No, not the 2006 film with Denzel Washington (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%A9j%C3%A0_Vu_(2006_film)), nor the chain of sandwich and coffee bars (http://www.dejavu.uk.com).

Have you ever had a sense of ‘déjà-vu’? That rather odd feeling that you’ve been somewhere before, or that you’re going through the same experience that you’ve had in the past? Often there’s quite a sense of dislocation about the whole thing – everything seems odd and you wonder what is going on. Perhaps you’re on holiday, visiting a cathedral, and suddenly it seems as if you have been in that very spot before. Or maybe you are having dinner with a group of friends, discussing something, and you have the feeling that you’ve already experienced the same thing – same friends, same dinner, same conversation.

Surveys have shown that 70 % of people report having experienced some form of déjà vu. The highest number of incidents occurs in people aged between 15 and 25 years old. Some doctors attribute déjà vu to simple fantasy or wish fulfilment, others ascribe it to a mismatching in the brain that causes the brain to mistake the present for the past. Some people would like to think it’s related to a past-life experience.

So, have you had such an experience? ……… Peter must have been having some sort of double-take as his story unfolds in our Gospel reading. You might be able to imagine him feeling the sense that he’s been here before, and then gradually remembering what it reminded him of. And I think that this happens twice for Peter in today’s Gospel.

The first time is this ‘fishing-thing’. Can you remember another similar occasion in Peter’s life? What happened then? …. It is a story from early in Jesus’ ministry – he purloins Peter’s boat to speak to the crowd on the sea shore and then, instructs Peter on where to fish. The catch is large and Peter is overwhelmed and he says – ‘Depart from me Lord, for I am a sinful man.’ Jesus ignores Peter’s outburst and asks him to follow him.

The second is Jesus’ series of questions – ‘Do you love me Peter?’

In the first instance, Jesus is gently reminding Peter of his calling to serve as an apostle – a ‘fisher of people’ – a follower of Jesus. In the second incident, Jesus reminds Peter of the time he most obviously failed. The time when he denied Jesus three times.

We are told in the Gospel story that after Peter had denied Jesus three times he went out and wept bitterly. … He’d been the one who had bragged that he would never desert Jesus, yet he had been the one who had most obviously failed to stand by Jesus at his trial and Crucifixion. … Peter must have felt devastated at Jesus death and guilty and ashamed of his own behaviour.

So how did Peter feel when he discovered that Jesus was alive again? Somewhere in the midst of the feelings of elation was at least a nagging doubt, perhaps an even stronger feeling, that the way he’d behaved was unforgivable. Peter must have felt that he had nothing to offer Jesus, that his failure was just too great. How would Jesus speak to him when they next were alone? Would there still be that deep sense of friendship and trust, or would there always be a barrier between them? And I guess, that if it had been left to Peter, he would have always felt a barrier between himself and Jesus that he could not cross. His own failure weighed heavily on him.

So what does Jesus do? We’ve seen it happen in the Gospel reading. He first gently reminds Peter of the circumstances of his first calling as a disciple. He then provides Peter an opportunity to express his faith and his love for his Lord – and we’re told that it was a painful experience for Peter. But Jesus is making it so very clear to Peter that he’s welcome back as a close friend, that forgiveness is real and that his calling as a disciple still stands.

So, the question for us today is, “How does Jesus deal with us when we fail him?” We feel that we can’t meet him face to face, yet God wants us to believe that the same forgiveness and love is available to everyone, how ever deeply we feel that we have failed. Peter’s story makes that so very clear. … None of us will betray God’s trust in us in any greater way than Peter did. Peter was welcomed back and re-commissioned by Jesus to serve him as a leader in his Church. We can have the same confidence that we are welcomed back as repentant sinners, welcomed back into the loved of God.

And often, there is for us, something like a sense of déjà vu about the whole thing – for, time and again, God provides us with the opportunity to serve him again even though we have failed, even when we have repeated the same failures. And in doing so he gives us the opportunity to discover that we have grown and changed through the love he has shown us.

ISAIAH 55:1-9  28^th February 2016

There is a true story told of a group of sailors shipwrecked in the Atlantic, off the Brazilian coast. They were marooned for days on a small life-raft. Their small supply of water ran out long before they were eventually rescued by a passing ship.

