect an archbishop to say. Later in the interview though he expressed the certainty of his belief in Jesus by saying,

“We know about Jesus, we can’t explain all the questions in the world, we can’t explain about suffering, we can’t explain loads of things, but we know about Jesus. We can talk about Jesus – I always do that because most of the other questions I can’t answer.”

And when asked what he did when life got challenging, the archbishop said,

“I keep going and call to Jesus to help me, and he picks me up.”

In a sense then, the archbishop has been misquoted; he didn’t actually say that he doesn’t believe in God. What he did say was that, when he sees the problems and troubles of the world, and God apparently doing nothing about them, he sometimes has doubts about the existence of God. He did say though, that he has no difficulty believing in Jesus. But whilst the archbishop may have been misquoted, what he said was still rather odd for a priest and bishop to say. Leaving aside some rather confusing theology, it’s a strange thing for an archbishop to say because it’s something even non-Christians could say. And indeed it’s something many non-Christians very often do say.

I’m sure that, in the past, many of us will have had to endure conversations with people who have insisted that Jesus never existed. Thankfully though, that doesn’t happen now, at least in my experience, because very few people these days hold that view. There’s no doubt now whatsoever that Jesus was a real-life human being who lived in the Roman province of Judea around 2,000 years ago. At the present time, there are 83 people whom we read about in the Bible whose existence has been confirmed by non-biblical evidence, and Jesus is one of them. So these days, nobody, even the most vehement anti-Christian, can really doubt the existence of Jesus.

But at times, the Scriptures also set out to show the historical authenticity of the events they’re describing. In this morning’s Gospel, St Luke sets out to show the truth of John the Baptist’s ministry by setting it in a non-religious historical context (John is also someone whose existence has been confirmed by non-biblical sources by the way).

In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John the son of Zechariah in the wilderness.

That would put the beginning of John’s ministry around 28AD according to our calendar and we know from other sources that all of these political figures held the positions Luke says they did at that time. And Luke tries to do something similar when it comes to Jesus’ birth:

In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration before Quirinius was governor of Syria.

It’s clear that Luke doesn’t know the exact year of Jesus’ birth because Augustus reigned from 31BC – 14AD and Quirinius was governor of Syria between 6AD and 7AD when there was a census that led to a revolt over taxes. But it’s also clear that Luke is trying to establish beyond any doubt that these things did take place, that they were real, historical events, and these people were real, historical figures.

Today, archaeological and historical research have caught up with Luke and there’s no longer any doubt that Jesus was a real historical figure, one that all people can believe in. But believing in Jesus as a real historical figure and believing in God are two different things and it’s quite possible to believe in Jesus and at the same time doubt, or even deny, the existence of God.

It simply depends on who you believe Jesus is.

If you believe Jesus was simply a man, then you don’t have to believe in God to believe in Jesus. But that’s not an option for a Christian. We believe that Jesus was more than simply a man. We believe that Jesus was both man and God, fully human and fully divine. So a Christian who says that they don’t believe in God but do believe in Jesus, is denying their own faith. A Christian who says that they doubt the existence of God but believes in Jesus is, at best, confused about their faith because how can you doubt the existence of God whilst at the same time believe in the existence of the second person of the Trinity? It’s tantamount to saying that you don’t believe in the Father but do believe in the Son. Whose Son is he then? Questioning God’s existence because God doesn’t seem to answer prayer but then praying to God’s Son; what is that saying, exactly? That the Father doesn’t answer prayers, but the Son does? But if we call on Jesus, the Son of God, because God doesn’t listen, or perhaps isn’t even there, who do we think we’re praying to? Aren’t we still praying to God? And if we think Jesus, the Son of God, then lifts us up and helps us to go on, who do we think has answered our prayers other than God? So for a Christian, any Christian, doubting or denying the existence of God whilst at the same time affirming their belief in Jesus is a very confusing, and confused, thing to do that leads us into trouble.

