The Genesis of Gentleness and the Gentleness of Genesis

David HerbertLeave a comment

Read gently my friend.

Facebook friend, Josh Askwith, has just heard the book of Genesis read straight through. What struck him was not the violence, nor the intrigue, nor the strangeness. It was something else. He posted this:

“I was struck by how gently it ends.”

And that’s got me thinking. Gently. That is not the adjective most people reach for when describing the Old Testament.

His comment landed on top of a conversation I had recently with someone who confessed that she “struggles” with the Old Testament. She is not alone. Many Christians speak of it as though it were a necessary preface to the real story — darker, harsher, spiritually inferior. The implication is often unspoken but clear: the Old Testament is something Jesus saves us from.

I wonder how much of that instinct has been formed not simply by careful reading, but by centuries of misreading — by a habit of exaggerating the discontinuity between Old and New, of distancing Jesus from his Jewish roots, of quietly rendering Israel’s scriptures obsolete. When we treat the Old Testament as primitive or problematic, are we inheriting interpretative habits shaped, at least in part, by anti-Jewish assumptions?

And then Genesis ends — not with thunder, but with tenderness.

Joseph forgives his brothers. Revenge is refused. Fear is met with reassurance. “You meant it for harm,” he says, “but God meant it for good.” The story closes not in triumph but in trust — a coffin in Egypt, waiting for promise. It is strangely, stubbornly gentle.

But the gentleness is not softness. It is shaped by a deeper pattern running all the way through the book.

Near the end, in Genesis 48, we are given an image that feels almost like a summary of everything that has gone before. Jacob — old now, frail, nearing death — is brought Joseph’s two sons to bless. Manasseh, the firstborn, is positioned at Jacob’s right hand. Ephraim, the younger, at his left. Everything is arranged according to custom, according to entitlement, according to the straight lines of inheritance – so that Manasseh will be blessed first and Ephraim last. That is the way of the world.

But then Jacob crosses his hands.

The right hand rests on the younger boy. The left on the elder.

Joseph tries to correct him. It must be a mistake. But Jacob refuses. The crossing is deliberate.

Jacob Blessing Ephraim and Manasseh, miniature on vellum from the Golden Haggadah, Catalonia, early 14th century, at the British Library, London

It is hard not to smile at the irony. The name Jacob is bound up with grasping and twisting — the heel-grabber, the supplanter. The one who once twisted his way into stealing a blessing from his brother Esau, now twists his own arms to give one. The old twister twists again — but this time not to steal, not to secure advantage for himself, but to bend the future toward the overlooked.

Genesis has been rehearsing this pattern from the beginning. Abel over Cain. Isaac over Ishmael. Jacob over Esau. Joseph over his brothers. And now Ephraim over Manasseh.

This is not randomness. It is theology.

God’s blessing does not run along the straight lines of primacy, status, or expectation. It bends. It crosses. It interrupts the obvious.

For those who are first, secure, established, this is unsettling. For those who are second, small, despised, or displaced, it is life.

Read this way, Genesis is not primitive folklore. It is dangerous scripture.

It belongs to the Torah — to a people who would know slavery, exile, homelessness; who would know what it is to be second best. It is instruction for living under empire. It is a memory bank for those whose lives do not follow the straight lines of power. Again and again it whispers: the story is not over when you are overlooked. The blessing may yet cross in your direction.

No wonder such texts can be domesticated. If the Old Testament can be caricatured as angry, obsolete, or morally inferior, its critique of hierarchy is neutralised. If it is reduced to a foil for a gentler New Testament, its radical edge is blunted.

But Jesus does not stand over against this story. He stands within it.

When he speaks of the last being first and the first last, he is not inventing a new moral universe. He is speaking Torah-deep truth. When Mary sings of the proud scattered and the lowly lifted, she is echoing the long music of Israel. When the kingdom is announced as good news to the poor, it is not a departure from Genesis but its flowering.

The rule of the kingdom of God crosses old hierarchies. It must – if the second best, the left out and despised are to find favour.

That does not mean the first are hated or the strong despised. The point is not revenge. The crossing of hands is not retaliation; it is freedom. God is not bound by our ranking systems. Blessing is not the private property of the powerful.

Perhaps that is why Genesis ends gently. Because beneath its betrayals and famines and rivalries runs a deeper current of mercy — a God who keeps bending history toward life.

A God who crosses his hands.

And for those who have lived too long on the left side of the room – left behind, left out – that is not merely interesting theology. It is hope. It is radical gentleness.

The Cost of a Strong Church

David HerbertLeave a comment

“The exclusion of the weak and insignificant,
the seemingly useless people, from a Christian community
may actually mean the exclusion of Christ.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together

Bonhoeffer wrote these words during the Nazi era, at a time when entire groups of people were being labelled unworthy of life — useless, burdensome, disposable. Against that deadly logic, he insisted on something profoundly unsettling: that God is revealed not in strength or success, but in lowliness and weakness.

For Bonhoeffer, Christ is found not among the powerful, but among those who suffer — those pushed aside, silenced, or made invisible. Again and again, he warned that when a Christian community excludes the weak, it is not simply failing morally or socially. It is committing a theological act. It is removing the presence of Christ from its own life.

Christian fellowship begins with the last coming first. The church does not bear witness to Christ by appearing strong, efficient, or successful. It bears witness by putting the last first — by elevating the weak, the overlooked, and the forgotten — because that is where Christ has chosen to dwell, and where the kingdom of God is already breaking in.

I wish I’d stumbled across these words in time for last Sunday’s sermon. They say, more simply and more truthfully, what I was reaching for.

Train the Eye, Follow the Finger, See the Lamb

David Herbert1 Comment

In a world shaped by global empires, Isaiah and John the Baptist train our eyes to see differently – to notice where God’s light truly shines for all nations. This sermon for the Second Sunday of Epiphany (Year A) reflects on Isaiah 49:1-7 and John 1:29-42.