The ship’s captain asked them why they were so dehydrated. Obviously they answered that they’d run out of water. ‘No water?’ said the captain, ‘You only had to reach over the side of the boat for an endless supply.’

We all know that you can’t drink sea-water because of the high salt content – but these men had been marooned in the middle of the freshwater stream which pushes out into the Atlantic from the River Amazon.

The shortage was an illusion. All they had to do was drink!!!

Hunger and thirst are compared in our passage from Isaiah with our need for God and his love. God invites Isaiah’s listeners to draw from heaven’s storehouses of wine, milk and bread. Isaiah highlights just how strongly our need for the love of God determines our lives.

God speaks through Isaiah, inviting the people of Israel to receive from him, from God, all that they need for life. And as God invites Israel to receive from him, so he invites us. God=s not so much concerned here with physical hunger and thirst, but with that sense we have at times that there must be more to life than we are experiencing, or the, at times overpowering, need to know that we are loved. Isaiah is convinced that as we come to God; as we listen to him speaking through his word; as we receive his unconditional love for us – then, and only then, will we find that our deepest needs have been met.

For many years we have lived in a society that has been telling us that this is not true. That if God isn’t dead, he has certainly become an irrelevance. Since the 17^th Century. and the Enlightenment we have been told that Science and Rational Thought will give us the answers to all our problems; that as the human race advances ‘enlightened thinking’ will mean an end to evil and will bring the gradual dawning of a new rational scientific age of harmony. An age that no longer needed the ‘Spiritual’ – that no longer needed God.

In the 20^th Century, we discovered that advances in knowledge do not change the human heart. In that century we saw some of the greatest evils committed by the most advanced of nations.

We’ve been left with a world which is suffering environmental damage, where the majority live in poverty while the minority feast on untold riches. As we come to terms with the state of our world, it’s no longer anywhere near as obvious that advancing human knowledge will create a better world.

People are dissatisfied, disaffected, and they’re looking for other ways to make sense of their lives. People are looking for spiritual answers – a trip into any bookshop on the High Street will illustrate the point. In the last few years significant shelf space has been given over to special ways of knowing, to alternative ‘spirituality’. As a society we are searching for meaning; we are looking for peace and wholeness; we are thirsty, we are hungry and we’re scrabbling around all over the place looking for answers.

It is no longer possible to argue that people are not ‘spiritual’ beings. We all have a sense of the spiritual, and of spiritual need. Men as well as women. Michael Nazir-Ali, one time Bishop of Rochester quotes some research done at the end of the 20^th Century among working men. This research found that a significant proportion of ‘working men’ at some point in their lives have gone through a ‘spiritual’ experience, but have not felt able to talk about it with their mates. Their experience was buried and not allowed to affect their lives at work, in the pub or at home.

It’s just like we’re in the boat with those castaways off the Brazilian coast. All they had to do was reach over the side to quench their thirst. All we have to do is reach out to God in Jesus. And if we do,  just as Isaiah describes, God will quench our thirst and relieve the aching pains of hunger Just as he reaches out to his Old Testament people in love, so he will do for us.

Listen to what God says through Isaiah:

“Incline your ear, and come to me; listen, so that you may live. I will make with you an everlasting covenant, my steadfast, sure love.”

I wonder whether you recognise these statements as you read them …. could tell me where these words come from?

“Britain only succeeds when working people succeed. We plan to reward hard work, share prosperity and build a better Britain.”

“Strong Leadership, a Clear Economic Plan a Brighter and more Secure Future.”

They come respectively from the 2015 Labour and Tory Manifestos.

Who first spoke these words?

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour, the day of vengeance of our God.”

It wasn’t Jesus, but the prophet Isaiah!

These words come from the latter part of the book of Isaiah. They are the prophet=s manifesto for his ministry among the people after the exile in Israel. A place of hope and new life. They follow the passages that we know as those of the suffering servant. The one who Isaiah sees as taking the sins and problems of the people onto his own shoulders.

In our Gospel passage Jesus speaks out these same words as his own manifesto. In hearing those words read, people listening to him will immediately have recognised their context in the scroll of Isaiah. They should have understood that in claiming these verses as his own manifesto, Jesus was not only taking the place of the suffering servant of Isaiah but also the predicted and long awaited Servant of the Lord.

