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Fourth Sunday of Epiphany: 30^th January (HR)

Readings: Ezek. 43: 27-44.4; Ps. 48; 1 Cor. 13; Lk. 2: 22-40.

Simeons and Annas

May it be given to me to speak in the name of the Son, to the glory of the Father, in the power of the Holy Spirit. AMEN

 Who are your Simeons and Annas? I realise that, for me, they are several people – some sitting in this congregation – some lying in the cemetery here – some elsewhere. Mostly incidental characters, yet crucial on my own journey toward the presentation of Christ and the feast we are anticipating on Wednesday.

 Candlemas, as we experience it through Simeon and Anna’s story in Luke’s gospel, becomes a graced moment; an experiential Nunc dimittis, in which our own eyes are widened with Simeon’s, our lips opened that bit wider with Anna’s in a spirit of proclamation, and Mary and Joseph’s purification-offering actualised for us at the bringing of Jesus – God and man – before the entire Jewish-gentile world.

 So as the old, frail, incidental Simeon sings his canticle today, we also find a voice with Anna to “speak about the child to all who are looking for redemption.” (Lk. 2: 38).

 And I think I begin to get something of what Fr Ben might be trying to express in his theory about liturgical time. Like those of the Holy Week to come, the events of today’s gospel transcend solely historical recollection: they become, moreover, an incorporation of the life of a whole community – namely the Church – into the expansive, participative life of the Kingdom event. And that event is Christ himself who is independent of beginning or end, presented afresh in the feast we are to keep, yet fully known – fully presented and re-presented – in the hearts and minds of those who love him; whose eyes have seen his salvation.

Simeon and Anna – 2000 years ago and today – bear with and for us all the consummation of time and eternity as they attest to its fulfilment in the “uncreated light [that] shines through infant eyes.”

Anna who kneels and waits at the Spirit’s behest no matter how long it takes – being formed and guided by a devout life into old age; Simeon, doubtless with a smile on his face in spite of arthritis and the wear and tear of years, never doubting that Messiah will come. And when he does, lifting him up for a cuddle to foreshadow the exaltation to the cross that is coming, yet already here.

   The Agape of which Paul writes to the Corinthians we find there to human view displayed in the babe of Bethlehem. Here is a moment full of grace and truth, formed and ready to spend itself and to be spent after the perfect image of him who makes love possible; he who floods the way with light from eternity because he wants us to live in that eternity of beginning without end; to anticipate and realise with Simeon the incarnation of the new Israel; to sing with Anna the often-dissonant canticle of humanity’s redemption; to inhabit those continuous moments of liturgical time which are evermore in the chronology of the here and now; to live in the love and faith of communion, where broken bread is shared and wine brimming with fresh hope is poured out, inebriating the hearts and voices of many, that many may have truth’s equal possession.

 The Simeons and Annas of his story – and more wonderfully of ours – breathe identity into the Pauline example of agape, offering human personality in the spirit of humility and good zeal which is glory for all his faithful people – now – and in the age to come.

 Who are your Simeons and Annas? Perhaps they’re next to you; perhaps they ought to be, and you can’t hear them or your sight is growing dim. Well, Simeon’s impairment is what transforms his vision, and it is Anna’s tenacity of 84 years that glorifies her vocation. Do not lose your Simeons and Annas: They are your presentation of Christ; your living Candlemas. Theirs is the more excellent way, and they are the ones who abide with faith and hope in the pursuit of love on this continuum that is grace, whom to serve – whom to pitch one’s tent amongst – costs us everything, yet makes us free indeed.

Here is Freda – at church Sunday after Sunday – looking for me; concerned I am being bullied at work; believing that I am being called by God to more than that; giving me the unconditional light of presence; passing on the hope of the one she believed would come with similar passion, yet with resurrection; with end and yet beginning; possessing in herself a window onto God through which I might glimpse his light – and believe again – and live – at least for 45 minutes on a Sunday morning: I can’t forget her.

There is Eric, whose evaluation of my parochial sermons was summarised as, “You’re developing a nice bass voice.” Thankfully, he came back when I was rotaed-on to preach again!

 Who are your Simeons and Annas?

