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Christmas Day
25/12/2024

Colossians 3:1-10
Luke 2:1-7

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On our bookshelf at home there is a book with the rather intimidating title, 1001 Movies You Must Watch Before You Die! I’ve decided to rise to the challenge, although it is quite possible that I’ve left my run a little late!

An advantage of resting in a discipline like that – if movie-watching can be called a discipline! – is that it forces you to watch and think about a lot of things you wouldn’t normally consider if you simply followed your personal tastes. The range of “must watch” flicks begins in 1902, crosses national, cultural and aesthetic boundaries, and covers every genre – at least those types that might have appeared in a local cinema near you at some time or other.

Yet, for all their variation across time, genre and style, most films have a common structure which runs something like this. The first thing which happens in the story is the placement of the central character. It might be young, innocent Maria on a mountaintop marvelling that the hills are alive with the sound of music. It might be the not so young or innocent Indiana Jones, realising the dream of finding a legendary archaeological artefact. Or it might be plucky Sidney Prescott, living a more or less happy, middle-class teenage life.

The narrative flow then moves to the displacement. Maria falls in love with Captain von Trapp and his children, and must contend with a jealous baroness, with her own sense of call to the convent and with the Nazis. Or all the boobytraps fire and send Indiana fleeing from crushing boulders through winding tunnels, and later from more Nazis. Or Sidney takes a phone call and finds herself relentlessly pursued by the murderous Ghostface.

In each case, the story begins with a placement, followed by a displacement, before the struggle of the heroes and heroines to find their way back to their proper equilibrium. And the bulk of the story is that struggle against all odds and seemingly insurmountable obstacles, climbing every mountain, fording every stream, until the dreamed-for peace is found.

This is the comedic arc the vast majority of our stories follow because most of our stories are comedies – not necessarily in the sense of making us laugh but in following that narrative flow of equilibrium, descent and restoration.

I bring all this to mind today because I want to draw your attention to a small detail in our gospel reading this morning over which we pass pretty quickly, usually noticing the noun but not the verb: “and Mary placed him in a manger”. We know about the manger, and the irony often noted here: that the one who is called “king” has such a lowly cot. But if we shift our attention from the manger to what Mary does, we seem to see again the dynamic by which our books and movies work: Mary lays, places, Jesus in a manger. This is his “equilibrium” point, the beginning of his story point from which the displacement will dislodge him. If we follow the story of Jesus from this beginning to its end, we see something like the usual flow of our stories: from his beginning condition, he descends into conflict, which culminates in the crucifixion, which is then followed by the resurrection.

The story of Jesus, then, looks like all our favourite stories: from high to low, to high again. Jesus “comes down from heaven”, slums it a bit for a while, and then “ascends” again.

Or so it seems. One problem with this way of reading Jesus’ story is that we are the slum! And, certainly, the “we” in the story – the people Jesus encounters in his circle of friends, disciples and opponents – scarcely make it easy for him. But on the other hand, we don’t get the sense from the story that Jesus is somehow dropped into a hole and needs to dig himself out, as do Maria, Indiana or Sidney; or Skywalker, Rambo or Ripley; or Harry, Hermione and Ron.

In fact, the story of Jesus is kind of the other way around. The equilibrium in the gospel story is a world in which mangers and mothers and fishermen and priests and kings already all have their place, and into this is placed the displacing Jesus. The baby in the manger becomes the threat, the thing which disrupts, the thing to be overcome.

And so, just as the heroine typically tries to fight her way back to the world which made sense, those around Jesus push back, seeking again the balance they had before he dislodged them. And this is why the story leads to the cross.

Jesus’ story, then, is not quite like our other stories. It’s a kind of “reverse” story. In a normal story, the protagonist struggles to get out of the frame, and so to disappear back into normality. But in the gospel, it’s not Jesus who struggles to disappear; it is everyone else. It is Jesus who frames them, casting them in a particular way from which they seek to escape by pushing him away.

