Just before Christmas I sat opposite a young couple on a train who had a ten week old baby. Dad was looking exhausted and slept most of the journey. It had been Mum`s first day back at work and he had been looking after the baby. So I talked to Mum. It was easy to start a conversation because of her beautiful baby daughter who after a good feed was also sleeping. I was told that baby had been born in a tent in the garden and Mum said I expect you can get a Christmas talk out of that. Both Mum and Dad clearly just delighted in their beautiful baby but my conversation meant that when our journey ended I also understood why mum and baby got off the train but dad had to stay on.  Life can be hard and rarely straightforward and the economic climate in particular meant for this couple difficult times of separation.

It can be too easy for us to idealise the Christmas story of the birth of the baby Jesus and put its meaning outside of real life and real experience. But that can never have been the intention of the gospel writers. Luke gives us the shepherds, the outsiders, those who were mistrusted, the people on the edge as being the first visitors to the manger. Matthew gives us the visit of the Magi, the wise men, the sages from the East and a story of a fearful king Herod, of warning dreams, a terrible act of violence by the king and a great escape for the young couple and their baby. At New Year we watched a play with pieces of music, mainly from the Messiah, called Coram Boy and now as I think about it, I can recognise the elements of Matthew`s nativity that run through this dark but redemptive show about fear and violence, and of a baby who escapes death through the human courage of others.

500 years ago the artist Peter Brueghal painted many scenes of rural life and was brutally realistic about debunking ideas that rural life should be thought of as an idyll. He also weaved into many of his paintings the major events of Jesus` life, interpretations of parables and religious festivals. These take place against the backdrop of Flemish life in the 16^th century and often you have to look hard in the painting to find what is going on. In “The Carrying of the Cross” (left) for example the Cross is barely visible and in “The Census at Bethlehem” snow and ice so much fill the landscape that we can miss the man leading a donkey which carries the young woman.

Brueghal would probably now be called a humanist. He interpreted the gospel narratives more in terms of human beings and their experiences in the world, letting the gospel narratives really taking hold of people`s hopes and struggles in the world in which they lived with its joys and disappointments. His perspective is important especially if Christmas becomes all too neat and tidy with too much being invested in it about looking right, doing things right and relying on old traditions to magically put things right. Approaching Christmas like that can often lead to frustration and disappointment . There is something to be said for always facing Christmas afresh like the young couple would be doing with with their baby.

And so in our families and our communities we should be creative, innovative and thoughtful in the plans we make each and every Christmas and that includes in the church in the planning our worship. Contemporary nativities set in a garage and also having non- biblicaI poems and readings at carol services can work well. As for the bible readings we do have, I wonder how meaningful now is the selection of readings that were put together after World War One in the longer form of Nine Lessons and Carols. These readings ignore the Old Testament Wisdom tradition which is the background for much of our understanding of the story of the wise men, make no mention of the positive role of women in the Old Testament only referring to Eve, and for Abraham, the reading is the complex passage about the offering of Isaac.   

At the back of Church this morning is a painting by one of Brueghal`s sons, Jan the younger. His painting is more traditionally devotional than the work of his father but I find equally thought provoking. Great crowds of people are both inside and outside a small house and at the front Mary presents the baby Jesus to them. She looks at the baby in a way like that the Mum did on the train. (And Joseph looks a bit exhausted by it all). This Mary knows that her child is special and that it is he who is the focus of the crowd. In particular we find three wise men at the child`s feet who are presenting their gifts. This child will bring change for Mary and Joseph who will need to be very courageous, change for the Wise Men who will need to think as they have never thought before and also bring change for all people. In the painting these are not only the ones queuing to see the child but also the ones talking and carrying on with life in the background, where we also find that there are soldiers at every corner.

This is the Jesus that makes most sense for me at Christmas and Epiphany. The one born to a carpenter and a young women in an occupied land where people were frightened about the future and where for many life was always hard and getting harder. A couple who would be on the move and who did not have the luxury of knowing where their next home would be. A Jesus who first is recognised by the lost of society and the excluded because they not only have the time, but also the imagination and the faith to perceive who he is and the change that he brings. A Jesus who is also found by those who are prepared to seek and search and who does not conform to their own perceived expectations. A Jesus who is a threat to a leader whose authority is based on fear and the disunity of others.

