We are in the in-between time. Christmas is past, and the New Year has not yet dawned. Many of us are still eating leftovers. There’s still much travelling, as families gather, or say their farewells.
It’s a strange time. For me, it feels that last Sunday was several years ago. The build up to Christmas can feel quite frenzied – a time of many lists and engagements, all that horrendous shopping, an overwhelming amount of chocolate, and the countdown to the BIG Day. And now we know we are in an in-between time because here we are, together for this 4 weeks of summer, so that the people who work so hard to shape the worship each week can have some time off. Thank you to Durham St for hosting us again – we from Christchurch West will benefit from coasting through the next three weeks, and we’re delighted that we can share some of our many treasures, in the form of Anne, and Socrates [the mouse in the children’s story], and the cake we made on Stir Up Sunday. It is good to be together.
Today we read of Jesus’ family joining the annual communal trip to Jerusalem for the Festival of the Passover. A reminder to us all that Jesus was a faithful Jew. A reminder that across all time, humans have ritualized and celebrated our relationship with each other and with God through gathering and pilgrimage. Religion is a collective pastime. We need to bounce ideas off each other, we need to witness the face of God in others, we seem to have a deep need to gather around shared stories and ponder them, collectively and individually. Jesus’ family travel with their neighbours and friends to recall the faithfulness of their God, who led them from slavery in Egypt all those centuries before.
Appropriately, the story we hear today is also focused on an in-between time. It’s focused on the end of the festival – the journey home – because it’s only after a day’s travel homeward, presumably dropping off friends and family along the way, that Mary and Joseph realise that their adolescent son isn’t anywhere in the group. It takes them 3 days to find him – anxiously searching – can you imagine how that would be reported by 21st century media? Even allowing for all the cultural differences between our world and 1st century Palestine, we can be confident that this was hugely stressful for Mary and Joseph – Luke records a very understated exchange – ‘Son, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been anxiously searching for you.’ And Jesus’ response has an alarming effect on the blood pressure of anyone who has ever raised a teenager – ‘Why were you searching for me? Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house?’
We are in the in-between time. The space between ‘no longer’ and ‘not yet’. Jesus is no longer the holy infant so tender and mild (that was Wednesday!), and he is not yet the Beloved Son in whom God is well pleased (who will be revealed when we read the Baptism stories in a few weeks). The in-between time, the time of uncertainty and waiting. Important things are happening but they are out of order and the synchronization seems weird. I suspect you were expecting the readings to be about the Wise Men from the East today – I confess I was disappointed they weren’t but this is what the lectionary has served us.
In Celtic theology, the in-between time – the liminal time – has a special sacred quality. Liminal is a word derived from the Latin for threshold – doorway – the transitional point between two spaces. A threshold is always a place of uncertainty and waiting. Transition in midwifery is the time of labour where the rubber hits the road – usually the messiest, sweariest time just before birth. Often there is also a liminal quality to dying – a space of transition between this world and the next. It is on this threshold where, if we are blessed, we may be able to bid farewell to our loved ones and commit them to their future in God.
I’m a big fan of John O’Donahue, the Irish priest poet who wrote many blessings for these transitional, liminal times. We will use some of his words to bless the passing of the old year as we leave this service. And I’m an even bigger fan of Mary, Jesus’ mother, who I don’t think gets enough attention in the Methodist tradition. Mary isn’t named in today’s reading but today marks the third time when Luke records how Mary notices specific moments, and holds onto them – pondering or treasuring them in her heart. Liminal times – the space between the no longer and the not yet – are the ultimate opportunity to learn, to bring your questions and try them in the fire of the unfamiliar.
Mary ponders the message that the angel Gabriel is bringing her in Luke Chapter 1. In Luke Chapter 2, verse 19, which many of us read during this week, Mary treasures the visit of the shepherds and the song of the angels. And today marks her third liminal experience – her baby boy announcing confidently that he has a vocation beyond the life of a village carpenter.
Any threshold is unnerving. It takes courage to step forward, or to stand firm, to face what is to come. None of us know for sure what 2025 will hold, for us or for our country or the wider world. I’m mindful of the words Antonio Gramsci, the Italian political theorist wrote in prison in the 1930s: “the old is dying, the new is not yet born, in the interregnum many monsters appear.” I’m mindful that we live in a tiny country on the outskirts of the American Empire which has dominated our world for our lifetime. I’m aware that the US is in interregnum, the transition between Presidents, and it can feel that there are monsters from political nightmares emerging. That’s why I’m interested in the work Mary is doing in this reading from today.
We could debate how much Mary knew from the start about who her son would be, and how she understood the implications of that. Mary is someone who stood courageously in the threshold, and trusted in what was emerging on the other side. She stood her ground when the angel visited, she accepted the acknowledgement of the shepherds and the angels, and today we see her recognizing, albeit through gritted teeth, the wise man who is emerging in her little boy. Eventually she had the courage to stand her ground at the foot of the cross. Having the courage to trust who our children are becoming is a rite of passage for anyone blessed to parent. Through trust and courage, we enable each other to grow and to move across the thresholds which make up our life journey – from baby to child, from young to old, from birth through to death.
Whatever comes, the great sacrament of life will remain faithful to us, blessing us always with visible signs of invisible grace. This is what John O’Donahue has written, and I agree with him. We merely need to trust.
Which brings us back to Mary – the ordinary young woman to whom the Creator trusted the incarnation of God. It’s a holy mystery, and especially at Durham St, I wouldn’t presume to judge how each of us might interpret that statement theologically. But whatever we believe, I invite us all to reflect on the miracle which enables ordinary humans to work together and cross thresholds to the future. Ordinary humans who comfort and inspire each other to have courage and trust as we step out into the new year. And I invite us all to treasure, with gentleness and humility, our hopes for 2025 – our hopes from justice and for peace, that we may be part of enacting the song of Mary, to bring into being a world where the hungry are fed and the humble are lifted high.
Amen