Dangers of the spirit world highlighted

We have wandered away from our spiritual traditions and forgotten the lessons from millennia of experience. Though we may have left behind the supernatural, it has not left us behind. Religion used to provide answers and rituals to help us understand the things we cannot understand with only our wits and our senses. Now, increasingly, we search for answers in ways previous generations knew to be dangerous, and so we play with spiritual forces we do not understand and cannot control.

… [O]ur society no longer teaches these rules, but often celebrates breaking them. The problem with that is simply this: God is real, and the rules have not changed. Evil spirits work personally to tempt us into sin and collectively to normalize sin in society. Their goal is to coax us away from God and into a subservient relationship with them. They play nice in the beginning, but when they have a hold on us, they turn cruel and controlling. They strive to isolate us and drive us to despair — or sometimes possession.

These words of warning are from The Exorcism Files, by Adam Blai, a Catholic layman, psychologist, and consultant to the Diocese of Pittsburgh on exorcism. Here’s a link to a page on his website that gives the “basics” of what the layperson needs to know about the devil and his work. "Blai tells you what to stay away from, and warns very strongly against messing with any of it. It’s very helpful, and ought to sober anybody tempted to dabble in witchcraft, divination, psychic consultation, or any form of the occult."

People in our era who follow the herd to abandon established religion to go their own way spiritually, put their lives and souls n a precarious predicament. The latest such case arises in an article on the rapid rise in the followers of shamanism in England and Wales. The danger lies in this:

Shamanism is not a unified field of work. Nor is it organised under any regulating body. The title of “shaman” is not protected or even well defined. As a participant, you must carefully consider who you approach to work with, as the standards from origin cultures may not have transferred over.

Western practitioners do not always fully adopt the shamanic ethics needed to practise safely. This can mean clients may be left with information and experiences they do not fully understand or know how to work with.

Evgenia Fotiou, an academic who has studied the globalisation of shamanism and the erasure of indigenous practices, warns that:

Westerners see no conflict in the appropriation of indigenous knowledge. They believe it is universal and everyone has the right to it … It is rare that westerners will make the necessary sacrifices and adjustments in their lifestyle to fully follow that path.

Contemporary practitioners must examine their motivation to work in this way and break out of exploitative and romantic views of indigenous peoples. It can take a long time to train and develop your work without stepping into cultural appropriation.

There’s also a risk that people with possible mental health issues such as substance use disorder or psychosis might see shamanism as a way to explain and justify their behaviour or symptoms (such as drug taking, delusions or dissociative states) as spiritual experience, and so not seek conventional treatment.

Though "shamanism has been linked with both empowerment and a greater sense of community, as well as a stronger connection with the Earth",  the key takeaway is that it is path to exploitation of others, as well as to predation by the demonic spirits as individuals do their own thing away from structures that preserve the well-being of all involved by the provision of ancient standards.

For more on Blai's findings from his experience in contending with the demonic world, go to this video:

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Incarnation: The unity of divinity and dust

Detail from Georges de la Tour's Adoration of the Shepherds (1644)

 Let’s start with an easy question: What is the Incarnation?

— Well, I’m not sure it is such an easy one. First of all, it is an impossible paradox, because it is the account of the union of two incommensurate entities: the uncreated being of God and our being of dust. The great Christian wonder is that mysterious union. […] We need to remember that in becoming flesh, the Word didn’t simply occupy one human body as a guest for 33 years. Human nature as such ⁠— that is, flesh ⁠— was invested with a potential for divinity. And so being a human being in the wake of the Incarnation isn’t the same as being a human being before the Incarnation, whether or not one believes in Christ and whether one even knows that Christ ever walked on this Earth. We like to talk about things being ‘systemic’ these days, and something systemic happened to human flesh through the Incarnation that opened it to transcendence and to eternity.

Ω From an interview with Erik Varden, a Norwegian bishop and Trappist monk. Read the splendid interview in full here. See Varden's own spiritual writing here.

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'Each of us is willed ... necessary'

“We are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution. Each of us is the result of a thought of God. Each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary.”