His own kith and kin in Nazareth listened to him as he spoke but singularly failed to hear what he was really saying. They were impressed with how he spoke. However, their failure to understand what he was really saying is obvious. They knew him so well, “this local boy made good!” At least they thought they did. You might be able to imagine their response – the knowing nudges, the delighted smiles as they turned to one another and said, “Is not this Joseph’s son?”

And we heard Jesus response. He immediately sets about correcting their wrong perceptions. It is as though he says; “No, no, a million times no! This is not the son of Joseph but the Son of God.”

They can only see him in the setting of their own village, they want him to do here in Nazareth just what he has done in Capernaum. Their vision cannot see beyond the confines of their own village. “Listen,” says Jesus, “I have come with a message of good news not for Nazareth only, but for all Galilee, indeed for all Israel, and – although this will scandalise you – if Israel turns out to be as blinkered as narrow-minded as you people of Nazareth, then Israel will forfeit the good news, while the rest of the world will receive it.”

The praiseworthy words of Jesus’ manifesto suddenly seem to be anathema to the people of Nazareth. Their pride in their local son, turns to rage; “Who on earth does he think he is. What right does he have to speak in this way? Not only is he rebuking us but he is also challenging the very tennets of our faith. The Messiah, saviour of the whole world – heresy, blasphemy, the devil’s work.”

Admiration turns to fury. They determine to kill Jesus.

The Gospel is good news not only for the Jews but for the whole world. This is the message that Luke continues to develop throughout his gospel. Good news for us! And it is good to give time to hearing once again the message that God’s grace extends to us here on the very edge of Europe, far from the places Jesus knew and loved in Palestine.

It’s true, this is a message of grace and hope. There are no buts, ifs or maybes associated with the breadth of God’s love. None at all.

However, this story itself carries a but, a very big but. … You see now, today, here, the story expects us not to stand on the sidelines watching the action but to ask who we should most identify with.

It would be lovely to be able to say; “O, we are the Gentiles Jesus’ refers to – isn’t it good to be included in God’s love!”

Clearly, however, Luke does not just intend us to have a warm fuzzy feeling as we read his gospel. He wants to challenge us. Luke intends that we, the people of God, identify ourselves with the people of Nazareth, the ones who want to domesticate Jesus …. Christ is ours, he is one of us, we have grown up with him, we have seen him at work.

Luke wants to challenge us to move us on.. He, and Jesus, wants us to join him in implementing Christ’s manifesto.

You see, Jesus sees us not as voters but as members of his party, he expects us to be activists, he expects us to share his values. To understand that ministry for Jesus is not just about feeling safe and secure in our faith. To understand that ministry is about: “preaching good news to the poor; proclaiming freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind; releasing the oppressed, and proclaiming the Lord’s favour.” To understand that we have to work to make God’s kingdom a reality here where we live and work.

And sadly, if we are not prepared to move forward with Jesus, to work with his manifesto, he will find those who are willing to do so. He will move on. Just as he walked through the crowd at the top of the hill he will refuse our agenda and pursue his own.

So let’s listen again to Jesus’ manifesto and as I read it out, let’s commit ourselves again to serving him in our own community.

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.”

ISAIAH 43:1-7 & LUKE 3:15-17, 21-22

Please take a moment or two with me, if you will – to imagine what it was like to be the nation of Israel at the time of the prophet Isaiah. …

To the south is Egypt a major power, still striving to keep its place in the world. To the north and east, Assyria, seemingly at the height of its power – a particularly vicious nation who pursued a policy of ethnic cleansing – completely devastating conquered lands, killing many and dispersing the rest around its empire, destroying any sense of national cohesion, minimising the possibility of rebellion. But Assyria was fragile, it had expanded too quickly and was itself on the brink of being overrun by a rival empire from further east – the Babylonians.

So what was it like to be Israel, or Judah, trapped between these mighty forces, sitting slap bang in the middle of the main trade routes between the powers; placed right on the main military roads?

Can you imagine the sense of fear, of terror, at the forces ranged on each side of them? Can you feel the uncertainty of Israel’s leaders as they try to evaluate who will win? Which side should they make a treaty with? Which side can be trusted? Can any of these powers be trusted?

Can you see the sense of dread on the faces of the ordinary people as they watch army after army moving back and forward across their land? Hoping against hope that the army will have moved through the territory before it chooses to stop. For when an army stops, it eats. And where does its food come from? From the farms, the fertile valleys, the families near where it stops. And ancient armies never paid for their food, they raped and pillaged – not only the land but the people.

