From a sermon preached by Ray Anglesea at West End United Reformed Church, Newcastle upon Tyne
Sunday 30th January 2011
Today is the 38th day of Christmas! In Sir Michael Caine’s immortalised words “Not a lot of people know that.” For in the church’s liturgical calendar the 40-day season of Christmas does not end until the feast of Candlemas on February 2nd, this coming Wednesday. In possibly the greatest of all European cathedrals, Durham, where I now work, the day will be commemorated with an evening communion service; hundreds of small candles will be lit throughout the nave and quire, giving the Romanesque building a beautiful golden candlelit glow. It is a service not to be missed.
The event of Candlemas or the “Presentation of the Lord in the Temple,” is described in the Gospel of Luke. According to the gospel, Mary and Joseph took the baby Jesus to the temple in Jerusalem forty days after his birth to complete Mary's ritual purification after childbirth, and to perform the redemption of the first born in obedience to the law of Moses. Luke explicitly says that Joseph and Mary take the option provided for poor people (those who could not afford a lamb) in Leviticus 12.8 sacrificing "a pair of turtledoves, or two young pigeons."
In the temple, they encountered Simeon the Righteous, an elderly devout and orthodox Jew, a man of prayer, of simple devotions. The Gospel records that Simeon had been promised that "he should not see death before he had seen the Lord's Christ." Simeon prayed the prayer that would become known as the Nunc Dimittis the Canticle of Simeon, which prophesied the redemption of the world by Jesus.
We can read this well-loved story at many levels. Simeon, prayerful, elderly is a lesson to us all in faithfulness and hope, but that is not what I would like to look at this morning. Rather, the two turtle doves that Mary and Joseph brought to the temple, symbols of their poverty, an offering requirement of the law.
The Bible contains approximately three hundred references to birds, scattered from Genesis to Revelation, ravens, eagles, sparrows, hawk, pelican, cock, dove, swallow. But I wonder whether you noticed the two turtledoves in today's gospel reading when it was first read out? Probably not. Birds for sacrifice are the small change of our religious life; very much at the ‘taken for granted', ‘cheap as chips' end of the spectrum. ‘Spiritually negligible', we might think , compared to say the faithful prayerfulness of Simeon, and his prayer that is recited daily in churches throughout Christendom, 2000 years after the event.
Turtle doves immediately remind me of the carol, the “12 days of Christmas.” Imagine if there were 40 verses in the carol, one for each of the 40 days of Christmas! Twelve are quite enough! I wonder if you have ever noticed that the first four gifts mentioned in the carol are all birds: one partridge, two turtledoves, three French hens, four calling birds. That's ten birds in all. A hint of modern folklore suggest that the verses from the carol were a 16th century Catholic code for a catechism song sang in a period of religious persecution – five golden rings refer to the 1st five books of the OT, The Torah, four calling birds, the four gospels, three French hens - faith hope and love, two turtle dove the OT + NT and a partridge, Jesus. Alas the story is sheer speculation and not true. Sorry to disappoint.
I would like to suggest that the pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons are significant birds to think about in this extended Christmas 40 day season.
Today is Big Garden Birdwatch Day. If like me, you love birds and want to help them, then the Big Garden Birdwatch is your chance to do something that really counts. The RSPB suggests we spend an hour watching the birds in your garden or park either yesterday or today and let the RSPB know your findings. The survey now in its third decade is important. I am sure that many of the synod’s “Faith and Feathers Group” will be out with their binoculars this weekend recording their many sightings of birds.
In last Saturday’s Times it was reported that our wild bird numbers have fallen despite millions being spent on their protection. Farmland bird numbers have fallen to a record low; the number of birds that rely on farmland for food or breeding has more than halved in England since 1970. The numbers of grey partridges, and our own turtle doves mentioned in our gospel this morning, starlings, tree sparrows and corn buntings have all fallen by more than 70% since the wild bird index began in 1970. Well let’s hope the Government’s environment white paper due in the Spring will give stronger measures to protect farmland birds. But did you see the spectacular display of Starlings last Sunday night on BBC1 Countryfile: it was estimated that 1.5 - 3million starlings took part in an air ballet, a gyroscope of movement, one of the most dazzling displays in the natural world, as the flock changes shape, one minute like a colossal wisp of smoke, the next a tornado, the next a thundercloud blocking the light. The huge gatherings, biggest in winter, are boosted by thousands of birds that come to Britain's milder Atlantic climate to escape the harsh cold of the European continent, especially in Scandinavia.