John doesn’t argue.
He doesn’t explain.
He points.

“Look,” he says.
“There.”

We follow his eye.
We follow his finger.

This is the beginning of John’s gospel — the first chapter.
This is what John the Evangelist wants us to see first.
He wants us to follow John the Baptist’s trained finger, his trained eye.

“Look, the Lamb of God.”

He wants the people around him to see what he sees,
the person he’s pointing to.

“Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.”

His finger is not trained on a figure of strength or certainty,
but on a lamb.

Many of you know what lambs are like:
how easily they are lost,
how dependent they are,
how little control they have over their lives.
Their vulnerability is well known.

The proverb “like lambs to the slaughter” captures not just their vulnerability,
but the vulnerability of the powerless —
those whose lives are shaped by decisions made elsewhere.

And slaughtered this lamb would have been,
had Joseph not been warned in a dream
to flee Bethlehem
and escape Herod’s slaughter of the innocents.

Our eldest son gave us vouchers for the RSC in Stratford.
We used them to see the Shakespeare Theatre production of The BFG.

The giants loomed over us as enormous puppets,
their movements controlled by visible operators pulling the strings.
They were noisy, careless — care-less — devouring powers.
They eat children for breakfast.

You could name the giants of scripture,
the ones who devour children.
There is Herod slaughtering the innocents,
and Pharaoh ordering the death of Hebrew babies.

It is the giants who make our news,
who make our wars,
who force people to flee for their lives,
who devour the lives of children
in Gaza, in Ukraine,
in gas chambers and killing fields,
who threaten to gobble up nations.

All except the BFG — the Big Friendly Giant —
despised by the other giants
because he would rather eat snodcumber
than eat children.

His eye is trained on Sophie,
a small, overlooked orphan girl,
without the protection of parents,
trying to survive inside a giant institution.

Isaiah has the same trained eye.

He looks at the world honestly —
at kings and rulers and empires.
He knows who makes the news.
He knows who decides who lives safely
and who must flee.

And then he looks again.

And what he hears
is not God addressing the giants,
but God speaking to the one
they have already decided does not matter:

“Thus says the Lord…
to one deeply despised,
abhorred by the nations,
the servant of rulers.”

In the train of their eyes
and the direction of their fingers,
both Isaiah and John the Baptist
are training our eyes.

They train us to look again —
to see as God sees,
to behold the Lamb,
to honour the despised,
refusing to let ridicule decide
where we look.

Because most of us have been trained —
almost without noticing —
to look first at the giants.
to follow the headlines.
to measure importance
by size, certainty, and control.

The giants have trained our eyes.

They ridicule the way John looks,
and Isaiah looks,
and the way we look
when we dare to notice the damage they cause.
They want us to look another way.
They want us to look their way.

Giants don’t just dominate by force.
They dominate by shaping
what is respectable to notice.
That is why they battle for control of attention
and of the media.

They hate it when people see
what they would rather keep hidden.
They accuse those who honour the despised
of being over-sensitive, unrealistic,
ideological, divisive — woke.
They want us to look stupid.

Classic giant behaviour
is to make compassion look naïve,
attentiveness look hysterical,
listening look weak,
and those who point to the crushed
look ridiculous.

The giants are not afraid of anger
as much as they are afraid of people who are awake —
awake enough to notice who is being crushed,
and awake enough not to look away.

They despise and abhor them.

This is how the giants train our eyes,
but the church is the place
where eyes are trained differently.

Not because we are braver,
or purer,
or better informed —
but because we have learned
where to look.

Week by week,
we are gathered and retrained.

We are taught to say,
not “Look how big the giants are,”
but “Look, the Lamb of God.”

And when we do,
our eyes change.

We begin to see differently —
to see the ones the giants have already dismissed,
the ones they ridicule,
the ones they despise and abhor.

And we discover that these are the ones
who are the apple of God’s eye.

This is how the church becomes light for the nations —
not by speaking louder than the world,
not by competing with the giants,
not by being big, or even successful
(that is the giants’ way),
but by honouring the very ones the giants ignore:
the lambs,
the small voices,
the ones whose lives are shaped by decisions made elsewhere.

By seeing them.
By standing with them.
By refusing to look away.

The trained eye looks away from giants
to the overlooked.

Look, the Lamb of God —
the one they despised, abhorred, and crucified,
and in him,
all the lambs
upon whom the world piles its sin.

Going Home After Christmas – another way

David Herbert3 Comments

Here is a sermon for Epiphany, about getting home after Christmas — about what it means to return to ordinary life once the magic of Christmas has done its work.
(Readings: Isaiah 60:1–6; Matthew 2:1–12)

This morning I want to take up the star of wonder
and see how far we have come this Christmas,
exploring the way to the manger,
and how on earth we get home.

Our readings cover many miles —
the miles in the reading from Isaiah,
the miles nations will come
to the light of the glory of God,
the miles rulers will travel
to the brightness of the dawn
of a new day, a new time, a new year.

The miles the children of Israel will travel:
sons coming from afar,
daughters carried on the hip.

The miles wealth will cross the seas,
and the camels… the camels —
from Midian and Ephah,
even from Sheba,
bearing gold and incense,
proclaiming the praise of the Lord
when he comes.

And in the gospel for today
there are the Magi from the east —
the Magi who believe in the magic of life,
who follow the star of wonder,
always wondering what kind of magic
can turn hatred into love
and a world at war into a world at peace.

Our readings cover miles of wonder.

The magic the travellers trusted
was not illusion or trickery,
but the stubborn hope
that the world could be other than it is.

It is a hope as old as time.
It is God’s hope we join.

The Magi are ones who travelled so far,
going first one way,
and then finding a better way.

First they went the usual way,
the old way, the well-trodden wrong way.
They found themselves in Jerusalem,
in the twisted streets of the medina,
the religious capital,
the political and social capital.