The seekers and searchers, the Wise Men, bring their gifts which reaffirm faith in the god that Abraham had acknowledged as the God of all people and all creation. They find a king like no other king whose life will be lived out entirely for others and who will die because his message is too radical and life changing to be safe.

In 2012 can we take this message to heart as we seek to make sense of it for our world, a world of many faiths, 2 of which we share a common background , also a world where in the west there is much secularism often connected to materialism and consumerism that holds a grip on all aspects of life . And a world where Christianity has many faces and many idiosyncracies and yet means nothing if we do not live out and show the radical love of the Galilean peasant Jesus.  A world where too many people suffer illnesses that could be cured and where millions of lives are shortened because of the greed of others. Where then can we say that we are in this landscape and where might we journey to, in this new year?

[John 1, 7]: “[John the Baptist] came as a witness to testify to the light ...”

Today’s lessons proclaim the Advent message that God will give us Light in a troubled world’s darkness.  Our world is darkly troubled.  Here are five examples taken from recent news items:

1.  In a recent Big Issue article [1-7 August 2011], a Celebrity chef describes how, in disguise, he sold The Big Issue in London, and returned home overwhelmed by how invisible he had become as shoppers gave him a wide berth.  “I was five minutes away from my restaurant,” he wrote, “but suddenly I felt like I was in another world.  I wasn’t in London any more.  All these lovely people who know me and enjoy my food were the same people now ignoring me in the street.  ...  presenting myself as a homeless working person was really tough.  The first person that bought from me ... said ‘I don’t want your magazine, and don’t touch me’.  ...  Some people were great, but the rest were miserable.”  

2.  In his evidence to the Leveson Media Inquiry, the comedian Steve Coogan described tabloid devastation of individuals as: “a dispassionate sociopathic act by those who operate in an amoral universe.” [Guardian, 23:11:11]  It is a mouthful, but it’s an accurate description of human beings caught up in organisations which are dispassionate - free from human emotion; sociopathic - unhealthy for human society; and amoral - disconnected from human morality. 

3. Ken Costa, a leading financier heading the Bishop of London’s initiative to reconnect the financial world with morality, wrote recently in the Financial Times: “Economics cannot flourish without mutual trust and respect or without fundamental honesty and integrity.  We all need to learn the grammar of morality, ....  For many, this will be exactly like learning a new language.” 

4.  Studies have shown that although extremist Muslims make up less than 1% of the Muslim population they dominate the nearly 95% of the negative media coverage of Muslims.  Why do we stereotype strangers?

5.  Tonight one in seven of the world’s population will sleep hungry.  Water shortages will affect half the world’s population by 2030.  These statistics are people!

Archbishop Rowan Williams’ recent reflections on last summer’s riots concluded with a question: “whether, in our current fretful state, with unavoidable austerity ahead, we have the energy to invest what’s needed ...”.  [Guardian, 05:12:11]

For those who do look for energy to enlighten the darkness, does Christmas provide inspiration? For many, the traditional promise of joyous peace on earth has become just another traditional decoration.  Last month a ‘Private Eye’ cartoon showed a couple passing a pile of Easter Eggs in a shop, the man saying to his wife: “Is it November already?”.  Last weekend, “Tis the Season to be Greedy” was a newspaper supplement’s rubric!  [Guardian Weekend, 03:12:11]  Christmas becomes superficial when a reformed humanity seems a pipe-dream.  A 10^th century Jewish rabbi said: “The main causes of irreligion are the weak and ridiculous arguments advanced in defence of faith”. [Guardian ‘Face to Faith’ 03:12:11].  Is our understanding of Christmas joy, based on the introductions to Matthew’s and Luke’s Gospels, persuasive?   

Scholars cannot work out the precise year when Jesus was born.  Paul, whose Letters were written about 20 years after the Crucifixion, merely says that Jesus was Jewish, “born of a woman” and “descended from David according to the flesh”. [Gal. 4: 4 and Rom. 1: 3]   In Mark’s Gospel, written about 40 years after the Crucifixion and probably based on Peter’s recollections, there is nothing about Jesus’ young life.  John’s Gospel, written 70 or more years after the Crucifixion, gives no details about Jesus’ birth.  To those first Christians it was irrelevant to the good news they courageously proclaimed.

