Patronal Festival 09 – St Peter and St Paul
Acts 9.10-25, Matt 14.22-33
Today we celebrate our Patronal Festival. It is fixed for this day
because today – or tomorrow to be accurate - is the feast of our patron
saints – St Peter and St Paul. You all know that. Of course our church
isn’t the only St Peter and St Paul around. In our own Diocese of
Rochester there are 18 St Peter and Pauls – it’s dead common, I’m
afraid.
But have you ever wondered why these two saints appear together so
often? It’s not as if they were bosom buddies in life. In fact the few
occasions we hear about them meeting in the New Testament they often
seem to be arguing, at loggerheads about how non-Jewish people should
be incorporated into the faith. Saints, like any other human beings,
don’t necessarily see eye to eye, or find it easy to get along, which
is quite reassuring really. So why put them together? Why not St Peter
and St Andrew? They were brothers. Or St Barnabus and St Paul?
They were travelling companions.
Of course the reason that St Peter and St Paul are lumped together on
this joint feast day and lumped together in the dedications of churches
all over the world, is that they were considered to be the two single
most important figures in the foundation of the church. Peter, whose
name means the Rock – he was given that name by Jesus himself - was the
one Christ chose to be the leader of the church when he was no longer
with them in the flesh. Paul was the great missionary of the early
church, travelling around the Mediterranean founding churches and
writing all those letters which we still have in the Bible, shaping the
beliefs of the first Christians. Between them they really formed
the Christian faith in its early days. They were the two great heroes
of Christian history, men who knew what they were about, saints to whom
people looked for a firm lead, a good foundation. The icon
I’ve printed on your pew leaflets shows them holding the church
between them, guarding it and supporting it.
No wonder people wanted to call churches after them. Who wants a church
named after some obscure figure – St Ethelfrith of the back-of-beyond -
when you can have a big-hitting saint on your side? And if you
are going to have one star saint, why not have both of them – the
original “buy-one-get-one-free”? That was the thinking of those who put
their feast days together, and dedicated churches after the two of
them.
But is that heroic picture of St Peter and Paul really accurate – or
really helpful? Were they really the people we have made them out to
be? The readings we’ve heard today perhaps point us in a different and,
I think more realistic direction.
In our Gospel reading we heard the story of Jesus walking on the water,
and of Peter not walking on the water – or at least not for long
anyway. It’s there in our stained glass window at the back of church.
Peter does ok while the first flush of enthusiasm is on him but then he
realises that what he is doing is impossible, and, unsurprisingly, he
starts to sink. In a sense he stands for all of us here – or rather he
sinks for all of us! Who hasn’t felt like this as some point? I know I
have. Out of my depth. Floundering. Sure I’m going to go under. The
first Christians knew this feeling well. The pathway Jesus showed them
felt new, untrodden, perhaps un-treadable too – they might as well have
been walking on water. The honour he gave to those who most considered
beyond the pale or unimportant – women, children, tax-collectors,
sinners, outsiders – baffled them. And what kind of Messiah died on a
cross? It didn’t make sense, to them or to those who criticised and
persecuted them for it. No wonder they sometimes felt as if the ground
they were standing on was turning to water beneath their feet.
For us too, life doesn’t always make sense. Things aren’t as we expect
and we find ourselves looking into a future that is uncertain. Peter
found – and we can find too – that when the ground beneath us starts to
wobble, it isn’t our own strength that gets us through, but the
relationship we have formed with God. For him it was the trust he’d
built up in this strange leader as he had got to know him which led him
to cry out for help and to take the hand that was offered to pull him
up. For us it is the time spent in prayer and reflection, in reading
the Bible, in worship, taking our faith seriously and wrestling with it
– which holds us through difficult times and keeps our head above
water.
The story we heard about St Paul in our first reading is similar. It’s
a story that isn’t often read, so you may not be familiar with it.
Paul’s called by his Hebrew name of Saul in this story – people often
went by different names in different contexts in his time – but it’s
the same man. You’ll recall that he was originally a staunch opponent
of the followers of Jesus. He believed Jesus had been dangerously
mistaken and that his teaching was leading the Jewish people astray. He
was determined to squash this new movement. He campaigned against it
and had Christians arrested and thrown into jail. He kept up his
opposition until the day, on his way to Damascus, when he had a vision
of Jesus himself. He realised that this strange prophet really was
God’s Messiah. Paul sat in Damascus, physically and spiritually
blinded. He couldn’t make sense of the world around him anymore.