Everyone said they would find
what they were looking for there,
because that’s where we always expect God to be —
close to influence, respectability, and control.

There’s no doubt that Google Maps
had led them to a king.
But Herod wasn’t who they were looking for.

There was no magic in his palace —
just the same old rules,
the same old rule of oppression,
ruling out the magic
of the least, the lost, and the last.

They stayed awhile — long enough
for the priests and lawyers
to consult the ancient books of magic,
the scriptures that had forgotten
just how dangerous they really are,
to remind themselves
that the place of magic
is the smallest of places,
never Jerusalem.

They’d got it so wrong.

Nine miles wide, one theologian says —
the distance between Jerusalem and Bethlehem,
the distance between power and promise,
the distance between knowing the words
and recognising the child.

Nine miles on, they saw the star
stop over the place where Jesus was.
Overwhelming joy brought them to their knees.

They bowed from their lofty heights.
They opened up their gifts —
all their power and glory:
their gold, their frankincense, their myrrh.

Gifts laden with meaning —
the gold of their wealth,
the incense of their power,
the myrrh of their mortality.

They handed them all over.

They do not leave Bethlehem lightly.

They have loved this place.
They have loved the silence,
the smallness,
the nearness of God in a child.

They have lingered long enough
to be changed by what they have seen.

And then they went home another way,
considerably lighter.

We are in the same room as the Magi.
We are with them in Bethlehem.
We too have travelled far this Christmas.
We too have knelt at the place of wonder.

But no one can stay in Bethlehem.
It was too dangerous for Joseph, Mary, and Jesus.
They had to flee from Herod’s terror
and his slaughter of the innocent.

Nor could the Magi stay.
They had to return to their own country.

They had two choices.
They could go back the way they came —
through Jerusalem,
through Herod,
through the centres of religious, social, and political power.

Or they could take the road less travelled.
They chose to follow their dream,
to heed the warning,
to go home another way —
refusing the way of fear and exclusion,
the way that protects power
by crushing the vulnerable.

And nor can we stay at the manger.
Christmas does not ask us to linger,
but to return.

There are just twelve days of Christmas,
and we are nearly at the end of them.
The road home opens before us.

We go back to the same people,
the same work,
the same complications and demands —
just as the Magi did.

The question is not whether we go home,
but how we go home.

Will we go back the way we came —
shaped by fear, habit, and power?
Or will we go home another way —
refusing fear,
trusting the stubborn magic of love,
seeing God not in the centres of control
but in the smallest of places,
among the least, the last, and the lost?

Home calls us —
the place that knows us,
the place we know,
the place whose joys and wounds
we carry in our bones.

The Magi return to their own country —
to their villages,
their households,
their responsibilities and loves.

They go back to the same world,
but not by the same road.

And so do we.

We go home
not because Bethlehem has nothing left to give,
but because it has given us enough.

Enough light
to see differently.
Enough love
to travel lighter.
Enough hope
to believe the world can be other than it is.

That is the road less taken —
and it is the way
into a new year of grace.

God on the night shift

David HerbertLeave a comment

We’ve stayed up!
We’ve stayed awake
to make this night,
this night above all nights, holy.

And we’ve sung praise to this holy night.
Perhaps for the first time tonight in this church
have we sung congregationally the lovely carol, Cantique de Noel.

Noel is a word from Anglo-Norman French. It means birthday.
So when we sing Noel, we are singing a birthday song to the world –
a new beginning sung into the night.

This holy night we see God
as light, forever a-light in our darkness,
a light in our fears, aloneness and confusion.
Tonight we see night as the time God acts.
God’s creation begins in darkness.
That’s our Genesis.
The Exodus began in the dark.
The resurrection begins “while it was still dark”.
God works the night shift.

Tonight we see God –
the very nature of God,
seen and worshipped
as the smallest,
the most vulnerable of life.
This is how we see God,
in a stable, in the busyness
of a crowd of people, in a state
preoccupied by the presence of enemy power.

We see God in that darkness,
and we begin to love the name of that baby,
Jesus, the one who saves us
by joining our darkness with the lightness of love.
As night follows day, he is with us
in the darkness of hurt and disappointment,
rejection, betrayal, the loss of loved ones,
the anxiety of making ends meet,
in a world of war, and a world in flight –
he is with us, our boy, Emmanuel.

Grace doesn’t come with a sword
to overcome the darkness with a spectacular blow.
Instead God illuminates the darkness
with everlasting companionship.

And in this new light, we see ourselves again
as the very image of God.
This holy night, God appears small,
and that smallness reveals what God is always like.
The manger isn’t camouflage, it is revelation.
The manger is our mirror image.
We are made in the image of God,
not born to be high and mighty, first and foremost,
but born into smallness – humble at heart.

And this is the best possible light,
this night, to see one another.
Even though we are in the dark
God helps us see his work begin in smallness,
even with the least, the last and the lost.
God imagines us all worth visiting,
all worth illuminating, all worth saving.

And perhaps, finally,
this holy night invites us
not only to consider how we see God,
or how we see ourselves,
or how we see one another –
but how God sees us.

God does not look for the impressive,
the sorted, the strong.
God looks with delight
upon those awake in the night,
those keeping watch,
those doing their best to get through.

This is the light God shines upon us:
not a searching light,
not a judging light,
but a warming one.
A light that says,
You are worth visiting.
You are worth staying with.
You are worth saving.

This holy night,
God sees us as beloved.
And that is blessing enough
to carry us back into the dark,
Unafraid.
Good night.

This Is How It Began – in the middle of winter

David Herbert1 Comment

Preached on the Fourth Sunday of Advent, this sermon sits with Matthew’s telling of Jesus’ birth at midwinter — when the light is weakest and hope can feel thin. It explores how God chooses to begin again not in tidiness or certainty, but in the mess, risk, and vulnerability of ordinary human lives.