Fired with the hope of their perpetuity, let us bear witness after their example; let us convene and dismiss his people with their same zeal for love and their holy spirit of humility and faith. Watch how they do it. Share in the salvation they possess and present, so many may know themselves fully alive in the one who continues to reveal his broken givenness; his oblation of himself once offered, that all may have life and have it more fully when they receive us – even our ham-fisted agape – to themselves.

 In Simeon and Anna and the bread and wine of the altar, Thomas Aquinas reminds us that the “full, final sacrifice” is gifted to once more in the grace of liturgical time. Pray therefore that He may come home in us, exalting us for love’s sake to the sight and life of resurrection light: the uncreated light whose beginning is without end, and of whose Word now fulfilled we may not keep from singing.

God grant that I have spoken to you in his name, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. AMEN

CTMD Unity Service (Week of prayer for Christian Unity)

 23^rd January 2022: Epiphany 3

“We saw his Star at its rising and have come to pay him homage.”

Lord, I pray that my words spoken in your name would open minds and hearts to your living Word, Jesus Christ our Lord. AMEN

Hear the words of the Magi according to St. Matthew, “Where is the child who has been born King of the Jews? We saw his star at its rising and have come to pay him homage.”

What about us? For what have we come here? What can we give this child who has been born king of the Jews today as the Church militant in Mirfield and district? What can we bring? Amid a continuing pandemic; in midwinter’s social and political discontent; in an apparently dying church? – at least for those of us in the C of E. Surely the Church is out of touch, irrelevant, inverted and ill-equipped to speak a Word become incarnate to a weary, wanting world, isn’t it?  Yet Peter Cornelius’s words, like those of the evangelist, suggest otherwise:

 “Three Persian kings from lands afar/to Jordan follow the pointing star/and this the quest of the travellers three/to follow where the King of the Jews may be.”

St. Matthew’s inclusion of the journeying wise men in his account of Jesus’ birth is not insignificant. Their coming – these somewhat oddbod priestly academics from Persian (and therefore, foreign, lands) –  recollects us who have come today: it recollects precisely our own calling as those who have been born from above of water and the Spirit: “We [also] see his star at its rising and are come to pay him homage.”  These mysterious figures – whether three or not – come; they show up; they make it to the place where the Christ-Child is; they hear the ancient prophecies, listen to what they have heard and act from a place of obedience. And their watching and waiting apprehends the truth from above who is the star at its rising – the sun who knows no setting – the God of both Jew and gentile: King and God and sacrifice for all peoples and nations and time; the Father’s revelation of Godself becomes human so we may become divine, as the Fathers of the Church teach us.

 We are come to pay him homage today in the town of Mirfield, and as we do so we are touched again by prophecy – reverted to the truth again of our rebirth in the unfathomable mystery of the Godhead – and equipped again with all the fullness of eternal life through the givenness of the Father’s spoken Word – baby, boy and man – become flesh for our sake, flesh whose celestial body will affirm his unity in Trinity when He gives his all – even his own self – to death as a pledge of resurrection and the restoration of creation’s life as it was spoken anew when he was in the beginning with God.

The coming of the Magi does precisely what each of us in our own way is called to do: observe and act and oblate from the gift of our own selves the gold, incense and myrrh of open eyes and minds; the offering of attitudes pierced by the beauty and bane which landscape the courts of the Lord in our time – giving of our own self-possession to transfigure all things in the wide space of the hopefulness embodied in the royal, impassioned child in whom  “all the fullness of deity dwells bodily”, as St. Paul puts it.

 Is that not why we too are here, trying and retrying to live the Lord’s gift and will as his people in Mirfield and district again this year? Is it not in humble, often unsure, yet completely necessary response to the vocation of the truth from above born of water and of blood, that Epiphany season once again makes manifest? “We saw the Star… and have come to pay him homage.”

 The wise men, bearing themselves and their unifying gifts of kingship, deity and passion lead us in the journey to follow the Star wherever He may lead, bearing our own selves as broken, living, epiphanic sacraments of the unity they foreshow when they come, as we do, to kneel and pay him homage.

