Luminescence, Volume 1: The Sermons of C. K. and Fred Barrett

By C. K. Barrett, Fred Barrett, Ben Witherington III and Penelope Barrett Hyslop

What is found in this series unveils an entirely different side of C. K. Barrett, a side one might never have known about if one had knowledge only of his famous commentaries and monographs. Herein lies a goodly selection of Kingsley's sermons preached largely in small- and medium-sized Methodist churches in the northeast of England, though often elsewhere in England and around the world.
 
Fred Barrett was not the scholar his son was, but on close inspection, one can most definitely see the impact of the father on the son when it came to preaching. It seems right to include as many sermons from both of these men as we can in this series. One thing sorely lacking in much preaching these days is in-depth engagement with both the biblical text and one's tradition and theology. The sermons in these volumes demonstrate what such preaching can look like. This first volume presents 100 sermons on the Gospels and Acts.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Release date: Apr 25, 2017
• ISBN: 9781498299596

C. K. Barrett

Charles Kingsley Barrett (4 May 1917-26 August 2011) was a distinguished biblical scholar. He served as Professor of Divinity at the University of Durham and wrote commentaries on the Acts of the Apostles, John, Romans, and 1 and 2 Corinthians.   Fred Barrett (28 October 1880-25 December 1957) was a well-known United Methodist minister and evangelist, serving in many parts of England.   Ben Witherington III is Amos professor of New Testament for Doctoral Studies at Asbury Theological Seminary and doctoral faculty at St. Andrews University. He is the author of numerous books, including New Testament Rhetoric (Cascade, 2009) and, with Julie Noelle Hare, The Living Legacy (Wipf and Stock, 2009).

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THE PURPOSE OF THE BIBLE—John 20.31

[Preached five times from 10/28/01 at Bishop Auckland to 10/23/05 at Wheatley Hill. Editor’s Note: I have positioned this late sermon first because of its theme, as it helps explain how CKB viewed the task of preaching and how the Bible functioned. This is one of the last new sermons he composed. Hereafter, the sermons will be in canonical order]

John 20.31: these are written that ye may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing ye may have life in his name.

I have said before in this church that a Bible Sunday is a paradox. Every Sunday is a Bible Sunday; there are fifty-two (or fifty-three) of them every year. A service in which we do not in some form or other read from Scripture, try to understand it, explain it, expound it, apply it is not a Christian service. We do not all express our beliefs about the Bible in the same way, but we know that it is at the center of our faith. So why a Bible Sunday? Partly because, though we know the truth we are all apt to forget it and need an occasional reminder; partly because the Bible is an old book (yet the simplest person can learn from it, though most of us need a lot of help with it), and partly because it gives us an opportunity of praying for the Bible Society and similar agencies.

Your minister said (not too seriously) that you would probably be getting the New Testament this morning and the Old Testament this evening. Not too far wrong as far as this morning is concerned, though all I say would, with a little bit of thought, be applied to the Old Testament too. Let us ask: What is the Bible—the New Testament—for? What is it intended to do? (John 20.31 is quoted again).

That verse is said specifically of one book, St. John’s Gospel, but it applies to them all. There it is the conclusion of the Gospel, summing up its purpose. Wait a minute you say—conclusion? But there is another chapter—21—to come. True, and this I think will help us on our way. Our text is surely the end of something—the end of the book as John intended it. There is a lot I have left out but this is the meaning, the sum of what I have put down.¹ But then, perhaps a bit later, he thinks of a few things that really ought to be there, so he adds what we might call an Appendix. In fact, it turns out very helpful to us.

Imagine these situations in the early Church. Jesus has died, has been crucified. It is a dreadful thing. How did we ourselves who failed him, deserted him, denied him, live through it? But the sorrow and the loneliness and the sense of failure and defeat are gone now, drowned in a shout of triumph for we know that he is alive, and he has commissioned us as his envoys to spread the news of the victory that his redeeming love has won over sin and death. Splendid: he was a Jew, we are Jews, he preached to us, so we will do the same. It’s not too big a task, Judaea is a little country. For the present let’s have a fishing trip.

Why? Just for pleasure? I doubt it—they (or some of them) were professionals. No; a few good nights and sales in the markets and there would be enough cash in hand to see them through a few weeks of mission. And they were wrong, hopelessly wrong, and the story had to be told to express the blunder. In the first place, they couldn’t catch fish without Jesus, and in the second place the mission would not be over in a fortnight. It would cost not years but millennia, and it would cost lives too. But Jesus was in it with them.

Now a second situation. They get to work, and then find that they, the Church, are in the most dangerous of all situations. We are in it still. The mission ceases to be a mission and becomes an institution. Institutions are indispensable but they are dangerous. They can lead (among other things) to a rivalry which is very different from the love that is the mark of the true Christian family. Now cast your mind back to John 21, and you will hear one group of people saying, there is only one man fit to be head of the church, and that is Peter. What did the Lord say? On this rock I will build my church. True, he denied Jesus, but he was forgiven for that. And another group is saying, No we must have the disciple whom Jesus loved— there is no higher qualification than that. But you must listen to Jesus saying to these two, and through them to us all, What business is it of yours what happens to the other man? Follow thou me. If only we always listened!

This leads straight on to the third situation. A saying was going around the Church—Jesus told Peter² that he would live until the Lord returned in glory. Peter is getting on in years now; the Lord will be here any time now and all history will come to an end. No, says John, Jesus did not say that. He was only telling them to mind their own business. If I will that he live until I come, what is that to thee? Follow thou me. Mind your own business and your business is not to speculate about the end of time, but to follow.

