There are many things you can do perfectly well on your own, but being a Christian isn’t one of them. Well, that’s not strictly true. There are many individuals who have walked the pilgrimage of faith alone, but these are extraordinary people. For most of us, community and common purpose are essential.
 
These things, community and common purpose, shine through the story of Nehemiah and Ezra. The people of Jerusalem had been through a tough time: warfare, exile and eventual return to the ruins left behind two generations earlier. With determination, good organisation and very hard work, first the temple had been rebuilt, then the city walls.
 
That’s the point at which we take up the story. We find the inhabitants of Jerusalem taking a break from their labours. But it is not just the physical city that had to be rebuilt. It was their community and, to an extent, their faith. For the Jewish people at that time, faith was centred on Jerusalem. That is why they asked – how can we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land? – as they wept by the waters of Babylon. Many had, perhaps, forgotten the Lord’s song; some, maybe, had never learned it. In other words, after many years away from Jerusalem, their hold on faith was shaky and their knowledge of God sketchy.
 
They turned to one for whom that was not true, Ezra, variously described as a scribe, a scholar, and as a priest. Teach us about God, they said, the God of this place, the God of our ancestors. So he gathered them, everyone – women, men, children – all who could hear and understand. They gathered, not in the temple, but in a city square, a public place from which no one was excluded. There he read to them from the Torah, the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, what we call the Old Testament, then as now the most important scriptures for the Jewish people.
 
This was a highly inclusive gathering. If we are to read this story both as history and as parable, as I believe we must, then the first lesson this teaches us about worship is that it must be open to all – all genders, all ages, all degrees of faith, all abilities. We live in a terribly individualistic world. Worship reminds us of the limits of that. We can pray alone, meditate and reflect alone, study scripture alone, but we cannot worship alone. It is only together that we are the body of Christ.
 
The whole people of Jerusalem asked a man they recognised as learned to do a very particular thing. They asked him to read the word of God to them. I’m sure some of you will have had an experience such as this: at a wedding or a funeral, someone reads a poem. Often it will be quite meaningful, but hearing it does not feel the same as hearing a passage of scripture, even one you’ve heard hundreds of times before. I would argue that the reason for that is that the words of scripture are infused with the Holy Spirit. When we hear scripture read, we do not just hear about God. Rather, we actually hear God. Scripture brings us into the living presence of God.
 
When you see it that way, you can immediately understand the effect Ezra’s reading had on the people. Because they felt, some maybe for the first time, that they were in the presence of God, they bowed low to the ground and some were so moved they wept.
 
For us, this is a reminder of the centrality of the word to worship. Central to every service is the reading of scripture. What scripture says informs the prayers we say, the hymns we sing, the interpretation I offer, the music we hear. But without the reading of scripture we would not be so powerfully aware of God among us. It is scripture too which makes sense of the sacraments we celebrate.
 
Because, in hearing the words of scripture, the people encountered God, they had a strong emotional response. Some, maybe, were overawed by the sense of God’s presence among them. Some may have felt faith awakening within them. Some might have been overcome with regret for the loss of the Torah during the long years of exile, and with a sense of having been far from God. Some may have been brought to repentance. Still others may have been filled with joy, being sure again that God was among them, caring for them.
 
You can’t manufacture feelings, and I’m not encouraging you all to weep, but there is something compelling about this sense of the power of scripture and worship. I suspect that when we come with expectations, with particular needs we want met, with things in mind that we hope won’t happen because we don’t like them, then we keep the potential power of worship at arm’s length. But if we come with openness, seeking to encounter God, and if the worship lets scripture be heard with clarity and understood with depth, then something profound will happen.
 
We can forget too easily that worship can and ought to change lives and that this fact is a cause for celebration. Be joyful, Ezra and Nehemiah told the people. Be joyful because God is with you. And share that joy by celebrating with others, making sure no one is left out of the celebratory feast. It is a rather wonderful thing that eating together is the best way to celebrate that God is here.
 
I was in a pub recently and on the bar was a box with a sign which read: If you are afraid of change, leave it here. I thought we should get one for the church, not just to collect money, but to make a statement. We should not be a people afraid of change. When we gather as God’s people; when we are conscious of his presence; when we attend to God’s word in worship – over time we cannot help but be changed. We gather to give glory to God and to let God make a difference in us so that we can make a difference in God’s world. Every change that God brings about is a change for the better and every change God makes in and through us is a cause for great celebration. We worship in order to be changed and we worship because we are changed. The worship of the people, led by Ezra, was a response to God’s work, accomplished through them, of rebuilding Jerusalem. Through our worship, through our attending to God’s word together, God is remaking us, and continuing to build his kingdom.
 
Amen.

We’ve all seen it happen. A child does something wrong. The parent tells the child to apologise. The child refuses. The parent insists. Eventually, the child furiously spits out the word “sorry”. We don’t like to be confronted with the wrong we have done. Yet every time we come to church, it feels like that is what we are asked to do in our Prayers of Confession.
 
