MATTHEW 2: 13-23 

Matthew in the Margins… Christmas 1…Revised 2019

If we were to take a survey, many would tell us two of the most important issues facing our world are Climate Change, & the Refugee Crisis. Our passage speaks to the latter. To preach the flight into Egypt with relevance to today, we need to draw people’s minds beyond the challenges of Israel’s past to the challenges posed by today’s international Refugee Crisis.

Joseph represents those of us tuned into God enough to see the relevance of the Holy Family’s experiences in their day to today’s trials & tribulations. Are we representing today’s myriad refugees fleeing wars & persecutions, personal & larger scale. Last night’s news told of 80,000 fleeing one area of Syria alone!

How might YHWH see, & expect us to see, the myriads of ‘Boat People’ as so many contemptuously dismiss them? Having His own earthly family go through the trials & tribulations they do, equips God to understand from inside the experiences today’s refugees face. Will God then not expect us, His people to be accepting & pro-active in our dealings with them?

We could also explore our own various personal captivities & escapes & how these follow in the Holy Family’s footsteps. Are we prepared for life around us to become a kind of ‘enemy’ territory when we differ from the popular anti-refugee stance?

Are we ready to don 'wings' (or, shed them?) should God call us on Dial an Angel when someone needs our guidance & protection?

Joseph is the protector of his little family. He is a positive & wholesome role-model for today's males, many of them confused, &, maybe, angered by changing societal expectations. As Moses flees from Egypt (to Midian) to escape an avenging Pharaoh, the Greater than Moses flees with His family to Egypt to escape Herod. 

The flight into Egypt & back - reversing Hebrew history from long before - gives us opportunity to revisit our own personal history & find new God-given possibilities for our future. To be stuck in some ‘Egypt’ of our past is to hamper God’s plan for our future, wherever that may be, ‘kicking in’ with all the new life in Christ it brings.

Brian

Afterthought: As a class, angels are too valuable for us to pass them up so readily as we often do today. Bad spirits are very much 'in' in a lot of circles. Allowed to take over, rule the roost. Help the good guys & gals make a comeback. For starters, why not become one?

MATTHEW 1: 18-25 

Matthew in the Margins… Advent 4…Revised 2019 )

So we think we know what it is to face a dilemma? May we need to re-think that when we read about the one Joseph & Mary, each in their own way, face here? 

They are having a tough time. But they are tough customers. Not the almost un-believably pious ones we tend to turn them into come Christmas season. To connect with them at the deepest level, do we need to identify with the tough time they are going through? And what about some possible ‘Marys & Josephs’ in our church? 

Does today’s reading of their dilemma speak to someone in our congregation’s personal dilemma? To someone’s sexual dilemma? Perhaps to an inconvenient & unwanted pregnancy, or fear of it, in their personal life today? Or in someone in their extended family’s life? The outcome YHWH God wants, & needs from us, is that we ‘hang in there’ with Him, knowing He is hanging in there with us, too?

Isn't it the right of every child to be ‘conceived by the Holy Spirit’ if not ‘born of the Virgin Mary’? What prayerful, emotional, practical support, ‘all meanly wrapped’ in love, if not in swaddling bands, do today's soon to be parents & children need. Can we see through the figures of our traditional Christmas Crib to those facing dilemmas of one kind or another this Christmas? 

It takes a person of great Spirit to be open enough to move away from their original intention to ‘dismiss’ any other person quietly’ as Joseph has considered in Mary’s case. But he can do better than that, understanding the part he has to play in bringing Jesus to birth for God. 

A lot of today’s would-be ‘Marys & Josephs’ are stuck in the muckiness of the world's many & varied stables. Not in some pretend nativity scene, but in real life. How can we help bring somebody to birth for God from such circumstances?

 We can’t just dismiss them, can we?  

Brian

Afterthought: If you can find a copy of John Irving’s ‘A Prayer for Owen Meany’ - it’s worth searching out - a highlight is an unbelievably amazing crib scene - one worth pondering deeply!

MATTHEW 11 : 2-11 

Matthew in the Margins… Advent 3… Revised 2019

Is JB’s musing about Jesus: “If you're who I think you are...what am I doing in prison ...get me out of here!” at all unreasonable? What if that One who came then doesn't appear to be taking up our cause today, either? Are we ourselves imprisoned in any sense? Don’t we deserve to be set free from whatever kind of ‘prison’ it is? If ‘God mysteries’ still puzzle us, why not explore them as openly & honestly as JB is doing here?

What kinds of things are we hearing & seeing that give us the responsibility to tell of them? Are we telling of the blind seeing again, though in different ways now? Telling of the lame walking, skin diseases being healed, deaf people hearing again, & at least the seemingly dead being raised to life through modern medicine if not the physically dead? As well as telling of these things, are we also playing our part in making them happen today when we can, where we can? 

When it comes to caring for the poor by ‘proclaiming the good news’ to them, are they still in the too-hard basket? If we’re setting up caring agencies to serve others, without down-playing these, can we go further than this? Agencies can't love people. Only people can love people. Being loved is the way the poor, or anyone else, can discover the ‘Good News’. Can we truly proclaim Jesus as Good News to the poor - or anyone else - except by becoming that good news in person? 