Now I have borrowed these things from John 21 because what they do is make explicit what is already contained in John 20.31, and worked out in detail in the twenty preceding chapters. Chapter 21 shows how it was applied to particular situations in the Church’s life—all relevant to us because in one form or another they will come up in age after age of the Church’s life, including our own. What does the New Testament set out to do? To preach to us.

JESUS

In the one word, John picks up the whole story that has gone before.³ It is easy to see the meaning in regard to the Gospels, where the story is told. It is no less true of the other great contributor to the New Testament, Paul. It has been well said that the theme of his writing is summed up in one phrase "solus Christus," Christ alone. There is no other name that matters. If you wish to go in for a simplicity that runs the risk of being so simple as to mislead, you may say (using the words of our text) that the Gospels show us Jesus, the real man who shared our humanity, our living and dying human nature, and Paul supplies the additional theological truth: This man Jesus is truly the Christ, the Son of God. It is misleading and the old Church Fathers who insisted on the inseparability of the two natures, human and divine, were right. I cannot explain it any more than they could, but both properties are here and we need both.

For most of us, it is easiest for us to think of this in terms of crucifixion and resurrection. Christ crucified, yea rather risen, as Paul put it. Or as Charles Wesley put it in lines of which we do not always see the full import—Those dear tokens of his passion/Still his dazzling body bears/Cause of endless exultation/To his ransomed worshippers. The risen exalted Jesus bears still the scars of the nails and of the lance. The risen Jesus is the crucified Jesus, and his glory means the whole significance of the cross is ratified by God himself. The love that never lets us go is the power that never fails.

We read (and some of you know far more about this sort of thing than I do) of people who want to embark on a great commercial undertaking. If they can take it on it will be an enormous success. But they can’t get it going unless they can find backers—a bank, say, or an insurance company—that will put up the cash. You cannot do without the backer. You look at the story of Jesus as the New Testament tells it—his love, his dying love for the sinful, the lonely, the outcast and you think, if you think about it at all, who is going to back this enterprise? And the answer is God Almighty.

No wonder that Paul would go out and preach nothing but Christ and him crucified. No wonder that John Lambert the Protestant martyr (1538), his legs already burnt, lifted up for sport by two soldiers who stuck their swords in his body, would cry out None but Christ, none but Christ. No wonder Wesley would sing my heart is full of Christ and longs/ its glorious matter to declare!/ Of him I make my loftier song/ I cannot from his praise forbear. And go out into the streets, and fields and market places. Perhaps we are going ahead too fast. The New Testament, represented by our text, has another word.

BELIEVING

I’m not entirely happy with believing as an English word. It sounds too much as though John has stated a sample of theological formulas—Christ and the Son of God, and is now saying—sign up on the dotted line and you are in, refuse to sign and you are out. Let me say at once that I believe that Christ and Son of God are good and true statements about Jesus of Nazareth; but I doubt that this is the way to begin. The word believing is not a matter of assenting to a proposition, however true; it is a matter of trusting. It is always edging towards an intellectual emphasis, because we are intellectual beings and we want to use our minds in the way we live.

We know that Jesus somehow means God, that God is known in Jesus, and that Jesus fulfills God’s purposes. All this we sum up by using the old Jewish word for God’s chosen fulfiller of his will—Christ; and we can say Jesus is God without implying he is all the God there is, by speaking of him as God’s Son. But the word most of us I think will find most of use is the word we find in the Appendix—follow. There are many things you will never know, never fully understand, but—follow thou me.

Following implies trust, you won’t follow someone you don’t trust. And trust implies trustworthiness. Following contains obedience. The leader sets out in a direction you don’t want to go. It is hard, it is dangerous, there is resistance, it doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. Following means going where you are led; it is good if you can understand why, but if you can’t you still follow.

Following is a responsibility for you; it contains also a responsibility on the part of the leader. It is a poor thing if he turns up at the predetermined goal, turns, and sees that his army has disappeared. He has lost them on the way. But not this leader. He will see those who follow through to their goal. He leadeth me beside the still waters. . . . I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever. But that leads to the last point, which again we can dig out of chapter 21—that believing you may have.

LIFE

They had got it wrong. The Lord never told Peter that he would live to the end of all things, which would mean the end was very near. They got it wrong but not all Christians have learned their lesson, and may have wasted pointless hours in calculating on a purely imaginary basis when the Son of Man will descend from heaven to bring history to an end. What bliss to be alive at that dawn! But it is all bogus. Here and elsewhere Jesus himself is not telling and himself did not know when the end would come.

Life that would be eternal in heaven is no doubt a very good thing, but it is not the Gospel. The Christian Good News is of life here and now. A heart in every thought renewed/and full of love divine/perfect and right and pure and good/a copy Lord of thine (C. Wesley). That is the life the leader leads to, and leads to now. And we may all follow. And that is what the Bible is about.

1. Editor’s Note: The older British practice was to use single quotation marks for a proper quotation of someone else’s words, but also when one is imaginatively speaking in someone else’s voice, such as St. John’s in this case. Accordingly, I have simply left things that way when CKB quotes Shakespeare, Wesley hymns, etc. I have, however, had to modify some of the British spelling of words for the American publisher.

2. Editor’s Note: I take it he means the Beloved Disciple, but the sermon text says Peter. Or perhaps he does mean Peter, but John

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simply forecasts that Peter will ultimately die much as Jesus did—at the hands of violent men.