Pope Benedict XVI, Homily, St. Peter’s Square, April 25, 2005 

God and the reason for existence

Love made plain through action. Photo: Thomas Leuthard PxHere

Samuel Wells again* puts his finger on the pulse of our times in this edited version of a sermon preached at St. Martin-in-the-Fields on Christmas Eve just past:

The first sentence of perhaps the most important story ever written is this: “In the beginning was the Word” (John 1:1). This sentence is itself a nod to the first sentence in the Bible, which starts, “When all things began …” (Genesis 1:1). But it’s saying something more profound than that earlier sentence. It’s saying communication — the desire to share and relate, the urge to engage and listen and receive and open up — is at the very core of all things; indeed, it is the reason for the creation of all things: “The Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

In other words, the essence that created existence, the forever that conceived of time, the everywhere that brought about here is, at its very heart, about communication — nonviolent communication, partnership, relationship, togetherness. In fact, that’s the purpose of existence: to communicate fully with one another and to communicate back with God. There’s nothing more important than that.

But here we run into two problems. The first is, not all communication is healthy — some words are hurtful, cruel, and destructive. (This was true even before the invention of Twitter.) The second is, words are sometimes only words. Words aren’t always rooted in feelings, actions, or integrity: sometimes words can be so far from actuality they might just as well be called lies.

In 1990 the rock band Extreme released a ballad that struck a chord with many people whose partners were quick with the terms of endearment, but whose way of showing it made those words empty. “Saying ‘I love you’,” goes the song, “Is not the words I want to hear from you … More than words is all you have to do to make it real. Then you wouldn't have to say that you love me —’cause I’d already know.” Rock ballads don’t get more searing than that.

Listen, with lyrics, here

Now I don’t know anything about the religious persuasion of the members of Extreme, but I wonder if they’ve realised, all the thousands of times they’ve been called upon to sing their most famous song these last thirty years, that they are perfectly expressing the heart of what Christmas is all about.

Communication is at the heart of all things, because the real big bang that started this whole thing off was God’s decision to be in relationship — for the persons of the Trinity to communicate as fully beyond themselves as they do with each other. Humanity is the purpose of creation, because humanity is the partner with whom God can be fully in relationship. But it turns out humanity finds ways to twist communication from its created purpose as the texture of relationship to a sinister parody of relationship in cruelty, and the outright undermining of relationship in lies.

There’s no Virginia Axline to come alongside wounded, fearful, and withdrawn humanity and create trust through patience and understanding. Many prophets offer words; many brave souls offer example. But collectively, humanity’s response to God embodies the words of that song: “More than words is all you have to do to make it real …”

The most important sentence ever written

Which brings us to the most significant sentence in the Bible, and I would suggest the most important sentence ever written. A sentence about communication, and how communication turns into trust and relationship. Fourteen verses into that same story I referred to earlier, a story known as John’s gospel, we find these priceless, peerless, perfect words: “And the Word became flesh, and lived among us.”

Here lies the fulfilment of the whole reason for the existence of all things. Everything that happened before this moment is backdrop and preparation. Everything that has happened since has been echo and embedding. This is the central moment, in which God’s original desire to be with us becomes more than words.

Jesus appears, fully human — born of a human mother in pretty desperate, shoddy, forsaken, neglected, rough, and inhospitable conditions. Let’s just say the ox wasn’t too particular where it went to the bathroom and the ass wasn’t too fussed about where it brought up last night’s fodder.

But Jesus is also fully divine, for the heavens ring with the song of angels and a star guides the Magi to the place of his birth. Jesus is the perfect communication of God to us, more than words, making it real, and Jesus is the perfect communication of us to God, how easy it can be to show God how we feel.

The whole of Jesus’s life is like Virginia Axline’s year with young Dibs. Jesus is creating an environment for us where we can live beyond cruelty and lies, and finally find ways to dwell beyond violence in patience, understanding and trust. He is in search of our self, listening, not judging, offering open enquiry not closed questions, inviting us to wonder and discover and allowing us to find our own solutions at our own pace. Jesus is the Word of God that offers us the epitome of communication, through which we may find a relationship that lasts forever.

Yet there’s no naïveté in Christmas. There is simplicity, and a degree of innocence — but no naïveté. Because we all know that cruelty and lies enter Christ’s story soon enough. They’re there in Herod’s court when the Magi go to Jerusalem by mistake and they’re there when Herod sends soldiers to kill all the young children in Bethlehem. And they catch up with Jesus in the end, when his communication meets the world’s violence, and for a moment violence prevails.

But the light of communication and relationship shines in the darkness of violence, and promises that, if we can only find time and patience, we will eventually see trust and relationship emerge from even the most violent of our failures to find words.

This is the wonder of Christmas: The Word becomes more than words. And inspires us to let the Holy Spirit of patience and tenderness turn our own violent frustration and anger into relationship and trust, and eventually to let those words become flesh, in embodied gestures and commitments of solidarity and love.

