Sermon. 15 December 2019.
St Michael and All Angels, Little Ilford
Advent 3 (Gaudete), Year A
· Matthew 11.2-11
Here’s a simple summary
of where we are today:
· We have lit a candle, which people
often call “the pink candle for Our Lady”.
· That said, that is wrong.
· It is the rose candle for our joy,
because a traditional service would begin with a call to rejoice (Gaudete!).
· That said, we don’t do that.
· That said, the theme linked to the candle is not
Mary, nor joy, but John the Baptist.
· That said, we were already introduced to John the
Baptist last week.
· That said, we might be invited to introduce Our
Lady today, if we had chosen the canticle, the great Magnificat.
· That said, she is not the theme and the candle
is not hers!
Confused? Brothers and sisters, every
Western Christian is surely confused by this great pile-up of themes. Worry not;
take from it what speaks to you.
But, any way, there is
something confusing about the hero of today’s candle, John the Baptist. He
is difficult, and confusing. Consider what might sound like an easy question:
Was John the Baptist a Christian? He was and is a saint, but was he ever
a Christian? And this doesn’t mean: Was he a churchman who was baptised in the
name of the Trinity and recited the creed? We know none of that applies; such
things developed centuries after his death. But really the question is: Did he
ever become a follower of Jesus? In today’s gospel it is clear that he
is considering becoming a disciple. But we are not told whether he actually
did. Did he welcome the answer to his question: “Are you the one who is to
come?”, or did he find it evasive? We are not told.
So Saint John is often –
and not wrongly – presented as one of the principal bridging characters.
He bridges the Old and New Testaments. He bridges (for Christians) the Judaism
of the Old Testament and the Second Temple and the emergent Christianity of the
Jesus Community. This means, while it might be controversial, it’s not wrong to
think of John the Baptist as a Jewish but not a Christian saint.
The Jewish saint, John the Baptist… Yes! Yes, you are
right in supposing I do want us to reflect on Christian approaches to Jews and
Judaism. (No apologies for that.) But I am going to do so via what you may well
think of diversion.
By a diversion, I mean I
want us to think about… the hymn we will sing at the end of this
service. That hymn is Lo, He Comes. It is a great hymn, in
many ways one of my favourites. But I do have problems with it. They relate
wholly to the second verse. Let me remind you:
Every eye shall now behold him
robed in dreadful majesty;
those who set at naught and sold
him,
pierced and nailed him to the Tree,
deeply wailing, deeply wailing,
deeply wailing,
shall the true Messiah see.
I can see that you will
enjoy singing it. Many do. How often do we get to sing about wailing, in
church, to a powerful, Wesleyan tune? Only really here. But! But
I feel a need to say that the problem with this verse is this: the most natural
subject in mind, for “those who set at naught and sold him/pierced and
nailed him to the Tree” are… Jews, and even “the Jews”. And that is wrong,
and that is bad, and even wicked. Wicked, because the underlying theme here is:
at the second coming, most of humanity will rejoice, but the Jews will be
found out and blamed for killing their Messiah; all they will get to do is wail
for their sins.
“[T]hose who set at
naught and sold him/pierced and nailed him to the Tree”. Yes, I know that a historian
will say: that’s not the Jews; that must mean the Romans.
Historically, the Roman overlords, in all their well-reported brutality, were
responsible for the killing of Jesus. The trouble with that is that the Romans
had no concept at all of a Messiah. To say to ancient Romans: “Here at last
is your true Messiah! Wail!” would mean literally nothing to them.
“[T]hose who set at
naught and sold him/pierced and nailed him to the Tree”. Yes, I know that a good preacher
or theologian will say: that’s not the Jews; that is us, all of us. When
we sin, we set in train the spiritual dis-ease which ultimately leads to the
killing of Jesus. It’s good theology, but again, it doesn’t work here. It’s
really the same point (though this is a harder claim to make). I am going to
say that “Messiah” isn’t a Christian word. (Many, many apologies to Handel; it
is certainly a Handelian word!) Messiah is an English version of the Hebrew
word, Mashiach. But Christians (as their name suggests) overwhelmingly
use “Christ”, the English version of the Greek word, Christos.
They both mean the same
thing. They mean “anointed”, “the Anointed One”. But still the Christian preference
for “Christ” over “Messiah is clear. It is clear in the New Testament, where
the word Messias occurs how many times? Only twice [Jn 1.42, 4.25]. (The
“Messiah” in today’s gospel is the translator’s interpretation of the Greek “Christos”.)
