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.

In the news this week there was a brief story about the Queen granting a Royal Warrant to her favourite tipple, Dubonnet. In the aftermath of that, sales of the drink skyrocketed. The supermarket chain, Waitrose, for example, said that sales had almost doubled, and the drink quickly sold out. Even Amazon, it seems, are struggling to keep up with the surge in demand for Dubonnet that’s followed the granting of the Royal Warrant. I must admit, all this brought a smile to my face because Dubonnet was also a favourite of our late friend, Fr Neville Ashton. But it was something he only started drinking after he heard that it was the favourite drink of the Queen and her mother, the late Queen Mother. But why should people do this kind of thing? Why should people want to do what the Queen does?

We live in what we might call an age of celebrity don’t we? And we only have to look at the programmes on the television to see that. Celebrity MasterChef; I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here and Strictly Come Dancing to name just a few. No doubt some of you will remember the original Come Dancing, a show in which ordinary members of the public took part in a dancing competition. That the programme’s been re-invented as Strictly Come Dancing, a dance competition for celebrities shows, I think, the interest, though perhaps obsession would be a better word, that our society seems to have for celebrities.

In a way, it’s quite easy to understand why people are so interested in celebrities. Celebrities are rich and famous, they’re seen as icons of fashion, and they enjoy extravagant lifestyles, and people who don’t enjoy those things, quite naturally, want them. So people see or hear what celebrities do and they try to copy them and do the same.

But the Queen isn’t really what we’d usually call a celebrity is she? She might be rich and famous, she might have palaces to live in but still, she’s not a celebrity in the usual sense of that word. The Queen hasn’t become rich and famous as an entertainer or sports star and we’re highly unlikely to see her on one of the celebrity TV shows that fill our screens. The Queen’s lifestyle may be very different to ours but it’s not one that we can aspire to because she’s the reigning monarch of this country. Anyone else who wanted to be that would no doubt find themselves in some serious trouble. People who’ve wanted to be that have often found themselves in the Tower of London where they’ve not enjoyed a very good lifestyle at all, and usually a very short lifespan too! So why do people want to do what the Queen does, even if it’s only in a small way, such as drinking what the Queen drinks?

I think the reason people do that is because they both respect and admire the Queen. I think people respect and admire the Queen because, despite being involved in politics on a daily basis, she stays out of politics because she makes no personal political statements and doesn’t get involved in political arguments. I think people admire the Queen because she never tries to use the great constitutional power she has, to push her own agenda. And I think above all, people admire the Queen because of her great sense of duty, of putting what she’s called to do, her duty as the Queen, before her own self-interest. And, if we think about these things, do we not see these same qualities in the one we acclaim today, not just as our King, but as the King, the King of all people and all time? Do we not see these qualities in Jesus Christ? 

To be honest, it’s difficult to say that Jesus never made political statements, but it would have been impossible for him not to have made political statements given the society he lived in. We have to understand that Jewish society at the time was a theocracy; it was a society run by priests and run according to God’s Law. Jesus said that he had come to fulfil the Law and his teaching was all about keeping the Law, especially the spirit of the Law rather than the letter of the Law. But, as God’s Law and state law were so closely intertwined, a religious statement about God’s Law was, inevitably, also a political statement about the way the land was governed. Perhaps a good example of that is his argument with the scribes and Pharisees about ‘corban’, offerings to God, in which Jesus accused the scribes and Pharisees of,

“…making void the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And many such things you do.”

But despite the inevitable political implications of what he said, Jesus’ teaching was always primarily about keeping God’s Law, about people doing what God required of them, not about politics as such.

And he was never partisan. Jesus didn’t go in for what we’d call ‘party politics’, it was simply about keeping the Law and living as God wants and intended us to live. And Jesus’ never made personal statements either because, as he said,

“…I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me.”

There’s no doubt that Jesus could have used the great power he possessed for personal reasons or gain. The story of his temptation in the wilderness, right at the start of his ministry, is all about this very issue and temptation. But Jesus never did succumb to that temptation, he put himself entirely at God’s service. He did his duty, what he was sent to do, regardless of the cost to himself. As St Paul puts it in his Letter to the Philippians;

‘…though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.’