This is how the birth of Jesus the Messiah came about.
These are the words Matthew uses to describe the birth of Jesus.
This is how it happened.
This is how it began.

When I say,
“these are the words Matthew uses,”
what I really mean is,
“this is how we have translated the words Matthew wrote.”
Matthew wrote in Greek,
and the key word in that opening sentence is a Greek word we know very well, the word genesis.

Τοῦ δὲ Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ ἡ γένεσις οὕτως ἦν· μνηστευθείσης γὰρ τῆς μητρὸς αὐτοῦ Μαρίας τῷ Ἰωσήφ, πρὶν ἢ συνελθεῖν αὐτοὺς εὑρέθη ἐν γαστρὶ ἔχουσα ἐκ πνεύματος ἁγίου

Genesis.
Beginning.
Origin.
The start of something that will change everything.

Matthew is not just telling us how a baby was born.
He is taking us back to the very beginning.
Back to the beginning of the world.
Back to the beginning of God’s work with humanity.
Back to what begins with Jesus.

It is no accident that we hear this reading now
— on the shortest day of the year,
at midwinter,
when the light is at its thinnest and the night feels longest.

Because beginnings often come like that.
Quietly. In the dark.
When the ground looks bare and the fields seem empty.
When nothing much appears to be happening at all.
This is when God makes his presence felt.

Matthew takes us back to a beginning that looks very small.
Just as in Genesis, there is a young boy and a young girl.
But they’re not Adam and Eve. They are Joseph and Mary.
Ordinary people with complicated lives.

Adam and Eve walked freely with God.
They had no backstory.
No reputation to protect.
No neighbours to worry about.

But Joseph and Mary live in a world where things are already tangled.

Mary is pledged to be married, but not yet married.
Joseph is a good man, but suddenly faced with a situation that could cost him his standing, his future, his place in the community.
This is not a beginning without consequences.
This is a beginning that arrives already burdened.

And God does not wait for a cleaner moment.
God begins again here — not in freedom, but in constraint;
not in clarity, but in confusion;
not in daylight, but in the deepening darkness.

This is how the birth of Jesus comes about.
Not by sweeping the mess away, but by entering it.
Not by restoring the world to how it once was,
but by beginning something new within the world as it is.

in a teenage love story,
in the vulnerability of these two youngsters.

Both are vulnerable.
Mary is pledged to Joseph but not living with him.
She’s pregnant. People are going to talk.
If she’s not been with Joseph, who has she been with?
She is at risk of being shamed, isolated and abandoned –
a public disgrace.

Joseph is vulnerable too.
He has the reputation of being a righteous man
because he tries to do the right thing.
If he stays with Mary he risks his reputation
(costly to his business and his standing).
If he leaves her she is exposed.
There is no clear path.

And here God begins.
In this mess framed by confusion, risk and fear.
God begins again by stepping into lives that are already complicated
— and trusting them with something holy.

Genesis does not wait for spring.
It begins when the light is weakest
in the midst of winter,
and slowly grows from there.

When God begins here, it is not with explanations.

Matthew tells us that Joseph makes up his mind.
He decided what he will do.

And then God speaks.
Not in public,
not with spectacle,
but in the dark night,
In a dream.

The angel does not tidy the situation.
He does not remove the risk.
He does not promise that everything will be all right.

He says only this:
Do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife.

Do not be afraid to stay.
Do not be afraid to be seen.
Do not be afraid to let your life be changed.

And then Matthew gives the child a name.
Emmanuel.
God with us.

Not God with us when the mess is sorted.
Not God with us when the rumours stop.
Not God with us when life feels safe again.

But God with us, here,
in confusion,
in vulnerability,
in teenage love that chooses faithfulness over self-protection.

When Joseph wakes up,
he does what the angel has told him.

And that is how the story moves forward.
Not through certainty.
Not through control.
But through trust.

And this is the genesis Matthew chose to share with his readers,
how God begins his work
these days that are long with darkness.

He begins with a boy and a girl,
with ordinary people inspired to trust.
Slowly, quietly, faithfully the light begins to grow.

This is how the birth of Jesus comes about.
God begins again –
with us –
in the dark.

NOTE
I make no secret of the fact that I’m greatly helped by AI when preparing sermons. Used well, it doesn’t write sermons for me, but helps me listen more closely — to Scripture, to season, and to the lives of the people I’m preaching among. This sermon is better than it would otherwise have been, and I’m grateful for the help.

Hope Before Dawn: An Advent Imagination

David HerbertLeave a comment

Live for that day when God’s peace is all in all.
Love for that day when God’s light leaves no shadows.

These are the darkest days of our lives.
December draws a long shadow,
and we find ourselves longing for light.

These days seem to go on without end.

These are the days Isaiah fought through and hoped through
3000 years ago:
the same old, the same old.
the dark ages all over again.
This is the mean time.

This is the time to cherish those who’ve kindled hope,
those we’ve bound in scripture
who hoped in God when the world felt just as heavy as ours.
This is the time to pray.
This is the time to keep watch.
This is the time to live for another day,
to love towards another day
when the times will finally be a-changing.

These are very mean days
when nations make war on nations,
There may be no world war,
But there are too many wars
for us to call this peace.
The world is at war,
and we are all caught up
in a global propaganda war.

These are very mean days when dark forces
create a hostile environment for those seeking asylum and sanctuary,
days which leave so many children hungry
and too many families poor, 

when budget after budget
miss the opportunity to make things better.

These days, however bright the weather may be,
are dark days to too many people.

And so –
these are the very days to keep hope alive,
to pray for the day when God’s kingdom comes on earth, as it is in heaven,
to live for the day when God’s word settles disputes;
to love for the day when nation will not take up sword against nation,
and nor will we need to train for war any more.

Imagine that.
Imagine the difference
when the weapons of war,
the resources of war,
become tools for farming and feeding and healing.