Everything had changed.
In the story we heard today, Ananias, a Christian living in Damascus,
is sent to heal him, and perhaps we might suppose that this is a happy
ending to his story. But it’s not that simple. Paul begins to preach
the Christian message in the Synagogues of Damascus and that really
puts the cat among the pigeons. The Jewish leaders there are furious –
the very man they hoped would uphold their point of view is attacking
it. They begin to plot against him, and to save his life he has to
escape from Damascus, lowered down over the walls in a basket by his
new Christian friends in the middle of the night.
It is a rather ludicrous image, and I am sure Paul was aware of that –
hardly in keeping with his old dignity as a learned scholar of the
Jewish faith. He had always been so sure of himself and of what he
believed, but now everything is up in the air, including Paul himself,
dangling precariously over the long drop to the rocks beneath. All that
keeps him from falling is the love of the Christians holding the ropes
from which that basket is suspended. He’s asking a lot of them to help
him – after all, until recently he was their worst enemy. And he’s
perhaps asking a lot of himself too in trusting them. He has tried
brutally to suppress their movement. Can he really rely on them not to
let him fall?
Of course, they don’t let him fall, and perhaps that is why the letters
he later writes to his churches are so full of teaching about loving
one another, about being the body of Christ, giving mutual support,
resolving arguments, treating one another well. It is something he
learned about on the end of a rope, when others held what was literally
a lifeline for him. We are still called to hold lifelines for one
another of different sorts, supporting and encouraging, listening and
giving practical help. It’s a vital part of our Christian journey to
get to know others who are on that same journey, and to let them get to
know us. You can be a Christian on your own, but your own faith will be
poorer for it, and so will the lives of those who might have needed you
to help them. It’s not always easy, of course, because we are all human
and relationships can be tricky things, but wrestling with differences
of opinion, with the hurts and the misunderstandings that naturally
arise between people often turns out to be a gateway to the love which
God wants us to find in one another.
In the icon Peter and Paul look completely sure of themselves. They
hold the church between them, with a grip that looks reassuringly firm.
But if we could see their feet, and if the painter was honest, what
would we find. We’d find that one was standing on wobbly water, and the
other was suspended in thin air.
I think we’d be better off if we could see them like that, because
that’s how life often is for us – personally, within the church, within
our society and our world. We don’t know what is coming next. Life
isn’t predictable. When we find ourselves floundering like Peter or
dangling by a thread like Paul it’s far more use to have the example of
people who have been there before us, who have learned to value and
cherish their relationships with God and one another, rather than just
trusting in their own abilities. If they are heroes, what use are they
to me, because I’m not one?
For 800 years or so – at least - this church has celebrated Peter and
Paul, year in, year out on their joint feast day. During those 800
years people here have gone through plague, war and civil strife.
Vicars have come and gone. Organists have come and gone. Death watch
beetle have munched through rafters. But we are still here. Just like
our predecessors I expect we still feel we are walking on wobbly waters
and dangling over empty air. As we celebrate yet another in a long line
of birthdays for this church, I pray that we’ll find that same faith
that Peter and Paul had, faith rooted not in our own abilities and our
own strength, but in the relationships we build with one another and
with God.
Amen
14 June 2009 Trinity 1
A sermon
by Kevin Bright
Mark 4:26-34, 2 Corinthians 5:6-17,
Ezekiel 17:22-24
A New Reality
As I read around today’s scriptures I found my thoughts drifting
towards reality TV shows! They fill a great deal of our airtime and
include titles such as Big Brother, The weakest link, Who wants to be a
millionare, super nanny, secret millionare, the apprentice and Britains
got talent to name but a few.
Clearly the shows vary in content, quality and entertainment value even
though they all fall within the description of Reality television.
Supposedly this is a genre of television that presents unscripted
dramatic or humorous situations, documents actual events, and
features ordinary people instead of professional actors. Or is this
just the context in which us viewers are encouraged to believe these
programmes are set, in order that the producers can have their desired
effect?
Perhaps the reality of Reality television is that participants are
coached to behave in certain ways sensationalising situations to
attract viewers, perhaps post production techniques and editing mean
that our brains are working from a completely false set of assumptions.