We have gained so much from the scientific revolution which explores the physical universe by careful observation and measurement, but this leads us to set up too narrow a correlation between facts and truth.  Jesus was noted for using stories to convey powerful truths, e.g. about the Good Samaritan.  The factual accuracy of that story’s background is irrelevant.  Careful reading of Matthew’s and Luke’s detailed and magnificently fantastic birth stories, containing much poetry, quickly shows that the two accounts are, in factual detail, incompatible.  And did you ever know under which star your house is?  Concern about factual accuracy will distract us from the meaning.  Matthew and Luke, each separately dealing with their current situation, prepared their readers for the real significance of Jesus using the Old Testament and Roman imperial religion as contexts.  They are not merely attractive stories, but a skilful framework emphasising that in Jesus hard-pressed people will find valuable leadership, justice and peace, joy and light.

Matthew wrote to show that Jesus fulfills the prophets’ hopes, at a time when Jewish Christians were being excluded from synagogues.  Luke wrote to show that it was Jesus, not the all-powerful Roman Emperor and his cronies, who provides the way to joyous peace.  About 30 years before Jesus, Julius Caesar’s nephew, Octavian, had brought Rome’s civil war to an end, and greatly expanded its Empire.  Octavian’s success resulted in him being worshipped - that is the meaning of his title ‘Augustus’. 

Listen to these examples, made shortly before Jesus’ birth, and catch the imperial style which Luke subversively uses to exalt the crucified nobody his Gospel celebrates.  The Governor of Asia Minor described:

“... the birthday of the most divine Caesar... [as] the day which we might justly set on a par with the beginning of everything, ... in that he restored order when everything was disintegrating ... and gave a new look to the whole world, ...  For that reason one might justly take this to be the beginning of life and living, ...  It is my view that all the communities should have one and the same New Year’s Day, the birthday of the most divine Caesar.” 

The League of Asian Cities accepted this suggestion.  They said:

“Since the providence that has divinely ordered our existence has ...  brought to life the most perfect good in Augustus, whom she filled with virtues for the benefit of mankind, bestowing him upon us and our descendants as a saviour – he who put an end to war and will order peace, Caesar, who by his epiphany exceeded the hopes of those who brought glad tidings, ...”.   etc.

The Roman idea of a good, well-ordered world under the divinely successful Augustus was peace through military victory.  At best violence establishes a lull; at worst it begets escalating violence in return.  Those non-violent but later executed subversives, John the Baptist and Jesus, both rejected this kind of peace, having suffered and lived under its yoke.  Shortly after their birth King Herod died, and there were armed revolts against Roman power.  As part of their retaliation, Roman troops captured and destroyed a town as near to Nazareth as Fotheringhay is to Cliffe, and enslaved its surviving inhabitants. [Josephus, 4.488 – 489].  

The Roman authorities persecuted the early Christians because their rejection of imperial worship gained converts, yet they continued determinedly to celebrate their subversive Christmases  For them it was not a folksy tradition, but an opportunity to proclaim the salvation inherent in Jesus’s way of living.  The world’s false Gods who need placating and flattering were as nothing to the crucified Jesus.

Matthew’s and Luke’s Gospel Prefaces make, in particular, a metaphorical assertion of Light in our darkness.  Our Advent services of Compline use the same symbolism and provide space to reflect.  Advent is an opportunity to change as we prepare to accept the Light of the World, so that we, individually and as a church, can respond to our own and our community’s diverse needs.  What we know of Jesus sheds light on the darkness in all five of the situations with which we began.

The 13^th century Meister Eckhart said Christmas should be the birthday of Christ within us, metaphorically-speaking, of course.  When that happens we can wonder with angels, shepherds, star-struck sages, seers and animals at the glorious potential of an obscure vulnerable baby who would defy the mightiest military power humankind has known, by embodying his Father’s care for all.

Note:  Images of individuals were used in the church service but they have not been reproduced here for reasons of privacy and copyright. A description of the missing slides has been give.  Please use your personal memories or imagination to fill in the gaps.