 We must look East and pay attention as we draw alongside them once more in this week of prayer for Christian Unity; as we come in our turn to give only what we can. And it surely is the knee of our hearts that he most desires us to bend to his obeisance, in order that by looking, listening to and loving him, the Word may be incarnate in us – Churches Together in Mirfield – and this whole district be acclaimed for his healing and reconciling glory, whose appearing wherever the Star points, makes all things new when it is gifted, received and shared for the one life of us all.

 Epiphany is the Christ-child’s showing of all that the Father is. The Magi teach us that we receive its fullness as we also empty ourselves, until love alone is left. That is why we have come, bringing ourselves with our minute gold of obedience and incense of lowliness – that together we may be gathered to one fragrant offering here, and Mirfield charged with the grandeur of God, the one shepherd, shining out in the face of his Son, the infant King. – And in us whom his Spirit lights.

 By our prayer and our presence together then, let us bear this Star of wonder, this beauteous light – to this town and to this wanting, waiting world.  AMEN.   

2022-01-23

(Nehem. 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10, 1 Cor. 12:12-31a, Luke 4:14-21)

          In this period between Christmas and Lent, it can perhaps seem odd that we have in today’s Gospel reading, Luke’s account of the beginning of Jesus’s ministry after his forty days spent in the wilderness. Would this not be better to hear after Lent? Would this not be more appropriate to hear in Eastertide? Yet the point may very well be its oddness. As we begin to look towards Lent, and what that means for our own journey as Christians, perhaps this Gospel is to remind us that this journey is not going to be easy. After all, we have here Jesus right at the very beginning of his ministry in Galilee. He has returned from the wilderness, filled with the power of the Spirit, and has begun to preach in the synagogues. Luke tells us how he has initially enjoyed great success, but then he returns to his hometown, and although we do not hear those passages today, we know what is to come – many of those who presumably knew him the best ultimately rejected him. Luke implies that Jesus had already shown that the Spirit of the Lord was upon him by what he had done in Galilee before his appearance in Nazareth; yet, for some reason, it was too much for the people of Nazareth to accept that the one they thought they knew, was the one who was to bring good news to the poor, release to the captives, sight to the blind. That in the carpenter’s son, with whom presumably many of them had grown up, was to be found the One – the One who Israel was waiting for. The One in whom the Scriptures were to be fulfilled.

          It is surely here that we have the far greater oddness of this passage. Jesus has begun to preach with power, he has made the God of Israel present in the lives of many, yet for those who knew him best it seemed to be absurd, ridiculous, that he really could be the Anointed One of God. After all, he was just somebody like themselves, how on earth could God be in him, and in him in such an unprecedented way, as Jesus seemed to be claiming? Can we really blame the people of Nazareth if they thought that they were hearing blasphemy? How do we really know when God is present? After all, the Church has now been trying, for nearly two thousand years, to find ways to communicate to the world what we mean when we say that this man is the One – the One who has bought the good news, and that in him the hopes of humanity, whether part of Israel or not, are fulfilled. It is not surprising that this message became, in Paul’s words, a stumbling block to his fellow Jews, and foolishness to the Gentiles.

I have always had some sympathy for Tertullian, that grumpy, curmudgeonly Victor Meldrew of the Church Fathers. It seems Tertullian actually did not say that maxim so commonly attributed to him – ‘I believe because it is absurd’. What he actually said in his treatise, On the Flesh of Christ, was that he believed in the Incarnation, that God had really and truly become human, because when Jesus died, it was credible, because it was unfitting, and when Jesus was buried and rose again, it was certain because it was impossible. Tertullian is bluntly presenting the paradox at the heart of Christianity – that in the frail broken flesh of a seemingly obscure 1^st century Jew, the Uncreated that lies behind all we know is really and truly present. It shouldn’t be a surprise that many would find this difficult to accept. But where does that leave us? Where does that leave us who have accepted this paradox, and are trying to live our lives by it?