If we look at Jesus and his life in purely human terms, if we take him and his life at face value, there’s really not much to see that would inspire us to follow him or to do what he did. He was, and is, famous, but his fame didn’t bring him any earthly reward; it didn’t make him rich. And his life isn’t one that many, if any, people would aspire to. He was an itinerant preacher who had no home and owned nothing other than the clothes he wore. He was hounded from place to place by the authorities who eventually caught up with him because one of his closest friends betrayed him. And he was put to death in the cruellest way imaginable, and on a false charge of claiming to be the king of the Jews. Who would want to follow such a man or aspire to follow such a life?

And yet we do. And we follow him because of the way he lived and died because it’s through the way he lived and died that he rose again from the dead. It’s because of the way Jesus lived and died that St Paul could say,

‘Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.’

It’s because of the way Jesus lived and died and rose again that we can hear the truth in Jesus’ words. It’s because of these things that we can see that his way of life, the way of humility and obedience to God’s will, is the true and only way to live. And so because of these things we can acclaim Jesus as our King and offer him our loyalty, our obedience, and even our lives.

In their refusal to make personal political statements or play party politics, in their abstinence in using power for their own ends, and in their devotion to duty above self-interest, I think there are similarities between Jesus’ life and ministry and our Queen’s reign. But there is also at least one great difference. The Queen, like all people, will die and her reign will come to an end. But Jesus, having died and been raised again from the dead and enthroned as our heavenly King, will never die again and so his reign will never end. And the great incentive for us to follow Christ’s example now is that, when our earthly lives come to an end, the promise of eternal life rests on our willingness to do as he both commanded us to do and he himself did on earth. When that time comes, there will be no other king to turn to, only Christ, the King. His way will be the only way, so I think we’d be wise to get used to following his way now.

Amen.

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The Propers for Christ the King can be viewed here.

Have you ever stopped for a moment to consider just how strange the way we construct our view of the world we live in actually is? If you’re not sure what I mean by that, just think about how we describe the world and it’s peoples; the way we divide the world and its peoples into categories. For example, we talk about the world in terms of East and West don’t we. But, in reality, East and West depend on your point of view. We talk about the USA and Europe as the ‘West’ and Russia and China as the ‘East’, for example. From China though, Russia is the West, the USA is East, and Europe could be either. So to divide the world into East and West is really rather ridiculous.

It’s the same when it comes to people. As wrong as it is, and it is wrong; both morally wrong and deeply un-Christian, one of the most common ways people are categorised is by the colour of their skin. We say they’re black, or white, or yellow. But have you ever seen anyone who’s skin actually is black, white or yellow? The only truly black people I’ve ever seen are in photographs of coal miners who’ve just come up from a shift at the coal face. The only truly white people I’ve ever seen are in paintings of people from bygone ages when women, in particular, painted their faces white because that was the fashionable thing to do at the time. And the only people I’ve ever seen who are truly yellow, are people who’ve been ill with some kind of liver disease. But nevertheless, we do categorise people according to the colour of their skin, even though it’s wrong and their skin isn’t any of the colours we say it is.

I’m sure we can all think of many other ways that we construct our view of the world by categorising things and people which, in reality, are actually quite meaningless in any objective sense. High and low in the Church, left and right in politics, Old World, New World, Third World and so the list goes on. If we thought about all these categories objectively, I’m sure we’d find them to be so ridiculous as to be laughable if it wasn’t for the fact that dividing the world and its peoples up in this way is such a serious problem. And it is a serious problem because when we construct our view of the world in this way what we’re really doing is sowing the seeds of division and conflict.

When we hold a view of the world that’s based on categories of things and people, what we’re doing in effect, is dividing the world and its peoples up and separating them into opposing camps; ‘us’ and people like us on the one hand, and ‘them’, people who are not like us, on the other hand.  And to make matters worse, we have people who are willing to exploit those feelings, to stir up mistrust and fear of those who aren’t like us in order to achieve power. People who then use mistrust and fear of those who aren’t like us to get others to follow them. People who instil their own personal prejudices and bigotry and hatred into the minds of others so that others will make those things their own.

A prime example of someone who did these things was Adolf Hitler. And he did these things so successfully that he became regarded as a saviour, a Messiah, to those he led, and his book Mein Kampf, My Struggle, a book filled with prejudice, bigotry and hatred based on racial and geo-political categories, became tantamount to scripture to his adoring followers, though we could even call them his worshippers. We know what following this false Messiah led to; a war of unparalleled suffering and devastation that engulfed the whole world and claimed the lives of somewhere between 70 and 85 million people.

And, of course, today, Remembrance Sunday is the day we set aside to remember those who died defending our own country in that war and in so many other wars that have taken the lives of our armed forces over the years.