Some months before we were married, my husband to be met my father for the first time. My father, no doubt, asked him many questions. One question, however, became enormously significant in my husband’s search for God. My father asked simply, ‘What is your picture of Christ?’

‘What is your picture of Christ?’ My husband realised that although he hardly ever thought about Christ, he did in fact own a picture of Jesus – a small reproduction of a Greek icon he’d picked up -- for reasons he didn’t entirely understand -- on holiday in Greece. He still has it. This was his starting point as he began to answer a question which has stuck with him over many years.

Today we celebrate the feast of Christ the King, and the whole point of this festival, and of the readings this morning which accompany it, is to ask ‘What is our picture of Christ?’ (which is why it will be a sermon featuring images all entitled ‘Christ the King’ from the Google images website). ‘I pray’, writes Paul to the Ephesians in this morning’s reading, ‘that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you…’.

Today’s passage from Ephesians, as well as the Old Testament reading in Ezekiel which you can also find on your pew sheet, and the gospel reading all present Christ as King. The Ezekiel passage predicts a great Shepherd King, who in the style of the first shepherd King David, will separate the sheep from the goats. Jesus’ words in Matthew pick up this imagery –‘When the Son of Man comes in Glory, all the nations will be gathered before him and he will separate them like a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.’

Interestingly, some of the very earliest depictions of Jesus in art portray him as a shepherd. Once Christianity was adopted as the State Religion by the Emperor Constantine the imagery turned much more regal.

Here, from the ‘Christ the King’ collection on google images is a typical portrayal of Christ, dressed exactly like a Byzantine Emperor.    A modern version of this image updates the crown a bit.

The link between secular and religious power loosens a bit in an image like this

in which the gold of the crown becomes spiritualised into a kind of halo. But the jewels and rich fabric of the robes continue to negate any sense of Christ as shepherd.

Modern kitsch art continues to explore the tension between the humility and humanity of Christ on one hand, and the power and sovereignty of Christ on the other. Here is an updated version of the Byzantine ruler Christ

but now his heart, burning with love, is made central – the thorns wrapped it around suggest a different sort of crown, though the much larger crown on Christ’s head and the sceptre in his hand let us know which sort of Kingship is being emphasised.

The feast of Christ the King is actually rather recent – instituted by Pope Pious XI in 1925 in the face of increasing secularisation all over the world, and the rise of Mussolini in Italy. Mussolini was declaring himself Emperor, and the feast of Christ the King was an attempt to remind people of their ultimate allegiance to a much greater ruler. It’s a politically subversive festival therefore, in its origins, and we see in the following images, modern catholic desire to locate an alternative sort of power and kingship in Christ.

This one could easily  be titled ‘the power of love’:

Here the marriage of Christ as good shepherd and superhero master of the universe is attempted:

In this even more kitsch and not terribly well reproduced image Christ appears on a white stallion, wearing a crown, coming to save the day:

  And finally this image:

finds Christ some new territory, declaring him ‘King of Cyberspace’.

This trawl through the Christ the King section of Google  reveals more than just the fact that bad art often reflects bad theology. In fact theologians, indeed all of us, struggle to picture both the majesty  of Christ the judge and the tender humanity of Christ the shepherd who lays down his life for his sheep. Our attempts to comprehend this mystery can be as clunky as painting an oversized crown and an oversized heart onto the same body:

Jesus’ attempt to picture this for us, as recorded in Matthew’s gospel, is clearer. Jesus tells us that, at the end of the day, we are going to be judged on how we treated the judge.  ‘I was hungry, I was thirsty, I was a stranger’ etc… ‘But Lord’ we will say to him, whether we are sheep or whether we are goats, ‘when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you? And the King will answer us, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.’

I wonder how you feel when you hear this passage. Personally, I feel quite panicked. I go through a mental checklist: have I fed enough hungry people and ameliorated enough thirst? Does offering a friend a cup of tea when they’re really upset count? Can I tick the box for clothing the naked if I simply fill up and leave on my doorstep a charity clothes collection bag? Will I get credit for all those hours of feeding, clothing, tending my own child when they’re ill – I sure hope so, that sure takes a lot of time and expense. Does visiting the prison have to be literal, or can visiting someone imprisoned by, let’s say, grief or remorse count?