And as I mentioned to the children we can help nature out by feeding the wild birds that might come to our windowsill or garden. Not only does this help them get through the cold weather. It also brings them close to us so we can admire their unmanufactured, feathery adornment. I understand that feeding the birds is not only a good thing to do in the winter. They need a lot more food to get through the breeding season too. So if you have been helping God and nature out this is probably not a good time to stop.
The second thing I would like to mention this morning is the nature of poverty. When Mary went to the Temple she was going to make a sacrifice. Luke tells us that she sacrificed according to the law, ‘two turtledoves or two young pigeons' (Luke 2.24). Luke probably had it in mind that when we read this we would appreciate first that Mary and Joseph were being obedient and devout Jews and second that we would notice that they really were poor people. Those with any cash to spare would sacrifice a lamb on this occasion; which is interesting, as when we tell the Christmas story we think of a lamb as the gift of the poor. The reality is that Mary brought Jesus into a much lower socioeconomic stream than we like to think. Luke wants us to know that Jesus was from a very poor family. Luke's gospel is good news for the poor partly because the Saviour knows that condition.
With that in mind today is also Poverty Sunday, the start of Poverty and Homeless Action week – 30th January – 6th February 2011.The Church’s Action on Poverty in this year’s publicity draws our attention to our duty to speak up on behalf of the poorest and most vulnerable, especially at a time of economic crisis and public spending cuts. Although Britain is one of the fifth richest nations on the planet it is increasingly characterised by inequality between the rich and poor. Several national churches and other Christian organisations have joined Church Action on Poverty in warning the Government’s welfare proposals are based on a lack of understanding of the poor. The Big Society, mentioned by the Prime Minister in his conference speech last October, was supposed to be the Government’s defining idea, it embodies a lot of good sense about public policy, but it is clear that nobody has the first idea what it means, and the concept seems to be disappearing in the argument about cuts to public spending. And it is clear that the voluntary sector and its groups, many of which support poor people, the platoons of which underpin the Big Society concept and who are heavily reliant on taxpayer funding, will either have their funding reduced or at worst, cut back all together. Such groups will not survive. The big society cannot be built without parts of civil society now under threat.
Perhaps one of the most over-used words in last year's general election campaign was surely the word 'fair'. Each party claimed it for their own policies. Each party realised how toxic it would be to have the label 'unfair' hung round their neck. But fairness can be understood in two very different ways. The first suggests that it's about being even-handed, not seeking to favour or show bias towards any particular group or individuals. There should be no favouring of the south over the north, town over country. But there is another sort of fairness which says that sometimes even-handedness has to be set aside because without bias, what seems to be fair can turn out to be unfair. How can it be fair if sharing out the pain means we make life a little less comfortable for some but quite unbearable for others? And it is this idea of fairness that Christians see practised in the gospels. Jesus seeks out those who find themselves on the edge of a decent way of life. They're forgotten, overlooked, ignored or shunned because they are inconveniently sick or mentally ill, out of work or disabled, and as a consequence, poor. The poor have a special claim on us, our compassion, our time, our resources. Some Christians speak of this as God's bias to the poor, a bias that informs Christian ethics as a consequence. Far from all of us being in this together, it's open to question whether some, like the poor should be in this at all.
And here I am sure you would want to join me in offering our congratulations to Lindsay Cross who has been appointed MBE in the New Year Honours List for services to the West End Refugee Service, for her work amongst the poor and homeless. Lindsay serves on our synod Church & Society Group. She has been untiring in her work for refugees and asylum seekers, the homeless, and has kept the work of WERS and the needs of its clients in the forefront of people's awareness in many of our synod churches.
And finally back to the birds again, our feathered friends. As well as our “Faith and Feathers” synod group I suspect the great northern saints were probably all bird watchers, too, St Cuthbert foremost among them. As we are made more aware of our natural world, particularly its birdlife, through superb wild-life television programmes, we are beginning to discover the interconnectedness of all things. As we watch such programmes we fear where the future will take us and wonder whether civilisation and our environment will last. Might I suggest that meditating on the birds can help us into all these things. And I wonder... I wonder this: might it be that in some day in the deep, dark future, the memory of Cuthbert is held by the humble eider duck, which people will still call a Cuddy, as its lives out its life in the seashore detritus of a western civilisation which collapsed because it fostered ways if life where consumption replaced contemplation, and greed replaced grace to such an extent that, to reverse that strange story of St Francis, it was the birds who came to preach to us.
Amen
Revd Ray Anglesea is a self supporting minister working across synod church partnership