I often seem to find it difficult to work out why the compilers of the Sunday lectionary included the passages that they did. Yet if today’s Gospel is about the immensity of Jesus’s claim about himself, then the words we have heard from Paul’s letter to the Corinthians tell us something about the immense claim that God has made on us through our acceptance of Christ. We are the Body of Christ – every single one of us here and throughout the world, who accept that the Spirit of the Lord was upon the man from Nazareth, we also in a way have that Spirit upon us. Just as Jesus in his body in some way made God present, so we as far as we participate in that now transfigured body, have our own part to play in making God present to our world. Present in our lives, and present to those who we meet. Like Tertullian, we need to be prepared to say, we know it is difficult to believe that God was present in a human being in this unprecedented way; but we embrace that difficulty, because in it, we can unequivocally say that God gave himself for us on that cross, that God went down into the grave to show us that death is not the end. That there is nowhere that God cannot be with his people.

In its own way, what Paul says in the letter to the Corinthians about what we are as the Church is as absurd, from the world’s perspective, as what we say about Jesus himself. That we are Christ’s body, and every single one of us is a part of that body that has a role to play in making God present to our world. If this is so, then the membership of that Body has consequences – that for all of us who are a part of it, there should be no division that can truly divide us from one another. If the Church is to truly be the Church, then there can be neither Jew nor Greek, slave or free, all of us should matter the same before God and before each other, because we have all drunk of the same Spirit. Yet we know personally and as an institution that we fail at that every day. As well as the blatant racism and discrimination that mars the Church’s body every day, there are the more subtle divisions.

In the Church of England today, the entire parish system is now being questioned as the right way for the Church to engage with English society as it has evolved around it. But it is noticeable that money can still be found to fund certain areas, certain resource churches, seemingly at the expense of their neighbours – churches that seem to cater mainly to white, middle-class people of a particularly theological persuasion, while parishes in poorer neighbourhoods can be seemingly abandoned. These parishes may only have congregations of dozens or scores of people, but who knows what might come of their witness if they were given the help and encouragement they need to continue. After all, have we not heard Paul remind us today that the weaker members of the Body are indispensable – those members of the Body who we think less honourable, we clothe with greater honour, and our less respectable members should be treated with greater respect.

Paul has also reminded us that not all members of the Body are called to be apostles or prophets or teachers or those gifted with deeds of power. Not all of us in the Church can be prophets or priests or teachers, not all of us can be high-powered evangelists, many of us are perhaps passengers on the ship of the Church, hopefully heading towards our salvation in Christ. But we can all be passengers who quietly or not so quietly witness to the presence of God to their neighbours. We can try to show the world that it does not have to be a place of fear and hatred and violence, we can all do our part to give people the hope that things do not have to be like that. Paul’s point about all the members having different gifts is surely that we do not know what these gifts may be until we begin to follow Christ in all its uncertainty and difficulty. That is why bureaucratic, top-down solutions may not be the best answer to the Church’s current problems. Now Paul does say that one of the gifts of the Spirit may be different forms of leadership, and there may well be a place in the Church for management consultants, but surely, they should not have the first or the final word?

Over the last couple of weeks, I have been reading Martin Buber’s The Tales of the Hasidim. It is a collection of anecdotes from the 18^th century compiled by the Jewish philosopher about the rabbis who founded the last great flowering of mysticism in Judaism, the Hasidic movement. Those people you can occasionally catch glimpses of in New York or London in 18^th century dress, who are mainly distinguished from their fellow Orthodox Jews by their large fur hats. Fur hats that may have been very useful in a Polish or Russian winter, but which one would think would be something of a burden in the summer in Jerusalem. Anyway, I mention this as it helped illuminate for me the passage we had this morning at Mattins from Nehemiah. There we heard how Ezra read the Book of the Law to the people – both men and women and all who could hear with understanding. When Ezra blessed the Lord, the great God, all the people answered Amen, Amen. Nehemiah and Ezra taught the people that when they heard the Law, they should not mourn or weep, because when they hear the Law, they should realise that the day is holy, and that the joy of the Lord is their strength.