Imagine the difference
if the resources of war were turned to farming.
Not just in the fields of our own villages,
but in Gaza’s broken orchards,
in Ukraine’s shelled wheatlands,
in every place where the soil has been scorched,
and the hands that sow can no longer harvest.

Isaiah’s dream has dirt under its nails.
It is a farmer’s dream,
a peacemaker’s dream –
swords hammered into ploughshares,
spears repurposed as pruning hooks,
the earth tended again.

And here’s another theme none of us can avoid,
if we care about justice and peace:
we need to be prepared in these days of darkness.
Advent comes with a wake up call.
The time has come for us to wake up, says Paul, (Romans 13)
and be ready for the Day of the Lord –
the day we live for,
the day we pray for,
the day we love for.

For Advent I’ve downloaded an app which notifies me of Fajr –
the prayer Muslims offer from dawn to sunrise.
So, this morning, at 6.05,
my phone buzzed to tell me it was time to pray,
and I was reminded of all those
who rise while the world is still dark
to end the night and hope for the day.

First they wash,
then raise their hands to acknowledge the greatness of God.
They then recite the Surah:

In the name of Allah – the Most Compassionate, Most Merciful.
All praise is for Allah – Lord of all worlds.
the Most Compassionate, Most Merciful,
Master of the Day of Judgment.
You ‘alone’ we worship and You ‘alone’ we ask for help.
Guide us along the Straight Path
the Path of those you have blessed
– not those You are displeased with, or those who are astray.

Then they bow
They stand and say, “God hears the one who praises him.”
They prostrate themselves, grounding their forehead, palms, knees and toes on the earth –
and from the ground they praise God.
They finish by turning their head
to the right and to the left
with a prayer of peace in both directions.
Then they are ready for the day
(and, dare I say, they’ve given themselves a good work out!).

There is something holy about any people
who pray before the sun comes up.
They remind us what Advent is for:
ending the night,
and hoping for the day.

And we are among those holy people
imagining that day which will end all days of wrongdoing,
when God’s word is truly heard.

That is why our time of prayer
is taken up with praying for the coming of God’s kingdom,
on earth, as it is in heaven.
Christians will always use their prayer time for that –
It’s what Jesus taught us.

It is a prayer of imagination.
It is a prayer for dawn in the dark.
It is a prayer for the day when ….
the day God’s peace is all in all,
the day God’s light leaves no shadows.

And so we live for that day —
when, as Revelation imagines,
there will be no more mourning, crying or pain,
the day that will see an end to night.

Until that day
we keep watch,
keep warm,
and keep hope alive
these dark days.

Luke’s Last Surprise: One Condemned Man Joining Another as the First in Paradise

David HerbertLeave a comment

This Sunday marks the end of the Christian year.
Next Sunday we hop on the next liturgical cycle of readings – it will be Year A.
Each year focuses on a particular gospel. Next year it will be Matthew’s. This year it has been Luke’s.

When I began this preaching year, I wondered what Luke would offer us.
I wondered how he might inspire us, challenge us, lead us.
And now, at the end of the year, I find myself saying one thing above all: WOW.
Luke has surprised us. Luke has stretched us.
Luke has shown us the kingdom of God in places we would never have thought to look.

This Sunday is a WOW moment,
a hinge on which we hang our wonder,
before the new year opens again.
Next week we begin again,
not from cold, not from scratch,
but already warmed by hope,
already knowing what God’s kingdom looks like
in the dominion of darkness.

We will return to the manger
knowing now what Luke has shown us all year –
that God’s kingdom begins with the smallest,
with the least, with the last instead of the first,
in a vulnerable baby held by exhausted parents
on the edges of empire.

These are the readings (Colossians 1:11-20 and Luke 23:33-43) that crown our year.
And this is where Luke has been leading us all along:
not to a palace, but to the place of the skull,
Not to a gold throne, but to a wooden cross.
A king.
A sign nailed above his head.
And a thief beside him.
That’s the gospel picture.
That’s where Luke brings us when the year ends and we crown Christ our King.

Our other reading, from Colossians, may seem difficult at first –
until we recognise it as a hymn.
A hymn praising the God who rescues us from the dominion of darkness,
who strengthens us with endurance,
who qualifies us for the kingdom of his beloved Son –
the kingdom of light,
the kingdom where Christ is King.

Luke paints the scene.
It is the “dominion of darkness” (to use the phrase from Colossians).
The place is the place of the skull,
Death Row in the Dominion of Darkness:
there is the smell of death
and the overpowering smell
of cruelty, injustice and wrongdoing.
There are three crosses.
One is for Jesus, the others for two criminals crucified either side of him.

Luke gives them very different voices.
One sneers – placing him with those who mock, jeer and insult Jesus.
“He saved others, let him save himself if he is who he says he is.”
(In other words, he isn’t who he says he is.)
“Aren’t you the Messiah? Save yourself and us!”

The other criminal rebukes him, saying the two of them deserve their punishment.
Then he protests Jesus’ innocence. “This man has done nothing wrong.”
And in that moment he is just right.
He is right to defend the defenceless
against the forces which have conspired against Jesus.
“This man has done nothing wrong,”
and yet he is facing the same sentence, only worse,
because insult is added to injury.

Then he turns to Jesus.
“Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom”

This criminal is the first to defend Jesus publicly.
He is the first to take his stand with Jesus.
And Luke wants us to see him.
This figure.
This last, least, condemned man
who becomes the first to declare Jesus innocent
and the first to receive a royal promise.

He is the last person in the world you’d expect
to be the first to defend Jesus –
(we are led to believe that there is no honour amongst thieves),
but here he is in the picture of paradise – alongside Jesus.
The last becomes the first in paradise,
that kingdom of love –
a relationship, not a place.

And here – right here – you can almost see it happen:

And perhaps this is Luke’s final surprise for us:
that the first to enter paradise with the King is not a saint or a scholar or a faithful disciple,
 but a criminal who can offer Jesus nothing but honesty and trust.

