A Conspiracy of Women

David Herbert1 Comment

This sermon was preached on Mothering Sunday 2026, the week of the 75th anniversary of my baptism.
The story of the baby Moses begins with fear of immigrants and a ruler determined to control the future. But the future does not belong to him. Instead it is carried forward by midwives, mothers, and a princess who quietly resist injustice. This Mothering Sunday sermon reflects on that ancient story from the Book of Exodus and what it means for the church to be a place where every life drawn from the water is treasured.

The Discovery of Moses by Edward Long, 1885, City Museum and Art Gallery, Bristol

Rulers — often men — do funny things.
And sometimes they become very worried about people who are different from them.

There was a new king in Egypt.
And he was very hot on immigration.

He began his rule by cracking down on the immigrant community —
particularly the Israelite families who had settled in Egypt.
They were fruitful and prolific.
Their numbers were growing.
And the king could see a time when they might outnumber them.

So he began by oppressing them with forced labour.
The book of Exodus says the Egyptians were ruthless in the tasks they imposed on them.

But still their numbers grew.

Next the king ordered the Hebrew midwives to kill all the boys they delivered.
Spare the girls — kill the boys.
That was the order.

But the midwives found a way round it.
They simply disobeyed.

When the king complained that Hebrew boys were still being born,
the midwives replied that Hebrew women were vigorous —
they gave birth before the midwives could arrive.

It is one of the most elegant acts of resistance in the whole of scripture.

That’s the background to today’s reading.

There is the murderous king.
And there are the heroic midwives — Shiphrah and Puah.

Names that should be remembered for ever,
Shiphrah. Puah.

Names that stand alongside all the women who saved the boy in the basket —
and, I suspect, many other babies besides.

We don’t know what the boy’s mother called him,
but we do know that she hid him as long as she could.
And when she could hide him no longer,
she prepared a basket,
placed him inside it,
and set it among the reeds on the riverbank.

His sister stood at a distance,
watching to see what would happen.

And then the king’s daughter came down to bathe in the river.
She found the basket.
She opened it.
And there was the baby — crying.

She knew at once that he was one of the Hebrew children.

The watching girl stepped forward
and offered to fetch a Hebrew woman to nurse the child.

And the woman she fetched was the baby’s own mother.
So the mother nursed her own child —
until the day came when she brought him back to the king’s daughter.

And it was the princess who named him Moses.

She called him Moses, because — she said — “I drew him out of the water.”

And when you step back and look at the story, you begin to see something remarkable.

The future of God’s people is being carried not by armies or kings,
but by a small network of women.

First there are the midwives –
Shiprah
and Puah.

Then there is the child’s mother –
Jochebed – who hides him and makes the little basket.

Then there is the watchful sister –
Miriam – keeping her eye on the riverbank.

And finally there is the most unlikely rescuer of all –
Pharoah’s daughter – the king’s own daughter.

When you look at them together, there is really only one word for it:
a conspiracy,
An international conspiracy of women.
Which, come to think of it,
would be quite an exciting rebrand for the Mothers’ Union …
… and perhaps the Women’s Institute as well.

In this story it is the powerful men who issue commands.
But they never control the future.

It is the powerful men who make the decrees.
But it is the conspiracy of women who prevent the consequences.

Scripture is telling us something very important here.

The liberation of Israel does not begin with plagues or prophets.
It does not begin with a hero.
It begins with compassion.

It begins with midwives, mothers, sisters,
and an Egyptian princess —
who refuse to cooperate with cruelty.

Long before Moses ever spoke to Pharaoh,
mothers had already defeated him.

And the princess gave the child a name.

Moses, she called him, because she said, “I drew him out of the water”.

Drawn out of the water.
That’s a phrase Christians have always recognised, because that is what happens in baptism.
In baptism we are drawn out of the water and given a new life, a new belonging, a new name as children of God.

Last Wednesday was the 75th anniversary of my baptism.
75 years since someone held me over water like this and spoke the name of God into my life.
I didn’t understand any of it then of course.
But the church understood.
The church understood that every life is precious,
every child is held in the love of God,
and every one of us needs a community that helps us grow into that love.

And that takes us back to the story we have just heard.
When ther baby’s mother made that basket,
she didn’t just weave some reeds together and hope for the best.
The Bible says she sealed it with pitch to make it waterproof.

In other words,
she did everything a loving parent would do –
she made that tiny boat as safe as she possibly could.
That little basket was probably the safest place the child had ever been.

When we hear of people being pulled from the sea today,
refugees rescued from dangerous waters,
perhaps the old story echoes again –
every life drawn from the water is a life that matters to God.

Which is why the church must always be something like that basket in the reeds –
a place where fragile life is protected
until it grows strong enough to change the world.