It is clear in all our hymn books. It is clear in this hymn book [Common
Praise]. You look for mentions of “Messiah”; you will find few. So, again,
we are given a real nudge to think not of ourselves, but of the Jews,
others, over there.
Don’t misunderstand me. I
am not suggesting that when you sing, you consciously think: “the
Jews killed Christ and this is about how they’ll get their comeuppance”.
This is not a conscious thing. But we do have to have some historical
awareness.
We do have to face
clearly that from very early days, Christians have been saying “the Jews
killed Christ”. And (even worse) not just a particular group of Jews, in
Jerusalem around 33 AD. No. All Jews, everywhere, throughout time and space.[1]
The Jewish people as a people have this guilt.
It was around – it was preached in sermon and sung in liturgy – already towards the end of the second
century. Great saints like John Chrysostom (349-407) in the East and Augustine
(354-430) in the West proclaimed it proudly. Martin Luther (1483-1546) also
became increasingly insistent that it is so. It’s hard for us to hear this. But
the historians are clear. They even speak of a “teaching of contempt”.[2]
It’s not wrong to say that it has been as-natural-as-breathing for even
great Christians to teach contempt for Jewish people.
It follows that we do
need to go out of our way – we really need to go out of our way – to
make sure we are not teaching or even hinting at that contempt now. And - in
that context - to sing: “those who set at naught, and nailed him to the
Tree, deeply wailing, shall the true Messiah see” must surely leave
something of a bitter taste. You cannot not know that you are being given that nudge
– whether directly or subliminally – to think that “the Jews killed Christ”.
Fortunately, we do not
have to abandon this otherwise lovely hymn. Nor does it need rewriting in any
complicated fashion. What we can do is simply change one word, one syllable.
We can sing instead: “We
who set at naught and sold him…”. That brings us back to the good, healthy
theology I mentioned before. It is our sins which ultimately lead to the death
of Christ. We should wail – deeply wail – that sorry state of affairs, always safe
in the knowledge that we will be forgiven and restored. What is not to like?
So, brothers and sisters,
I am going to encourage and, yes, urge you to do that, and not to please me
(nor even to shut me up), but because it is a change that tells the gospel,
that “speaks Christian” better than what is actually written in the
hymn-book: “We [not “those over there” but “we over
here”] who set at naught and sold him…”.
You may object on any
number of grounds.
· You may say you don’t understand
what I’ve said. Please tell us this. Your preachers need to know if and how and
when they are being understood, and this is a natural time for a review of our
preaching.
· You may say I have made claims but not
brought much evidence. That is true. It has been (I know) a long sermon
without “putting the quotes” in. But I can provide the quotations and statistics,
if we seek some more teaching.
· You may say that I’ve just preached
on my hobby, my hobby-horse, Judaism. To that I want to say
gently but clearly: No. To be a Christian is to engage in
Jewish-Christian relations, even if we never meet a Jew. Our Scriptures,
are all (or almost all) written by Jews, and are drenched in Jewish themes,
like Israel, election, Hebrew heroes of faith, the hope of the prophets, and more.
· You may say (most likely option, I’d
say) that I’m a pedant! You don’t think about what you sing anything
like as carefully as I’ve presupposed, and I should get over myself. To that I
also say gently but clearly: No. It is precisely what we find ourselves
saying or singing, without any need to reflect on it, that tells us what we
truly believe. What we need to reflect on, we are still in some ways
weighing up. What just launch forth into with gusto, that is what we have uncomplicatedly
signed up to. That is worthy of our attention, from time to time.
Here I do finish. Please
notice that I am not at all saying: We need to water down what we
believe and sing, for fear of giving offence to Jews or others. I am a
million miles from saying that. I am saying that here that, given how Christian
history has unfolded, we have a chance and a need to improve what
we sing, so that we can become better, more truthful, more authentic,
and, yes, more orthodox Christians.
“We
who set at naught and sold him,
pierced and nailed him to the Tree,
deeply wailing,
shall the true Messiah see”
and He will love us, forgive us, heal us,
and give us what we need
to
love and heal ourselves, heal others,
and bring
and be reconciliation throughout the world.
Amen.
[1]
Perhaps starting with Melito of Sardis, d 180.
[2]
Coined by Jules Isaac (1877-1963)
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