It’s because the Word became flesh, because God came among us to embody utter relationship with us, because God has faced the worst of our cruelty and lies, because God has shown us, because God has made it real, that we gather on Christmas Eve, with stars so brightly shining, and say to God, boldly, bravely, gladly: “You don’t have to say that you love us — ’cause we already know.”

Ω Rev. Dr Samuel Wells is the vicar of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, Trafalgar Square, and Visiting Professor of Christian Ethics at King’s College London. 

* Previously posted on this blog:

    The twin dimensions of Christmas

    The logic of God gleams at Christmas

Ω Read the sermon in full here

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Trans as "a liberating, cool, edgy thing"

 File photo from PxHere

A mother of a teenager who is eager to take on a male identity speaks from experience of the pressure young people succumb to because of the cultural influence of promoters of  gender ideology, namely the Western education systems, social networks and news media. This from a site that has earned its credentials as being trustworthy:

In today’s culture, being “trans” is considered by many a very liberating, cool, edgy thing. We know people are (I hate these terms, but they are becoming part of the lexicon) “love-bombed” when they come out as “trans,” and are seen as brave, strong individuals. Further, many young girls fear what being a woman means ‒ how they may be sexualized, how they won’t be successful if they aren’t gorgeous, etc., and some boys fear what expressing their natural sexual desires will turn them into (monsters is what they may think, thanks to an overly enthusiastic “me too” movement that went way beyond exposing corrupt, vial practices of men like Harvey Weinstein, making many young men feel embarrassed simply for feeling strong attractions for women). Many effeminate gay males and butch lesbians still don’t feel very accepted in society. By instead being “trans,” they resolve their gender non-conformity by claiming to be the opposite sex, and have the bonus of getting oppression points (very useful for upper-middle class white kids!).

They are fed the notions that the medical changes associated with transition are safe, relatively painless, and necessary in order to prevent them from committing suicide and, as noted above, for them to be their “true selves.” They are told they will be truly happy only once they medically transition.

To question these notions is to be a bigot, so everyone who does bring up questions about the medical treatments is sloughed off as a transphobic moron, assuming they are allowed to speak at all. Parents like me are considered bigots (my daughter has used this word), transphobic (she has also used this word), and just plain ignorant. (My daughter has used much worse terms, but why get ugly?)

With all these messages about being “trans,” and so many more that I’m not mentioning, it is no wonder so many young people are flocking to it. And are these young people ‒ many of whom are on the autism spectrum, have suffered abuse, are overly sensitive, are gay/lesbian or very gender non-conforming, have anxiety and depression or other mental illnesses, or are just plain vulnerable ‒ really able to consent to these medical treatments when they are fed so much mis-information, and when they are not mature enough to understand the real, permanent consequences of these treatments?

Frankly, I see the medical transition of teens and vulnerable young adults as not only analogous to foot-binding and genital mutilation, but actually worse in many ways. At least the foot-bound and/or genitally mutilated girls did not have to pretend to be something they are not. Further, foot-binding and genital mutilation do not cause sterility, and only cause lack of function in the specific area in question (the feet or the genitals, respectively), rather than total dysfunction of the genitals combined with a host of other medical issues, on top of the mental gymnastics of pretending to be the opposite sex and putting energy toward “passing” as such.

True informed consent can only be given by a mature, mentally stable person who is provided with accurate information about the procedures to be done. This includes the medical necessity of the procedures, the potential side effects, and alternative, less invasive treatments (or non-treatments as the case may be) that may adequately alleviate their perceived suffering.

I don’t think any young person today can possibly consent to the medical treatments associated with transition because, even if they were mature enough to understand all the ramifications of transition ‒ which they are not  ‒ they are being fed so much misinformation, by their schools and universities, by the Government, by large corporations, by the medical community and therapists, by both social media and mainstream media, and by their friends and neighbors, such that they cannot possibly have the information necessary to give truly informed consent. Therefore, we as a society should be ashamed for pushing these medical treatments on to young people. 

US: A mother, teacher describes her child being indoctrinated, encouraged to transition in high school. https://t.co/eEIKRDNzNO

— Genspect (@genspect) December 29, 2022

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The twin dimensions of Christmas

Photo at PxHere

To understand the Christmas story, we need to grasp two dimensions that are apparently contradictory but which, on closer scrutiny, are both showing us the same thing. The first is what we could call the wide-angle version; the second, the close-up picture. 

Let’s start with the wide angle, says the Rev Dr Samuel Wells, in a Christmas sermon. He is the vicar of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, Trafalgar Square, London, and Visiting Professor of Christian Ethics at King’s College London.

