Sermon for the 2nd Sunday before Lent

Sunday 15th February 2009

Preached by Rev Paul Hewitt

I’m still working my way through and dipping into a book that Christine purchased last Christmas and I may have mentioned it before. It’s by Judy Parkinson and it’s The History of Britain in Bite-sized Chunks, entitled, ‘Remember, Remember (The Fifth of November)’; she’s the best selling author of ‘i before e’. And the idea of her book about history was borne out of a desire to encapsulate the whole sweep of British history – from the Roman invasion to the end of the Second World war – in no more than 150 entries, each no longer than 250 words. A fascinating exercise in it self, but could it be done? Well, it is an extraordinary feat and she has achieved her goal in remarkable fashion. You are not going to get all the nuances and complexities of the War of the Roses or the Treaty of Versailles. But then, are you going to remember them? So, in the first 43 pages, you can cover something like a thousand years of history. Granted not to A-Level standard, but at least you have a smattering of what went on.

What has struck me most is that over all these centuries, have we really changed all that much? For example, for nearly seven years, Stuart Britain was torn apart by civil war. Religious and political tensions erupted in a power struggle between Royalists (Cavaliers) and Parliamentarians (Roundheads).

Nearly after four hundred years, political allegiances and political divides follow the same pattern. Irish political history also follows well established demarcations, created at the very beginning, in the mists of time, it seems!

It all prompted me to tell my cohort in the office, Peter Johnston, my new found take on things, and he reminded me of the old maxim, “The more we change, the more stay the same”! Now, who said that? Well, if you’re interested, it seems to be, originally, a French saying and it’s often attributed to Rousseau, the French philosopher of the Eighteenth Century!

But what about this direct quote? “I see no hope for the future of our people if they are dependent on the frivolous youth of today, for certainly all youth are reckless beyond words...When I was young were taught to be discreet and respectful of elders, but the present youth are exceedingly impatient of restraint”. When was that written? It sounds so modern, yet it was written in the eighth century BC, by a Greek poet called Hesiod. Do some things never change?

When you sit down to record things and events, it’s very interesting to note where people choose to start.

The gospel writers, all four of them, sat down to write, as Luke puts it, “an orderly account...so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught”. The truth is at the heart of good research. Look at the gospels for a moment!

Matthew begins his account with Abraham: “A record of the genealogy of Jesus Christ the Son of David, the son of Abraham”.

Mark says, “The beginning of the gospel about Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” God seems to be a good place to begin a tale about his Son! Luke actually begins his testimony with the foretelling of John the Baptist. None of them can be wrong; they have all started in logical places. The first three gospels are the Synoptic Gospels, meaning, literally, seen through the same eye. There are some significant differences which are fascinating, and the three gospels are not exactly the same. This makes it all the more interesting. I’ve said it before, but if they were all exactly the same, I would be much more suspicious of the whole gospel story!!

John’s Gospel comes much later and is one of the oldest pieces of writing in the New Testament, written about 90 AD., some sixty years after Jesus’ crucifixion. John died, it seems, after a fairly happy and contented life on the Island of Patmos. He had time, and the inclination, to truly reflect on the real meaning behind all these extraordinary events, and on who really was this person of Jesus.

It is an extraordinary account; it’s full of theology and wisdom, borne out of contemplation and time. John begins his story at the very beginning! “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God...In him was life, and that life was the light of men.”

It is a classic piece of literature and something we know off by heart.

I remember when I was asked to be a kind of religious consultant on a Christmas programmed that was filmed in the Primary School here and other locations throughout Northern Ireland (in fact, a repeat was screened I think just before Christmas) and the producer asked me,

“Right, where does the Christmas story begin?” He just wanted the punch lines, I know, but I was tempted to say that the Christmas story starts at the very beginning of everything.

History is His Story!

If human nature doesn’t change all that much over the centuries of recorded history, then what is said about our human nature in the New Testament can be applied directly to our human condition this very day.

We all know where we’re at. We know our history and, at least our immediate ancestry. We know well our human condition; perhaps better now than we have ever known it!

With all our advances in science and philosophy and art and medicine, we are basically the same human beings, desperately in need of love and forgiveness and grace. That will never change if the world lasts for another thousand years.

How great it would be if the world would see that the world pivots on the God who loved us and created us and that Jesus his Son came to show us that very fact. John ends his Gospel:

“Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written.”

That was written 2000 years ago, and that it what we still believe today.