My knee jerk reaction to this gospel reading is to turn the focus on myself – am I naughty or nice? a sheep or a goat? Yet, perhaps particularly because this story falls on Christ the King this year, I hear a voice saying to me, ‘What is your picture of Christ?’ Because the astonishing revelation of this parable of the sheep and the goats is not actually which camp I’m in, but the news that Christ the King camps out with the ‘least of these’: he indwells them. In fact the greek verb used in that famous verse from John’s gospel:  ‘the word became flesh and dwelt amongst them’ is the word ‘tabernacled’ – camped out. Christ pitches his tent in the least of these.

Unwittingly the google image website for Christ the King makes this very point. As you scroll down the page, the obvious images of Christ give way gradually to a very different kind of picture.

Image of boy playing basket-ball

Image of teenage boy

Image of teenage boy

Image of Junior girl

Image of Junior Girl 

These photos of children, who presumably all attend schools called ‘Christ the King’ in various parts of the world, ask us, ‘do you see Christ the King in me?’.

Image of teenage boy proudly holding a rather messy looking cake.

Indeed every face we encounter presents the same challenge, ‘Are you still seeing a picture of Christ the King?’

Jesus essentially says in the 25^th chapter of Matthew: these are your judges.

Image of infant girl

I put down my power, embed it in them.

Image of football players

Listen to Paul at the end of Ephesians Chapter One: ‘God has put all things under Christ’s feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.

Image of girl playing basket-ball

This is anatomically impossible, to be under Christ’s feet, yet to be his body, to be the fullness of Christ. But this is indeed the implication of Christ’s taking on flesh, and identifying so completely with humankind.

As I considered these passages over the past few weeks, I’ve had the unusual privilege of holding no fewer than 4 newborn babies when visiting their parents. Babies less than a month old, who still have really no muscles at all. They are the tiniest, most helpless scraps of humanity, totally utterly dependent on the human community to keep them alive. They flap and flail and make strange other- worldly faces. Newborn babies always draw out from me an initial response of adoration and wonder. But I know that as soon as they start to need something, as soon as they start to mew and then cry with all the rage and grief of unmet hunger, I will become scared, annoyed, maybe angry that I cannot feed or sooth them. And I will want to hand them back.

Next week, the first Sunday of Advent, we will begin to prepare ourselves to meet Almighty God in the very least of the least, the newborn King. And we will begin again the process by which God enlightens the eyes of our hearts so that we can enlarge our picture of Christ as we encounter Jesus first in the manger, then with his friends, with the lepers, on the boat, at the last supper. We will lift our eyes to see Jesus on the cross, risen from the tomb, and ascended into heaven, the great judge, ruler and sustenance of the world. Finally we will look out to see Christ in the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, the homeless, the prisoners of this world… The question ‘What is your picture of Christ?’ is never ending. And never safe. It draws men and women to leave their comfortable lives, their homelands sometimes, to part with time and possessions and to search out Christ in ever more strange and unlikely places. And sometimes the most strange and unlikely places to notice Christ will be amongst your own family members, and the people next to you in the pews.

Image of football supporters

May Christ bless you in this journey. Amen.

Good morning. It is a privilege to stand here before you and to be asked to comment upon a portion  of the Old Testament, the equivalent of  the weekly  portion known to Jews as the Sidra, which forms part of the annual Sabbath readings from the  Torah, read  over the course of a year.

It is appropriate to be talking about the period the Jewish people spent in the wilderness, since today is part of the festival of Succoth, when Jews are enjoined to build replicas of the temporary booths, which they lived in at that time of the Exodus, and to celebrate the Harvest Festival.

Today we come to Exodus Chapter 33, verses 12 -23, which deal with the second meeting between Moses and God, after the Children of Israel had danced before the Golden Calf, and the Tables of the Law lay shattered at the foot of Mount Sinai, and I am asked to comment on the passage from a Jewish perspective.

For context we must remember God's commitment in the earlier Verse 2, where it is promised that an angel will precede Moses and the Children of Israel into the lands promised to them; and also Verse 11 where God is said to have spoken 'face-to face' with Moses. Both of these elements are reflected in the interpretation of our current passage.