What was it like for Israel to be caught in the middle of forces over which it had no control? Tossed hither and thither by the events of the day? ….

It is into this kind of situation that Isaiah speaks God’s words:

Do not fear for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through rivers they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through the fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you. For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Saviour.

What do these words mean to Israel?

They were already feeling swamped and overcome. These words are not a promise that everything will be fine. They are rather a promise that whatever Israel suffers God will be with them. Whatever difficulties they face God will walk through those difficulties with Israel.

Do not fear for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you.

What does God want to say to us today through these words? What does God want to say to us on the Sunday when the Church of England asks us to remember that Christ went through the waters of Baptism? What does God want to say to us, at the beginning of a New Year?

Adult baptism by full immersion is a graphic picture of death and resurrection. … Christ’s own baptism prefigures his death & resurrection. It points forward to the time when he passed through the waters of death & in doing so experienced the desolation of being deserted by his Father. The time when the Godhead was rent asunder for love of us. … Christ’s Baptism & his death are the greatest evidence that he has experienced the worst that life can throw at us. That as we pass through the turbulent waters of life, God will be with us. “Do not fear,” says God to each of us. “Do not fear,” says God to us as communities of Christian believers, as churches in Ashton, Tameside and the UK.

Do not fear for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you.

God does not promise us exemption from the struggles of life, the difficulties that others face. Rather, God promises to be with us through the experiences of life. And it is grasping the truth of this which the Bible calls faith. It is what sustained ancient Israel. It is what can sustain each of us as we embark upon the journey of another year with all that it may bring.

Do not fear for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine.

These are words that each of us needs to hear for ourselves.

We can dismiss God’s words in our Gospel reading. We can say that God meant them only for his special Son. Although I think they were meant for all of God’s children: “You are my Son, my Daughter, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” They are just the words we each need to hear.

But we can dismiss them, we can disbelieve them, if we choose to, because God said them to Jesus and he was a special case, wasn’t he? And so we don’t hear that the words spoken to us as well!

We cannot, however, so easily dismiss the words of our OT passage. They were spoken to God’s servant Israel, to God’s people. They are words for us, promises to hold onto in the most difficult of times. Words for us today as stand at the start of a new year:

Do not fear for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through rivers they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through the fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you. For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Saviour.

The first Christians were Jews. They came from a small backwater in the Roman Empire. A seemingly irrelevant outpost in a bustling and cosmopolitan world. They faced a big question. How could they help people throughout the Greek speaking Roman world engage with Christian faith? How could a faith which was initially expressed in the framework of the Jewish culture be comprehended by people of very different cultures? Throughout the book of Acts we see people like Paul, Peter, Silas Barnabas, Timothy, James and others struggling with these questions – they knew what Christian faith looked like for a Jew living in Palestine, but what should it be like for a Greek intellectual in Athens?

Their situation mirrors our own. Just like they did, we wonder how we can make what we believe intelligible to people in today’s world who have little or no experience of Church and who see Christian faith as largely irrelevant, who enjoy Christmas as a traditional event but who believe little of the content of the story.

Our Gospel reading today is the gospel writers= attempt – at the beginning of John’s Gospel to relate his Christian story to a world that was alien to it. A world which was culturally very different from that of the gospel writers. How could they convey the Gospel to the Roman and Greek world – the good news which was so bound up with Jesus’ divinity and humanity. They had experienced Jesus as both divine and human. How could they explain to others that a divine being became human? How could they help people understand? As they reflected on this they realised that their scriptures – the Old Testament had at least a couple of ideas that would help them.

We meet the first idea that they used in Genesis – in the story of Creation – God spoke and something happened. God only needed to say a few words and a whole world and universe came into being. Words for God were not just things to say, concepts to express or write down. Words were effective, they achieved something. God’s Word was God at work in the world.

The second idea came in other parts of the Old Testament. There they found passages about Wisdom. In parts of their bible, our Old Testament, “Wisdom” is spoken of as a personality, a person, who existed before the worlds were created. Wisdom at God’s side as he created. Wisdom as the craftsperson moulding creation and delighting in what was made.