When we get older, we maybe apologise more readily. We work out that an apology can ease a difficult situation. Apology is something we learn genuinely to wish to express. It can make things better.
 
Is that what we are doing, when we confess our sins? Confession may feel like apologising to God for whatever failings we have committed, thereby trying to make things better with God who, we may feel, ought to be angry with us. But this line of thought ignores some crucial considerations. The God we confess to is, as Scripture tells us, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. Furthermore, his ways are not our ways. And most importantly, in Christ, we are already forgiven.
 
So why, in every service, do we confess our sins? And what are the sins we should be confessing?
 
Exploring these questions will help us make sense of the story of the Baptism of Jesus. It is a perennial conundrum. All the gospels, and Luke in particular, go to great lengths to emphasise that Jesus was without sin. He had nothing to say sorry for. He was pleasing to God. So what was he doing, undergoing a baptism of repentance?
 
We never read the rest of Luke Chapter 3, the verses which come after this brief account of Jesus’ baptism, and there’s a reason for that. It is a list of names. But it is interesting none the less. It is a list of all of Jesus’ forefathers. (Luke, unlike Matthew, does not include any women.) It starts, “He was the son, or so it was thought, of Joseph, the son of Heli, the son of Matthat . . .” and so on, back through David and Jesse, through Judah, Jacob, Isaac and Abraham, back through the more mythic figures of Shem, Noah, Methuselah and concluding with “Seth, son of Adam, son of God.” Between God and Jesus there are seventy five names. But why is the list there at all?
 
The first thing to note is that, actually, it affirms the paternity of Joseph. That Joseph was Jesus’ biological father in no way undermines his status as God’s anointed son. Taking that first step back through Joseph links Jesus into the story of Israel’s history, told in the Old Testament. Named in the list are priests and kings, establishing Jesus’ religious and royal antecedents. There are heroes here. There are people with flaws. There are villains, and there are those in whose names traces of tragedy linger.
 
All this adds up to tell us that Jesus was born from as well as into a world of systemic sin. His origins are here on earth. He wasn’t parachuted in from a realm of perpetual virtue. He emerged from a lineage, a world all too well acquainted with suffering and tragedy, with guilt and fear, with injustice and tyranny, with conflict and conflicted interests. These, not infringements of a personal moral code, are what sin is. When we confess, we recognise we are a part of this system. Jesus’ baptism showed that he understood the systemic nature of sin – that every action, every choice, every event is in some way compromised. It showed that, through his incarnation, he fully identified with the world for which he would give everything to save.
 
His baptism was not about personal sin, any more than ours is. It was about repentance, as ours is.
 
Repentance, properly understood, is about challenging the sin laden systems of the world, about making incarnate, in this flawed world, the purity and virtue of the next. It is not about saying ‘sorry’. It is about making changes, turning around, taking a better path. A little later in the service, we’ll have the opportunity to reaffirm our commitment to repentance. This is our call as followers of Christ: to stand with him against the things that cause suffering; to stand with him against injustice; to work with him for the healing of minds and bodies, of communities and nations, of the whole of creation; to witness with him to truth amid lies, to kindness amid cruelty, to generosity amid greed, to love amid hatred.
 
Jesus’ baptism is a sign of God’s commitment to the world as it is and to bringing about the world as it should be. It is a sign that Jesus came to serve. It is a sign that what God has made is fundamentally good and can be redeemed from sin. Our baptism, which we recall today, is an invisible sign, but a powerful sign, that we, with Christ in our hearts, work with him for the redemption of the world.
 
Amen.

I’m sure that many of you will, like me, have been asked, “Did you have a nice Christmas?” And I hope that all of you, like me, have been able to answer, “Yes.” But in some ways, it is more complicated than that. For most people, there will have been things which were very nice indeed, but there will have been other things which were not. Christmas can be a time of heightened and conflicting emotions. There will have been tiredness, loneliness, sadness. While many have feasted, some will have gone hungry. While some will have been rushed off their feet in a flurry of shopping, presents, trees and decorations, parties, relatives, cooking, eating and, hopefully, church services, for others the days will have seemed long and empty. And when you get through to the other side, as we just about have, we can look back and wonder, ‘What was all that about?’
 
Well, today, our gospel reading gives us the answer. John the Evangelist is telling us what it was all about. The Word became flesh and lived among us, full of grace and truth. The Word, living among us. That’s what Christmas is all about.
 
We have heard the stories that the other evangelists tell, of Mary and Joseph, of dreams and angels, of shepherds and wise men and, at the very centre, a fragile human baby. And it is good that we have heard these stories because they prepare us for this one. They show us in tangible, recognisable form what John calls ‘flesh’. The flesh of God is entirely real and entirely human.
 
That sounds like a very strange thing to say. Does not Scripture say that God is a spirit and those who worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth? How then can God have flesh?
 
