Epiphany, 3 January 2021
A sermon by David McEvoy, Reader
The Wrong Trousers, the Wrong Text and the Wrong Town
In ‘The Wrong Trousers’, the second of Wallace and Gromit’s adventures, the hapless Wallace unknowingly puts on a pair of mechanical trousers which are controlled remotely by an evil penguin. ‘It’s the wrong trousers!’ shouts Wallace as he is steered stomping away. I recently read something which threw new light on the visit of the Magi, the wise men, to the infant Jesus. The writer said that the Magi had used ‘The Wrong Text’ to guide them and that they had gone to ‘The Wrong Town’.
The way Matthew describes the journey of the wise men implies that the wise men had consulted the passage from Isaiah we have just heard – with its images of camels and gold and frankincense. Isaiah predicted that after decades of ruin, Jerusalem would be returned to its former glory. The Magi therefore went to Jerusalem.
However Matthew tells us that the passage from Isaiah was the wrong passage. There is another text, from the peasant prophet Micah which predicts that a ruler of Israel will come from the ‘little town’ of Bethlehem. The Magi should have been consulting Micah not Isaiah. So they went to the wrong place. They went to Jerusalem, the centre of power and wealth, when they should have gone to Bethlehem, a humble and relatively unknown town. The journey to Bethlehem that followed may only have been six miles, but it was a hard journey - a journey from riches and power to poverty and humility. It was of course there that they found the child who was the real ruler, who was the Messiah. It was there that they found the light that would shine out of Israel and bring all peoples, to the love of God.
Thomas Becket
Tuesday was the 850th anniversary of the martyrdom of Thomas Becket, Thomas of Canterbury, killed in his own cathedral as he was about to celebrate Evening Prayer. Many words have been written about Thomas Becket, the low-born Londoner who rose under Henry II to be Lord Chancellor and then Archbishop of Canterbury. Thomas famously fell out with the King when he became Archbishop, changing sides and resisting Henry’s attempts to bully the church. This led to a seven-year exile and ultimately led to Thomas’ death at the hands of four knights who were seeking to curry favour with the King.
Thomas was not what we would regard as a saintly man. As Chancellor he loved hunting, fine clothes and the show and exercise of power. And as Archbishop he attacked the greed and tyranny of the King, not to defend the faith or to defend the poor, but in order to protect the privileges, status and power of the church. As a man of the church, like the Magi he was starting in the wrong place. As the current Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, said, Thomas’ cause is not our cause.
Thomas’ journey to Bethlehem
Thomas was in the wrong place. However in the short dark days of December 1170 he made his own difficult journey to the right place, from Jerusalem to Bethlehem. When he returned from exile in France he seemed to know that his actions could only end in his death.
And he knew he was following in the footsteps of the first martyr archbishop, our own patron saint, St Alfege. Before Thomas’ martyrdom, the shrine of St Alfege in Canterbury was the main focus for pilgrimage. Thomas was devoted to Alfege. We now know that he owned a book of psalms which had been owned by our patron saint. And an eyewitness tells us that his very last words were a prayer ‘To God and St Mary … and to the blessed St Denis and St Alfege’.
Thomas had made his own journey from Jerusalem to Bethlehem: from his positions of power and wealth as Chancellor and then Archbishop to the ultimate humility and vulnerability of being pushed about and killed by angry, drunken knights. Thomas had let go. One moment in the story of his martyrdom highlights this letting go. As the knights were following him into the main body of the cathedral, a group of monks tried to protect Thomas, pushing him through a door and bolting it shut. Thomas ordered them to open the door. He said sternly ‘The Church is a house of prayer and is not to be made into a fortress’. T.S. Eliot made this the dramatic climax of his play ‘Murder in the Cathedral’. He has Thomas saying ‘The Church shall protect her own, in her own way, not As oak and stone.’ Opening the door was the final act of Becket’s letting go; the final stage of his journey from Jerusalem to Bethlehem, from power to powerlessness, from self-protection to complete vulnerability.
Our own journey to Bethlehem
The word martyr means witness. Witness to God’s love. Isaiah spoke of the light of God shining out through Israel, calling all peoples to God. Justin Welby explained in a sermon last Sunday that martyrs, like Thomas and Alfege, through their vulnerability, bear witness to that light, the light that can never be overcome by darkness.
Like Thomas of Canterbury and like the Magi, we and all Christians are invited to look for what God promises and to look for it in the right place. We are invited to travel those six hard demanding miles from the wrong place to the right place. From self-sufficiency and self-protection to vulnerability, love of neighbour and generosity.
As we move with some relief but also much anxiety into a new year, we are invited to find our own route from Jerusalem to Bethlehem, to search for the light that can never be overcome, and to let it shine out through us.
David McEvoy, Reader, 3 January 2021