The universe is impossibly large to imagine, stretching to trillions of stars; and who knows if there are plenty other universes beyond this one. But that which lasts forever, which we know as “God”, seems to have a particular interest in this tiny planet in this obscure galaxy. It seems useless to speculate why this planet, in this galaxy, in this universe; the point is, that which lasts forever seems to have so ordered things as to be in relationship with one part of creation — in short, us.

The whole epic magnitude of existence has come about in order for God to be among us as one of us and to be our companion and dwell with us. That’s the wide-angle version of Christmas. It answers the perennial question, “What’s the meaning of life?” The answer is, the meaning of life is for God to be in relationship with us and for us to reflect the joy and glory of that relationship by relating to one another and the wider creation in the same way. That’s the meaning of Christmas — the wide-angle version.

And so to the close-up picture. The three accounts of the coming of Christ, in Matthew, Luke, and John’s Gospels, are significantly different from one another. But they all agree on one thing. Matthew talks about a man called Joseph who discovers his fiancée is expecting a baby and is told by an angel that the Holy Spirit has brought this about. Luke sees it from Mary’s point of view, and locates the conversation in Nazareth. Luke adds the story about the census, and there being no room at the inn, and tells us about the shepherds and angels. John misses out the personal detail and describes how the animating force in the universe became a human being, but, interestingly, he adds this sentence, which we seldom talk about at Christmas but seems to me very significant: “He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him.”

What these three contrasting accounts have in common is that the entry of the creator of all things into the human drama didn’t happen in the way we might expect. It happened in an obscure backwater of the Roman Empire. It the happened to an ordinary woman and a bewildered man with no social prominence. It happened in a shed. It was witnessed by lowly herdsmen.

I discovered what God was up to some while ago when I got to know a woman and a man who told me they wanted to get married. It was a difficult situation. The man had been married before, and for a long time had been partly estranged from his wife. The woman was much younger than the man, and from the very start of their relationship felt she had to tiptoe around her family, because it was clear they didn’t approve.

To be fair, she’d spent her whole life tiptoeing, because her family had been a scene of constant wrangling and great pain almost since she’d been born, and she couldn’t see why her finally finding happiness was taken so badly by a group of people, many of whom it seemed had never found the way to any happiness of their own. But then she became pregnant, and those who disapproved, or took offence, or just couldn’t bear the idea of someone in the family being happy, all decided this was the moment to say the whole thing was terrible, and everyone should be ashamed, and ask what did they think they were doing? But they all turned up to the wedding, and when the bride walked down the aisle, her elegant simplicity, her utterly unpretentious grace, took the wind out of the whole congregation, and all misgivings were set aside for the day.

Two months later, she gave birth. And she wrote to me and said, “You’ll never guess what’s happened. My family has been visiting and have been very kind to everyone including my husband. It’s as if this tiny child heals something inside them when they are with him, and their troubles vastly reduce or disappear around him. It made me think of the wonder of God. This little baby has achieved what my husband and I tried to achieve and couldn't over many years. And so effortlessly!” Those were her exact words.

It was one of the most moving messages I’ve ever received. And not just because this new child had changed the whole dynamic of two troubled families. But because in seventy words, this new mother had shown me what God is doing in coming among us as a baby. God is doing just what this baby was doing: something no argument, no loud voice, no lit-up sky, no heavenly vision could achieve. It’s called a dismantling of the heart. A disarming of resistance.

God comes to us at Christmas — not to blast us into submission, not to make us guilty for what we’ve got wrong, not to stir us to take up cudgels in the latest battle. God comes to us under the radar. God surprises us by appearing as a tiny baby. It’s a high-risk strategy. It’s such a vulnerable way to come among us. But it shows us unmistakeably, irrevocably, eternally, who God is and what kind of relationship God wants to have with us.

God doesn’t want us to worry about the wide-angle story our imaginations can’t encompass anyway. God says, “Receive me as you receive this tiny child. Allow me to dismantle centuries of enmity, heal decades of hurt, transform depths of antagonism. Be mesmerised by me the way you’re captivated by a tiny baby. Let me melt your heart."

❒ Rev. Dr Samuel Wells  

❒ Sermon source here 

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The logic of God gleams at Christmas

Photo by PxHere

Matthew's gospel says the birth of  Jesus isn’t just one of myriad consequences of the original Big Bang. On the contrary, the conception and birth of this particular baby is the single event around which every other event in the universe clusters. That's the theme the Rev Dr Samuel Wells* explores in a sermon preached at St Martin-in-the-Fields, London, just before Christmas this year.