3. Editor’s Note: The way CKB operates most of the time to give a sense of the context of this or that text is what he calls painting a picture, an imaginative recreation of the context often with dialogue or vivid description. The purpose of course is to help the congregation understand the original meaning of the text, and also to make the text come alive.

DOUBTFUL ANCESTRY—Matthew 1.3–6

[Preached nineteen times between 12/5/76 at Chester-le-Street to 12/26/04 at Gilesgate]

Let me get in one word, before you exclaim in disgust that is the stupidest text I ever heard, and it leads to the worst sermon. Get up and walk out. The sermon, I dare say, will be bad enough, but I must say a word in defense of the text. I agree that appearances are against it. As we read the New Testament through at home and got to the end of Revelation, and then back again to Matthew 1, my wife Margaret says Do we really have to read all the list of names again? We do, but I can see her point. And I did not venture to read you the genealogical table as our second lesson. But before you dismiss it, notice that there is something very odd here. People in the first century drew up their family tree and produced lists of ancestors and the lists were the names of men—grandfather, father, son and so on.

Of course women in those days wouldn’t stand for being left out and even then people knew that no man stood much chance of being a father if there was no woman available to be a mother, but so it was, right or wrong. Only—not here. Here in the most significant genealogy of all, stands no fewer than four women, cutting right across the formal structures of the list, for it is formal and Matthew underlines the fact. All the generations from Abraham unto David are fourteen generations, and from David unto the carrying away to Babylon, fourteen generations, and from the carrying away to Babylon unto Christ, fourteen generations. The crossing of the two lines, the formal and the informal, the expected and the unexpected, remind us at once of what the coming of Jesus was. He was what people expected. They expected a Messiah a deliverer, one who would fulfill the hopes and dreams that prophets had entertained through the centuries and he was all that. The fulfillment of what God had led people to believe in and hope for.

But this did not mean there was a ready-made set of categories by which he could be described, a neat set of pigeonholes into which he could be neatly filed away . . . and forgotten. There was in him also that which suppressed all such expectations and confounded all their plans. Things that no one had ever thought of before. You can see it in the story of his baptism. The voice declares from heaven you are my Son, the Beloved that is he fulfills the messianic hope of his people. But immediately the Holy Spirit descends on him; that is, he will go out to fulfill God’s promises and his people’s hopes in all the freedom and spontaneity of the Spirit. So it is here; the formal and the expected is cut across by the informal and the unexpected. But there is more to say. Look at the four women individually.

TAMAR

I did not read you her story from the Old Testament nor am I going to tell it to you now. It is in substance a rather unpleasant and even dirty story. If you wish to look it up, you will find it in Genesis 38. It is enough to say that you will find there the story of a frustrated woman, robbed by death, by selfishness, by carelessness of the husband and children that she wanted. There is no need to describe the particular circumstances. There are others that can lead to frustration and frustration itself is something we know well enough. In some ways our modern mechanized, automated age knows it better than others. Not long ago my son said to me You know father you are one of the lucky ones. You are doing a job you want to do. I think the observation was just, and I wonder how many people work day after day feeling all the time frustrated because they can never get past their work and on to things they really care about.

Even more important perhaps are the frustrations of personal life. The sort of frustration that Tamar knew. The frustration of unrequited love and friendship. I love my children, and all I want from them is that they love me. But too often it does not work out like that. I offer my friendship and the offer is turned down or isn’t even noticed. We put all we can into the work of the Church but it doesn’t move on much, or it moves backwards. We can understand Tamar and what she stands for, even though this is something more subtle than our next name evokes.

RAHAB

The Old Testament describes her bluntly as a harlot. If we consider the circumstances of the time, 3,000 years ago, we shall not want to pass too severe a moral judgment. But prostitution is not what God made sex for, and Rahab will serve as a label for sin—another theme introduced into the genealogy of Jesus. And another that we can understand. Of course we do not bear the label that society attaches to Rahab, but do you remember Paul’s saying? What! Shall I take the members of Christ and make them members of a harlot? Or shall I take the gifts that God has given me, myself, my powers of body, mind, and will and devote them to something other than God? How often have we prostituted ourselves, not in the interest of some human client, but of some goal we would not bring before God and try to justify in his sight? Preferred some sort of profit, financial or social, to the service of God? It can all be done most respectably. It can even be done in the aura of religion. But whenever we consult ourselves first, and other people’s interest and God’s only inadequately we put ourselves in Rahab’s company. But the next woman is different.

RUTH

There are things to note about Ruth, this time at least, that she was a stranger, a foreigner, a Moabitess, no Jew at all. She lived outside the framework of the true religion. What were Abraham and Moses, the law and the covenants to her? Not for her to take part in the sacrifices in the Temple. She stood outside this world of religious activities. Well there are plenty of Ruths about us today, they constitute the huge majority of our national society. What are we who meet here today in comparison to the population as whole? They are a mixed lot, many of them very nice as Ruth was—kind, affectionate, appreciative. But if they were suddenly dumped here in Church, if by some mistake they walked in here instead of into a public house, they would feel strange, awkward, embarrassed, perhaps we should too. This very embarrassment is one of our problems today. People feel they don’t belong even if they would rather like to, and we do not do as much as we might to heal the embarrassment and bring them in. And people live out in the dark and the cold because though we unbolt the door, we don’t go out to bring them in. We move to the wife of Uriah.

