Sermons

Sun, Jan 01, 2023

A crafted (or crafty?) tale

Series:Sermons
Duration:12 mins 54 secs

There’s no way on God’s earth––

that I would ever venture anywhere near a department store…

during the post-Christmas period.

If Dante were writing his Inferno today…

that…

surely…

is what hell would be modelled on.

At least for me…

any spare time during this slightly-sleepy post-Christmas period means watching cricket on TV.

And, I have to admit, I’m a big fan of all the modern technology that’s deployed…

not least for the player-reviews around wickets:

like the thermal imaging used to detect the faintest contact of ball on bat––

and ball tracking software to determine if it would have hit the stumps.

Of course, all of that’s a far cry from the old days.

Back in the nineteen-thirties…

when the Australian team toured England…

the cricket was broadcast over the radio.

And the commentator would explain the placement of the fielders…

and describe in detail the bowler charging in…

followed by the sound of bat hitting ball…

and the report that it had been defended for no run.

Yet, we know now, it was all completely fabricated.

The local broadcaster received a cable at the end of each over…

but the only details were of wickets that fell…

or shots where the batsmen made runs.

Everything else was made up by the commentator.

What everyone thought was the sound of bat on ball… 

was the commentator banging his wooden desk with a pencil.

If there were delays in the cables being received…

then the commentator would suggest that the batsman was adjusting his pads…

or his gloves…

in order to buy time.

If the system broke down altogether…

whole overs in which no runs were scored…

were simply concocted.

But most of the listening public thought that what they were hearing was live…

and authentic.

Of course, those creative commentators didn’t invent wickets…

or manipulate scores––

with regards to the things that really mattered, what they relayed was true…

even if most of the incidental details were not.

 

On one level…

many of the stories in the Gospels are like one of those commentaries.

We just don’t know, sometimes, how much is true and how much is fabricated by the author.

In the case of the birth and infancy narratives in Luke’s Gospel…

the answer is probably little is true…

and most is fabricated.

Our reading this morning is a good example.

It begins where our Christmas day story left off.

The stunned shepherds head down into sleepy Bethlehem…

somehow find Mary, Joseph, and the baby Jesus…

and tell them their story.

And we’re told that “all who heard it were amazed”––

although we have no idea who these “all” are…

because there’s been no inkling of anyone else until now.

And Mary, we’re told, “pondered” what they said “in her heart”.

Which, given what’s happened so far in Luke’s Gospel, seems kind of odd.

After all…

supposedly…

the whole nature of her pregnancy was just a little out of the ordinary…

and the angel who announced it to her told her that her baby had a special destiny…

specifically…

that he would be called “Son of the Most-High God”

and God would give to him “the throne of…David”.

And, indeed, she herself…

apparently…

had sung about how God, in this, was overturning the structures of society.

Now, she seems either to have forgotten all of that…

or, somehow, it hadn’t really sunk in.

As if, despite everything, she still didn’t really understand or believe it.

 

The story then jumps forward eight days.

We don’t know where it takes place…

whether still in Bethlehem…

or perhaps in Jerusalem, which was only about twenty kilometres away.

It’s certainly not back in Nazareth…

which is about two hundred kilometres from Bethlehem…

and would take a lot longer than eight days…

on foot…

with a post-partum mother and an infant in tow.

And, we’re told…

that Jesus was named and circumcised on his eighth day…

as was expected according to the Hebrew Law.

And… 

despite absent and ambiguous details… 

that seems to be the author’s main point…

and it’s one that he wouldn’t have fabricated.

Jesus was born into a devout, Hebrew family…

and grew up within the faith of his people.

That was important.

It still is!

After centuries of white, European- and Protestant-centric imagery and ideology…

we don’t always think of Jesus as a brown-skinned…

Middle-Eastern kid––

or man––

and one who was raised within…

and devoted to…

the faith and traditions of what we now know as Judaism.

 

Then, we move on to another, slightly later episode.

The author claims that “they”––

by which he seems to mean both Mary and Joseph––

went down to Jerusalem for “their purification” and to “present him to the Lord”.

Here, the author has made a mistake. 

The rite of purification for a new mother––

which took place forty days after giving birth to a son––

was for her alone.

There was no ‘them’.

And the author has also conflated this ritual with another––

that is the ‘redemption of the first-born son’.

Notwithstanding the errors and inconsistencies…

the author is making a similar point to the one before:

Jesus was born into…

and raised within…

a devout Hebrew family…

who…

although clearly poor––

after all, an offering of a pair of pigeons was stipulated for those who were ‘poor’;

and confirming Mary’s self-identification as such in her earlier hymn––

nonetheless, they were scrupulous in their faithful obedience.

 

And yet, interestingly, in the rite of ‘redemption of the first-born son’…

they were meant to present him as an offering to God…

but the normal practice was that they would then pay a sum of five Shekels…

in a sense, to redeem him…

that is…

buy him back.

Five Shekels would have been something like a month’s wages for someone like Joseph.

But there’s no mention of that bit here.

Rather, the author seems to be drawing instead on the origin story of the prophet Samuel.

Effectively…

Jesus has been symbolically presented to God––

as Samuel was––

but he isn’t ritually redeemed…

so he remains God’s.

The author has, in effect, crafted the details of this story based on his theology.

Jesus was born and grew up within a devout Hebrew family.

From the beginning, his life was dedicated to God’s service.

And his later efforts to evoke evolution––

or to provoke change––

within the traditions and faith of his people…

arose from that background and that upbringing.

He did so as an insider.

 

Now, that’s all very interesting––

I can hear you think––

but so what?

What does any of that have to do with us…

today?

 

Fair enough!

 

But, perhaps, these odd little narrative vignettes remind us that God isn’t always found…

or experienced…

at the significant points of our lives…

but in the simple and the mundane.

God enters our world––

God meets us––

in obscurity;

in poverty and hardship;

in unlikely places and unexpected people;

in our obtuseness or lack of understanding;

and in our everyday lives as we seek to live with faithfulness…

within the confines of our traditions and worldview.

And, perhaps, that’s the only way that God does enter our world…

and the only way that we experience God.

In that respect, we’re no different.

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