Rev Hugh Perry

Readings

Isaiah 40:1-11

The voice that cries out in verse 3 is one from the heavenly council of divine beings mentioned in chapter 6.  Maurice Andrew says it is not a prophetic voice of someone in the wilderness that leads to the Christian application in introducing John the Baptist as ‘a voice crying in the wilderness’.  The wilderness is an allusion to Exodus and, in this case, is the way back from exile in Babylon.  The valleys being lifted up etc are lyrical metaphors for the way home from exile being made easy. ^[1]

Like all the prophetic writing this passage is about events at the time of writing but, just as Isaiah makes allusion to the Exodus wilderness, the gospel writers make allusion to the voice crying in the wilderness and, even though they read new meaning into it, that process is part of the genre of Hebrew sacred writing.

Mark 1: 1-8

Now we truly go to the beginning of Mark’s Gospel and our Advent preparation for the birth of Jesus in a sort of a walking backwards to Christmas.  In spite of what Maurice Andrew might think, the gospel writer is sure that John the Baptiser is ‘the one crying in the wilderness’ from our Isaiah passage and that is an important feature in his explanation of Jesus’ divine credentials.

Part of the traditional expectation of a messiah was the understanding that Elijah would return to earth to announce the arrival of the messiah.  Verse 6 describes John as clothed in a camel hair coat with a leather belt around his waist which is an allusion to the description of Elijah in the first chapter of 2 Kings (2 Kings 1:8) It is also worth noting that John the Baptist appears in Josephus’ Antiquities of the Jews (Ant.18:5:2) where his baptising activities are mentioned along with his popularity and his execution by Herod.^[2]  This reference gives an historical affirmation for John outside the gospels.

Sermon

Jeff Bell’s cartoon in The Press on 28^th of November the cartoonist quoted Napoleon Bonaparte saying, ‘If you wish to be a success in the world, promise everything, deliver nothing’.[3]

Regardless of who the cartoonist was lampooning, this was an interesting quotation at a time when Reading Cinemas were screening the film Napoleon here in Christchurch.  So, I turned to Mr Google to see if I could find a context for when Napoleon said that. After all, with my limited knowledge of European history I would not count Mr Bonaparte as totally successful.  Names like Trafalgar and Waterloo come to mind.

Sadly, although my brief search confirmed the quote as Napoleon’s, it did not give any context.  But one website also included a quote from someone most people would admire.  Apparently, Albert Einstein said:

‘Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value’.

That is indeed a statement in the world of humanities and theology to match E=mc² in the world of physics, the universe and everything.

I can think of a recent president of the United States who could well agree with Napoleon’s statement.  However, the recent death of Rosalynn Carter reminded me of the many pictures I have seen of her and her aging husband Jimmy Carter, in their post Whitehouse years, building houses for Habitat for Humanity.  Regardless of what President Carter achieved, or failed to achieve, as one of the most powerful men in the world, both him and Rosalynn were people who strived to live lives of value rather than what the world might see as a success.

Certainly the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize is a substantial measure of success but, putting on a builder’s bib and creating homes for the less fortunate is both of value and to some extent a voice crying in the wilderness.

In a world focused on economic growth those, who speak out for marginalised, are easily regarded as voices crying in the wilderness.

Those scholars who have commented on today’s readings have pointed out the allusion to the exodus saga in our Isaiah passage.  There is also a reference to the Isaiah passage in framing the story of John the Baptist.  Mark adds further allusion that describes John as an Elijah figure. Elijah would certainly fit the contemporary understanding of someone crying in the wilderness.  People who express an idea or opinion that is not popular like spending their retirement building homes for the homeless.

Greta Thunberg was certainly a voce crying in the wilderness and the future of the planet would appear to depend on more and more voices joining her.

But wilderness voices can and do bring change.  On the 1^st of December 1955 Rosa Parks refused to move to the back of the bus and by that action she became a voice crying in the wilderness.

After her death in 2005, the Rev. Jesse. Jackson wrote: ‘With quiet courage and non-negotiable dignity, Rosa Parks was an activist and a freedom fighter who transformed a nation and confirmed a notion that ordinary people can have an extraordinary effect on the world’. [4] Continue reading Sunday 10th December →

The dead city. Matthew 23. Proper 26A 2023

Rev Barbara Peddie

Sometimes there are readings set down in the Lectionary that I can’t easily find my way into. It happens most often with Matthew, and it happens to me particularly in the readings we get in these last months of the Church’s year. There are the parables where so many are left out – where is the Jesus who said: “All are welcome”. All! As we will say in a few minutes – all are welcome to the table.

So, I came to this Sunday wondering where I would go. I almost took the easy option of celebrating our saints. After all, we’re only 4 days out from that festival. And I have slipped some of them into the order of service anyway, because, after all, that’s the whole point of the saints of the church. They’re always with us, whether or not we recognise them. But at the same time, we’re living in a time where there’s war and disaster all round us. Today is the anniversary of Parihaka – a black day in the story of Aotearoa New Zealand. On November 11 this country sets apart remembers the dead from all the wars that have affected us. Our city has a Ukrainian community that is living through daily tragedies affecting the families here. All round the country people are protesting the war in Gaza. And at the same time, our young people are distraught about the disasters brought about by climate change. I very nearly decided that today we would have a Peace Sunday service. Except that prayers for peace must be part of our daily faith journey.

And, in the end, just because it’s important that we keep the candles burning every day, not just on the occasional Sunday, I went back to our reading from Matthew. But first, I went a little further afield. Who was Matthew writing to? What sort of community were they? They probably lived in Antioch, the third-largest city of the Roman Empire. The sociologist Robert Stark tells us that any accurate picture of Antioch in New Testament times “must depict a city filled with misery, danger, despair, fear and hatred; a city where the average family lived a squalid life in filthy and cramped quarters, where at least half the children died at birth or during infancy, and where most children who lived lost at least one parent”. Stark goes on to say that the city was filled “with hatred and fear rooted in intense ethnic antagonisms and exacerbated by a constant stream of strangers.” Antioch lacked stable networks, and was repeatedly smashed by disastrous catastrophes, which meant a “resident could expect to be homeless from time to time, providing he or she was among the survivors”.

I can think of more than one city in our time which would fit this description. Continue reading Sunday 3rd December →