As Christians we’re called to profess our faith and proclaim the Gospel. But how can we profess our faith if we’re confused about it ourselves? How can we profess our faith if the things we say deny our faith? And how can we proclaim the Gospel if we doubt the existence of God? We might be able to do the good works Jesus urged us to, but the Gospel is more than doing good works. Isn’t the heart of the Gospel, the ‘Good News’ we’re called to proclaim, salvation and eternal life to all who do God’s will and believe in the one he sent, Jesus, his Son? And isn’t the vindication of all that Jesus said and did, his Resurrection from the dead and Ascension into heaven? Isn’t that what he said would draw all people to him? Who do we think raised Jesus if it wasn’t God the Father?

It may well be possible for some people to doubt or deny the existence of God but still believe in Jesus, but not for us. As Christians, belief in God and belief in Jesus go hand in hand and we simply can’t have one without the other. We may well wonder why the world has to be the way it is, so harsh, cruel and unjust. We may very well wonder too at times why God doesn’t step in and do something about it. But as Christians, we know too that when he did, people seemed to like things the way they were rather than the better way he showed them because wasn’t the one he sent, Jesus, his own Son, treated in the most, harsh, cruel and unjust way?

Through his words to the Christians in Philippi, which we read today, St Paul says that he prays with joy for the way they had helped to spread the Good News. Let’s pray that we can be like them too. Let’s pray that, whatever goes on in the world never causes us to separate our belief in God from our belief in Jesus because if we do allow that to happen, we stop proclaiming the Good News and then, we’ll no longer be able to be the messengers of hope and of a better way for the world, that we’re called to be.

Amen.

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The Propers for Advent 2 can be found here.

I’m sure many of you will have heard the joke about what’s the best and worst thing about being a priest. If you haven’t, it goes like this:

What’s the best thing about being a parish priest? The answer? Dealing with the people. What’s the worst thing about being a parish priest? The answer? Dealing with the people!

That is a joke, but it is one with more than a hint of truth behind it. One of the great joys and privileges of being a parish priest is dealing with people, sharing in the good times of their lives, helping them through the bad times and, hopefully, helping them to grow in faith. But, as we all know, people can be very difficult to deal with at times and so whilst dealing with people can be a great pleasure, it can also be very challenging too. Having said that, for me personally, one of the best things about being a parish priest is dealing with one group of people who are, at one and the same time, both a great pleasure and extremely challenging to deal with. Those people are school children.

As vicar of this benefice, I have the pleasure of going into St Gabriel’s Primary School on a weekly basis to lead a school assembly and to welcome the children into church from time to time either for visits or for end of term worship. Part of the joy of that for me is in the children’s enthusiasm for what we do; the obvious excitement they show as their hands shoot up when I ask a question and they think they know the answer, and the sheer joy on their faces when they get the answer right. One challenge of dealing with the children though is in making sure that you understand what they’re trying to say when they answer questions.

Anyone who’s ever had or dealt with children will know that they don’t always express themselves in the way that adults do. So, when they answer a question, they often do know the answer, at least have some understanding of what the answer to a question is, but they can often give the answer in an unusual way and what they mean isn’t always immediately clear. It’s also never a good idea to tell a child that they’re wrong, especially in front of their classmates, let alone the whole school, and so you have to think very carefully about what a child has said before you respond. And you have to do that quite quickly too. Typically, I have about 10-15 minutes to lead a whole school assembly at St Gabriel’s and so you can’t afford to take too long on one question or your you wouldn’t get very far before your time was up. But I think the real challenge of dealing with school children isn’t in their answers to my questions, it’s in the questions they ask and expect me to answer.

Children can ask the most unexpected questions. Perhaps to an adult they might seem to be completely random questions that have nothing whatsoever to do with what we’re actually talking about. But to child, they might have. In any case, if a child asks a question when you’re leading an assembly or RE lesson, it’s because they want to know something and so I think you have to give them an answer, and again, you have to give them an answer quite quickly. So you have to think on your feet.

This happened just a couple of weeks ago when I had a Year 4 class in St Gabriel’s on a church visit. The idea of the visit was for me to show the class round church and explain what things in the church were and what we use them for. We’d not got very far into the visit when one of the children put his hand up to ask a question. So I, thinking it would be a question about something he’d either seen in church or I’d spoken about, asked what his question was. But his question didn’t seem to have anything to do with what we’d been looking at or talking about, it was this:

“Fr Stephen, what would you do if Jesus came into church now?”

