Sermon for the 4th Sunday of Advent
19 December 2004
Recorded for BBC TV at St Faith's Great Crosby, Liverpool
The Son of Man sows the Seed
Later today I shall be on safari! Well actually, I'll be going to Knowsley Safari Park just on the outskirts of Liverpool! Believe it or not, the Vicar of Knowsley has decided that this open-air zoo is just the place to stage this year's nativity play! When she announced this recently at a meeting of church leaders from all over Liverpool everybody fell about laughing at the thought of wild animals cavorting with the sweet children of Knowsley!
The fact that we all killed ourselves laughing says something about how much we've forgotten that this nativity in a zoo is much nearer to what really happened than what we see on many Christmas cards!
Mary put the newly born Jesus in an animal feeding trough - a manger. It was a dangerous place to lay a baby! Hungry animals, the goat and the cow, would feed in the trough and munch their way through anything there!
You'll remember that this was the sign the angels gave to the shepherds to help them find the baby Messiah.
It was a sure sign too of the new world that Jesus was to bring about, the new heaven and the new earth where the wolf would lie down with the lamb. Jesus is bringing in a new kingdom where all the relationships will be different.
I have to confess that I've never been very keen on animals! But I've been through something of a conversion. After years of gentle pressure from my wife we have a dog - a Cairn - called Charlie! Single handedly through his dogged friendliness he has won me over. We now share long walks and he runs me into the ground!
The second experience was in Honduras in the heart of the Rain Forest in a simple village. I woke early one morning and as the sun was rising walked down to the river with my Bible. I was surrounded by dogs, goats, horses, cows and crowing cocks all happily grazing alongside each other. Not so long ago I'd have been nervous but this morning I opened my Bible and began reading Psalm 104 "In wisdom you have made them all; the earth is full of your creatures".
The animals came closer the more I read and I began to see and to feel in a new way how God has made a world in which we all need each other. It made me feel as if I were back in the Garden of Eden! It made me realise how far we'd strayed like sheep from the ideal world that God had made. And it made me long for that new world that Jesus came to bring about where heaven will come to earth. We can all make a difference to where we live. All over the Diocese of Liverpool we have local environmental representatives working voluntarily in parishes - transforming their neighbourhoods.
Just a few miles from here on a tough estate in Norris Green local people are turning the church grounds into a garden to grow their daily intake of fruit and vegetables! It's a taste of heaven on earth.
In the last book of the Bible God makes an amazing promise! That one day there'll be no more pain, no more crying, no more dying, no more mourning; that someone will come and wipe away the tears from our eyes. Who will do this? God!
If you've ever wiped tears away from someone's eyes you'll know it's a very delicate thing to do. You brush the cheek gently, not damaging the eye. It requires great sensitivity. And it is God who ministers to us so sweetly.
One day we will all be like God. In the meantime we are given his Spirit to live like him as much as possible. Jesus is our model. We're to treat the world as Jesus would.
Full of compassion we're to bind up the broken hearted, full of justice we're to challenge and change those things that hurt the poor and the powerless.
In 2007 The City of Liverpool celebrates its 800th Birthday. In the same year we celebrate the 200th Anniversary of the Abolition of the Slave Trade, and also the death of John Newton the man who composed that wonderful hymn "Amazing Grace".
John Newton was Surveyor of the Tides on the River Mersey based here in Liverpool. He had a chequered history. He captained a slave ship that sailed out of Liverpool. He became a Christian and fell ill and gave up commanding a slave ship. God showed him the terrible evil he'd been guilty of and led him to the cross of Jesus Christ to find forgiveness. He was so profoundly changed by this experience of God's love that he wrote: "Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me".
He then, as an act of repentance, worked with Wilberforce for the abolition of the slave trade - and together with others, both black and white, changed the face of the earth.
They sowed the seeds of the new world, a kingdom of justice and mercy for all.
It's a great vision. I was about to say "dream". But it's more than a dream. It is God's promise for the future. He longs for us all to be a part of it.
On this last Sunday in Advent as we prepare for Christmas and coming of Jesus let's prepare our hearts for him. Let us turn away from all destroys God's earth and seek his forgiveness. Let us turn our lives over to him the Prince of Peace and ask him to fill our hearts with his spirit as he brings about God's "Peace on Earth".