In the anecdotes Buber recounts, God’s Law is always a source of joy. For the Hasidim, the Law is the presence of God in our world, it is part of the Shekinah, the divine radiance – the radiance which increases the more devoutly you follow the Law, the radiance that will eventually transfigure all of creation. It is an impressive spectacle even today among Hasidic Jews to see them celebrate this joy of the Lord – to see hundreds joyfully dancing around their rebbe while he holds the scrolls of the Torah, while they sing and cry in gratitude for God being with them. Of course, it is noticeable that you don’t see many or any women at these gatherings, as Hasidic Jews do have rather conservative attitudes towards gender roles, but I’ll let that pass. My point is that according to the Apostle Paul, we, the Body of Christ, are no longer living under the Law, but under grace. For us, it is supposed to be the case that the Shekinah, the divine radiance, has become fully present in Jesus as the Messiah. If those still awaiting the Messiah, those still under the Law, can show such joy in God, then perhaps those who believe he has come, should be rather more joyful than we are?

I acknowledge that I am not always the best example at doing Christian joy, but surely if the Church is to survive, if we are to be the Body of Christ, then we should not mourn or weep. We should celebrate all who are in the Church, recognising that those supposedly less honourable or less respectable may be its glory, despite what the wisdom of the world may be telling us. After all, what we have to say is a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Gentiles, as we are claiming that in us, in our relations between ourselves and our neighbours, the God of Israel, the God of Jesus of Nazareth can be truly present, reconciling us and the world to himself. It is perhaps absurd, and many in good conscience may not be able to believe us, but surely we should still be able to communicate that good news with joy. We should all, as the Body of Christ, be able to do something to witness to the world that it can still be a place of hope, that the love revealed in the Cross is stronger than death, and that is why we should not mourn or weep, because God is with us.

Matthew, Mark and Luke describe the Holy Spirit coming down on Jesus at his baptism. In the New Testament as a whole, the action of the Holy Spirit is an important element in baptism. In the 5 accounts of baptisms in the Acts of the Apostles, the spirit is always comes down, sometimes spontaneously from on high, or through the laying on of hands; in one case he comes down on everybody present, and in the curious case of the Ethiopian eunuch, Philip baptises him in the pond, but the Spirit comes down upon Philip, not the eunuch, and carries him off to Azotus. In all these stories the Spirit is at work, but the manner is unpredictable. The Holy Spirit is characterised by life and energy, spontaneous life, and containing an element of surprise.

There is a widespread enthusiasm for the Holy Spirit. Since the 1960s there has been enthusiasm for language about the Holy Spirit, who is seen as alive, vibrant, creative, and it is often said that what we need to do is open ourselves to this energy of the Holy Spirit. Even as the Church is declining, we carry on saying such things. And they need to be said – but what is new about this picture of the Holy Spirit since the 1960s is a notion that the Holy Spirit is at work where services and mission and Christian thinking are full of excitement, enthusiasm, and an energy that makes us feel joyful. It’s good that these things should have their place, but we can hype them in a way that misses something.

This kind of enthusiasm and vibrancy in worship is in fact only a door. We need to go through the door and into the room beyond to warm ourselves at a fire that is burning away in the fireplace. This is the hidden place where the profoundest work of the Holy Spirit goes on, and it manifests itself not so much in surface liveliness, as in something else. If you like, worship and activities and mission which are full of beans and excitement are like the icing on the Christmas cake – let’s have them, but we need too to dig in to the real fruit cake below. That is where we will find a more reliable sense of the exciting operation of the Holy Spirit. For instance, you could say, “what could be more exciting than the daily office?” – Mattins, Evensong, and the other offices where we quietly and diligently recite the Psalms. Some people might think I was joking. But you could compare it to furniture-making. You can get very nice fancy furniture easily knocked together and easily available on Amazon or in IKEA. A true craftsman or craftswoman’s furniture, however, will be different. Over a lifetime’s work they will have developed a sense of judgement. They can’t say where it has come from, and they have never been aware of it being imparted, but the years of experience leave them with a judgement about grains in the wood, types of wood, the kind of constructions that are possible and will last, and so on. And it comes from diligent perseverance and attention – sustained attention is important here. Spiritual maturity is given to us in a similar way to that judgement, through a persevering, diligent, trust in the practices of Christianity, such as the singing of the Psalms, and the daily hours of prayer, and the Eucharist.