Listen to these words from Proverbs:

“Does not wisdom call, and does not understanding raise her voice? … The Lord created me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts long ago. … Before the mountains had been shaped, before the hills, I was brought forth. …When he established the heavens, I was there, … when he marked out the foundations of the earth, then I was beside him, like a master worker” (Proverbs 8)

As Jewish Christians were asked about Jesus by their Greek neighbours. As the first theologians tried to explain the events of the first Christmas, how God could be born as a baby in Bethlehem. They saw something in the Greek culture that would help them to explain better to Greek and Roman people, just what they meant by Jesus being the Word and Wisdom of God, both divine and human.

The word for “Word” in Greek is “logos”. Greek philosophers used that word “logos” in a special way – by the time of Christ – they used it to refer to the ordering principle of the universe. Sometimes they used “nature” and “logos” interchangeably. What they meant was that there was an organising principle behind all of nature. The principle by which life held together – perhaps “wisdom.” And as Greek philosophers talked of “logos” they almost gave it a personality.

Christians realised that here was a way of explaining to Greek and Roman people just who Jesus was – and the first verses of John’s Gospel were born. John gives the “Word,” the “logos,” a central place. He describes the “logos” as God, the Creative Word, who took on flesh in the man Jesus Christ. … “God active in the created world” = “logos.” … God’s Word expressed as a human being. However difficult it is for us to understand today, those Christians successfully managed to translate the story of the incarnation into a form that Greek and Roman people understood.

The challenge to us is similar. … To find ways of expressing what we believe, in ways that people in today’s world will understand. We cannot just say, it worked in the past so it will work again. We cannot just do the things we have always done. We cannot continue to use only the words that we understand. We cannot continue to be just the church we have always been. Words and customs move on. Meanings change, hopes and fears change. The world is shrinking and ideas from the four corners of the world now influence the values of every society.

You only need to think of the way that the meanings of words have changed.

‘Comfort’ – what does that mean now? But on the Bayeux Tapestry it means something completely different. …. There is a picture of Bishop Odo ‘comforting’ his troops, so the legend says at the bottom of the tapestry. The picture does not show a team huddle like we sometimes see on a sports field, rather it shows Bishop Odo with a spear behind his troops urging them forward as he pushes the spear into their rear ends – really comforting!

‘Organic’ – until very recently that was a group of chemicals which contained Carbon – a mixture of different substances both noxious and benign. Now we use it to mean wholesome food, untainted by many of the chemicals which would naturally have fallen into the ‘organic’ grouping.

You’ll know many other words which have changed their meaning over the years. Those changes are like small snapshots on what has been happening in society – a process of change which is accelerating not slowing. And if we don’t change we will be increasingly misunderstood and become increasingly less and less relevant – having little or nothing intelligible to say to people who need to know the love of God.

As we participate in a process of change we do just what Jesus did ….. The Word, Jesus, became flesh and dwelt among us full of grace and truth. God changed, God became human, God learnt new things, expressed himself in different ways, felt tired for the first time, experienced limitations for the first time. God changed so as to bring his love to his creation. The early church changed its rules, expressed itself in new and different ways, so that its mission to the Roman world might be effective. And we are called to do the same to look for new ways to communicate the Gospel to those who live around us but who have none of the history of Church involvement that we have.

How are you doing with the presents? Got them all wrapped yet?

What a job! Trying to hold three different bits of paper together at the same time as cutting the sellotape; sticking the sellotape onto one finger and trying to fold everything back up, only to discover that a bit of the tape has stuck to the paper and ripped it! Then there’s the present which turns out to be just a little too big for the largest sheet or roll of wrapping paper you could find. Wrapping presents is a real bind!

And when you have wrapped everything,  you sit back a look at your endeavours and it’s still pretty obvious what most things are – it isn’t easy to disguise the shirt with the collar which sticks up above the rest of the pack, a tennis racket is a tennis racket even inside Christmas wrapping, a bottle of wine is a bottle of wine however you try to wrap it – and a
mountain bike – well what else could it be?

It is a wonder that anyone is surprised by the presents that they get. And yet we are, aren’t we. There is always something that comes as a complete surprise – even if we’ve given everyone a list of what we want, we still get that present or presents which are impossible to guess from their wrapping. We look at them and wonder what they might be.