We usually tell our stories to remind each other that there is danger out there, and that this is how to overcome it, how to get back on our feet again. But we don’t see this in the story that flows on from the manger. Jesus’ own placement and displacement are the same thing: he is at home in the world which finally rejects him, and it is this at-home-ness which is so threatening to everyone else. Jesus always acts as if he is where he should be, whereas most of us, most of the time, want to be somewhere else.

We want to be done with where we’re at. We want to be done with our studies, with our dead-end job, our dead-end relationship, or with the in-laws. We want to be done with the too-high expectations and the incompetence. We want to be done with the uncertainty, the ill health, the infirmity, the worry. We want to be done with knowing and seeing all that is wrong with us and our lives together.

As we struggle to find a way out of all such things, we seek to prove to ourselves that our lives are comedies, despite all appearances to the contrary: the real me cannot be here and now but is still to come. I just need to climb out of this displacement, whatever it is.

The child placed in the manger knows nothing of this. What does a swaddled baby care about straw or silk? A gentle song at a warm breast is close enough to heaven. And this doesn’t change as the story unfolds. Mary’s embrace of Jesus becomes the embrace of the one he knows and names as the divine Father. As at his birth so in the full stride of life, Jesus is where he is supposed to be, and so God’s will is done on earth, without waiting for some distant or future heaven to arrive.

We should entertain no sentimentality, then, as we hear of Jesus’ birth, and the manger, and everything else we’ve added to the story ever since. It is not that things start well in the stable and go downhill from there, only finally to end well by the power of God. It is rather that whether he is with cradle or cross or crown (TIS 321), Jesus is always in the right place; there is nowhere else he needs to be. He is in the right place, whether in Mary’s arms, with his disciples, disputing with the scribes, or standing before Pilate. Jesus is not always in a comfortable place, but it is always the right place, a place where he can be true.

And so this is the proposal of the baby placed in the manger: that it is better to be in the right place than in a comfortable place. The comfortable fear being uncomfortable again, and those who seek mere comfort will fear its loss if they ever find it. But those who know themselves to be in the right place don’t fear anything.

We tell the story of Christmas because it is the beginning of a possibility which might be our own: being fully alive wherever we are, comfortable or not. As Mary places Jesus in the manger, God places him in the world to the part of the world which is always true, wherever it is. The story of Jesus is not comic like the stories we like or tragic like the ones we don’t; it is simply full, and true. Jesus has much to do, but he has nowhere else to be.

And God places us in this same way in the manger of the world, to live stories which are neither tragic nor comic, but pressed down and flowing over with truth and life.

Let the message of the God who finds a home among us be the beginning of our finding our home in the world in which we’ve been placed. For we too have much to do, but nowhere else to be.

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Advent 1
1/12/2024

Jeremiah 33:14-16
Psalm 25
Luke 21:25-36

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The Doctor is a time traveller. And if you’re wondering, “Doctor who?” – precisely! In a cunningly disguised time machine, Doctor Who, the last of the Time Lords, travels from the very beginnings of all things to their very end.

Even if you’re not particularly interested in the time-travel/science fiction genre, you likely know the apparent paradoxes of time travel. One of the first questions to which the possibility of time travel generally gives rise is, What would happen if you were to travel back in time and kill your own parents before you were born? The paradox, of course, is that if I kill my parents and so am not born, how could I kill them?

Storytellers have sought to think through this and other time travel paradoxes with varying degrees of success, although, in the end, none of it really makes any sense. And, often enough, making sense isn’t really the point – certainly not in the case of Doctor Who, at least, where the point is more enjoying watching a crazy person and his sassy sidekick do their stuff.

What has this got to do with today’s text from Luke’s gospel, with its apocalyptic foretelling of the end of time? Just this: New Testament apocalyptic thought is a time machine with its own set of paradoxes and contradictions.

The word “apocalypse” relates to the uncovering of the end of the world – the revealing of the goal towards which God draws it – quite apart from the dramatic form apocalyptic thought took. New Testament apocalyptic serves as an itinerary for the end times, by which we might know where we are up to as that time approaches.