He offers no record of virtue.
No proof of goodness.
No last-minute achievements.
He can’t even lift his hands in prayer.
All he can do is speak the truth —
about himself, about Jesus, about the kingdom.
And Jesus takes that truth, that tiny seed of faith,
and makes it bloom.

“Today you will be with me in paradise.”

And that paradise begins there,
in the dominion of darkness,
with a king crowned not with gold but with thorns,
and a wrongdoer who sees more clearly than anyone else.

The only crown Jesus could ever wear is a crown of thorns.
They’re the thorns of scorn, the barbs of bitterness.
They’re our failures, our wounds, our complicity,
our inability to rule even ourselves.

But the kingdom Luke has been showing us week after week
is a kingdom where the last come first,
the lost are found
and where the crucified King gathers in his arms
those the world’s unjust powers condemn.

This is the WOW moment.
Everything has led to this,
when the thorns begin to flower.
This is what Luke is intent on showing us.

His sequel, Acts,becomes the story
of the cross in bloom.
The frightened disciples become bold and generous.
The failures become witnesses.
A crippled beggar stands up and walks.
An Ethiopian outsider becomes the first fully Gentile convert.
A persecutor becomes an apostle.
Prisoners sing hymns; jailers are baptised;
enemies share bread.

Again and again the thorns flower.
Again and again the barren places bear fruit.
Again and again the last become first.

This is where the King of Love leads us:
into a rule of life that puts the last first
and sees thorns flower with grace.

All year long Luke has shown us a kingdom that grows in unlikely places,
and now at the last,
he shows us the unlikeliest place of all,
the place of the skull, Death Row.
Yet even here, if we look through Luke’s eyes,
Something ]begins to bloom.

At the place of the Skull grows the tree of life.
The crown of thorns flowers with grace.
The King of Love
and the convicted criminal
become the first couple in the new creation –
the first to walk the way of mercy,
the first to step into the garden of God’s future.

This is how the Christian year ends:
not with worldly triumph,
but with this strange, saving beauty –
a King who makes the last first,
who turns a place of execution into a place of promise,
who opens paradise to the least likely of all.

This is the kingdom of God and the gentle thorn-crowned rule of Jesus.

Luke 23:33-43

When they came to the place called the Skull, they crucified him there, along with the criminals – one on his right, the other on his left. Jesus said, ‘Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.’ And they divided up his clothes by casting lots.

The people stood watching, and the rulers even sneered at him. They said, ‘He saved others; let him save himself if he is God’s Messiah, the Chosen One.’

The soldiers also came up and mocked him. They offered him wine vinegar and said, ‘If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself.’

There was a written notice above him, which read: this is the king of the jews.

One of the criminals who hung there hurled insults at him: ‘Aren’t you the Messiah? Save yourself and us!’

But the other criminal rebuked him. ‘Don’t you fear God,’ he said, ‘since you are under the same sentence? We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong.’

Then he said, ‘Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.’

Jesus answered him, ‘Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.’

Hope Has Hooves: Keeping Faith When the World Feels Mean

David HerbertLeave a comment

This sermon was preached for the Second Sunday before Advent — sometimes called Kingdom Sunday, and this year also marked as Safeguarding Sunday.
It begins with the prophet Malachi’s vision of a day when “the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings,” and when God’s people “will go out and frolic like well-fed calves.”
It’s a vivid, earthy picture of freedom — hope that doesn’t float above the world but thunders joyfully across it.
Hope, as it turns out, has hooves.

‘Surely the day is coming; it will burn like a furnace.
All the arrogant and every evildoer will be stubble,
and that day that is coming will set them on fire,’ says the Lord Almighty.
‘Not a root or a branch will be left to them.
But for you who revere my name,
the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its rays.
And you will go out and frolic like well-fed calves.’ (Malachi 4:1-2a)

I thought I’d let Malachi do the talking this morning. 

He did his talking 450 years before Christ after the Jewish community had returned from exile.
They thought everything was going to be hunky-dory.
The Temple had been restored, the worship re-established,
and people hoped – and expected – that Israel would be great again.

But the glorious renewal never materialised. It rarely does.

The community Malachi is speaking to is one that had expected to be spared the ways of the arrogant and the evildoers.
Instead they found themselves small, struggling and disillusioned.
They are weary. They are disappointed. They’ve had enough.

And into that discouragement, Malachi tells them not to give up.

In my last parish we lived next door to a dairy farm.
The farmer knew how much we loved the moment when the cows were released into the fields after winter – those first few minutes when they leap and dance and frolic before settling down to graze away their days.
On our final day there, as a goodbye, he freed the cows (earlier than he normally would) just so we could watch them. A little gesture of joy and encouragement.

Watch the moment when these animals are released and leap into life.
This is the kind of hope we’re talking about — wild, earthy, triumphant (From the Funky Farmer)

That’s the image Malachi gives us: “You will go out and frolic like well-fed calves.”
Imagine that, he implies.
Feel it.
Let that joy into your bones.

The day is coming,
the day to end all days,
the day we’ve prayed for,
the end of wrongdoing, the end of misery, the end of oppression,
the end of the arrogant, the end of the evildoer.

But between the promise and its fulfilment, they still had to live through some very tough times indeed.
They still lived between a rock and a hard place.

He’s speaking to a community who’ve given up waiting for times to change,
who’ve lost hope.
And he may as well be speaking to us.

Things haven’t changed that much. His times are still our times.
The arrogant and the evildoers still seem to carry the day,
and we too can feel like a struggling and disillusioned generation.
We get weary. We get disappointed.

This is one of the readings appointed for today.
And its words speak, with beautiful conciseness and clarity, of the day we all pray for –
the day when everything broken will finally be set right.