THE WIFE OF URIAH

She is not hard to understand, and you know her story. At first you might classify her under the label of sin, like Rahab, but that would be wrong. Of course there is sin in the story—David’s sin, which evoked the most famous denunciation in the whole Old Testament— Nathan’s parable of the ewe lamb and his you are the man! But you can’t blame Bathsheba again given the circumstances of the time. When the king sent for her, she had to go. The word here is sorrow. There is sorrow first for Uriah, her husband, that good loyal faithful man and about his death in so dastardly a way. And then there was sorrow for her baby. We hear much of David’s sorrow. He fasted and lay all night upon the earth. The elders of his house arose, and stood beside him to raise him up from the earth but he would not, neither did he eat bread with them.

But what of the mother’s sorrow? Here the sound of sorrow weaves itself into the story that leads up to the story of Jesus, and as long as human life is lived in this harried world of mortality and death we shall know its meaning. Bit by bit as the story of life goes by you learn the meaning of these things—of loneliness, of separation, of death.

Now let us begin to add up these things, observing as we do that this is no compulsive mathematical logic but just a way of setting out truth that we have learned elsewhere. You can have a dozen Rahabs as your ancestors and care nothing for the sinful. Jesus was not what he was because he had such and such great grandmothers. But we can see, as I believe Matthew wished us to do, how these unexpected names cohere with the truth about Jesus.

FRUSTRATION

Jesus knew what to do with the perturbed. Not that it always worked, there was nothing automatic about it. Little Zacchaeus was frustrated in his desire to see Jesus, but Jesus not only made the contact Zacchaeus failed to make, he gave Zacchaeus a new life in which money was no longer its center. But there was that other sick man, so obviously frustrated and seeking Jesus. What must I do to inherit eternal life? He was rich and he had kept the commandments, but he had not yet gotten what he wanted. To him also the same challenge—sell up and give and come follow me. But he couldn’t take it. Failing to follow Jesus he went away frustrated still.

SINFUL

We could not have plainer words—I did not come to call the righteous but the sinners. One of the first things Jesus says was lad, your sins are forgiven. Certainly he was not always using the word. Perhaps he has an extra lesson for modern preachers there. He told stories, a story of a boy who gets tired of living the family life in his father’s house and says, I’m off! I want my cash and I’m going. And he went and ruined himself and everything else. In the end he crept back to the back door of the house, hoping to sneak in with the servants. But his father met him with no reproaches and with a robe and a ring. It was the publican who could only say, Lord have mercy on me a sinner, and he went away justified.

THE OUTSIDER

This follows on. Jesus died because he would not give up the outcasts, because he would eat with the tax collectors and sinners, because he would not toe the line with official Judaism and only associate with the respectable.

THE SORROWFUL

The widow of Nain at her son’s funeral, Jairus and his twelve-year-old daughter and countless more because sorrow is caused by other things than death and is not always suspected by the beholder. But always Jesus was there proclaiming at the beginning of his ministry the fulfillment of the prophet’s words—the Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he anointed me to preach good tidings to the poor; he has sent me to proclaim release to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind and to set at liberty those who are bound, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.

We are here today to think afresh both of the meaning of the coming of Jesus, and of the works of the Church. Here are both. This is what Jesus came to do, noted by Matthew in a curious little parable of four women—Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Bathsheba. He came to seek and save that which was lost. And he has handed on his task to us, not to seek respectability and reward for ourselves, but to minister in his name to the frustrated, the sinful, the outcast, and the sorrowing.

I recalled recently an essay on William Booth that told the story of the old man. He lay dying, death was not far away. His son Bramwell bent over him and whispered Is there anything you want Father? Yes, said the old man, I want to hear dear old Wesley say ‘here’s another one coming for God, General, another one of the outcasts and sinful, another finding their way home to God.’ This is what Jesus came to make possible. That is what he has left us to do.

JESUS: FOR HE SHALL SAVE HIS PEOPLE—Matthew 1.21

[Preached 24 times between 12/24/39 at Hollyhead Road and 12/11/83 at Trimdon]⁴

What’s in a name? Not very much to us. We are matter of fact people and sufficiently scientific to recognize the fact that to call a rose a turnip would make no difference to its scent. And we are not very impressed by another’s name either. And the names we give to our children are not, as a rule, based on any strange insight into their character or even hopes of what their character will ultimately prove to be. A name is therefore just a convenience, and that’s all.

But customs have not always and everywhere been like that. In the country and times of Jesus names were very significant things. To know the name of a person or a demon was to have him in your power. Have you noticed how Jesus himself would ask the demons their names? And to know the name of God meant not merely to know what was the proper title by which to address God, but what was his nature, and what he would do. So when Jesus said (John 17.26) I have made known unto them thy name and will make it know, he meant that he, in his teaching and life, was telling people what God was like, who he was, and what he was doing.

The name therefore of God’s Son, of him who was God, and was doing the work of God on earth is very significant. Of course before the birth of Jesus, people were expecting a Messiah, the King of the Jews. And they were expecting him to do many things. They thought of him as a great military leader, who should drive the foreign armies out of the land. They thought of him as God coming to judgment, one who would drown the world in the blood of his enemies. But it was a different idea that was expressed by the name Joseph was commanded to call his child. The name Jesus (Yeshua) means God saves, and the angel knew what sort of a savior this child was to be. It was true, as for hundreds of years, God’s people had dreamed, and hoped, and despaired that God was on his way, stooping from heaven to deliver his people from that which oppressed them. But it was also true, that God could see much more clearly than could his people what was their worst enemy. It was not easy to look beyond the hard lives created by the Roman army rambling across their land; it was not easy to feel more than the prick of hunger and hardship, the humiliation of defeat; but there was something else. There was a greater enemy, a more bitter defeat. There was Sin.

