This morning I shared some details of a series of events that began just over eight years ago that led me to pick this reading from Isaiah for us to think about at the beginning of this new year and new decade. This series of events reinforced for me this instruction from God to God’s people to enlarge their tent, to stretch out the guy ropes, and to stake out the land that God is giving them. If you weren’t here, than I encourage you to have a read or a listen on the All Saints website, it should be online by the middle of the week.
This evening, I want to explore this idea further, taking the opportunity to look in more depth at the circumstances around Isaiah’s original prophecy, how Epiphany was the beginning of a significant next step in it’s fulfilment, and how this was continued in the life of the early church, exemplified by Paul’s ministry, summarised for us in our reading from Ephesians.
So let’s begin with Isaiah. Much of the first two thirds of the book of Isaiah is taken up with warnings to God’s people about what will happen if they continue to be unfaithful to God and corrupt in their dealings with each other, and particularly the vulnerable in their society. The section we’ve read from this evening is more focussed on the subsequent restoration of God’s people, their forgiveness, redemption and salvation. These chapters tend to alternate between descriptions of God’s faithful, suffering servant who is going to achieved all this (see chapter 53 for instance) and encouragements of joy and hope for the woman who personifies Jerusalem. This woman has been barren, but is now going to have children. Her tent is not going to be big enough for all these children and grandchildren, she is going to need a bigger tent. This image harks back to the time of the patriarchs, back to Abraham and Sarah travelling round with their herds, in their tents. They were wandering tribes people, and God promised them more descendants than they could count. That covenant promise is still operating, says God. Make your tent bigger.
Tomorrow is the feast of the Epiphany, the time at which we traditionally celebrate the visit of the Magi from East, come to pay homage to Jesus as a child. We’ll come back to them in a moment, but first I want to wind the clock back a little bit to the first group of people who came to visit Jesus, on the very night of his birth. These folk were the shepherds. My mum grew up on a diary farm in North Wales, which her parents were still farming when I was a youngster. We’d drive over there on Boxing Day for a week after Christmas. My sister and I would go and stay for bits of the summer holiday. But Gran and Taid rarely got away from the farm. The cows needed milking every morning and evening. It’s been the same for livestock farmers down the ages – animals don’t take days off. Which is a problem if you’re a Jewish shepherd, and you’re meant to take a Sabbath, do no work, once every seven days.
Shepherds in Jesus’ time were outsiders, it was difficult for them to keep the religious laws, get to the temple for the festivals, join in the religious life of the community. Sure, the sheep they looked after were needed for the temple sacrifices, but the shepherds themselves were not welcome. And it is to these outsiders that the angels first proclaimed the good news of Jesus’ birth, and invited them to come and see. From the very first Jesus’ was spreading the tent to include those who were on the edge of society, the excluded and the looked down upon.
But if the shepherds were on the edge of society, at least they were Jews, not Gentile pagan astrologers. These Magi weren’t just even close to the edge of Jewish society, they were on a completely different planet. When Isaiah was writing about the redemption of daughter Jerusalem, he also wrote about the destruction of the lady Babylon. In one of these passages he writes,
“Let your astrologers come forward, those stargazers who make predictions month by month, let them save you from what is coming upon you. Surely they are like stubble; the fire will burn them up. They cannot even save themselves from the power of the flame.”
And yet, God in grace, chooses to use a method of communication that these people will hear, a sign in the stars, so that he can draw them in, and, in the very early years of Jesus life show that the tent is going to be extended beyond the Jewish people to all the people of the earth, including the Gentiles, the pagans, and the astrologers. This isn’t a change of plan on God’s part, this also harks back to those earliest days of the tent dwelling patriarchs, when God said to Abraham, “all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” That covenant promise is still operating, says God. Make your tent bigger.
Now, the funny thing is that we don’t actually see much of this come to pass during Jesus ministry on earth. He stuck pretty much to ministering to the Jewish people. He did have the odd trip into some non-Jewish surrounding areas, but pretty much he focussed on the descendants of Abraham. He did include those on the edges of society, the disabled, the poor, the prostitutes and tax collectors – that fits well with the inclusion of the shepherds – but there were no astrologers or foreigners amongst his disciples and followers. That really took off after the Day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit came and filled Jesus’ disciples with power. And what was one of the first signs of this? The Holy Spirit enabled them to proclaim the wonderful works of God in a variety of languages so that all could understand. If the call to the Magi was the beginning of the Epiphany to the Gentiles just after Jesus was sent to begin a new phase of ministry, then the gift of languages at Pentecost was the beginning of the Epiphany to the Gentiles just after the Holy Spirit was sent to begin a new phase of ministry.
The presence of the Holy Spirit at work amongst the Gentiles continues to be a touch stone through the whole of Acts, as Jewish Christians again and again see Gentile Christians filled with the Holy Spirit, and, on that basis, recognise that God was including them in the body of the church. This is the back ground into which Paul writes his letter to the church at Ephesus, a church of Jews and Gentiles together. Paul, once the most ardent of Jewish religious zealots, now rejoices at the inclusion of the Gentiles, and is delighted that God has called him to be part of spreading the message of that inclusion as heirs in the family of God, members of the body, and sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus. I wonder if those last two elements remind you of anything? They remind me of a part of one of the prayers we use when we celebrate communion,
“On the night before he died he had supper with his friends and, taking bread, he praised you. He broke the bread, gave it to them and said: Take, eat; this is my body which is given for you; do this in remembrance of me.
When supper was ended he took the cup of wine. Again he praised you, gave it to them and said: Drink this, all of you; this is my blood of the new covenant, which is shed for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.”
Jesus body was broken so that it might be made whole, and include the whole of humanity – Jew and Gentile. A new covenant was made in his blood, and that covenant promise is still operating, says God. Make your tent bigger.
So, if this is a consistent theme in Scripture, and if God is drawing our attention to this theme, and calling us to engage with it, what might it mean for us here at All Saints?
We are blessed here at All Saints that we do have a good age range in the different congregations. We have youngsters being born into our church family, and God bringing in families with young people. We do have people coming to faith, a few every year, but not loads. If God were to give us a deluge of people turning to faith, would we be ready to extend the tent to make room for them? Is it possible that God is calling us to now to make the changes, to extend the tent to create room for them before they start arriving?
To a certain extent, we’ve already done this with different congregations such as Explore, Wednesday communion, and Toddler Praise, which has allowed us to extend our tent over more people. We’ve got the development of the Orbit project, which extends our tent physically. The Organ project has the potential to extend our tent with cultural and musical programmes. This is all good, and I look forward to it continuing.
I wonder, however if there might be even more. Would we welcome more? Some of us, including me at times, find it difficult to keep track of everybody, and find Sunday morning services quite full on with lots of people. What if so many people started coming along, that we didn’t have space for them at one service? What would we do? Are we ready to make our tent bigger? I’m not sure, but I do believe that God is a promise keeper, and so I am willing to be obedient, stretch out the tent and see what happens. I hope that you’ll join me.
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