One author takes as an example the bringing-up of children:

Imagine a family of five, two parents and three children – all love and care for one another, and any major event (when one falls and gets hurt, or when one wins a prize) any major event will mobilize all of them to help or support or praise … the member in question. But, in daily life there is often much pushing, screaming, grabbing of hairbrushes, not helping with the dinner or feeding the dog, and so on. The parents then decide that everyone has to treat each other with a bit more respect, more civility, more use of ‘please’ and ‘thank you’. Many of us have experienced this and know that it works – at least for a time, until the please and thank you begin to get lost. Ratcheting up the amount of love everyone feels, on the other hand, is not the way to make life more pleasant in the household. There is no need.

(A.B.Seligman, Ritual and its consequences, p.25)

They all love each other already. The author goes on to say that these small rituals of saying please and thank you are important for inculcating in children a sense of what is needed for good relating with others. From these formal practices they will go on to evolve for themselves more complicated ways of saying please and thank you, where a simple please or thank you would not be enough. They will develop a sense of judgement.

It’s not the point to try and stoke up more love; and it’s the same with the Holy Spirit in the church: it’s off the point to spend a lot of time getting excited about the Holy Spirit. We all know the Holy Spirit is exciting. The point, rather, is to take seriously the simple practices that build in us a rich grounding in the life of the Holy Spirit: daily prayer, the Eucharist, and the other practices through which we walk with God. In monastic life in the same way the many practices and conventions, great and small, inculcate in us over the years what it is to live our life together.

At Jesus’s baptism we can imagine a great hush that came over the crowd as Jesus appeared, and took of his robes and stepped soberly into what St Paul calls the waters of death, and as he submitted to John’s baptism of repentance, even though he had no need of it. In this serious act, and all that followed from it, there is something thrilling indeed.

    John 1.10-18          

‘HE CAME TO HIS OWN,  AND HIS OWN   DID NOT RECEIVE HIM.’

A week ago we celebrated Midnight Mass. After  we had received Holy Communion the priest took the tiny figure of the baby Jesus from the altar and carried it to the crib in the Resurrection Chapel at the east end of our church.   Everyone present followed singing ‘O come all ye faithful’.

When we arrived in the chapel we got quite a surprise because the crib was quite different from those in earlier years.   If you are watching on our Facebook link you will see the crib, which I will briefly describe.   The altar is covered with a dark cloth with large paper snowflakes on it.  On the floor in front is an orange dingy like the boats used by asylum seekers when crossing the Channel from France to England.  In the dingy are the figures of the Blessed Virgin Mary and St Joseph worshipping the Baby  Jesus lying in front of them.     

The dingy is on a blue cloth representing the sea.  You can see the sandy shore on the left and a pile of dark rocks indicating a dangerous coast. 

This is not a portrayal of a historical event.   Although St Matthew’s Gospel does describe an occasion when Jesus and his apostles were crossing the Lake of Galilee and were caught in a storm and nearly capsized.  But that is not the crib scene I described.

St Matthew’s Gospel does record  that after the wise men had brought their gifts to Jesus St Joseph was warned in a dream that the baby was in danger.  He was told to take the child and his mother Mary to Egypt and stay there until it was safe for them to return to Nazareth.  So they were asylum seekers and tradition holds that they were welcomed in Egypt.  It is likely that they travelled there on a donkey.   So why depict the Holy Family in a dingy?

It is a Christmas picture though we do not see any angels or shepherds or kings.  It is revealing a spiritual truth about the Incarnation of Jesus Christ.   Jesus was and still is the beloved son of God the Father.                                                     Though he was always God he became truly human, like us in all respects except sin, so that we might become like him and become the adopted children of God.

So this world is not our true home but we are aliens seeking our true home with God in heaven. In a sense we are all asylum seekers as was Jesus and the Holy Family. This is not a new doctrine.  It is a development of the doctrine of the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ.  We can recognize it in the old idea that the Church is a ship like Noah’s ark taking us safely through the stormy seas of this life to a safe harbour in heaven.   We live in a time when many, many people are on the move seeking safety from war, natural  disasters and poverty for a better home.  We are to recognize them as like God’s only Son Jesus Christ, who became incarnate to lead us to the promised land.