A reed, a fancy dress show, or a Prophet? There's a lot of bending this way & that in today's church, sometimes in a good cause, sometimes not. Not to mention dressing up. How does one recognize a genuine Prophet among the reeds & fancy-dressers? Whatever nurturing we may be giving others, is anyone nurturing us in becoming a recognizably authentic, prophetic, compassionate, hands-on word-of-God for each other? That we all need what the Celts call an ‘anamchara’, or soul friend, comes to mind. Why not explore that with a view to implementing it?

Jesus says JB ‘is the greatest human being’ up to that stage of history. At this point in the Gospel, though, even JB fails to recognize God's Rule present among us in Jesus. Rather than be discouraged by his failure, why not learn from it & grow stronger in faith as a result.

Brian

Afterthought: The Gospel of Thomas Ch.46 [Complete Gospels, Harper Collins '94] may help us see where we come into all this with its: ‘whoever among you becomes a child will recognize God's Rule & will become greater than John.’

MATTHEW 3: 1-12 

Matthew in the Margins…Advent 2…Revised 2019

Can John, fascinating character that he is, also be a distraction? Long after his death, there were those who persisted in following him rather than the Jesus to whom JB pointed. Not helpful! 

Is true wilderness a matter of interior, spiritual geography? If that’s true, & I believe it is, is there any point in desperately seeking physical ‘Jordans’ of one kind or another to cross in the hope of deepening our spirituality? 

JB speaks to the people in heart language, not head language. Heart language is directed to the heart of our human problem: sin (separation from God) through disobedience, rebellion. Are we ourselves speaking ‘heart language’ or just the old head stuff? 

Without pre-empting next Sunday’s Gospel, is Jesus a ‘puzzlement’ to JB, as the King of Siam might have said to Mrs. Anna? And, maybe, vice-versa? How much is either Jesus, or JB, a puzzlement to the other? Or, to us & those round us today?

I think it was Dom Crossan who said somewhere that JB preaches God as coming where Jesus models God as already present. What JB is on about out there in his wilderness is telling people about God, & preparing us for God, whereas Jesus is showing us what God is like by being God! As we go about our daily lives, are we doing more telling, or more showing through being the Body of Christ? 

When I started primary school I was in ‘Beginners’ in one half of a divided room. Miss. C, the teacher on the other side of the partition was always shouting at the kids & belting them with the leather strap Victorian - in both senses - schools used back then. We littlies all lived in terror of being promoted. But, God is good! I developed a severe dose of Whooping Cough, & by the time I’d recovered, our family had moved & I went to a different school where no-one shouted at you! If I’m unfair hinting JB shouted at people, I guess he did, compared with Jesus showing people how to live? 

When Jesus asks for baptism, the heavens open, & God acknowledges His beloved Son, JB recognises Jesus as the Lamb of God. The One who is going to pick up all our pain & division & separation & broken-ness & put us together again. How well are we living out our put-togetherness as distinct from simply re-telling it?

Brian

Afterthought: Turning from something or somebody without as a consequence turning to something, or, better still, Someone, is an invitation to a vacuum to possess us. If that sounds a contradiction in terms, don’t let’s put it to the test.

MATTHEW 24 : 36 - 44 

Matthew in the Margins… Advent 1…Revised 2019

It makes sense to begin with some lead up rather than jump in cold as the lectionary does. Choose what makes sense to you & your congregation.

Astro-physicists & the like theorise about a universe expanding forever, not one that collapses into itself when some point is reached. Can we explore such ideas in the light of Faith rather than be scared off by fundamentalism or insecurity? What things are happening today making heaven & earth teeter on the brink? How can we help our congregation identify them, & respond positively?

Early disciples under persecution understandably opt for an Intervening God over a ‘Son of Humanity’, a fellow Suffering Servant. We can take just so much of this suffering business, can't we? Ever walked the beam of a see-saw? Go too far towards either end & we come down to earth with a jar! How are we to balance both Divine & Human ‘sides’ of God so we become complete humans with a complete God? Are we letting the Spirit keep our theological see-saw well balanced?

In the flood story from pre-history Noah represents those who have the discernment, to read the truth in what's happening round them, on earth & in the skies. When we feel sodden to the eyeballs & the flood is still rising, is trying to wring ourself out any real help? Why not, instead, build a new Ark, the Church, to God’s plan revealed in Jesus? Not out of timbers this time, but out of people. Is there any mileage for God or for us in our waiting for a Cosmic Christ to drop from heaven & snatch us from a watery grave? Might it be better to use whatever sails, or oars - or motors - God provides to keep our heads & the rest of us above water? Let’s not diminish God or ourselves in looking for an ark that never existed except as an important parable.

The Noah tale is a great & valuable religious parable, but, as Ian Plimer, then Professor of Geology, University of Melbourne, puts it in ‘Telling Lies For God’ ¹ ‘Despite efforts by creationists to salvage a credible ark & flood story, the story just doesn't hold water.’

Do we tend to read into the next bit that it's bad news for the one from the field, & one of the grain grinders to be chosen or taken? But if God's doing the taking, & these folk are ready, isn't this maybe the experience of Good News for them? OK, as long as it's them and not us, are we still thinking?

Brian

Afterthought: Would you believe the Ark, from our cosmic memory bank, still sails the seas of life today? Amid our rebellions against God? A reminder that though we flood ourselves with all kinds of destructive things, God is the Ground of our being. 

¹ Random House, Australia, '94, p.73