SIN

It may be that sin is an idea one would prefer not to think about at Christmas time. This is a season, we like to think, of general goodwill and kindliness. There is no one so hard of heart but that Christmas makes him merry and kindly. Christmas reveals the innate good nature in us all, often buried, often dissembled, but always there. Is that true? Are we really like that? Ought we really to use the fact of Christmas to set aside the matter of sin, as an excuse for putting aside the probing questions of the New Testament?

Let us at least make no mistake about the first Christmas. It is very easy to think of it as a beautiful, happy, idyllic scene, especially with so many Christmas cards about. I should rather like to send out more Christmas cards not with pictures of romantic looking shepherds, but with a realistic view of Herod’s hired assassins murdering young children. I don’t want to take away the beauty of Christmas but let us not act the ostrich, and hide our head in the sand when anything unpleasant appears.

Do not forget why Mary and Joseph were in Bethlehem at all. They were living in a land not unlike Poland today (i.e., 1939), and had to go where they were told for the convenience of those imposing crushing taxation upon them. Do not forget that after that weary journey, and arriving in a blackout, there was no room in the inn. Do not forget where the birth of Jesus took place—in a stable, and let the stained glass windows go and see the stench and filth of it. Do not forget Herod and his massacre. Do not forget the hurried flight into Egypt.

There is plenty of beauty indeed in the story of the Nativity, but there is a dark side to the picture. It is the very contrast that helps us to see the infamy, the ingratitude, the utter sinfulness of it all, and so to the Cross. And having seen that contrast we may move on to another which extends as far as our own time, and as far as our own lives; the contrast between God’s act in sending his only Son into the world, and the sort of world we have made to receive Him. I suppose the most obvious thing to do is to point out, that he, the Prince of Peace, came and still comes into a world of war. In Jesus, God offers to us, to all his peace.

But there is something which strikes home even more personally than that. God’s coming into the world in Jesus, proclaims most of all God’s love, a love not based on merit or desert, but freely descending to the undeserving, a love that gives its all for people, not because they are loveable but only of its own inner necessity. He hath loved, he hath loved us because he would love. The love of God and his wonderful patience, even his humility.

A very old Christian writer pointed out the wonder of this. How did he send him? Not in wrath, not commanding, but in love, persuading, exhorting people, being patient with them. And on our side, what corresponds to this? What is our reply? In our behavior toward God and toward our fellow human beings governed by the same love, the same patience, the same humility, that we see in Jesus?

In Goethe’s Faust, Mephistopheles is spoken of as a spirit which ever denies. And there is something of that in us; something that says no to God’s love and kindness, something that is on Herod’s side rather than Christ’s. A communist I was arguing with after an open air meeting told me that our present rulers were entirely selfish, and the people should rule themselves. Without quarreling with the principle, I wanted to know how he could be sure that the new rulers would not show the same selfishness. He said ‘you must change their ideology. That’s a big way of putting a simple yet terribly difficult thing. Change their ideology, that means change the No into a Yes, and turn the hard selfishness into the love and patience of God.

We may well recognize anyway, that it is something that needs to be done. It is true that we live in a world that is saying no to the God who with infinite love and compassion made his home and his grave among human beings. Do not think this is something abstract. It appears again and again in the whole fabric of human life. Sin is a fact of experience. You may forget it for a time, but you cannot blot your sinful acts out of your mind. Like David, you will meet your Nathan. Like Elijah, your Ahab. And sins are not isolated, because they are built up into habits, the chain that we forge for ourselves and bind upon our own limbs. This is the human NO! to the grace of God, which is more than the no to his commandments. Can nothing be done about it? Something has been done about it.

HE SHALL SAVE HIS PEOPLE FROM THEIR SINS

That is what Jesus came to do. He it is, and no other can do it; that is the meaning of the stress in the Greek—thou canst save, and thou alone. We run in vain from one supposed source of help to another, and he is the only Savior from sin. And that is what he is. People have tried from time to time to show him to be other things. The first communist, the first pacifist, the great teacher, the supreme moral example. But he is the Savior from sin. That at least was his own idea, and the idea of St. Paul of his work. But how can he save people from their sins?

1) By being with them, associating his purity with their evil. Have you ever read through the first sixteen verses of the New Testament? It is Matthew’s genealogy and repays reading, if you know the Old Testament. Notice especially the women who are mentioned—Tamar, Rahab, Bathsheba—all women of the worst of reputations, and Ruth, no Jew at all. Somehow these are the people who have to be brought in, and that reflects the whole of the mission, and the character of Jesus. For he was the friend of publicans and sinners. He was the shepherd of the lost sheep and the doctor of the sick. Jesus healed people’s bodies at a distance, but he did not heal their souls that way. It was when people like Levi and Zacchaeus opened their homes to him that they became changed persons.

2) By his power to forgive. Jesus knew that the most terrible consequence of sin was the barrier it erected between humankind and God, its breaking down of the relationship between them. Not that there was ever much to break down, because human beings had been trying to come to God by the wrong road; trying to earn his favor by the good things he did. But this attempt is constantly vitiated by the fact of sin, so that what Jesus did, in effect, was to create a new relationship between God and human beings, and our relationship to God exists only in Him. He is our righteousness and we have no other. So the jolly feasts with sinners could indeed become a holy communion, because Jesus bore them up to the presence of God. He was with them, but he was not one of them, and because he was different, and came from above he was able to forgive; to give us a new start, a new relationship to God, the life of sonship.