So today we remember a story about a baby in a basket on the river.
A fragile life, protected by a network of courageous women –
midwives, a mother, a sister, and a princess – who refused to cooperate with cruelty.

We remember that the child they saved, Moses,
was given a name that means
drawn from the water.

And we remember that in baptism something similar happens to each one of us.
We too are drawn from the waters that could engulf us,
and we are given a new belonging in the love of God.

And perhaps Mothering Sunday is a good day to give thanks
for all those people who have helped carry us along the river of life –
mothers, fathers, friends, teachers, neighbours and saints –
those who have held us safe until we were strong enough
to set out on the river of life for ourselves.

Seventy-Five and Still Counting

David HerbertLeave a comment

Abram was seventy-five when God told him to go.
Nicodemus was long established when Jesus told him he must be born again.
New birth is not punishment for failure — it is rescue from stagnation. It is never too late for God to be the making of us.
A sermon for the 2nd Sunday of Lent (Year A)

One goes, another comes.

It is Abram who goes.
It’s Nicodemus who comes,
Carefully, at night, to see Jesus.

For both, it’s about being born again.

Abram, we are told, was 75.
75.
By that age you’d expect him to be set.
If you’re not settled by 75, when will you be?
He’s established, formed and known.

Then he hears God say:
GO.

Leave your country.
Leave your people –
the people who made you who you are.
Leave your father’s house.
Leave everything you’ve ever known.

Even, in a way, leave your whole identity.

This man is Abram. That is who he is.
Abram is the “exalted father” –
“high father” – that’s what his name means.

And yet he has no child.

He sets out as Abram.
He sets out before anything has changed.
Before the promise is visible.
Before the future is secure.

And only later does God give him a new name:
Abraham – father of a multitude, father of nations –
the one through whom all the families of the earth shall be blessed,
and from whom, to this day,
Jewish, Christian and Muslim families
trace their story
and count their blessings.

It is Abram who goes.

Then there is the one who comes,
out of the dead of night he comes,
emerging from the shadows of
darkness and despair comes Nicodemus.

We don’t know his age, but he is no youngster.
He is old enough to have made his mark.
He is a Pharisee – a serious student of the Torah.
He is a member of the Jewish ruling council.
He is a teacher of Israel.
In fact, he is a person of substance,
and has spent a lifetime becoming someone.

And yet, he comes to Jesus and says:
“Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God.”

Jesus tells him,
“No one can see the kingdom of God,
unless they are born again.”
“You must be born again.”

There we have it.
Abram is seventy-five.
And Nicodemus is no spring chicken.
Both are too old, humanly speaking,
for new beginnings.

Their story matters to us.
The two of them, they are both settled.
Abram is settled geographically, socially, economically.
Nicodemus is settled intellectually, religiously, institutionally.
Neither of them is wicked.
They’ve just grown old.
And we can become rather settled in our ways when we get old, can’t we?
Sometimes we are just tired.
Sometimes we get fixed in our opinions.
Sometimes we know our lines too well.
Sometimes we have become experts in being ourselves.
Some of us have had a lifetime of building ourselves,
making something of our lives,
with a lifetime of defending ourselves,
and the castles of our achievements,
Probably just like Abram and Nicodemus.

Perhaps we are too settled.
Settled in habits.
Settled in grudges.
Settled in roles.
Settled in the versions of ourselves we defend.

Perhaps, we too, need to stop that.

These scriptures spell out the good news
that we can stop that
and that we can be born again,
that we can stop all of that
so God can be the making of us.

New birth is not punishment for failure.
It is rescue from stagnation.
Nicodemus is right to ask the question,
“How can someone be born when they are old?
Surely they can’t enter a second time
into their mother’s womb to be born!”

We cannot make the new start ourselves.
We cannot birth ourselves.
It is God who makes the new start.
It’s God’s creation story.

In our own creation story
the firstborn stands secure.
The firstborn inherits.
The firstborn has position.
The younger is “spare”.

But in God’s story
it’s the younger who carries the promise,
the one born last – as we see in Abraham’s own family.
It’s younger Isaac, not older brother Ishmael.
It’s grandson Jacob, not Esau.
It’s Ephraim, not Manasseh.

The line of blessing doesn’t follow seniority,
it follows grace.

The last born is the new born.
The first born is always the older one,
relatively speaking.
The first born is the settled one,
just like Abram, just like Nicodemus,
just like all of us.
And the first born is never the new born,
unless willing to be born again.

The Gospel of John tells it different to the other gospel singers:

“No one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.”
The other gospel writers say it like this:
“Noone can enter the kingdom of God
unless they become like a little child”.
The newborn are the last and the least.
They come with nothing.
They’re not dressed up with status or with achievements.