But in Christ, everything is changed. When before there was division, now, in Christ, God makes unity possible. John speaks of division between light and darkness, and of a light which darkness cannot overcome. And there are other divisions overcome in Christ too – the division between eternity and time, the division between heaven and earth, the division between spirit and matter. All these divisions are reconciled in Christ, in God leaving eternity and entering time, taking on physical form, lighting a light which, in a fuller and more complete way can show us God. And all of this is accomplished in one baby, Jesus, born in Bethlehem, Son of God and son of man. Henceforth, the division between God and humanity is blurred. Through Christ, we have the opportunity to live both on a physical and a spiritual level. No longer are we bound entirely by time but we have a sense of eternity with God. No longer can we say we have no way of knowing God. By Christ, we are bathed in divine light and have access to the mind and will of God. No longer can we say we do not know what God wills. Jesus has revealed that.
 
The effect of incarnation is not, of course, just on us. While we are changed by the fact that God became one of us, one with us in Christ, even more significantly, God in Christ changed too. And that has huge significance for us. It means that God shares with us in our human experience. Since Jesus is truly God, then God is not separate from fleshly existence, but profoundly and intimately present. Our material existence matters. It matters in an absolute sense by virtue of God’s blessing it, but it also matters to God because God is in relationship with us. Since Jesus is truly God, then God came to share in human experience, in human suffering, in human agony of every kind – even the most gruesome of human deaths. Because of Jesus, the Word become flesh, God is not far away. God is as close to us as our next breath, and God bears the pain we bear as well as celebrates our joy in which we exult.
 
To express this truth, John chooses a simple but unusual phrase – the Word became flesh. The Word he speaks of is the word through which all things were made, a word of extraordinary power. But all words, even ordinary words, can be powerful. Today, as we wrestle with this passage, I want to ask – which words would we like to become flesh among us? You see, a word is just a sound, just an idea, until someone acts upon it. Justice is a nice sounding word, but powerless until it becomes flesh in someone acting to tackle an injustice. Compassion sounds good too, but means nothing unless someone acts compassionately.
 
So, standing at the beginning of a new year, and with changes ahead for us as a congregation, what words would we like to become flesh among us? One might be ‘unity’. If that is to become incarnate here, it will require openness, an acceptance of the different gifts and opinions of one another and a willingness to value differences as contributing a variety of strengths to the whole. Perhaps another might be ‘friendliness’. That too will depend on openness, particularly towards people whom, individually, we know less well. Or how about ‘hospitality’? Food is something we do well in this church, and it is about more than physical nourishment. It is about community. That’s another good word to incarnate among us, but it depends on participation, and upon sharing the burden of providing the food and the opportunities for community to grow.
 
I’ve spoken before about ‘mission’. That’s a good, churchy word that no one can argue against. But it is another which remains meaningless unless we actually do things to reach out to other people. We need to think hard about how mission may become flesh and live in this congregation.
 
These have all been good, positive words, and there could be many more. Not every congregation can put flesh on every good word. We need to spend some time, and we will, trying to decide which words God is calling us to incarnate here.
 
And, at the same time, we need to be on the look out lest we give flesh to harmful words. Imagine the harm that would occur if we incarnated ‘resentment’, or ‘indifference’, or ‘antipathy’ or even ‘disappointment’. If these words become flesh among us, there is no hope, no future for this congregation. And I have to admit I am fearful. Since the Session made the decision, which I believe was right, to unite the two services, I am already aware of people who have distanced themselves. I am fearful that the action we are taking to tackle the malaise of a disunited congregation, worshipping apart, may prove to be too radical if significant numbers of people simply refuse to worship together. But I have to struggle not to let ‘fear’ become flesh in me. I must put my trust in God, and in you – God’s people in this place – that my fears will turn out to be baseless.
 
As well as seeking to discern what words we might incarnate together, perhaps we should each be thinking of a word or words that we might incarnate in ourselves. For me, I shall try to make ‘confidence’ and ‘boldness’ take on flesh. I have been hugely challenged by the process of uniting the services, perhaps more than some might imagine. One of the things that several people in the Session said, during the course of discussion, was that the united service shouldn’t just follow the pattern of either of its predecessor services. So, from next week, the order of service will be different. Various things will happen at different points in the service. From time to time, there will be more congregational participation. We’ll need to give it some time to see whether it works, and I’ll be asking for views and opinions in some months’ time. I hope people will take the time to let the new order of service settle and become familiar. I will wait to see if ‘welcome’ or ‘rejection’ become flesh among us.
 
These two ideas, welcome and rejection, lurk in these opening verses of John’s Gospel. “He came to his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God.” We speak of Jesus as God’s son, yet all of us, by virtue of his coming among us, may be counted children of God. All of us share with Jesus in being light to the world. All of us share with him in bringing life. The light and life we bring are of God and may be known to be so in the same way as Jesus was known to be from God – through their grace and truth.
 
Amen