It is a seminal piece, because it sets out the terms of Jewish Revelation,  not only the extraordinary relationship between Moses and God, and therefore man and God, the essence of God's attributes, but deals with the often vexed question of Israel - or Jews - as a 'chosen people', and the often ill-perceived sense of the superiority of that position.

In Verse 12 Moses displays his unease at being asked to fulfil his mission alone, for previously, as we have seen, he was promised the guidance of an angel. The most famous Jewish commentary was given by the Rabbi Nahmanides known better as the Ramban, born at Girona in 1194.

He explained in The Guide for the Perplexed, 2:34 that the verses refer to a prophet to whom an angel would speak and give guidance, and later commentators explain that the reference must be to Moses himself, perhaps inspired through the medium of an angel representing the 'Glory of God'.

In verse 13, even while apparently God's voice has assured Moses of his favour, doubts persist for Moses says, 'Now therefore, I pray thee, if I have found grace in thy sight, show me thy way, that I may know thee, that I may  find grace in thy sight; and consider that this nation is thy people.' The Talmud, which is the Rabbinic commentary on the Pentateuch or Torah, understood this to mean that that Moses wanted to know the principles upon which God would deal with humans, granting goodness, health and prosperity to some, but adversity to others, so that he, Moses,  could both lead and govern the people in accordance with the divine will.

God's reassurance in verse 14 is ambiguous, 'My presence shall go with thee ' but Moses is concerned that this may not extend to those who had so lately profaned. So he tries again, saying in verses 15 and 16, that unless God accompanies the Israelites on their journey, they would be better to stay at Sinai, but if they were to travel together, then Israel would be distinguished from all other peoples by that honour.

Now this word 'distinguished' was considered by the Rabbis only to mean the closeness of the bond between the Divine and Israel as expressed in the Ten commandments. This was the covenant between the  Israelites and their God. It had no purpose beyond them, for it had no relevance to those nations who were outside, or chose to be outside,  the contract. But it was natural, that later  in a world of competing religious beliefs 'distinction' should have been used by non-Jews to insinuate that Jews thought themselves in some way superior by their preferment.

The relationship of the covenant  is clearly expressed in the prayer known as the 'Shema' which is said by observant Jews three times a day. It replaced the recitation of Ten Commandments which was eliminated in the Rabbinic  redaction of the Torah around  c. 220 CE by Juda ha Nasi when the persecution of the Jews and the passage of time raised the possibility that the details of the oral traditions dating from times of the Pharasees could be lost after the destruction of the Second Temple. The first verse found in Deuteronomy Chapter 6:4-9 encapsulates the monotheastic essence of  Judaism and declares "Hear, O Israel: the Lord is our God, the Lord is one," and goes on in Chapter 11:13-21:

'And it shall come to pass, if ye shall hearken diligently unto my commandments which I command you this day, to love the LORD your God, and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul,

That I will give you the rain of your land in his due season, the first rain and the latter rain, that thou mayest gather in thy corn, and thy wine, and thine oil.

And I will send grass in thy fields for thy cattle, that thou mayest eat and be full.

Take heed to yourselves, that your heart be not deceived, and ye turn aside, and serve other gods, and worship them;

And then the LORD's wrath be kindled against you, and he shut up the heaven, that there be no rain, and that the land yield not her fruit; and lest ye perish quickly from off the good land which the LORD giveth you.

Therefore shall ye lay up these my words in your heart and in your soul, and bind them for a sign upon your hand, that they may be as frontlets between your eyes.

And ye shall teach them your children, speaking of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.

And thou shalt write them upon the door posts of thine house, and upon thy gates:

That your days may be multiplied, and the days of your children, in the land which the LORD sware unto your fathers to give them, as the days of heaven upon the earth.'

That is the covenant, and the duty of all those who wished to be Jewish, was to observe this two-way relationship.