And what Malachi offers is not a vague or floaty hope.
Not a “pie in the sky when you die” kind of hope.
Not the sort of hope that shrugs and says,
“Well, it won’t happen in my lifetime—maybe someday, somewhere else.”

No.
Malachi’s hope is earthed.
It has muscle and movement.
It has sun-warmed skin and strong legs.
It leaps. It runs. It frolics.

Hope, in Malachi’s vision, is not an idea.
It’s an animal set free.

Hope has hooves.

And because hope has hooves, it doesn’t wait politely for the world to improve.
It doesn’t sit still until things get better.
It doesn’t retreat into a dream or escape into the clouds.

Hope is not about leaving this world behind;
it’s about this world being set right.

The freedom Malachi imagines does not happen “up there” or “somewhere else”
but here—in the fields of our own lives,
in the soil beneath our feet,
in the communities that have grown tired and heavy with disappointment.

Hope is grounded.
Hope is embodied.
Hope is movement.

And that is why those who have given up hope
so often spiritualise it, soften it, postpone it.
They make it so distant that it no longer touches the earth.
They reduce it to wishful thinking or to a future reward
instead of a promise that breaks into the present.

But real biblical hope always has dirt on its feet.
It always has skin in the game.
It always demands something of us.

It is a hope with hooves—
a hope that will not stand still
because God will not stand still.

And so we pray for that day.
Every time we say the Lord’s Prayer — “your kingdom come” — we are praying Malachi’s prayer.
We’re praying for the day when wrong is ended, when justice rises,
when the oppressed stand tall,
when the broken are made whole,
when healing breaks out like sunlight over a cold field.

But praying for that day is not passive.
It is not waiting-room spirituality.
It is preparation.
It is participation.
It is permission for God to rearrange our lives as well as the world.

Paul, writing to the Thessalonians, puts it plainly:
“Never tire of doing good.”

Never tire.
Not when we get weary.
Not when hope feels heavy.
Not when the world seems to resist every effort toward kindness, justice, truth.

Because if hope has hooves, we need to keep ours moving.

Doing good is not an extra.
It is not the garnish on Christian faith.
It is the shape of hope lived out.
It is the daily, steady work of aligning our lives with the world God is bringing into being.

And Jesus, in the Gospel reading, speaks of upheaval—
nations in uproar,
wars and rumours of wars,
the ground trembling beneath our certainties.

But then he says something deeply strengthening:
“Do not be afraid.”

Not because everything is fine — it isn’t.
Not because everything will suddenly get better — it may not.
But because God is with us in the meantime,
and it is precisely in these mean times
that our hope matters most.

The world being turned the right way up is bound to be unsettling.
Those who profit from cruelty won’t like it.
Those who cling to power will resist it.
Those who prefer darkness will fear the light.

But discipleship has always been lived with courage.
Courage to do good when others give up.
Courage to tell the truth when lying is easier.
Courage to protect the vulnerable when it costs something.
Courage to embody hope when cynicism is fashionable.

And that brings us to Safeguarding Sunday.

We haven’t mentioned it until now —
and that’s intentional —
because safeguarding isn’t a special theme for one Sunday,
or a box to tick,
or a duty we dust off once a year.

Safeguarding is simply hope in practice.
It is the grounded hope Malachi speaks of,
the persevering hope Paul commends,
the courageous hope Jesus prepares us for.

Safeguarding says:
in this community,
in this place,
every person matters.
The vulnerable are protected.
The wounded are listened to.
The frightened are safe.
This is a place where harm is named, not hidden,
and where healing is made possible.

Safeguarding is part of the way we pray “your kingdom come.”
It is part of the way we “never tire of doing good.”
It is part of the way we “do not be afraid.”

It is hope with hooves —
hope that moves,
hope that watches over,
hope that makes room,
hope that keeps all God’s people safe
until that promised day dawns
and we go out and frolic like well-fed calves.

So today we keep our hope alive,
we keep our feet moving,
and we keep one another safe.

Hope doesn’t just have feathers,
as Emily Dickinson writes in her poetry.
Hope has hooves.

The calling of God’s people in every generation
is to keep faith in these mean times,
to never give up hope in these mean times,
to never stop loving in these mean times.
These are the things we need to keep going forever,
faith, hope and love,
until the day comes which sees the end of the arrogant and the evildoer,
the day the sun of righteousness will rise
with healing in its wings.

Until then, we keep faith.
We keep hope.
We keep love.

Our call is to live for that day.

The stolen blessing: giving the word back to the poor

David HerbertLeave a comment

When the rich say they’re “feeling blessed”, the poor lose a word that was meant for them. Here I take my stand as a preacher – outraged and hopeful that the word “blessed” might yet be given back to those Jesus called “blessed”. It’s All Saints Sunday. I’m at Napton in Warwickshire.

In Luke 6, Jesus stands among the poor, the hungry, the grieving, and the hated — and he calls them blessed. He doesn’t bless success or security; he blesses need, honesty, and hope.
This sermon began with a niggle about that phrase, “feeling blessed,” and grew into outrage that such a word — once full of mercy — has been stolen by privilege.
Here’s my attempt to give it back to Jesus, and to those he named as saints.

Last Sunday I said this, and it’s niggled me ever since:

It strikes me that the Pharisee, in his way,
is saying what we so often hear today —
“I’m feeling blessed.”
Blessed that life’s gone well,
blessed that I’m not struggling,
blessed that I’m not like those who’ve fallen on hard times.

But the tax collector doesn’t say that.
He doesn’t feel blessed —
he only feels the weight of mercy.
And yet he’s the one who goes home justified,
seen, forgiven, restored.
Maybe that’s what blessing really looks like —
not success, but mercy meeting us
when we’ve nothing left to boast about.

Having heard this back in conversation with Angie,
I don’t think I was quite right.
It is true that it bugs me when I hear the phrase “feeling blessed”,
or when I see it as a caption on social media
under someone’s post showing how well life is going.
But I want to dig a bit deeper into this.