In delving into Matthew 1:18-25 (see in full below), Wells relates an experience of 30 years before:

Just as I was beginning studying for a PhD, I sat next to a very fervent Christian at a wedding reception. ... [M]y neighbour asked me, besides being a priest, what I was involved in. I said, ‘I’m doing a PhD in theology.’ ‘Oh,’ he replied, ‘I don’t bother with theology. The Bible’s always been enough for me.’

There’s few things more deflating than to run into a self-assured lack of curiosity, mixed with an air of superiority and condescension, all dressed up in the language of being a simple creature, free from the self-imposed complexities that beleaguer others. I can’t deny I wondered for a moment if doing a PhD in theology was a waste of time. But 30 years later, I realise the response I might have done well to give to that affectedly humble smugness dressed up as piety. I should have talked to him about today’s gospel reading from the back end of Matthew chapter 1. 

Why? Because what I want to show this morning is how this passage opens up pretty much every door in the conventional theological textbook. It’s a whole manual of doctrine on its own. Let’s walk through these few verses and see the entire theological panorama come to life.

Straightaway we have a fascinating word. Birth isn’t a notable word in English, until you realise the Greek word it’s translating is genesis. This is a huge theological claim. Matthew’s saying the conception and birth of Jesus are a more significant moment than the creation described in the book of Genesis. He’s saying, this is the real beginning, for which the creation of the universe was just preparation. We’re used to thinking of the Big Bang and the cosmology that outlines the first few seconds at the start of the universe. And probably most of us have wondered at what feels like the miracle of conception and the growth of a baby in its mother’s womb and the agonising yet fabulous process of being born. Matthew’s saying the birth of this particular baby isn’t just one of myriad consequences of the original Big Bang. On the contrary, the conception and birth of this particular baby is the single event around which every other event in the universe clusters. That’s mind-blowing; and yet we’re only five words into this passage.

After starting with creation, the second big theological theme we move to is Israel. We’re quickly in the company of two Jews, Mary and Joseph, seeking to live faithful lives according to the covenant God made with Moses. The significance of Israel in theology is that almost from the very beginning our understanding of God is one of the essence of eternity being eager to be involved in the ordinariness of human affairs – in this case, the traditions of betrothal and marriage. Interestingly the Old Testament also begins with creation and Israel, the call of Abraham to be the father of God’s people coming only a few chapters after the two portrayals of the creation of all things. Matthew’s emphasising that you can’t talk about God without talking about God’s chosen people, the children of Abraham, and without talking about very earthy and ordinary human relationships in which the life of God is embedded.

Only when we’ve located ourselves in such a way do we get the first reference to God. We’re still in the same opening verse, and we’ve covered a lot of territory: now we stumble upon the Holy Spirit. This tells us two things at the same time. First, there’s something beyond our experience and beyond our existence that’s above, beyond, outside or within that existence. I call it essence – that which lasts forever, in contrast to existence, which lasts a limited time. How that essence relates to existence in general terms is a mystery, although we assume essence was responsible for creation.

But this is the point – the Bible isn’t much interested in God in general terms. The Bible’s interested in God in relational terms – a God who’s invested in Abraham, Moses, David and Elijah; in Sarah, Deborah, Ruth and Esther. And the discovery that’s veiled in the Old Testament, yet clear in the New, is that essence is relational within itself – it’s inherently made up of communicative encounter between Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Any relation we have to God is a joining in the relation already taking place within God. God is relationship. The Holy Spirit is the name for the way God extends relationship to us, by making Christ present to us, and how God turns that relationship into abundant life, here and everywhere.

But let’s not get carried away with God. This is a very human story. We trust the Bible to tell us about God because it’s so acute at telling us about humanity. Joseph’s plunged into a moral, social and relational crisis. Mary’s pregnant and he’s not the father. His duties as a faithful Jew mean he should publicly humiliate her. His dignity as a child of God mean he has no desire to do so. Here we land in our fourth aspect of theology, after creation, Israel, and God. That aspect is ethics. Ethics is about how we live in the light of God’s grace. Joseph’s depicted as a man torn between justice and mercy. That’s territory in which ethics often dwells. It turns out the one to blame is the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit’s merciful action blows apart our notion of justice. As so often.