Often the surprise is fantastic. Something really special. But sometimes the surprise is negative. …

As a teenager in the 1970s, I set my sights on a lovely pair of cowboy boots that had good 3” high heels and platform soles. I think that they were bright orange in colour. I told my parents about them and they assured me (suprisingly) that my boots would be waiting for me on Christmas morning.

As teenagers are wont to do, I slithered downstairs on Christmas morning, trying not to betray my excitement. Mum and Dad had always said no to the clothes I wanted before.

When we started opening the presents, I was immediately aware that I was probably going to be disappointed. There were no presents large enough. Still I maintained a slim hope that perhaps the boot calves had been folded over to get them into a smaller box. But no, when I opened the present from Mum and Dad, there were a pair of boots, ankle-height elasticised slip-on boots with half inch heels. It felt like they had reinterpreted my request to suit themselves! I don’t think I wore those boots more than once. I was deeply disappointed!

As Israel waited for its Messiah it had a very definite idea in mind what that Messiah would be like. The trouble was that when that Messiah arrived he did not fit their idea of a Messiah. God’s gift to Israel was not what it wanted.

Israel had chosen to listen to the bits of the bible it wanted to hear. It created a concept of a Messiah who was a powerful and dynamic king. A Messiah who would rid them of the oppressor, a military Messiah, a powerful leader who would free them from the yoke of oppression. ‘No,’ says Jesus, ‘I am here to inaugurate a different kingdom, a kingdom built on justice for all, and peace and healing for the oppressed.’

The thing with God is … that we can never pin God down. We think we have listened. We form our ideas of what God wants, or what God is doing. And then, hey presto, God does something different. We’ve tried to understand what he wants and yet again we’ve been trapped by our own ideas and our limited understanding of God.

It is wonderful when God surprises us with something new, something different. … The incarnation of Jesus, was one of those occasions – perhaps the most important of them.

In Jesus’ life and death he turned convention on its head, he disturbed the status quo, and out of a shameful death brought new life and hope to the world.

Jesus is God’s present to us this Christmas. But don’t go thinking that you’ll necessarily get the present you’ve asked for! Jesus at work in our lives is more disturbing, more exciting, more wonderful than we can anticipate. If this baby was a surprise and a shock for those waiting for a Messiah, his life was even more so, and the manner of his death was the final shocking surprise.

When Jesus came in his glory, it wasn’t as a king robed in finery on a golden throne. It was naked, dying, with a cross as his throne. In Jesus’ death shame became glory. We look back with gratitude and celebrate a king born as a baby who is finally crowned king with thorns and with a cross for a throne.

I was disappointed with my boots back in the 1970s, but I have never been disappointed with Jesus. Occasionally confused, sometimes disturbed, sometimes bewildered, but following his lead has taken me all over the place, and he continues to change and challenge me.

We can look back with gratitude to those days when Christ was here on earth; we can express our love of our Lord. But for those who lived through those days, weeks and months of Jesus’ ministry and the week surrounding his death, they were full of shocks and surprises.

Our God is a God of
surprises. He wants to surprise each of us with his presence this Christmas time.

Mary’s Journey

I have spent time living in South West Uganda and I have returned there on a few occasions. Since 1994 when I first travelled to Uganda, I have been to Kisoro, right on the border with Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo 5 times. and I am delighted to name their current Bishop as an important personal friend.

The Christmas story seems to be full of journeys – starting, seemingly with Joseph and Mary travelling to Bethlehem with a donkey, the journeys of shepherd and wise men follow before the Holy Family travel as Syrian refugees to Egypt to avoid persecution.

Today’s gospel focuses on another journey that is perhaps often overlooked … but more of that later. ….

People in Kisoro and the districts around spend a lot of their waking hours travelling. Here, below, are two of the journeys they make on a regular basis. ….

The first is to get to church.

Most of us rely on clocks or watches to sort out when to leave for church – in the past we relied on bells to tell us that the service was due to start. And in those days most of us would have walked to church – perhaps a few hundred yards at the most.  …… In Kisoro, 10 minutes before the service starts drums begin to play under a tree outside the cathedral.

In 1994 virtually no one had a watch and people would start walking to the cathedral when they heard the drums.

At the start of the service there would be perhaps 30 or 40 people in church – the services would last perhaps 2 to 22 hours and by the time the sermon was well underway (usually something that lasted at least 3/4 hour) the congregation would have swelled to over 700. Most people had heard the drums and then had a 45 minute to an hour walk to get to church.