Angie was telling me about a conversation she’d had,
and that she left that conversation “feeling blessed.”
That seemed an entirely appropriate thing to say,
because the person she’d spoken to had truly blessed her.
He’d listened, encouraged, lifted her.
Perhaps all of us have had moments like that —
moments when the poverty of our nature is met by grace,
when we’ve made ourselves vulnerable,
when we’ve needed help, to be heard, to be understood —
and someone has met us there with words or deeds
that feel like they’ve come straight from the heart of heaven.
Then, yes — we can say we’ve been blessed.

The story of the Pharisee and the tax collector
was the context for what I said last week.
The Pharisee put me in mind of those who say “feeling blessed,”
because when he prayed, he thanked God
that he wasn’t like other people —
robbers, evildoers, adulterers.
Jesus, in effect, posted on social media
a snapshot of the Pharisee “feeling blessed” —
“me tithing,” “me fasting,” “me succeeding.”
But the Pharisee wasn’t blessed by God.
The one blessed by God was the tax collector
who prayed in shame and hope —
“God, be merciful to me, a sinner.”

So, those social media posts captioned “feeling blessed” —
what’s wrong with them is that they can seem boastful and proud.
They often show an exotic holiday, a trophy spouse, an obedient child.
It’s blessing as a lifestyle accessory.

But maybe there’s something deeper going on.
Maybe the word itself has been stolen.

Somewhere along the way, the word blessed slipped its moorings.
In the early Church, to be blessed was to be close to Christ in suffering —
to be touched by mercy in the midst of need.
By the Middle Ages, blessing had become
the Church’s way of naming holiness —
attached to the saints, the sacraments, the sacred.
Then, in the modern world —
especially in the language of empire, commerce, and the prosperity gospel —
blessing became confused with success.
 The word that once described God’s nearness to the poor
was slowly recruited to congratulate the comfortable.
It drifted from the margins to the centre,
from the hungry to the well-fed,
from the grieving to the gratified.
And that’s why we need to give the word back —
to let it find its way home to mercy again.

[Four readers speak these “impact statements,” one by one — slowly and simply.]

1. I used to think I was blessed — until my job disappeared.
 Now I know what it feels like to be forgotten while others boast of favour.

2. I pray for food and work and a home for my children,
 while my feed is full of people posting pictures of dinners and holidays,
 captioned “feeling blessed.”
 It feels like the word was never meant for me.

3. I came here from another country,
 fleeing violence and fear.
 They call me an asylum seeker,
 but I’m seeking only safety, belonging,
 a place where I might be seen as blessed too.

4. I live with grief every day.
 People avoid me because my sadness unsettles them.
 But if Jesus is to be believed,
 it’s people like me who are blessed —
 the ones who weep now, and will laugh again someday.

Because when Jesus opens his mouth to bless,
he doesn’t bless the powerful.
He blesses the poor, the hungry, the weeping, the hated.

Blessed are you who are poor,
for yours is the kingdom of God.

Blessed are you who hunger now,
for you will be filled.

Blessed are you who weep now,
for you will laugh.

Blessed are you when people hate you,
when they exclude you, insult you, reject your name as evil.

But woe to you who are rich…
woe to you who are well fed now…
woe to you who laugh now…

This is the same train of thought that sees the tax collector blessed
and the Pharisee left outside the circle of mercy.

When those who are rich, those who are well fed,
those who are having such a good time,
those receiving yet another honour —
when they say, like the Pharisee, “I’m feeling blessed,”
they are really rubbing salt into the wounds of the world.
What they should be saying is “I’m lucky,” not “blessed.”

Because it is the penitent sinner who is blessed.
It is the poor who are blessed because the kingdom of God works for them.
It is the hungry who are blessed — as in the feeding of the five thousand.
It is the heartbroken who are blessed.
It is the hated who are blessed —
the excluded, the insulted, the rejected,
the refugee and the asylum seeker.
They come first in the kingdom of God.

Please note: these are the only people Jesus calls blessed.

The proud, the self-satisfied, those who look good in their own eyes —
they should just count themselves lucky.
They put themselves first, better than all the rest —
but they come last in the kingdom of God,
because they give blessing a bad name.
They confuse blessing with comfort,
they preach a distorted prosperity gospel,
and in doing so they deprive the poor, the hungry, the heartbroken, and the hated
of the blessing that is rightfully theirs.
They exclude them, insult them,
and reject them from the realm of blessing,
pretending that the blessing is theirs alone.

So, today — on All Saints Sunday —
we remember not those who had it easy,
but those who kept faith when life was hard.
The saints are those who lived the Beatitudes —
the ones who gave the word blessed its meaning back
by how they lived.

And maybe that’s our calling too —
to speak and live in such a way
that the poor hear again that they are blessed,
that the hungry are satisfied,
that the grieving are comforted,
that the hated and the displaced are received as beloved.To give the word blessed back to Jesus —
and to those he never stopped blessing.

Luke 6:20-31
Looking at his disciples, Jesus said:
‘Blessed are you who are poor,
    for yours is the kingdom of God.
Blessed are you who hunger now,
    for you will be satisfied.
Blessed are you who weep now,
    for you will laugh.
Blessed are you when people hate you,
    when they exclude you and insult you
    and reject your name as evil,
        because of the Son of Man.

‘Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, because great is your reward in heaven. For that is how their ancestors treated the prophets.

‘But woe to you who are rich,
    for you have already received your comfort.
Woe to you who are well fed now,
    for you will go hungry.
Woe to you who laugh now,
    for you will mourn and weep.
Woe to you when everyone speaks well of you,
    for that is how their ancestors treated the false prophets.

‘But to you who are listening I say: love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who ill-treat you. If someone slaps you on one cheek, turn to them the other also. If someone takes your coat, do not withhold your shirt from them. Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. Do to others as you would have them do to you.