Stephen Sizer

I wonder what is going to be the biggest musical hit this Christmas? Apparently the all-time, best selling Christmas song is Band Aid’s “Do they know it’s Christmas?” closely followed by Slade’s “Merry Xmas Everybody” and Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas”. But beating them all is Mary’s Song. Known as the “Magnificat anima mea Dominum”, it is one of the earliest Christian hymns, sung in hundreds of thousands of churches of all denominations, every week for at least 1,500 years.

And today we are going to see why. As we saw last week, Mary had some serious liabilities – she was pregnant, she was young, she was poor, she was unmarried, she was from a dubious neighbourhood. And that was just the start of her problems. Besides all that, she faced divorce by Joseph, rejection by her family and death by stoning. Good reasons why, when the angel left her,

“Mary got ready and hurried to a town in the hill country of Judea, where she entered Zechariah’s home and greeted Elizabeth.” (Luke 1:39-40)

Luke 1 wonderfully records the providential work of God in providing Mary with a friend who would understand. The narrative of not one, but two, miraculous conceptions woven together in parallel, as the mothers support and encourage each other.

1. Both begin with an introduction of the child’s parents.
2. Both mention specific obstacles to childbearing—Elizabeth’s barrenness and Mary’s virginity.
3. The angel Gabriel made both announcements, each time to someone living in a small, out-of-the-way location..
4. In both there was a fearful first reaction to Gabriel’s words and a statement of reassurance from him.
5. Then there is a description of the coming son and,
6. In each case, an objection raised—by Zacharias, unbelief; by Joseph, lack of understanding.
7. Last, Gabriel’s promises confirmation that his announcement will come to pass.

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Remember the last time you filled out a job application?  You listed your education, your skills, your work experience. Then you hit the final question: “What is it that makes you uniquely qualified for this position?” How do you answer without appearing arrogant? And when I am asked to give a reference for someone, the question I stumble over is “What are the applicant’s weaknesses? Employers assume your availability, but what they really want to know about is your liabilities. Most employers hire on the basis of competence. They look at your skill set and maybe your personality type. Only the enlightened ones care much about your character.  But God doesn’t operate this way. In today’s reading from Luke, we learn what it means to say “I am the Lord’s servant comma”

1. No matter who you are, the Lord can use you

“In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin’s name was Mary.” (Luke 1:26-27)

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“High fidelity: Julian Richer rewards staff loyalty with holiday homes and trips on the company jet. Next? He’s planning their inheritance…” That was the eye catching headline in the Independent this week.

“Why can’t all bosses be like Julian Richer? I’m not going to beat about the bush here: I think Julian is great. If I had to hold up someone as a role model for other wannabe tycoons to follow, the founder of the Richer Sounds hi-fi chain would be that person. … So what earns him this accolade? The way he treats his staff, the fact that in surveys 95 per cent of them say they love working for him. And then the way his approach translates into tangible results: 52 stores that produced profits of £6.9m from sales of £144.3m last year in an austerity-hit economy, and helped him to build a personal fortune estimated at £115m.

Based in what property agents refer to as the “secondary” shopping streets – the tattier end – his shops, full of in-your-face Day-Glo posters, have won awards galore for their levels of service, and achieved sales unheard-of in the electronics industry. For years, his London Bridge branch could claim to have the highest sales density of any shop in the world.

It was no surprise to hear Richer, 54, who still holds 100 per cent of the company he started 35 years ago, explain this week how he has formed a trust for when he dies so that the business becomes a mutual, similar to John Lewis, under which every staff member receives an equal share…That’s how he is. He’s often talked of the business surviving after he’s gone, of putting a structure in place to ensure his methods continue. He calls them the Richer Way (he’s pulled them together in what must rank as one of the best business books in history, now in its fifth edition, called, not surprisingly, The Richer Way). These include: providing free access to holiday homes in the UK and abroad (regardless of sales performance); trips aboard the company jet for those who suggest the best ideas; cash handouts for staff so they can go to the pub and brainstorm; the use of a Bentley for the store which does the best each month. His reasoning is simple: a happy workforce supplies good customer service, boosts sales, decreases complaints, and eradicates theft and absenteeism.”

A wise investor… in people. Our theme today is “How to Become a Wise Investor in 2014” That’s because today is our annual Pledge Sunday. Today we are asking you to make a pledge. To indicate in writing, up front, what the Lord has laid upon your heart to give back to him in 2014. Actually to ‘give back to him’ because we are acknowledging that everything we have has come from him.

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I was born on 27^th July 1953. Not a particularly significant date in Britain but in South Korea, where I have been this week, it is hugely significant. The Korean war which began in June 1950 saw the Republic of Korea (South Korea), supported by the United Nations and British Commonwealth, defend its borders against a surprise attack by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea), at one time supported by China and the Soviet Union. Over three years the battle lines moved up and down the country leading to over 1.2 million deaths, at least half of whom were civilian non-combatants. The armistice was signed on July 27, 1953.

It was designed to “insure a complete cessation of hostilities and of all acts of armed force in Korea until a final peaceful settlement is achieved.” But no “final peaceful settlement” has been achieved yet. So while the Cold War in Europe ended when the Berlin Wall was torn down in 1989, North and South Korea have remained in a perpetual state of war. How have the two nations responded?

North Korea has made repeated attempts to invade the South. On Tuesday I entered one of the tunnels dug by the North, deep underneath the DMZ using slave labour and dynamite. Only 44 km (27 miles) from Seoul, the tunnel was discovered in 1978. It is 1.7 km (1.1 miles) long, 2 m high and 2 m wide. It runs through bedrock at a depth of about 73 m (240 ft) below ground. It was  designed for a surprise attack on Seoul, and could easily accommodate 30,000 men per hour along with light weaponry. A total of four tunnels have been discovered so far, but there are believed to be up to twenty more. Furthermore, North Korea has 9,495,000 active, reserve, and paramilitary personnel, which makes it the largest military organization on earth, even without its nuclear weapon programme. How has South Korea responded?

Through its ‘Sunshine policy’ it has been giving millions of pounds each year to provide vaccines, medical care and food for North Korean children. It has built a railway to bring the two countries together and opened factories in the north to further economic ties. But most significantly of all, while the North has built the largest army in the world, the South has sent more Christian peacemakers into the world, as a proportion of its population, than any other country in the world. The first evangelical missionary to Korea was a Welshman, Robert Thomas. Aged 24, he landed in Shanghai with his wife Caroline in 1863. She died of an endemic disease just a year later, and Robert himself, became a martyr on the shores of the Daedong River in 1866. But a church was born. Even though the Evangelical church in Korea is just 150 years old, numerically, after the USA, there are more South Korean missionaries in the world than any other country.

Two nations – North and South – two very different responses – one fuelled by hate, the other fuelled by love. Today we rightly remember and honour those from our community who made the supreme sacrifice to defend our freedoms and values. It is one thing to risk your life to save a friend or even to put your life on the line for your neighbours. It is quite another to give your life to fight a formidable enemy to defend your country. But at best, all we can hope for is an Armistice – a cessation of conflict. In our gospel reading today from Matthew 5, Jesus wants us to take one step further, to realise that, whether in war or peacetime, God wants to enable us to transform our enemies into family. This is the kind of radical motivation that characterizes an authentic follower of Jesus Christ. Let’s make three observations.

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