That is quite a journey for a Sunday morning. ……….. However, it is nothign compared with the journey that many children and women still have to make in the territory around Kisoro.  …… A journey to fulfil a more basic need – the need for water.

In 1994, for the first time, I met children who had to walk a 12km round trip each day before going to school – the outward 6km was relatively easy for the jerry cans were empty – the return journey was more arduous – up hill with full 5 gallon jerry cans. As churches in Ashton-under-Lyne, we’ve been able to be part of a continuing process of making this a thing of the past, but there are still today children and adults that make that kind of journey each day to collect water. It is still shocking!

What’s the worst journey you’ve ever experienced?

Was it a long car journey and did you get stuck in traffic? Was it a train journey that seemed never ending. Since being in Uganda my attitude to what counts as inconvenient in my travel arrangements has changed. But I still manage to get impatient. Many of us will be travelling this Christmas to see friends and family. Some of us, long distances.

Luke reminds us that Mary travelled with haste to spend time with her relatives. She’d just been visited by the Angel Gabriel. She’d accepted a role which could only mean that she would be ostracised by her community, a role which might mean the loss of her fiancée – being pregnant when Joseph knew that the baby was not his.

Was she afraid? You bet she was. Where did she turn? To someone she thought might understand. Someone who was also having a child in strange circumstances.

Can you imagine how she was feeling? This journey she took from Nazareth to the hill country of Judaea would have been a long one. 50 to 60 miles – a pregnant woman travelling alone – not even a railway system to take the strain. Can you imagine what it was like, walking all that way? How long would the journey have taken on foot? What dangers would she have faced? Why did she leave Nazareth in haste? Had people found out? Was she at risk of being stoned (for that was the punishment for women who had sex outside wedlock)? What would she have been thinking during the days that she was travelling?

How will I be received? Will they understand? Will they too condemn me? … So much time to think!

What must it have felt like to hear Elizabeth’s welcome: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb?”

The immense sense of relief – someone understands.

We know the story so well that we can easily miss the strength of the different emotions that Mary must have felt – fear of what others might say and do, joy at Elizabeth’s acceptance and love.

Is it surprising that she bursts into song? One of the most enduring songs of worship.

My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord, my spirit rejoices in God my
Saviour; he has looked with favour on his lowly servant.

From this day all generations will call me blessed; the Almighty has done great things for me, and holy is his name.

There are many journeys in the Bible – many have this element of fear attached to them, with questions in the mind of the traveller about how they will be received.

Do you remember Jacob wrestling with God because he does not want to face his brother who is ahead of him on the road?

Or what about the Prodigal Son – wandering home wondering how he would be received?

In both cases the welcome they received far exceeded their expectations.

We’re often told that we can look on our lives as a journey. Its particularly true at Christmas time – whether in reality when we visit friends and relatives, or in our minds and hearts as we revisit significant events in our lives.

For some, Christmas holds out the promise of joy or the promise of renewal; for others, the journey through our memories is long and arduous, and like those Ugandan children we carry heavy loads. The journey brings back feelings of loneliness, of loved ones who have died, relationships which have gone sour. The journey through this Christmas period can be both light and dark, a mixture of joy and sorrow.

As Mary travelled the difficult road south to Judaea, she discovered not the blackness of despair but the joy of acceptance. Elizabeth shared her experiences and rejoiced with her in God’s involvement in her life.

Both Elizabeth and Mary can be models for us this Christmas – Elizabeth offering love and acceptance, offering hospitality, challenges us to make our homes ones of welcome – places were the weary and heavy laden traveller – the one struggling with life or the burden of unwanted memories – can find a resting place of love and care.

Mary encourages those of us struggling with this season to take risks in sharing our fears, our hurts, the loneliness of our journey, with others who will understand. Mary encourages us, perhaps above all, to know that however long or tortuous our journey, just like those Ugandan Christians at the cathedral in Kisoro, when we approach

the communion table we receive God’s loving welcome – we are at home.

I tried learning to sail once. 4 lessons in tiny topper dinghies at Gorton Reservoirs, in the evenings after work.

One of those evenings there was no wind. As you might be able to imagine, it was a frustrating experience. A lovely location, bright evening sunshine, blue sky and no clouds. But we could do nothing – the sails were limp and the boats would not move. …. It was a beautiful evening, but so deeply frustrating.

