Isaiah 61: 1-4, 8-11.
1 Thessalonians 5: 16-24.
John 1:6-8, 19-28.
Poverty, hunger, lack of education, harmony, peace.
Now the hard part, what can we, as Christians, do to bring about that change?
Or do we prefer to keep things as they are?
The reading from John highlights change that faced the Jewish people. The scribes and the Pharisees were the leaders of God’s Chosen People. They thought of God as “tied down” by contract and convenant. They would interpret God’s laws and make the people obey them. In return God would look after his people and especially them…..the scribes and the Pharisees. If anyone who wasn’t Jewish wanted to share these blessings, they could join God’s people by washing away the guilt of their pagan sins and their false pagan beliefs in what was called the Baptism of Converts.
But then John comes along. He comes out of the wilderness and tells the ordinary people that everyone is to be baptized. Jews must ditch their traditions and put themselves in the same position as the pagan convert. A clean start was needed; from everyone, People, Scribes, Pharisees, everyone.
Even today, baptism marks a clean start. A new beginning and a willingness to start again from scratch, if need be over and over and over again. Jesus continued the revolutionary approach to religion when he developed John’s teaching about baptism and called it new birth. You cannot put new wine into old wine-skins, you cannot put a new patch on to an old garment. Change is always needed.
Yet whenever change is mentioned in church contexts people always take extreme positions. There are those whose immediate accusation that even a minor alteration is “Change for Change sake”.
There are those who see Change and decay in all around. I see and they imagine that the two words are synonymous. But they are not. People are reluctant to change. It is cosy in our familiar rut and deep down we are afraid of what change might bring. And the teaching of John and Jesus gets watered down. We get baptised …but do very little about changing our selfish lifestyle. We follow the rules, jump through the right hoops and pray God will be on our side.
St Chad’s is facing change. We have joined with St Peter’s Maney and Holy Trinity Churches to form a group which is known as the Sutton Coldfield Group Ministry . It means that the cluster arrangement between the three churches has not a more formal footing. It means that we will speak as one voice with the power of three congregations when we meet with secular authorities and it means that we will continue getting to know each other better through pulpit swaps and joint services. It also means that each church will maintain its own individuality, its own way of doing things and its own vicar. So when I leave, you will get a vicar to replace me, not an associate vicar or a priest in charge, but your own vicar.
Change can be disturbing, but sensitively handled and with the support of people who want to see growth; it can be quite liberating. Change is like dying: dying to the old ways and dying to the past, but like dying, change leads to new life. Changing to a new way of living; a life modelled on that of Jesus is like the sun breaking through the clouds. Old habits die hard but once you have discarded them, you feel as though life has just begun.
Like Jesus you are unselfish in service to the poor and needy; you sacrifice your own comfort to bring comfort to others and you share with others the joy of knowing that God loves you, not because you deserve it, but because that’s how God is.
So dying to the old life means rising to the new. Resurrection is not just something we wait for till we have died, it is something we enjoy here and now- a new quality of life.
The Advent message of the coming of Christ is a joyful song, because the birth of Jesus leads us, through dying to the old ways, into joyful life, now and into eternity. Dying to the old means rising to the new. Changing to an unselfish way of living is uncomfortable but to quote that TV advert, You’re worth it.
Edwina Wallace Vicar of St. Chad’s.