So I said, “What, right now? Came and stood here with us right now?”

“Yes” he said.

“Well” I said, “I think the first thing I’d think is that I’d hope I’d been a good Christian, a good enough Christian to be Jesus’ friend. So I think perhaps one of the first things I’d do is ask him that. And I’d hope that he’d say ‘Yes’.

In the context of the school visit, I’m not sure why that young lad asked that question, but he must have had his reasons. And the answer I gave him seemed to satisfy him. But in the wider context of our lives as disciples of Christ, it’s a very pertinent question, a question that perhaps we all need to be asked, or at least ask ourselves on a regular basis. Just what would we do if Jesus came and stood with us right now? And if it’s a question for us to ask or be asked generally, it’s an especially pertinent question at this time of year as we begin the season of Advent and prepare to celebrate the coming into the world of our Lord Jesus Christ at Christmas.

The season of Advent is all about preparing for the coming into the world of the Messiah, isn’t it? Throughout Advent we read and hear the prophets who foretold the coming of the Messiah. This morning, for example, we read Jeremiah’s prophecy that the days are coming when the Lord will fulfil his promise to Israel and Judah that he

‘…will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David, and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land.’

We know from elsewhere in the prophets that this refers to the promise to send a Messiah, a Saviour of David’s family line, who will save God’s people.

But as well as this kind of prophecy, of foretelling what God will do in the future, the prophets were also commissioned by God to call his people back to righteousness, to call them away from lives of sin and back to the covenant he’s made with them so that they would be ready to meet the Messiah when he came. We see this especially on the third Sunday of Advent when we hear the preaching of John the Baptist but it’s also something we see in this morning’s Psalm.

The Psalms are often thought of as a hymn book but they’re part of the Scriptures too and, in some ways, they can be seen as the Scriptures in miniature because the Psalms contain all the themes we find elsewhere in Scripture, including prophecy. This morning’s Psalm is in that prophetic tradition because it’s a call, a prayer, to God that he might show us his ways, teach us his paths and lead us in his truth. It’s also a prayer for God to forgive our sins, and these are all things the Messiah would do when he came.

So, as we look forward to celebrating the birth of the Messiah, the coming into the world of our Lord Jesus Christ, we look back to those who told of his coming and called the people of Israel to prepare for his coming. But we also look forward during Advent to that unknown time in the future when Christ will return in glory, and just as the people of Israel were called to be ready for his first coming, so we’re called to be ready for his second coming. That’s summed up in our reading from 1 Thessalonians today when St Paul prays,

‘…may the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, as we do for you, so that he may establish your hearts blameless in holiness before our God and Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints.’   

And in our Gospel reading today, we have Jesus’ own exhortation to live as God’s people so that we’ll be ready to him when he comes again:

“…watch yourselves lest your hearts be weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and cares of this life, and that day come upon you suddenly like a trap. For it will come upon all who dwell on the face of the whole earth. But stay awake at all times, praying that you may have strength to escape all these things that are going to take place, and to stand before the Son of Man.” 

As we think about these things, and more in the same vein that we’ll read during Advent, we could, and perhaps should, ask ourselves the question that I was asked during that school visit to St Gabriel’s a couple of weeks ago: What would I do if Jesus came here, now? Perhaps we’d all hope, as I said I would, that we’ve been good enough Christians to be his friends. I’m sure we’d all hope, as I said I would, that his answer would ‘Yes’. But, if we’re really honest with ourselves, how many of us could be entirely confident that’s what his answer would be?

So, as we look back and forward during Advent, let’s not forget to look inward too, at ourselves, and if we see things that aren’t in keeping with the way we should live as God’s people and disciples of Christ, let’s do something about it. Let’s put those things right, and ourselves right; right before God before the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Because if we wait until he comes, it might be too late.

Amen.  

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The Propers for Advent 1 can be viewed here.