The newborns are never first.
Nicodemus is first.
He is first in power – he’s on the ruling council.
He is first in knowledge – he’s the teacher.
He’s the first in religious competence

But if he is to see the kingdom of God,
if he is to understand the way of God,
he must become new,
he must become small enough to receive
He must become, in a sense, last.

And the same with Abram.
He was established, named, known,
but becomes the stranger,
and the beginner again.

Abram was seventy-five.
Seventy-five.
That’s the age to qualify for lifetime achievement awards.
We spend our lives making ourselves,
our opinions,
our reputation,
our security,
our case before others.

Seventy-five.
It’s never too late
for God to be the making of us.

If Abram can begin at seventy-five,
and if Nicodemus can learn again
after a lifetime of teaching,
then none of us are stuck.
No one here is “too formed”.
No one is past beginning.

No one is past beginning.

And if we need one more witness —

there is Saul.

Certain.
Certain he was right.
Certain he knew God.
Certain he was defending the truth.

Established in his learning.
Established in his zeal.
Established in who he was.

And then —
stopped.

On the road.
Thrown down.
Blinded.

Led by the hand like a child.

He who saw so clearly
cannot see at all.

He who led
must now be led.

He who was first
must become last.

God does not improve him.
God remakes him.

He too must be born again.


Seventy-five.
It’s never too late

Abram was my age when he left it all.
I am still at that age when I don’t know,
when I don’t always like how I am,
when I need to hear “stop that”,
so that I can begin as the new-born,
as the last.
Heaven forbid I ever get settled in the way I am
and the way we are.

The amazing thing about God’s grace
is that we can always start again.
God so loved the world,
loves the world too much to leave it settled,
too much to leave us stuck,
so much as to come to us in the night,
to call us out of what we have made of ourselves.

Let us pray.

Lord God,
Father of Abraham,
giver of new birth,

We pray for the first borns among us —
for those who have grown established,
respected, secure.

For those who know their lines too well.
For those who have built lives
and learned how to defend them.

For those of us
who have become experts in being ourselves.

Make us willing to become small again.
Make us teachable.
Make us new.

And we pray for the new borns —
for the fragile beginnings,
for tender faith,
for hesitant steps into the unknown.

For those setting out not knowing where they go.
For those coming in the night with questions.

Breathe your Spirit upon them.
Guard what you are bringing to birth.
Carry to fullness what you have begun.

For you so loved the world
that you did not leave us settled,
but came among us
that we might be born from above.

Make us new, Lord.
Amen.

It is never too late for God to be the making of us.

There is a Hum in Humanity

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There is a hum in humanity — a low note that runs through our lives. From the garden of Genesis to the wilderness of Gospel of Matthew, that hum carries the strain of mistrust, hunger and longing. But in the desert, Jesus holds a truer note — and the music of the world begins to change. A reflection for the first Sunday of Lent (Year A).

There is a hum in humanity.
A low note that runs through our lives.

It is there in the very beginning of the word itself,
the hum as we grow up as humans,
part of humanity,
challenged to be humane,
struggling to keep our feet on the ground – the humus,
finding humility so difficult.

There is a hum in humanity.
A low note that rumbles through our lives.

It is not just the hum of dust and breath –
but the hum of strain.

It is the hum of a myth
that resounds through all our lives,
a myth that can’t be dismissed
because it rings so true,
so true that it becomes the earworm
that casts our psyche
and scripts our story.

This is the story from Genesis.

It is not a fairy tale about a perfect world once upon a time,
but the beginning of difficulty.

The first mistrust.
The first fracture.
The first hiding.
The first blaming.

And the rest, as they say, is history,
herstory and ourstory.

Ever since, life has carried that note.

Work that exhausts.
Relationships that bruise.
Bodies that fail.
Power that corrupts.
Fear that whispers.

There is a hum in our ears and hearts
that tells us life should be easier than this –
easier than it has ever been.

A hum that suggests it was never meant to be this hard.

And yet –
it has been this hard from the beginning.

And then we hear the Gospel from Matthew.

The same hum.
The same strain.
The same voice that once whispered in a garden now speaks in a wilderness.

“Turn these stones to bread.”
Make it easier.
Fix the hunger.
Work a little magic.

“Throw yourself down.”
Let God catch you.
Prove yourself.
Court admiration.

“All this can be yours.”
Take control.
Overrule the chaos.
Dominate rather than trust.

These are not exotic temptations.
They are ours.

The temptation to solve difficulty by spectacle.
To escape vulnerability by popularity.
To end uncertainty by control.

Jesus stands where we stand.
He feels the same pull.
He hears the same hum.

But he stays.

He stays with the hunger.
He stays with the trust.
He stays with the limits of being human.

And he answers —
not with magic,
not with drama,
not with force —

but with Scripture,
with remembered truth,
with the steady note of dependence.

And that steady note
sees the back of the devil.

