SERMON FOR CHRISM EUCHARIST

ON

THURSDAY 9^TH APRIL 2009

AT 11.OO AM

                                             Readings: Isaiah    61 : 1-4

Matthew 2 : 1-15 

One of the preacher’s nightmares is to  listen to the wrong gospel being read out.  It’s happened to me a couple of times, and there’s not much you can do, even if you want to strangle the person concerned, who may only be reading the right verses in the right chapter  but – very thoughtfully! – from the wrong Evangelist.  Now, you may think that this is exactly what has happened this morning, and you may still think so when I’ve finished what I’m going to say!  But bear with me, and let’s see what emerges.

The wise men - ‘the magi’ – coming from the east with their gifts for the newborn Christ is a scene that has been picked over by artists, archaeologists, playwrights, poets, musicians and preachers for centuries; and I’ve no doubt that will always continue to be the case. Were they philosopher-magicians from Southern Arabia, travelling along the incense trade route? Or did they come from further afield, somewhere mysterious and distant?  Were there only three of them, to correspond with the gifts, or were they part of a larger group, a kind of travelling team?  All those speculations only emphasise the religious and geographical distance between them and the birth of this Jewish boy, Jesus.  Matthew, the most Jewish of the gospel writers, is sounding the note, right at the beginning, that this new way of looking at life is for everyone.  It is not just for the in-crowd, who are familiar with the language and the culture, as well as the semaphore signals that we flash at each other to show that we’re somehow in the know and others are not. 

The story of the magi is, therefore, about the abolition of boundaries, and boundaries (as we all know) are props that we depend on far more than we  admit, whether we are organising a kitchen, or an office, a family trip, or even a local Church, for that matter.  The magi scene is in reality very unexpected, however familiar the story has become through its association with Christmas.    This Chrism Eucharist is also about setting aside boundaries; and dealing with things in an unfamiliar way  by inserting  the blessing of those oils (as we shall do shortly) and by recommitting ourselves to different forms of Christian ministry, ordained and unordained (as we shall do at the end).  We are abandoning familiar routines, in order to re-emphasise – through these two interruptions - that the work of the gospel looks outwards, not inwards.  It looks outwards to a world (not just a Church) desperately in need of healing;  to new Christians who will not just repeat what we tell them, but  will challenge us and become a new generation of disciples in very uncertain times.   And we are called to a whole cluster of ministries which are not about yet more pieces of paper and meetings, but about finding points of contact in the today’s world, where lively but often inarticulate spiritual awareness lives side by side with strident voices that want to write us off as living a dangerous delusion – which was, of course, King Herod’s final verdict on the whole scenario.

So this is all very public, and potentially costly.  But  the trouble with the Church is that we have a genius for domesticating everything – as the curious history of this service through the ages has shown, with archaic features that I remember seeing as a student but which have fortunately been discarded.  Those oils and our commitment to ministry are meant to be as public as the journey of the magi from their mysterious and distant point of departure.  The magi do not arrive  at the end of an Epiphany procession, behind cross and candles, or with a powerpoint projector to teach Mary, Joseph and Jesus some up to date worship songs!  This journey takes them up a side-road, to Bethlehem, the ‘house of bread’.  So far, so very unlikely, at least on the surface. 

But it is those gifts – the gold, the frankincense and the myrrh – that keep coming back to illuminate our very public journey of faith. Those three gifts provide a key to how we can understand our faith and our world.  And they only function properly when they are held together,  in a  creative tension where each needs the other to form a vision of the kingdom of heaven.

You can’t live by gold alone – for that leads to the kind of economic crisis that we’re experiencing at the moment, which is the responsibility not only of bankers, and the politicians who encouraged their games, but our whole western way of life.  You can’t live by frankincense alone – even though that is  what an anxious and self-interested Church sometimes appears to prefer: come and escape, we seem to say, into our religious club, and forget about everyone else.  And you can’t live by myrrh alone – because the poor and the marginalised and the enslaved need the gold of wealth and the frankincense of worship to be mutually given and shared before the world can become a more  righteous place. 

King Herod – and his modern equivalents – will always stand in open criticism and judgement over what we’re trying to be about, sometimes even to the point of violent reprisal.   But what of our fragile, tinpot travelling road-show the Church? Well, it will probably have to learn to travel a lot more lightly, a lot more generously,  and a lot more prayerfully. Only that way can God speak to us through the crises of our age. For we are called to live both in a kind of  exile in Egypt, and at the same time striving faithfully for the Promised Land of love and joy and peace.  God’s road-show will go on. And it is in order to continue that journey together that we commit ourselves once again today.