3) By his victory over the power of evil. Look again at the genealogy and see how Matthew splits it up into three sections. This is not coincidence, it is a philosophy of history. It means that for Matthew, the coming of Christ, is the inauguration of a new era, different from all that preceded this, in the fact of the presence of the Kingdom, the mighty rule of God. God manifests his power in overcoming the power of evil and setting up his own kingdom in the hearts of human beings. This means the defeat of sin, which on its own ground was invincible. Give me somewhere to stand, says Archimedes, and I will move the world. He meant that if, by a miracle, he could stand outside the world, he could exert force enough to move it. That is what the coming of Jesus means—power from outside the world applied inside it, power that was able to conquer sin and death in Jesus and those who believe in him. I have related all this to the time of Jesus himself, but he is the same yesterday, today, and forever. And what he did for sinful persons in the past he can do for you.⁵

APPLICATION

When people gave names, they looked backward as well as forward, and we may look too at the two Joshua’s of the Old Testament. One was the triumphant leader of a young and vigorous people whom he led into their promised land with glory and daring exploits. The other comes much later after a long and weary history, strained with sin and suffering. And he is not a soldier, but a priest, sacrificing, atoning for his people, sanctifying them.

And Jesus is both, so that whether you stand with a big life’s history in front of you, or with a tale of failure and defeat behind, he is the one who can save you from sin, and save you into the glory of his Kingdom. On one occasion, a friend, Sir Henry Leeland found Michael Faraday in tears, with his head bent over an open Bible. I fear you are feeling unwell, he said. No, answered Faraday, it’s not that, but why O why will not people believe the blessed truths here revealed?⁶

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Pages from C. K. Barrett’s notebook

4. Editor’s Note: There are many sermons composed in the

1930

s as CKB began to preach regularly that he did not use thereafter, perhaps because he thought they could stand improvement or replacement. Whatever the case, this was not one of them for he used it in various places for over forty years. In general, I have followed his own implicit evaluation of those very early sermons, and presented here those that he felt worthwhile to use across many decades.

5. Editor’s Note: Here in pencil, he writes the name Lew Batchelor, about whom the story is told in another sermon in this volume. Presumably, he repeated that story here, at least in some of the uses of this sermon.

6. Editor’s Note: This illustration is crossed out in pencil, so presumably it was not used in later versions of the preaching of this sermon.

IMMANUEL—Matthew 1.22–23

[Preached twenty-seven times from 12/25/56 at Langley Park to 12/11/05 at Bowburn]

All that there is to say this morning is contained in the one word—Immanuel. It is one word when it stands as a proper name, but it is two words in Hebrew which it takes four words in English to translate—With us is God. Short enough, but it means everything. It always has meant everything, once humankind has learned to understand it.

Years ago, before the war, I read a story which has always stuck in my mind. The sorrows of China, of the Church in China, have gone on for a long time. It was in October 1934 that the two men, Hazmann and Bosshardt were captured by the Rio Army. One of them was to spend thirteen the other nineteen months in captivity. Christmas Day 1934 found them cold and cheerless, and kept not in solitary but in silent confinement. There was nothing to do but sit in the cold room all day and wait for their three square meals of rice and vegetables. They were not allowed to speak. Then Bosshardt had an idea. He began to play with the straw that littered the ground, spelling out letters for his friend to see—IMMANUEL. The two men looked at each other with a glow of comfort and hope. The whole scene was changed into one of joy. If God be for us, who can be against us (Bosshardt). Immanuel, not as a charm, or a magic spell, or an Open Sesame to open prison doors, but as a meaningful word to those who understood—it does mean everything. But to be more precise—what does it mean? Let me say three things about it. First, negatively, it does not mean God’s approval of all we do.

GOD’S APPROVAL OF ALL WE DO

That God should be with us does not mean that he will do all the things we do. I well remember the occasion when I had the opportunity to attend service in John Calvin’s own church in Geneva. It is perched up on a rock above the lake, in a situation not unlike that of Durham Cathedral, but it was a service and a preaching like our own that was conducted there. The sermon was on the last words of Matthew—Lo I am with you always. And one of the preacher’s points was this—you must not suppose that promised presence is simply a comforting and comfortable thing. It is, he said, an accusing presence. And so it is. People were not long in the presence of Christ before they found that out. He didn’t strengthen, or browbeat them. As often as not, he did not need to speak a word. Not a word to Peter, but the man was on his knees saying Depart from me for I am a sinful man, O Lord. In the presence of the woman taken in adultery, it was only Let him that is without sin among you cast the first stone. It is not what is said, it is the man who speaks.

Immanuel, with us is God. That is what he is like, and that is the sort of effect he will have. This is not the end of the story, but it is a chapter we are prone to skip, and one therefore that ought to be emphasized sometimes. He attends our Christmas feasts like Banquo’s ghost—for you will remember Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Macbeth himself had just had Banquo murdered, but when he came to feast with his friends the ghost of Banquo, visible to him alone, is there in his place. And the feast is ruined for, without speaking, Banquo’s ghost accuses, Thou cannot not say I did it! Never shake thy gory locks at me!

I suspect that there ought to be ghosts at some of our Christmas dinners. I am delighted to wish you all a happy Christmas; will you misunderstand if I also wish you an uncomfortable Christmas? I should not like to think you were too comfortable while others starve, and tremble from the cold or from terror. You might even be uncomfortable enough to send the hat around when you’re done.