History tells us that building a view of the world along a subjective ‘us’ and ‘them’ mentality always leads to division and conflict. Can any of us actually think of any war in history that hasn’t had it’s roots in this way of thinking? But, as with so many other things, the danger of thinking in this way is spelt out to us very clearly by Jesus.

In this morning’s Gospel, we find the disciples admiring the temple. The temple itself is no longer there so we can’t be certain of what it was really like, but it’s thought to have been the biggest of the three temples that the Jews built in Jerusalem, so it was, no doubt, a sight to behold. As a symbol of their faith and identity as God’s people it was also no doubt a building the Jews were very proud of. That certainly comes across in the disciples’ admiration of the temple we read about this morning. But Jesus tells them that, as great as the temple buildings are, they’ll all be destroyed, that not one stone will be left standing on another.

In St Matthew’s Gospel, this story comes immediately after Jesus had lamented over Jerusalem’s failure to accept him and turn to God. And because of that, he says her house, perhaps the temple, perhaps the city, perhaps the Jewish state itself, would be left desolate, broken and empty. And indeed that is what happened. In the great Jewish uprising of 66-73AD, a war that set Jews against Romans, and even Jew against Jew as various Jewish factions waged a civil war at the same time, Jerusalem was sacked, looted and burned to the ground, and the temple was destroyed.

Jesus also warns in this morning’s Gospel about being led astray by false Messiahs; those who come in his name and say, “I am he.” We know that there were two more major wars between the Jews and the Romans in the century after Jesus’ Resurrection. Wars that led to widespread slaughter across the whole of the Eastern Roman Empire. Eventually, large parts of Judea, the Roman province that includes modern day Israel, was emptied of Jews because they’d either been killed or expelled, and they were banned from even visiting Jerusalem except for one day each year. At least one of the leaders of these revolts, Simon bar Kokhba, was acclaimed as the Messiah. But perhaps Jesus’ warning is more general one of not following anyone other than him for fear of being led astray from God’s ways.

And if we really do want to have a view of the world and its peoples that isn’t going to divide and cause conflict, if we want to build a world and a way of life that won’t ultimately be destroyed by conflict and war, then it is God’s ways that we have to follow.

Jesus said the greatest commandment, the most important of God’s ways, was that we should love God. If we do love God, then we’ll keep his commandments and one of those is not to covet what our neighbour has. But how much conflict in the world is caused because people do covet what their neighbour has? How many wars have been caused because people have seen what others have, want it for themselves, and are prepared to fight and even to kill their neighbour to take it?

Jesus said the second commandment was that we should love our neighbour as ourselves. If we did love our neighbour as ourselves, we wouldn’t argue with our neighbour or fight them, let alone kill them, would we? Because we wouldn’t want anyone to do those things to us. 

But how many wars have been caused because people have loved themselves far more than they’ve loved their neighbour? How many wars have been caused because, far from loving their neighbour, people have actually hated their neighbour?

We call God our Father. If God is our Father, we are his children, all of us, and that makes us all brothers and sisters. But do we regard our brothers and sisters as ‘them’? Don’t we rather regard our brothers and sisters as one of ‘us’, or perhaps even as part of ‘us’? So, if we really do follow God’s way, the way that Jesus taught us, how can we view other people in terms of ‘us’ and ‘them’? Shouldn’t we rather see other people, whoever and whatever they are, as our brothers and sisters and as part of an all embracing ‘we’? And if we can see other people in that way, if we can stop dividing them into separate categories, won’t a lot of the reasons and causes of dispute and conflict be gone from our lives?

Of course, for disputes and conflict and especially for war to end, most, if not all people would have to think in these terms and that’s something people seem to find very difficult to do. And Jesus himself suggests that it’s something that is not going to happen before his return because he warns his disciples to expect wars and kingdoms to rise against kingdoms. But, while we might not be able to stop war, we can at least try to find peace in our own lives by keep God’s ways in our lives. We can try to see the world is less divisive terms and we can try to see other people as our brothers and sisters and treat them accordingly.

So today, let’s remember those who’ve died in time of war defending this country from those who wished or still wish us harm. Let’s give thanks for

the great sacrifice they made for us. Let’s pray that they now rest in the peace that war took from them in life. And in our lives, let’s try to be more like the children of God we are, and let’s pray that one day, the world will find that God’s way is a better way, a more peaceful way, and follow it too.

Amen.

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The Propers for the 33rd Sunday of Ordinary Time (2 before Advent) can be viewed here.