In the calendar of the Western church, the day after Christmas, has been celebrated in honour of the first martyr Stephen. Much has been made of how this feast together with those which follow shed light on the meaning of the Incarnation, something most certainly true but which is due just to happenstance.   The happenstance is fitting, for the reality of the matter is that the appearance of the binding for ever of human flesh to God, to the unknowable, to the unspeakable and unfathomable God, is not always welcome. Joy to the world, for the world, the chasm between our state and God is bridged, but from the beginning the response has been more than feckless, it has been murderous. Not simple disbelief, but fear and hate.

      Stephen who is he? He is a Greek Jew, one of the seven whom the church appointed to go out and to minister to the poor widows and to make known the good news of Jesus Christ; they were Aramaic and Hebrew speakers mainly, those chosen were a minority, ethnically and culturally. At least one was a convert. Stephen is a minority ethnic Jew. One might indeed say that what kick starts the mission of the church to the non-Jewish world, is indeed a witness, but equally the witness of one of an ethnic minority.

      Stephen’s mission arises out of a  disagreement; the minority feels slighted and the church responds by making amends for the slight and giving the seven, a high profile role. Stephen is full of the Spirit and his following the way of Christ, the signs and miracles he does, provoke his fellow Jews, also diaspora Jews.

      Stephen begins by doing things which are at home, looking after the widows; doing something which contributes to resolving a disagreement but which leads to a more exposed place. Stephen lets rip, yet though his opponents are angry, it is only when the heavens are opened and he says what he sees, that the hate of fear turns them into his killers. He sees

 the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. ⁵⁶ “Look,” he said, “I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God!”

          It is a pivotal moment; for Stephen announces human flesh bound to God, the Son of Man standing next to God, not seated, and next to the glory,  to the unknowable, to the unspeakable and unfathomable God. This is what provokes the others to murder. Stephen’s witness, before a Sanhedrin, like Jesus; full of the Spirit like Jesus; taken outside the city like Jesus; giving up his spirit and forgiving his killers, both like Jesus; is all geared to showing us what this new world of the incarnation does. It is not an imitation of Jesus though certainly a likeness and it puts into  action the form of Jesus; what happens when the needle meets the LP record and the music sounds, when the play is produced on a new stage, something already full of life, which shows it is not a one off. This is  divinity not to be grasped, ‘being found in human form, humbling himself’. Not revenge as called for by Zechariah son of Jehoiada, not even just retribution, but forgiveness is tendered, divine forgiveness bound to human humility.

Stephen’s vision   shows that what takes flesh of the Blessed Virgin Mary, most blessed be she, is at the heart of what it is to be God; full of grace and truth.  His death shows that the same love which gave birth and life to Jesus, is something which is not confined to a Christmas crib, long ago, but is to be repeated but differently, in all manner of diversity.

The love of God, the love which is uniquely and without limit in Jesus, that  sustains the life, witness and death of Stephen, it is a love which keeps him faithful to God; it is the love of his neighbour, fellow Jews which leads him to  communicate the truth about Jesus, a love which when it is rejected, forgives them their fear and hate.

A witness like Stephen – perhaps especially Stephen – may seem rather remote, something almost heroic; yet that is to ignore the journey which goes to make a witness to death. Given the disagreement out of which his profile arose, given his exposed status as minority ethnic it is not ridiculous to think of a final witness which would have been nothing had not over time Stephen coped with a fair number of knocks and shakes. He was not perfect – he gets things wrong and his speech is long, boy is it long. Those who face great trials – and many of our fellow Christians do – then as now, face them not as clear simplicities but as pettinesses, annoyances which grow and fall, the importunity of friends inflict on them creeping and incessant; they gradually come to believe that the world is not so wrong as some  say it is, and that it is possible to be over-strict and over-nice. This is not to gainsay the significance of death and forgiveness accepted at the end; but there can be few such witnesses which have not been the issue of dull tedious petulance, patiently endured.         Stephen is unique – a vision, a confession of the glory of the God- human, which is at great cost – but the way of witness is open to all who follow, often tedious, rarely to violent death, but something which is the length of life more often than a moment, a length full of grace and truth, no brief span, but something God has taken never to lay it by