WALKING TOWARDS THE GOD WHO IS WITH US

Malachi 3: 1-4            Philippians 1: 3-11        Luke 3: 1-6

Presented to Warners Bay Uniting Church, 8th December 2024 by Rev Dr Chris Budden

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I have an interest in what is known as Narrative Therapy. The assumption behind the therapy is that we all have a story – a narrative – that holds our explanation of the world; our account of how things are. These narratives hold what has been called the “architecture of our life” or the shape of the world in which we live.

 

Narrative therapy says that when we have a negative story of the world – because of a series of negative experiences – every new experience gets seen through that negative lens. How can that be changed?

 

But today I am less interested in how the therapy works than its foundation: we have a story, a set of images and metaphors that hold for us the meaning of existence.

 

Let me give you an example that comes from our faith tradition.

 

At the time of the Reformation the church imagined a world that was always in danger of disorder because of sin. The church’s responsibility was to administer the means of grace – baptism, eucharist, confession, absolution - that would both keep the world ordered, and offer forgiveness for the next life. There were a lot of things people needed to do to earn that forgiveness and promise of new life in heaven.

 

Martin Luther had a new way of imagining the world, in which God’s grace was not controlled by the church but was offered directly to people through faith. And because of that, people could live in ways that anticipated the kingdom, even if it was fulfilled after death.

 

There was another part of Luther’s view of the world, his story. He believed that God’s grace was also exercised through princes to control evil and disorder, and to help sustain the proper hierarchy between people. Or to put it another way, God kept people in their right place.

 

Luther believed that God’s grace could break into life in a limited way in the church, but mostly kingdom life was a future thing.

 

Most of us know that story in some form. The claims about the authority of scripture, the centrality of grace, and the need for holiness weave into our story. What we are usually less aware of was that there was a whole other social and religious movement at that time which imagined the world very differently.

 

People, a whole lot of ordinary people, believed that God’s grace could break into life; that divine life could come closer to our life. Christ was seen as the saviour, the healer, the nurturer, rather than the judge. People found meaning in the daily and earthy, and not simply the spiritual or heavenly. They stressed inclusiveness and equality in daily life. They looked at the world, and believed that God could break into life, and they could live in anticipation of the kingdom.[1]

 

Think about the conflict those three ways of imagining the world caused. The church opposed Luther for undermining its authority, and for the dangerous claim that life was controlled by grace as God’s free gift.

 

And Luther opposed the people because they actually dared to believe that they could live the promises of Jesus now. They said the world should not be hierarchically ordered; all people are equal before God. Everyone should have a voice, and everyone should control their labour, their families, their place and voice in the church, and have a say in the shape of the community. Because this reflected God’s kingdom.

 

I wonder what story you hold and how you imagine the world? Which bits of the three stories do you hold? In your imagining, what place is there for God’s kingdom to break into the world?

 

This, you see, is what I think the Advent season is about. It is a challenge to us to imagine a different world; to believe that God’s grace not only entered the world in Jesus, but can keep breaking into the lives of those who journey with him.

 

Malachi wrote to people deeply broken, and living in a community where they were exploited, and where religious leaders betrayed their trust. They found it hard to imagine a world in which hope existed.

 

So, Malachi offered them another story, another way of seeing the world. The prophet offers them a vision of the faithfulness of God who will send someone to restore true worship and the covenant. Those who designed the

Lectionary have suggested to us that this promise is starting to be fulfilled in the ministry of John the Baptiser.

 

Luke starts the story of John by setting John’s ministry in the context of the reign of the Emperor Tiberius, the governorship of Pontius Pilate in Galilee and his brother Philip in nearby regions, and when Annas and Ciaphas were high priests.

 

These are not just historical markers, an attempt to locate John in real history. These are social and political markers; they speak of the messenger of God coming at a time of great suffering, economic hardship, and religious exclusion of ordinary people. They are markers of the dominant story, and dominant way of imagining the world.

 

One of the first steps in oppressing people – whether through the abuse of individuals or control of whole communities – is to so tie people up in the details of survival that they cannot see what is going on

 

John speaks to a people who cannot see the big picture, and who cannot imagine another sort of life. And he speaks to them of the Messiah who offers life.

 

Yes, John calls for repentance, but he offers a baptism that is a sign of being washed clean and acceptable to God. And he says that in the one who is to come everyone – everyone - will see the salvation of God. Not, notice, the judgement of God. The salvation of God.

 

The most difficult thing for people in the struggle to survive, is to imagine a different world: a world in which they are loved and cared for, and are not to be blamed for all the forces that smash up life.

 

What we need to remember, what Advent says to us, is that we and everyone are loved so deeply that we can find new ways to live; that there is a divine love that can transform our lives. We need to know that we and those we love really can have a chance to see the salvation offered by God. We need to know that the past will not burden us in ways that deny our ability to live now.

 

This is what Advent tells us. This is what we discover in this journey to the incarnation. This is what we are asked to imagine, and accept as the structure of our life.

 

The Messiah – Jesus – so embodies the rich and unexpected grace of God, the deep love of the persons of the triune community that is God – that it is not only possible to imagine new life, it is possible to live it now.

 

Yes, that life will be risky, and at times difficult. It will be hard to resist the feeling that it would be easier to live the ways of the world, and its sense of reality. It will not always be easy to see where God’s grace is actually breaking into the world.

 

But that is why you exist. To see God’s life in the world; and to help each other live that life.

 

So here is the promise and challenge of Advent. How does the story of the birth of Jesus shape how we see the presence and love of God in our lives? Can we imagine that the story of Jesus actually does change our life, and God’s grace is not just for the future but now? Can the story of God’s presence among us in Jesus teach us the steps of a new dance through life?

 

Here is the social world we are meant to imagine and live in. It is a world shaped by grace and deep love, of welcome and homecoming, and of inclusion and not exclusion. Jesus is not some sort of insurance policy against judgement, but the one who invites us into the presence of God where we discover that it is possible – if we have the courage to imagine and trust – to live in anticipation of the kingdom.

 

Right now – equality, grace, inclusion, welcoming love. Right now, because as shocking as it might be to us, God’s grace extends to all people. We do not deserve God’s love more than others. It is a gift. Church is not just a sanctuary, but a light to the world.

 

May the Spirit transform your imagination, help you to see and live by grace, and be a light that shows people the messiah.

 

[1] See, for example, Peter Matheson, The Imaginative World of the Reformation Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001), 7.