After the discord of the devil,
a new note sounds,
a different music,
harmonies and the ring of truth.
This is the sound of angels,
the sound of heaven attending earth.

This is the sound that swells our hearts
as we walk our 40 days of Lent,
through our temptation,
through difficulty,
through wilderness.

It’s not the sound of despair and desolation,
nor the sound of punishment and shame,
it is the note Jesus brings to the garden,
the hopeful note of humankind.

This is the joy Paul conveys to us in his letter to the Romans.
By the obedience of one
the music of our lives has changed.
Not by the brilliance of one.
Not by the power of one.
By the obedience of one –
in the wilderness,
in the difficulties, pressures and temptations of life,
humanity is re-tuned.

The hum of strain is not denied.
Jesus is still hungry.
Jesus is always hungry.
As long as anyone is hungry,
Jesus is hungry.

But discord becomes fidelity.

That’s the good news.

The gospel is not that life suddenly becomes easy.
The good news is that within the difficulty –
the wars, the privations, the despair –
a new sound has entered the world.

The hum is still there.
The world is still hard.

But now –
it is not the only sound.

These forty days are a gift to us –
time to learn again how to listen
for the music of accompaniment.

The Glory that Straightens Us

David Herbert1 Comment

A reflection for the Sunday just before Lent, when the Church’s readings gently remind us that Lent is not about self-improvement, but about staying with the glory of God.

There is a great noise in the world just now.
Nations in tumult. Rulers devising their plots. Power protecting itself.
The psalmist’s question hardly feels ancient: “
Why are the nations in tumult, and why do the peoples devise a vain plot?”
It is the sound of anger, of rivalry, of ambition —
the sound of a world bent in on itself.

And beneath the public noise there is another noise:
the private ache,
the anxiety we carry,
the way we can find ourselves almost doubled up with it —
bent backs and bowed heads under the weight of it all.

This is how we’ve come to worship today,
with our minds dripping with the headlines
from the Sunday papers, the TV news
and fed by the crooked algorithms of social media.
This is how we began our worship,
with those lines from the psalm appointed for today,
Psalm 2: Why are the nations in tumult,
and why do people plot so cruelly against one another?

This is the noise that we take into Lent,
the noise of anger and anxiety.

And then, in today’s gospel,
Jesus leads his friends away from the tumult.
Up a high mountain.
Not to escape the world, but to see it truly.
The air is thinner there.
The noise falls away.
The cloud settles.
The voice speaks.

And as we stand on the edge of Lent —
forty days that echo Moses in the cloud —
we are invited to climb with him.
Not to try harder.
Not to straighten ourselves by effort.
But to behold a glory that does not crush us,
does not dazzle us into denial,
but straightens us.
“This is my Son, the Beloved. Listen to him.”

The mountain is not where we live.
We live mostly in the valleys —
in the ordinary press of work and worry,
in the shadowed places Psalm 23 calls “the valley of the shadow of death,”
in the deadly ways that bend our backs and narrow our vision.

But in Exodus, Moses is called up into the cloud,
into fire and mystery,
for forty days and forty nights —
not to escape the people below,
but to receive something that will sustain them in the wilderness.

And as Lent opens before us,
those forty days are not an ordeal to be survived,
nor a spiritual boot camp in self-improvement.
They are a grace-filled ascent.
An invitation to step, however falteringly, into the cloud with Christ —
to let the noise fall away,
to let our sight be cleared,
to let our crooked wills be gently bent back toward God’s goodness and glory —
to have our hearts set straight and our wills aligned with his love –
so that when we walk again through the valleys,
we do not walk weakened,
but strengthened by the glory we have glimpsed.

So we will walk down the mountain again.
We always do.
The noise will still be there.
The nations will still rage.
The valleys will still wind their way through shadowed places.
Lent will not remove us from the world’s tumult,
nor from the private aches that sometimes leave us doubled over.
But we will not walk alone, and we will not walk unstrengthened.

For we have heard the voice: “This is my Son, the Beloved. Listen to him.”

And if we listen —
not perfectly, not heroically, but honestly —
something in us begins to straighten.
Not by effort, but by grace.

The glory of Christ does not crush us;
it steadies us.
It does not blind us;
it clears our sight.

It does not demand that we prove ourselves;
it bends our wills gently back toward the goodness and glory of God.

This is what these forty days are for.
Not self-improvement, but reorientation.
Not spiritual ambition, but deeper attention.
So that when we walk through the valleys —
even through the valley of the shadow of death —
we are not bent by fear or twisted by the world’s rage,
but strengthened by the glory we have seen,
and guided by the voice we have learned to trust.

The Glory that straightens us is not found in noise or power or spectacle.
It is found in the Beloved Son — and it is enough.

The Genesis of Gentleness and the Gentleness of Genesis

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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

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“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.