Then we get the appearance of an angel – which is how this passage portrays the irruption of God’s essence into our existence. It sets up the experience of a dream as a liminal space between God’s reality and ours. And the two significant aspects of theology that arise here are providence and vocation. Providence is a theological theme many people struggle with. It’s about how God’s purpose is being worked out as year succeeds to year. People struggle with it because it’s hard to see how God’s purpose can possibly be worked out through holocaust or tsunami. 

People also feel nauseated when an individual or nation arrogantly assumes the mantle of the bearer of God’s destiny. But the Bible’s full of moments like this when God’s purpose is visible despite adverse circumstances. Likewise vocation. Vocation is our discovery of the unique part we are called to play in God’s story. Joseph literally overnight goes from a bewildered critic or silent victim of God’s mysterious ways to a crucial agent in advancing God’s story. We do the same. ‘Do not be afraid,’ says the angel. ‘Do not be afraid,’ says the Holy Spirit to us today, when we’re called to take up our part in that story.

We’ve seen six great theological themes at work; but we’re only half-way there. The child’s name is Jesus. This introduces two more dimensions of theology. One is the notion of the kingdom, or realm, of God. Jesus is the Greek form of the Hebrew name Joshua, and Joshua was the one who took possession of the Promised Land. As we transition from Judaism to Christianity, we change from an understanding of blessing based on the land to a notion of grace based on the coming-alive of all those in exile – those oppressed in body, mind or spirit, those suppressed by foreign invader or sinister prejudice or unrestrained cruelty.

These are ways we perceive God’s future now and live today the life God prepares for us to share forever. In the naming of Jesus we also discover the reality of sin. Sin is everything that prevents us fully being with God, ourselves, one another and the creation. Jesus is the full and utter relationship of God that overcomes all these obstacles, whether made by ourselves or others, arising from painful memory or wilful disregard. Hence here we have an insight into the theme of salvation.

The way the angel persuades Joseph in his dream is to quote a line from Isaiah. Here we find the notion of revelation. Many theological textbooks begin with the doctrine of revelation, because they find it impossible to explain issues like authority, narrative and divinity without some idea that particular discoveries and experiences are blessed and honoured by a community. But Matthew has no abstract idea of revelation. He just plunges straight in with it, portraying Jesus within the context of what God has long prepared and always done. 

Within the notion of revelation is the doctrine of scripture, and we can see at work here Mathew’s confidence that, even with only the Old Testament to play with, the ways of God have already been disclosed such that identifying the unique and overwhelming significance of Jesus is not difficult.

Then to the greatest theological theme of all, that of incarnation. The angel announces Emmanuel, and quickly explains that means ‘God with us.’ These three words sum up everything theology has to tell us, and invite us into all the mysteries that theology has in store for us. It’s Matthew’s gospel in three words. It describes the wonder of Jesus – fully human, fully God – the call for our response, to be fully with God, ourselves, one another and the creation, and the embracing inclusivity of the us God chooses to be with. It also gives us eschatology, the promise of how things will be beyond now and into forever: that too is summed up in those three words, God with us. That’s all we need to know about revelation and all we need to anticipate about heaven.

But there’s two final verses, and one last doctrine to articulate. Joseph goes ahead and he and Mary live according to God’s call, making room for Jesus and responding to the implications of Jesus for their lives. That’s what we call church. Maybe church didn’t begin at Pentecost; maybe it began here, when the difference Christ makes began to be felt, understood, and responded to.

So here’s pretty much the whole of theology in eight verses: creation, Israel, Trinity, Holy Spirit, ethics, providence, vocation, God’s realm, sin, salvation, revelation, incarnation, the last things, and church. Theology is simply attending to the work of the Holy Spirit in scripture and elsewhere and discerning what that means for who God is and how we should be. 

I wish my conversation partner at that wedding 30 years ago had realised that the Bible is not like a packed lunch or first aid kit tucked away to get you through all eventualities, but an invitation to explore every aspect of what it means for God to be with us. And I hope he experienced the wonder of making that exploration together, with others committed to find, listen to and share that truth and put that truth to work. That’s the gift of what we’re doing right now: that’s the wonder of church.

* Rev. Dr Samuel Wells is the vicar of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, Trafalgar Square, London, and Visiting Professor of Christian Ethics at King’s College London. 

❑ Sermon source here

Matthew's Gospel 1:18-25

18 This is how the birth of Jesus the Messiah came about : His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit.

19 Because Joseph her husband was faithful to the law, and yet did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly.

20 But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.

21 She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.”

22 All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet:

23 “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” (which means “God with us”).

24 When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife.

25 But he did not consummate their marriage until she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name Jesus.

(NIV: Source)

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