Yet the most apocalyptic thing in the New Testament is not any of its “watch-for-this” predictions of what is yet to come but the already-happened resurrection of Jesus.

Resurrection as a general “idea” was an apocalyptic concept at the centre of the religious and political atmosphere of Jesus’ time. The details varied in the different accounts, but the point was not that resurrection was a miraculous return to life. At the apocalypse – the revelation of God’s righteousness – a general resurrection of one sort of another was anticipated as part of a great judgement; it was how the final setting-right touched upon everyone – the living and the dead.  This meant that, in late biblical times, if someone were to stop being dead, this would be a sign that the end of the world had come. By affirming Jesus’ resurrection, then, the church affirms not life after death but that we have seen the end of the world: the goal towards which God is drawing us, even Jesus himself.

This is where the time machine of New Testament apocalyptic kicks in with a couple of temporal twists of its own. The first of these is that the resurrection does not reveal Jesus in the future. Unlike the Doctor and all other time travellers, Jesus doesn’t move through time into the future. Rather, the future is seen in him, here and now. And if his disciples sense that Jesus continues to be present to them long after the events of Easter, then their future is also present to them, here and now in the presence of the future-containing Jesus.

More than this, the Jesus the disciples see in the resurrection is the same Jesus they knew in his prior ministry. The preaching, teaching, exhorting and challenging Jesus was the same as the Jesus encountered in the resurrection. The resurrection was merely(! ) the apocalypse – the uncovering, the revelation – of who Jesus was and how he was related to God. It was not, then, so much that our once-future moves in the resurrection to be relocated in Jesus; it was always in him, even as he walked the dusty roads of Palestine. This would seem to be the point of the Transfiguration of Jesus one ordinary day on a hilltop: here, for a moment, the meaning of Jesus’ extraordinary ordinariness is seen.

The paradox of the New Testament apocalyptic time machine is that the now of Jesus, in whatever condition he might be met, is the future. And the gospel is that this now future might be ours.

Now, as interesting as I hope you’re all finding this to be, I admit that it is not yet very useful! What I’ve tried to say is that time is a central notion in the New Testament’s wrestling with the person of Jesus, and that the outcome of that wrestling is a notion of the past, the present and the future which is quite confounding of ordinary understandings. To confess the resurrection of Jesus is to remember our future, and this must qualify our reading of New Testament apocalyptic such as we find it in texts like today’s from Luke.

The importance of all this – its usefulness – is that, for the New Testament, a Time Lord is not one who controls time – who can wind it forwards or backwards. A Time Lord is one for whom the present time is no impediment to life. Such a one has no need to wind forwards or backwards; now is always good enough. Life does not have to wait for tomorrow (or even return to yesterday, to recall last week’s thoughts).

This, of course, messes with our usual sense of time. The time which matters here is not the ticking of clocks, as it usually is in sci-fi time travel. It can be that, but this is scarcely a very interesting type of time. The biblical sense of time is entirely social and political – and so is utterly interesting if we are paying attention – and we come closer to the truth if we say that time is what passes between persons. Such time is more a quality than a quantity. The ticking of clocks is a mere medium for that human passage, that human exchange.

If a Time Lord is properly one for whom time is no impediment to life, then this means that my set of relationships here and now are not merely where I happen to live. The here and now – and not the tomorrow – is where I can be truly alive, God’s will done on earth, as in heaven.

It is our failure to live in such a timely fashion which bears in on us from all sides. Time – in the mode of our current relationships – is something from which we constantly seek to escape. This is the meaning of Israel in Gaza, of Russia in Ukraine, of the rhetoric of our politicians, or of our dismissal of the insufferable neighbour, colleague or spouse. It is the meaning of lonely old souls in nursing homes, of binge-watching streamed TV series and of comfort chocolate. In our fractured relationships with each other and our lack of reconciliation within our very selves, true life is only to be found in the kind of future which comes from the further ticking of a clock. Peace, reconciliation, oneness – heaven – are always put off till tomorrow.