If God is going to be with us—today—there are some things we shall do, and there are some we shall not do, and you may remember that if drunkenness is a sin, so is gluttony and sloth. But it is time to be positive. Immanuel means that God is for us.

GOD IS FOR US

The whole mystery and wonder and miracle of grace is there, and it is the foundation of Christianity. We often talk about people deciding for Christ, and we do well. I myself tried to preach so people would do this. But all this talk and all this deciding would be the vainest nonsense, if God had not first of all decided for us. You have not chosen me, said Jesus, but I have chosen you. And behind your willingness to follow him lies his choice of you. So behind our being for God, and far more important, is God’s being for us.

Think how much reason God had for not being for us but against us. I see that the BBC is offering us that very moving play of the African-American’s idea of the Old Testament—Green Pastures. The picture of the Lord God walking the earth and being incensed with the folly and iniquity of humanity is crude enough, but what is wrong with it? I can see nothing theologically wrong with it. Small wonder that more than once God resolves to destroy his own handiwork. Yet he doesn’t; he can never quite bring himself to blot out the rebellious humans on the little earth. Behind wrath, there is mercy, and in Christ God is for us. He that might the vengeance best have took/ Found out the remedy. Again and again in the Old Testament you can read the prophetic words—Therefore I am against you, says the Lord. But in Christ he is with and for us, even those who have rebelled against him, disobeyed his laws, flaunted his Word.

What this means you can see in the original setting of the Immanuel prophecy in Isa 7.14. The situation had seemed hopeless; Israel was lost. But the time would come, Isaiah said, when after all, people would say Why, God is with us! He has delivered us from our foes. What it means you can see even better in the story of Jesus. He accuses, but even when he accuses, he is on our side. Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? God—who justifies us? The God who lays bare our sin also forgives it. God with us. There remains one more question.

WITH WHOM

We have been talking happily enough about us. But who is us? We know the answer that many people would give. Only the lowest level people say, God is on the side of the top dogs. Scarcely higher up the scale, is said God helps those who help themselves. God, that is, favors the strong, the wise the resourceful, the universe is on the side of those who thrive. In a more refined way people may say God is on the side of the righteous, the pious, the religious. So one would assume, but it does not ring true to the story of Jesus, for it was the righteous and the religious who rejected him.

No—God is with the poor, the humble, the lowly. Above all he is with sinners, and those who know they are sinners. He came to the lowly, needy folk who were looking for deliverance from their chains. He was with them—and that is how we know he is with us.

TROUBLED AT CHRISTMAS—Matthew 2.3

[Preached thirty-three times between 12/14/47 at Croft to 1/8/06 at Kelloe]

Yes, I admit, there is trouble enough in the world already. There is no need for a preacher to augment it, and on the Sunday before Christmas at that. But you will see before we have finished that this trouble is the most helpful thing there is. And at least you will not be so warmed up by the prospect of your attenuated Christmas dinner as to deny me this—we are starting in the full blaze of topicality. The latest political move has set our hearts palpitating again—how modern it is. What’s going to happen next, and what can we do to stop it? The age-old questions.

For a moment let your minds go back, as once a year at least they should, to the days of 1900 years ago. Jesus was born at the moment of one of the triumphs of history. For a hundred years or so during the death throes of the Roman Republic, life had indeed been nasty, solitary, brutish, and short. There was no security of mind, body, or estate for anyone, anywhere. And then had come Augustus, the first Emperor. Looking back in the cold light of history we are not likely to think him a god—he didn’t think so himself, but we are not surprised that his contemporaries did. For he had brought peace, and the world breathed a happy sigh of contentment. Herod ruled a puppet kingdom, nominally independent, but in fact all his future was tied up with Rome’s. And now, just as the machinery was working smoothly, someone throws in this spanner—another king, another pretender, another war.

What did Herod feel? What did all Jerusalem feel? You know exactly what they felt. What did you feel when, as you thanked God for peace in Europe, you learned that there was one more totalitarian state, with a spiritual depravity, a viciousness, an aggressiveness, and a physical force at least equal to Nazi Germany. Troubled—and so was Herod.

Of course there were those at the first coming of Christ who were ready to rejoice. There was his mother, and if she didn’t love him, who would? But there were others, men and women looking for the consolation of Israel, who saw him and rejoiced. But I am glad that our Gospels do not leave out this realistic note. Where is he that is born King of the Jews—asked the wise men. And the first recorded comment is, King Herod was troubled and so was all of Jerusalem. But why? Let us look into this trouble a little further.

WHY WERE THEY TROUBLED?

Firstly, there was trouble because the authorities had not been consulted. The civil authority had not been consulted. Here, they said, was a new king. But surely the reigning sovereign has a right to know something about the birth of the heir to the throne. And Herod had not been consulted at all, the news was sprung on him. And the religious authorities had not been consulted either. They were hurriedly hustled together to look it up in their official tomes, under pressure.

Now civil and religious authorities don’t like that kind of treatment. It troubles them. It always has done so, even when the event has been the coming of Christ. I need not stay to illustrate that. Has there ever been a civil authority that didn’t stir uneasily when the name of Christ was invoked in its council chambers, even in respect to slavery or child labor? And are the religious authorities better? We know at least what happened when Wesley offered Christ to thousands of English pagans. The Anglican authorities were not consulted, and they were troubled.

