Sermons
Epiphany - 1
Children’s answers to questions can often be revelatory. When we had one of the many groups of schoolchildren in church before Christmas I asked them about the Advent wreath, if they knew what it was, why five candles, and why were they different colours, different lengths - this was in the third week of Advent so three candles had burnt down, the first being now the smallest, why were they different sizes I asked? Because, said one little boy thinking very hard, the small ones hadn’t grown up yet. A very unexpected answer…and in the same group I asked them why we use incense in church and got the equally unexpected and excellent reply ‘Because one of the king’s gives it to the baby Jesus and we should always offer our best to God’. Which, unfortunately, summarised completely what I had been intending to take ten minutes saying to them.
But what a great answer that was, ‘Because one of the king’s gives it to the baby Jesus and we should always offer our best to God’. An adult might say the use of incense is Biblical and is a figure or type of the way we should order our worship of God and our actions in life.
But there are of course places in the Bible where the offering of incense is condemned. The prophet Isaiah records the judgement of an angry God denouncing empty ritual with the words ‘Incense is an abomination to me’. So there is a bit more background to put in before we should concur with the little boy in church.
Some of that background can be coloured using the story of the visit of the Magi to the infant Jesus which we have heard in today’s gospel. And first we might wonder who these Magi are for the community in which Matthew’s gospel comes into its final form. Their origin is obscure, they come from the East, possibly Persia or Babylon or Arabia, Matthew doesn’t tell us their number or their names; details which tradition supplies over time, and are they Magi in the positive sense of being wise and clever readers of the signs of the times, or sinister sorcerers intruding their pagan magic into the Hebraic world of Mary and Joseph? We do know that they represent the Gentile world, they are the first non-Jewish worshippers of the infant Christ and they are led into one of the spiritual heartlands of the Jewish faith, Bethlehem, the birth place of David, the King of the Jews, Royal David’s City. This is by far the most significant part of the story for Matthew’s readers, right at the very start of the gospel narrative he makes clear that this great thing that has come to pass will be good news for all people, not just the Hebrew people - whose expectations of a political Messiah who will overturn foreign domination are about to be disappointed. This is the point that Matthew would have wanted his hearers to take away with them, not the unremarkable business of astrological events being associated with the birth of someone important. For the ancient world in general the stars and planets were thought of as animate - living - beings and for the Jewish people in particular the stars were associated with angels. And the story of the star is not remarkable to Herod, rather he is troubled, he doesn’t stop the wise men in their tracks saying as the line in Life of Brian has it ‘led by a star, led by a bottle more like’, after all the birth of Alexander the Great and the fall of Troy and other important events each had their own astrological herald. Matthew’s focus is on the offerings of the wise men speaking of the world-wide import of this holy birth and also, as the little boy said, on their offering being of the very best. So, as the little boy said, this is a tale that can teach us to offer the very finest we can in worship and the very finest we can in life. But what of that warning recorded in Isaiah, Incense is an abomination to me…?
As you know I am a priest of a very moderate catholic persuasion. But even to me this denunciation of what is a central part of catholic worship is unsettling. ‘Incense is an abomination to me.’ The warnings recorded by Isaiah against false worship be it worship of the false God of the Baals, or the incense associated with the sacrifices of the empty ritual of the temple cult of the 8th century before Christ are warnings that should indeed serve as a guide for our own attitude to worship, and they can be set alongside Our Lord’s teaching to wait on him in a state of readiness and eagerness, worship and waiting for the Lord are to arise from the earnest desire for God’s judgement and counsel. In both Isaiah and the Gospels we are called to humility, to turn our attention from ourselves to God.
The prophecies of Isaiah have such an enduring quality, such a direct relevance to worshippers throughout the ages because they focus on the enduring sin of pride. For Isaiah, all sin has its root in pride, the assertion of one’s own wisdom over that of God’s. For Isaiah, Sodom and Gomorrah become totally alienated from the word of the Lord, their worship becomes an empty offering of senseless ritual and, as in the prophets Amos, Hosea, and Micah, we hear God’s fierce denunciation. It is not of course incense or sacrifices as such that are condemned by God; there are many other texts where the odour arising from the sacrifice is a sweet smelling gift in which God delights. It is the sin of pride that is condemned, for it is pride that has fooled these worshippers into thinking that ‘going through the motions’ with empty hearts will be pleasing to God. It is pride that has fooled them into thinking their worship will pacify the God who calls us to humility. Their worship, instead of being an encounter with the living God, has become therapy; they might even have begun to think of it as therapy for God. All who would worship God should heed this warning and should guard against the structure of worship becoming decadent, and both catholic and evangelical worship, particularly in their extreme expressions, are ever in danger of becoming ends in themselves, pantomimes carried out for the benefit of the participants.
How would God be worshipped then? Isaiah’s answer leads us through the pursuit of humility: ‘wash yourselves, make yourselves clean, remove the evil, seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow’. Gain inner sanctity by performing the actions of mercy, then come, offer the worship of your heart, offer your sacrifice and your incense to the God who will turn to you and make the scarlet of your sins to be like snow. The attention has been moved from self to God. So we give alms and we care for the outsider, because if we tie our hopes to financial wealth or bodily health we place a stumbling block between us and God. Rather, freed from anxiety to collect worldly possessions through trust in God’s fatherly care we are enabled to spend our time in the service of God and in readiness for the kingdom he would give to us. The Christian life is therefore lived within an expectation, the fulfilment of which is sure, and within that expectation God’s continual judgement of our offering to him is exercised. As with Isaiah we are called to humility; and if we leave God’s call unanswered our lives become the empty accumulation of goods and an anxiety that seeks security everywhere but finds none.
SO the little boy is right, we use incense in church because one of the kings gave it to the baby Jesus and we are to offer our very best to God. God will not accept false worship, but would have us cleanse our hearts by seeking the outcast and the weak and offering them mercy. God would not have us watch the world go by with indifference, but neither must we become so enveloped with concern for this passing state of things that we take our eyes off the possibilities for encounter with the God who calls us to humble service and worship. When we offer our incense with clean hearts, when our worship is the natural and true offering of the people carried through with conviction and not mummery, God will turn to us. When we live our lives in joyful expectation of the kingdom that our Father would give to us then we store up treasure for ourselves in heaven. Then our lives and our worship will be a pattern of that sanctified obedience that God desires; our attention is turned to him who desires our salvation, and we are caught up in the actions and intentions of God to his world, we are caught up in actions and intentions of love.