The Third Sunday of Epiphany, 26 January 2020
Austwick, Clapham, Keasden
What is it about the North? Whether in England, or Ireland, or Wales, or Scotland, indeed wherever throughout the world, towns and cities and villages of the North have reputations - have histories - which differ a lot from other places down South. Northerners have reputations for struggle, of striving to carve out a tough living in a harsh environment, of being neglected by the powers-that-be, of being sniffed at culturally. And of defying all this darkness to find ways to shine.
The gospel writer Matthew noticed that Jesus chose to begin his ministry in the North. And he reckoned this to be significant. Early on in his ministry Jesus relocated from Nazareth to the city of Capernaum in a region called Galilee of the Gentiles. It was a Northern place which had a history of suffering, of struggle - but whose people also lived expectant of a great promise made to them centuries before.
In the year 734 BC Israel's enemies, Assyria, who Jeremiah called "the foe from the north", conquered most of Israel and divided the land into three regions. An area which had been called Zebulun and Naphtali was split into three and renamed as 'the way of the sea', 'the land beyond Jordan' and 'Galilee of the Gentiles'.
And the people there had to face life under the control of foreign forces. They had to give up many of their precious ways of life to accommodate their conquerors and their ways. You could appreciate how Assyrian rule must have felt like a time of darkness for the people of Galilee of the Gentiles, how many felt crushed, and abandoned by God. But how also, with a defiant Northern spirit, some were ready to hear a word of hope that God may yet save them.
Isaiah offered them that word of hope. "There will be no more gloom for those in distress," he said. "In the past he humbled the land of Zebulun and Naphtali; but in the future he will honour Galilee of the Gentiles, by the way of the sea, along the Jordan.” Isaiah had a vision of what it would be like for the people in the future, in a glorious day of freedom and release: The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned, he said. What a promise, to the downtrodden Northerners of Capernaum and the Galilean neighbourhood.
Thank God for Isaiah, whose empathy with a suffering people inspired these words of hope he gave them, whose concern for a downtrodden people led him to encourage them to lift their hearts, whose response to a people whose faith was weak was to turn their eyes back to a faithful God.
Isaiah reminded the people that God always seeks to come alongside humbled people, to be present to the struggling and suffering ones. God's intention is to bring light into the world’s darkness and give all people the chance to find a way towards a brighter and better way ahead.
There is no clearer statement of this than the event we call the incarnation - the coming to earth of the Son of God. When God took on our humanity, when the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, this happened in a Palestine under Roman occupation. When Jesus called his disciples, ordinary Palestinian folk, he empowered people who in everyday life were powerless, and who felt it.
Think how significant Jesus’ message would have been to these fishermen and common folk of Zebulun and Naphtali. Jesus’ statement that the kingdom of heaven had come was, to them, the confirmation of Isaiah’s prophecy. To a people used to walking in darkness, here was that long-awaited good news of a light now dawning in their land. As this good news spread through the hills of the North, the people rejoiced that their time for recovery and rescue had come - through this man Jesus and his message and his help.
Today’s Palestinian people live in occupied territories too. The United Nations reports that:
Israel's de facto annexation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip has resulted in the Palestinian economy stagnating, Palestinian communities being dismantled, violations of their fundamental human rights and exploitation and depletion of their natural resources, and an exodus of half a million Palestinians forcefully driven out of their homes and indigenous communities. [2]
I was struck recently by the words of Naim Ateek, a Palestinian Christian and peacemaker, and former Canon of St. George’s Cathedral in Jerusalem. I think there’s something of Isaiah, and something of Jesus, in what he says. And something of that spirit I like to call a Northern spirit, which finds hope in hard times. Reflecting on the power of the incarnation to make a difference in Palestine, Ateek says that believing that God is active in our world ‘makes us defiant’:
We defy the evildoers because we believe in the goodness which they are capable of doing. We defy hate because we believe in the power of love and forgiveness. We defy despair because we believe in life and hope. We defy violence and terror - both state and individual - because we believe in the power of peace and nonviolence. We defy war and the occupation of other people's lands because we believe in the power of peaceful methods based on international law and legitimacy. We defy and challenge those who humiliate and degrade others because we believe in the dignity of every human being. [3]
How do we share the good news of Jesus in a hard place? How can we offer good news to struggling people? It is a demanding task, and if we want to be peacemakers we have to recognise that the peace of our Lord Jesus Christ is ‘not an easy peace, not an insignificant peace, not a half-hearted peace’. [4] It can only come when both those who are suffering and those who are causing the suffering are embraced equally in love - for the good news has to be good news not just for one type of people, but for all.
Let us pray for those like Naim Ateek who are working hard to shine the light of Christ’s love, joy and peace into our world’s hard places. And here in this Northern place which is our home, let us also pray for ourselves, that in our dealings with others in our daily lives, we may try to find ways to shine the light of the gospel of Christ.
Notes
[1] Sermon adapted from Epiphany: Light in the darkness preached at St Christopher’s, Norris Green, 2005.
[2] United Nations, Living conditions of the Palestinian People in the Occupied Territories – CEIRPP, DPR study. New York, 1985. Introduction.
[3] Naim Ateek, The Defiant Spirit of Christmas [PDF]. Cornerstone Issue 35, Winter 2004.
[4] Iona Community Wild Goose Worship Group, A Wee Worship Book: Fourth Incarnation. Liturgy for Holy Communion B. p.101.
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