It is in contradiction of this that the risen Jesus is the future, here and now. In him, longing for the future is met with his fullness of life in the present. Jesus is lord over time by reconfiguring the relationships around him. He reconciles, heals, joins, uncovers new possibilities, overcomes without destroying. The future in him is now because God is able to work with our now. It is as Lord over this kind of time that Jesus is Lord over all time, which is to say that the Incarnation is the meaning of the Resurrection.

And us? Unlike the Doctor, Jesus is not the last of the Time Lords, the only one who can pull off life in the midst of death. By God’s grace, he is the first among a great family of Time Lords, called to live the future in the present, to find life in all its fullness in the midst of the change and decay which surrounds us. The Body of Christ is called to be timely in the way of Jesus himself.

If the point of watching Doctor Who is to enjoy a Time Lord and her sassy sidekick do their crazy thing, then the point of Christian discipleship is to be Time Lords. This will often make us seem crazy. For most of the world, it is well understood that if the life of heaven were our destination, we would be poorly advised to try to get there from here.

But our call is the call to the Now.

And even if it is crazy, we do our reconciling, relationship-renewing, time-bending thing anyway. This is because our sidekick is especially sassy: Jesus the Christ, who is first and last, who is today, yesterday and forever, and in whom we now and finally live, and move and have our being.

With a God like this, every time is God’s time, and ours.

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Pentecost 26
17/11/2024

1 Samuel 2:1-10
Psalm 16
Hebrews 10:11-14, 19-25
Mark 13:1-8

Sermon preached by Yoojin Song

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Have you ever watched a Superman movie or read the comic? Most of us have probably heard of him or know his story.

In 2013, another Superman movie was released, called Man of Steel, directed by Christopher Nolan.

In the movie, Superman wears a suit with an ‘S’ symbol on his chest. For a long time, I thought this ‘S’ stood for ‘super.’ But there’s a scene in Man of Steel where Lois Lane asks Superman what the ‘S’ really means. Superman explains that it’s not actually an “S” but a symbol for hope in his world.

While many focus on Superman’s superhuman powers, his true role is to bring hope to seemingly hopeless situations. In moments of crisis, disaster, or danger, people look to Superman with hope, waiting for him to appear and save them. In fact, in the Superman series, we often see scenes where people wait for his rescue in their most desperate times.

Not just in movies, but in real life, many people try to hold on to hope in the face of an uncertain reality and future. But where people place their hope can be very different. Some place it in wealth, others in their own abilities, but what really matters is if our hope is in the right place.

Just as people look to Superman in moments of crisis, trusting in his power to rescue them, we, too, have a Savior who stands ready to respond to our needs. Through the Holy Spirit, Jesus is always with us, deeply understanding our struggles and listening to our prayers. Our hope in Jesus takes shape as a daily reliance on His presence, His strength, and His unchanging love.

This hope allows us to do our best in what we can control, while entrusting what we cannot to Jesus, finding peace in knowing He is always near. Like the words of Psalm 23, we can trust that He will lead us in goodness. With this trust, we find true peace and freedom here on earth, knowing that He is guiding us faithfully each day. Just as Superman’s symbol represented hope, the cross of Jesus reminds us of a far greater hope: a Savior who not only hears our cries but walks with us, offering peace in every circumstance.

Today’s reading from Mark chapter 13 connects back to events in chapter 12. In chapter 12, while Jesus was teaching in the temple, He criticized the scribes. Their actions were not just small mistakes; they had twisted their religious responsibilities, making faith seem confusing and shallow. Jesus spoke out against their hypocrisy and empty show, and then He pointed out a poor widow who was giving her offering in the temple.

While the wealthy gave a portion from their abundance, this widow gave all she had to live on. Jesus praised her offering, teaching that the true value of giving lies not in the amount, but in the heart of faith and sincere devotion behind it.

