Sermon: Re-arrangements

Text: Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.

Matthew 1.20-21

From time to time events happen that rearrange our lives, so that after them things can never be the same again. A marriage, a birth, a death change things for ever. How could it be otherwise when our lives are so closely entangled with each other?

Thus the late Professor Colin Gunton, of King's College London, at a funeral in 1998.
The lives of Joseph and Mary were subject to some re-arrangement, according to St Matthew. They had hoped, presumably, for a relatively normal married life, with family and work and village relationships, but then this 're-arrangement' came in the form of the discovery of Mary's pregnancy; then in the visit of the angel - not to Mary, as in Luke's Gospel, but to Joseph - with the message that they were to go ahead with the marriage, because Mary's child was to be in a particular way the son of God.

And the Gospel urges, Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.

For Joseph, as for Ahaz, the pregnancy of this young woman was to be a sign of the work of God. And we, the readers, have been made aware that this child has a genealogy that goes back to Abraham; and it is to be understood in groupings of fourteen, which according to the numerical values of the Hebrew letters equals the name, David. Later we shall read that wise men from the East come to visit him; and that will arouse the hatred of King Herod and bring about the departure of the family to Egypt, so that, even as a boy, Jesus has to come up out from Egypt, and so be understood also as Moses.
And we are told all that because Matthew's community has been subject to 're-arrangement'. It has been excommunicated from the synagogue and is now asserting its identity and laying claim to its Jewish heritage.

This is some re-arrangement! Births re-arrange lives, and this one involves more re-arrangements than most.

Deaths do it as well. You might think that statement of Colin Gunton's fairly prosaic, when he says,

From time to time events happen that rearrange our lives, so that after them things can never be the same again. A marriage, a birth, a death change things for ever. How could it be otherwise when our lives are so closely entangled with each other?

But he said that in the course of a sermon at the funeral of whom I assume to be his own grandson at the age of eighteen months; and Colin himself died suddenly in May of last year, after an illness lasting no more than a day.

We can all testify to the fact that the deaths of family-members and friends bring about re-arrangements, not only of time and relationships, but also of memories and even of faith. But what is urged of Joseph and Mary and you and me is that we should not fear:

Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.

All this re-arrangement calls for a different attitude to life: we are invited not to fear. Fear of change, fear of the unknown, fear of the future, fear of events and of people can atrophy our souls, starving us of the nourishment that enables us to function and act as human beings. But what the messenger of God says is, Don't be afraid to do what you are doing and to be what you are; only do that and be that in the awareness of the promise of God.

What is conceived in the lives of those we love, in the life we live, in the future that unfolds before us, might be nothing other than the embodiment of the breath, the Spirit of God, redeeming and transfiguring our anxieties and holding out the promise of a future even more glorious than that which we imagined.

The birth, the death - indeed the whole event, the whole story - of Jesus is about 're-arrangement'. And the invitation implicit in it is to open ourselves up to all that this might involve in the interval between our own birth and our own death, so that the great 're-arrangement' that will take place when his kingdom comes might already be present in the way we have conducted ourselves on earth.

For the past three months I have been spending some sabbatical and study time reading the Transfiguration traditions - one might even say, the 'Re-arrangement' traditions - in the New Testament. And that time was subject to some re-arrangement too: by two family bereavements and the offer of a new job.

St Matthew's version of the Transfiguration story says that, when the disciples heard the voice saying, This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him! they fell to the ground and were overcome by fear. But it goes on to say that Jesus came and touched them, saying, Get up and do not be afraid. The same happens at the resurrection. Three women go to the tomb, and an angel descends, rolls back the stone from the entrance to the tomb and sits on it. His appearance is like lightning, and his clothing white as snow. For fear of him the guards shook and became like dead men. But the angel said to the women, 'Do not be afraid'.

The usual 're-arrangements' are taking place across the world at the moment, any of which might paralyse us with fear, and they involve all the usual suspects: war, global warming, famine and disease. But just as the beginning, the middle and the new beginning of the life of Jesus is framed by the invitation, Do not be afraid, so we are invited to share in that life, to act as those who are lived in by the Spirit of this same Jesus, and so to see in all these things signs of the kingdom of God coming to birth, fruition and maturity - even if also to re-arrangement.

And that will be the fulfilment of what we have already asked: O come, O come, thou Dayspring bright!
Shed on our souls thy healing light; Dispel the long night's lingering gloom,
And pierce the shadows of the tomb.

Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.