Thus  Jewish Rabbis emphasised the need to know and to understand the Torah, which became the central part of synagogue, family and social life. Paradoxically as I view it today, it was within the Moslem world that Jews, known as the Sephardim from the Jewish word for Spain Sepharad,  flowered in a golden age until their expulsion by the  militant Christianity of Ferdinand and Isabella in 1492.  In Eastern and Northern  Europe, where the so called Ashkenazi Jews lived, they were forced into closed communities, with little outside contacts and study was almost the sole outlet. No wonder that Jews have the reputation for academic prowess - it was simply part of their enforced lifestyle, and of course as they were forcibly separated, so that separation became construed as wilful.

Returning now to our current passage, we come to the most difficult part of the reading. God assents in verse 17, showing his trust in Moses, who, perhaps overcome by the event, asks for Divine revelation - the Glory of God  or his eternal qualities. Those God is prepared to reveal, saying: 'I will make all my goodness to pass before thee; and will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy.' Grace in this context, the Hebrew word 'Chen', means 'favour' or 'goodwill', while the mercy is held by the Rabbis, to be for  the fallen and penitent House of  Israel waiting at the foot of the mountain.

This revelation of favour and mercy should be for Jews, the sublime principle of the Imitation of God and the Rabbis expressed it: ' Even as I am merciful, be thou merciful; even as I am gracious, be thou gracious.' For man does not innately have, or can have, the qualities of God, but in life must imitate those qualities for the good of all mankind.

Perhaps this can best be illustrated in the way in which Jews are enjoined to observe the Sabbath as set out in the  the 4th Commandment:

'Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the Sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed it.'

So nothing which might be construed as creative or work of any kind was permitted. However, the Rabbis explained that God's mercy meant that it is a paramount duty for a Jew  to act to save life, no matter what Sabbath laws concerning work might be broken in so doing.

In Verse 18, Moses asks that God should reveal himself in his glory but  God refuses to reveal his physical form and attributes - they are too all consuming, so he proposes to Moses that he be placed in a cleft in a rock, while God passes by, presumably as Divine radiance, and that God's hand shall shield him until, Moses can see Gods back.

The Rabbis see in this the effect of the teachings of God, and man's imitation of those teachings. God is to be seen by Moses as the wake of a ship which has passed, by the Divine footprints in human history or his traces in the human soul.

It is also a reflection of the Second Commandment already give to Moses in Verse 20.4:

'Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I The Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate Me; And showing mercy unto thousands of them that love Me, and keep My Commandments.'

This insistence on the mystery of God is central to Judaism as a monotheastic faith. Remember that it took nearly 300 years for Christianity to accept  the conception of the Trinity which was only formalised at Nicea in AD 325. Pictures and representions relating to Jesus himself seem only to have emerged slowly, probably  in the fourth-century AD, and became an increasingly decisive feature of the difference between out faiths.

So where does this leave Jews today and what are the lessons of this strange meeting of man and God. I take no comfort from standing here to say that it poses moral dilemmas, which are hard to square with life in the Age of Enlightenment. The simple statements of the Ten Commandments, formulated within the culture of a nomadic agriculturist society, seem to many to be irrelevant to a world which thrives on so-called self-expression, complexity and technology. A world in which there is massive disenfranchisement caused by disparities in resources and knowledge, and where only too clearly exploitation both at  the interpersonal level, and between nations, is a source of catastrophic frictions.

At the same time it certainly does not leave Jews irrevocably welded to the Judaism of Exodus, Deuteronomy and  Leviticus - where sets of detailed laws found their expression in the ghetto and the shtetl of Eastern Europe. With the passing of the Temple in Jerusalem, went sacrifice - but not the honour of God which it was meant to represent. And for Jews that honour  is the very imitation of mercy and graciousness which was revealed to Moses on Mount Sinai. In today's world it may be hard for Jews to reciprocate that kernel of faith, which was expressed by God's willingness to accompany Israel on its journey, but we are constantly taught to remember that our survival  depends upon our willingness to keep to the covenant. Judaism has always been adaptable in its practices, while conservative of its moral principles.

In this the  first week of  the Jewish New Year of 5772 - I hope that I have shed a little light on how we view this passage, and as befits Jewish tradition I wish you all 'Shalom' - Peace.

Geoffrey Dannell was invited to All Saints and St James to give a Jewish perspective on a reading from the Old Testament.  He is a member of the Finchley Reformed Synagogue and the Peterborough Liberal Synagogue.