In Mark 13:1, one of Jesus’ disciples says, “Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!” Admiring the beauty of the temple, he was impressed by the grand stones and impressive structure. This reaction makes sense because the temple was the center of Israel’s religious life. The temple in Jerusalem, built by Herod, was known for its grand and beautiful appearance. The Jewish historian Josephus even described it as being made of white marble stones, carefully arranged to look like waves flowing across the walls when viewed from a distance.

But Jesus responds differently. He says, “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.” He is foretelling the complete destruction of the temple—a prophecy that was fulfilled in A.D. 70 when Roman soldiers destroyed it.

Hearing this, the disciples ask Jesus when these things will happen and what signs to look for. Here, it’s important to understand that biblical prophecy is not given to simply satisfy curiosity about the future. While prophecy may indeed point to future events, its purpose goes deeper: it calls believers to respond in the present with faith and a renewed commitment to live according to God’s will. This is what sets biblical prophecy apart from secular predictions or fortune-telling, which often aim to exploit fears about the future. Biblical prophecy always carries a message that urges us to live faithfully now, no matter what lies ahead.

So in Mark 13:32, Jesus says, “But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.”

Jesus didn’t focus on the outward beauty of the temple building. Instead, He saw the inner corruption and predicted its destruction. This message reminds us that the true temple is not a building, but the community of believers, created through Jesus’ sacrifice, resurrection, and ascension (Acts 2:44-47). It also reminds us that our own bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19). Our true hope and trust should rest in Jesus Christ alone.

In our lives, we might also rely on things that are ultimately temporary, like the temple that would be destroyed. Jesus warns us in verse 6, saying, “Many will come in my name and say, ‘I am he!’ and they will lead many astray.” We should reflect on whether there are things in our lives that we hold onto as if they could replace Jesus.

In Counterfeit Gods, Timothy Keller, the former pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York, explains that our modern society is not so different from ancient cultures. He says that each culture has its own idols. For example, places like offices or gyms can become “temples,” where people pursue blessings for a happy life and try to ward off misfortune. In our personal lives and society as a whole, we can find gods of beauty, power, money, and achievement, all holding a near-divine place. Keller points out how young people today, especially young women, often struggle with depression or eating disorders due to an extreme focus on appearance. Many prioritize money and success as the highest values, even at the cost of family and community.

Similarly, the temple in Jerusalem during Jesus’ time was created for a good purpose—to connect God and His people. Yet, over time, an obsession with the temple itself led the leaders to become addicted to wealth and status, while the people suffered under misguided teachings.

He also shares the story of Chris Evert, a top tennis player in the 1970s, who idolized success. With the highest career win rate in history, she considered retirement with great fear. She once said in an interview, “I was afraid of letting go. Who would I be and what would I do without tennis? Winning gave me a sense of worth and applause, and I needed it to feel like someone.”

Yet, in times of crisis, wealth, status, and achievements often fail us. Wealth, status, and achievements cannot protect us from war, famine, economic instability, or natural disasters.

Like the disciples who admired the beauty of the Jerusalem temple, it’s easy for us today to be swept away by the glamorous progress of modern civilization without stopping to question it. Yet, as Christians, we are called to see beyond the glamour of the world and recognize the increasing corruption and moral decay hidden beneath.

Just as Jesus reached out to those who were marginalized and became a source of hope, our purpose as God’s children is to love God and love our neighbors. Jesus’ cross may have seemed like a failure in the eyes of the world, but it became the foundation of our hope and the beginning of new life.

Jesus, who became fully human and experienced life as we do, is not a distant observer of our struggles and pains. Even now, through the Holy Spirit, our heartaches and burdens are brought before Him. He sees our sorrow and suffering as His own and desires to show us a way forward in hope. When we bring our frustrations to Jesus in prayer, He listens to our stories and responds with compassion.

Following His example, may we, both as individuals and as a community, look around to see where help is needed and live as a light of hope, sharing God’s love and justice with the world. Amen.