Hurrah! We say. We’re all agin the government. Let the easy rogues in ermine and plush be discomfited. But wait. There is one place, if only one, where you are the authority. What happens there? When Christ comes, as, from time to time, he does come, elbowing his way through the jostling crowd of interests and ambitions that pass through your mind—what then? When he says, as he has been saying for 1900 years—never mind your history, never mind your ledgers, never mind your legal practice, never mind your college fellowship—follow me! What then? I know, that is the trouble, that is where the shoe pinches. But again, further. . .

Secondly, there was trouble because a new set of standards was involved. I have spoken of the immense majesty of Roman peace. Even Herod was no pale imitation of the greater Roman ruler. And there was no newborn king in his court. Nor was there any royal messiah in the Temple court. You know what there was. There was a baby, supposed illegitimate (for that was the natural inference from the circumstances), in a stable, at the village of Bethlehem. The new king was a different king, and at this rate he was going to turn the world upside down.

There is nothing revolutionary about Christianity but this—that its kings are servants and their weapons are love. But there are few revolutions more disturbing than that. It may be well enough to shout for a bloody revolution, but if the blood is going to be your own, it is a different matter. The question for this: was Herod going to climb down before the newborn infant of a peasant woman? And the answer was— not likely! Slaughter a thousand infants first. You recognize the choice of course, for you have had to make it, and like me, you have sometimes, chosen with Herod. There have been no massacres but we have done so. It is a choice, a challenge to trouble anyone. And we can see why.

Thirdly, there was trouble because Herod was, in fact, confronted with the unknown. There was coming into the known, or at least comprehensible situation, the unknown the incomprehensible something, the incalculable factor that upsets the schemes of every planner. Into the plain human world came God, the one factor in life which is by definition beyond our grasp and beyond our control. There is nothing like the unknown to lay the cold clutch of fear on our hearts. We have all seen it, and most of us have experienced it. Felt it maybe, as the ambulance surged through the hospital gates, or when as children we stepped into the big new school alone, or when we went into our first job. And certainly we have felt it, or shall one day feel it in ourselves or in the world about us tells us that death after all is a real thing and not a name.

The coming of Jesus means the coming of the Unknown. What will this mean for my Kingdom? asked Herod. And what will this mean for my kingdom asks everyone whose territory Christ has invaded. Where is he that is born King of the Jews? And trouble fell on everyone—in chancery, in university, and in Church. And that is the beginning of hope. If it were not so, I should have found something else to talk about.

When people are troubled, there is always hope. I will tell you how I have seen that happen. I have seen people begin their studies in a severe self-confidence, a far greater confidence that they have settled the problems of theology than I dare admit. And I have no hope of their learning anything worth learning until they begin to be troubled, to see that the ocean of truth is a bigger thing than the parish pool they thought of. Bishop Westcott was once asked why there is in the Prayer Book no prayer for theological students. Oh, but, he said, there is. Which is it then? "Why the one headed ‘for those at sea.’’’ Well let me have the person that is at sea, rather than the one who is roped up to his homeport, and has never ventured out. Whenever a person is troubled in mind, in spirit, or in conscience, there is hope. How? Why? Let us look into this.

THE TROUBLE THAT IS THE GROUND OF HOPE

Of course not every sort of trouble has this result. But let us run the film through backwards and see the result. Why were the people troubled? You will remember the answers we suggested: 1) because the authorities had not been consulted. Don’t think that I’m saying that to commend anarchy—the complete absence of authorities. What was happening was that the old partial authorities were being superceded by a new authority. It is not a bad thing for a political tyranny like Herod’s to be superceded. It is not a bad thing for a religious tyranny that will see no light but its own to be superceded. But more, I spoke of that one small sphere where at least, if nowhere else, we ourselves are in authority. We are in authority, and that is precisely the trouble. We are the center of our own circle. All roads lead, not to Rome, but to ourselves. That is the very essence of untouched human life. And for that to be ended is always a good thing.

That is one of the best things about Christmas. It takes people out of the center of their own interests and affections. For once at least in the year we consider others—their happiness, their well-being, not our own. There’s the meaning of the Christmas classic about Scrooge and Bob Cratchit and the rest of them. What happened to the old miser Scrooge? He ceased to be his own authority. Of course it was upsetting but it was worth it in the end.

That is why Christianity is the hope of the world. It is no mere annual festival of good nature. If it means anything at all, it means the dethronement of self. That leads at once to the next thing. We have begun to speak of it already.

A new set of standards was involved. Not before time either. The old standards arose out of the very simple principle that we have been considering, the principle that I come first and that anything that ministers to my pleasure, to my self-satisfaction, and to my will power is right. And the new standards mean turning that upside down.

Now I am not taking back anything of what I have said. That does cause trouble. It is profoundly upsetting. If you have ever given up, for the benefit of someone else, a course of action you have cherished, you will know how upsetting that is. Charington knew, when he gave up the million pounds that he could have had in his father’s brewery because he saw a drunken lout knock his wife into the gutter. I do not say that that was an easy thing to do. But I do say that there is the way of hope for humanity. Look at this thing on the purely human level, as, for the moment I am prepared to do. There is something in the way of Bethlehem that can out do all of Herod’s Palace.

But how can these things be? Who can reorient his life around a new center? Who can set himself to follow so new, so exciting a standard? There is one thing more to say and it is the key to all the rest.

They were troubled by the coming of the unknown. The old was confronted by the new and altogether different. The old situation was known, yes, but it was too well known. We know so well the