The truth is that – beautiful calm seas and lakes only exist when there is no wind! Ultimately calm seas mean no sailing, no progress.

Zephaniah’s prophecies in the 3 chapters of his book include images of a storm wind sweeping away everything in its path. Just like a tornado lays everything waste. … The storm is raging around God’s people. And at the end of a series of verses of vivid and dark imagery comes the passage we read this morning. Zephaniah is lifting the hearts of his people:

Rejoice and exult with all your heart, O daughter Jerusalem!
The Lord has taken away the judgements against you,
he has turned away your enemies. The Lord is in your midst.
Do not fear, O Zion; the Lord God is in your midst.

‘Do not be afraid. Be encouraged’, says Zephaniah, ‘God is with us. The storm is over, the dark times are coming to an end’.

We read similar upbraiding words from Paul in Philippians. ‘Rejoice, don’t worry’, he says. These might seem to be unrealistic, unreasonable words for Paul to say – how can we rejoice when times are hard? Paul cannot seriously expect us to rejoice when we are worried about our health, or about our families.

Yet Paul himself was in prison as he wrote Philippians. He is able to say later in the chapter we have just read, that he has learnt to be content in all situations – whether hungry or well-fed; in both difficult and good times.

That’s as it maybe, but how do you feel when you’re struggling and someone says to you, “Just rejoice, don’t worry! Pray about it – it’ll be OK!” ……….. If it wasn’t for the fact that we know Paul was in prison, we’d think he’s saying that Christian life should be about sailing through troubles as though on a calm sea – life should be wonderful!

But as I discovered on Gorton Reservoir, calm water does not allow progress or learning or growth. And in life, even those of us fortunate enough to live relatively peaceful and stable lives know that progress, or growth occur only through facing the challenges that life brings our way. It’s great at times to experience calm waters but we know that choppy waters will come whenever we experience the wind in our sails.

Perhaps we can take the analogy about sailing a little further?

When Paul talks of God’s peace, he is not suggesting something like the beautiful stillness of a lake on a summer evening. He’s thinking much more of something like the eye of the hurricane. That elusive place in the middle of the storm where the sea is calm. Paul has learnt in the middle of the storms and difficulties of life to rejoice because he has found God’s peace. He longs that those who read this letter will experience the same peace.

Zephaniah has a similar image in mind – that in the midst of all the turmoil surrounding Israel, they can be confident because God is with them.

However, in our Gospel reading, John the Baptist seems almost as though he is the hurricane, ripping through the sin and hypocrisy of his day and pointing forward to Jesus who will strip away the chaff and gather those faithful to himself, just like a farmer will gather wheat into the safety of the barn.

It would be nice to be able to say, as we approach Christmas, that we are filled with God’s peace, but the truth may well be far from this. Worry and fear, darkness and depression sit so close to us at times, and Christmas can for some of us be the most difficult of times. Some of us have lost those dear to us at or around Christmas time in previous years. Christmas is promoted as family time, yet so many of us are lonely and will be lonely over Christmas. The circumstances that surround us and the emotions that we feel can be like a storm raging around us. Our emotions feel out of control. And circumstances feel as though they will destroy us.

Zephaniah’s promise is that God is with his people, ‘with us’. … At Christmas we celebrate ‘God with us’, Emmanuel.

John the Baptist tells us that when Jesus comes he will gather his own and keep them safe like wheat stored in a barn. ……  However we are feeling, God is with us, at the eye of the storm, longing to reach out to us with his love and peace. Promising that he will never leave us alone.

And what some of us need to hear more than anything else are God’s words of comfort as we struggle through difficult times.

Others of us, however, need to hear the challenge that these words of comfort can bring. We need to reach out to the lonely, those struggling with fear and worry, those who feel their loss most deeply. Because as we do so we begin to make God’s promises tangible, we give them a human form.

So if the challenge is appropriate for you, what can you do? What can we do this Christmas? It might mean helping in one of the hostels for the homeless over the Christmas period. It might mean giving sacrificially to a caring charity. It may be as little as inviting someone to share your Christmas meal.

The challenge is to be part of God’s mission. For some, to receive the gift of God’s love and peace through friends. For others to heed the challenge: to get into the boat with those caught in the storm.