Perhaps the reality is that its all about filling airtime on hundreds
of channels with people you don’t have to pay and yet still generating
advertising profits. Alternatively the reality could be that I’m just a
miserable old cynic.
Even though Paul didn’t have Simon Cowell to compete with for peoples
attention it’s a new kind of reality which he is urging the church in
Corinth to grapple with. He encourages Christians to have their own
distinct relationship with reality and to make judgements based upon
this. He wants us to be ‘savvy’ people with perception and not to be
fooled by what others may present as reality.
Seeing through reality TV shows might be obvious, Paul wants us to go a
lot deeper than this, to confront our bodily instincts, suggesting that
our bodies are stuck in the old reality wanting comfort, security and
pleasure. It’s not that the bodies messages are necessarily wrong ,
it’s that we have to strain to see the world with different eyes to see
something deeper, something which will continue after our bodies have
been shed. We need to trust God more, consider how what we see might
fit in his kingdom and, as Paul puts it ‘walk by faith, not by sight’.
Paul encourages us to see our world in the context of the love of God
in Christ and his aim is to teach us to make judgements in the light of
that reality. He is an example of someone whose perception of reality
drastically changed from one who felt compelled to persecute Christians
to a man who was able to see things in the light of Christ turning his
knowledge and understanding completely on its head.
He offers us hope and inspiration to seek a deeper reality than much of
that which is pumped through the airwaves, the web and in most of the
press. We are to challenge what we hear and see considering God’s point
of view beyond those who shape and present our news and information.
Switch empty celebrity, wealth and fame back the other way and we find
Christ centred reality in the lives of people who are oppressed,
starving and sick. To those whose reality is purely material they can’t
understand how such people have such remarkable depths of resilience,
compassion and hope in what can seem such hopeless situations. Their
faith in Christ is their reality and they thank God for it though it’s
no excuse for their fellow Christians to ignore their plight.
Pauls argument for a new reality offers a really, really hard challenge
for us.
We live and work and consume at the overlap of several huge cultural
waves. More than any generation before us we live in a cultural,
economic, moral and religious hypermarket, a megastore where we can
pick and mix together whatever we like.
The trouble is that this raises rather a lot of questions for people
who want to be distinctly Christian.
From where I’m standing these questions include:-
• Do such things as truth and clear values exist or
does it depend upon the point of view of the person describing them?
• Are we tempted to create a personal form of virtual
reality and then inhabit our own private little world?
• Is there a danger that this virtual reality
will collapse in upon us?
One thing we can be sure of is that it’s never black and white, so how
do we work out what is pleasing to God?
Those with good memories will remember being challenged to consider
what their images of God were last Sunday morning. A mystical figure on
a cloud, a spirit, a man, a woman were all possibilities but the main
influence on our thinking over the centuries has been the culture in
which this took place.
Our thinking this week is towards what we can imagine God’s kingdom is
like and it seems that we are encouraged to go beneath the veneer or
scratch away the topsoil to find some reality. It is all about the
kingship of Christ but it’s less pageantry and privilige and more
sacrifice and service.
In our Old Testament reading Ezekiel uses the cedar tree as a symbol of
royalty when he talks of the hope that a new king will arive someday
and a new Kingdom will begin bringing relief from Babylonian
oppression.
Just as we make mistakes searching for God’s values in a confusing
world the Jews spent much time looking in the wrong places for a mighty
saviour.
Jesus contrasts their images of splendid cedars and royalty with a tiny
mustard seed, something easily passed over by those with their minds on
greater things. Whilst the seed could grow into a large shrub it was
commonplace and somewhat scruffy, lacking the majestic splendour of the
cedar.
We may want to make Christ our reality but feel that to change our
standards of judgement so radically is beyond us.
Jesus suggests that it doesn’t have to be that way. dramatic and
immediate change won’t be the path for many but we need to look more at
the potential of small things and understand that they are definitely
worth doing.
Like the mustard seed these small steps may not be seen by those with
their minds on higher plains even though they could lay the foundations
for bigger things. There is a warning here against looking down on,
say, the church with small numbers, those who make a start with
basic bible study or those who simply get out of bed and want God to be
part of each day.
Jesus realised that his message was radical and that it would deeply
challenge and disturb the reality of all who heard it which is why he
spoke in parables. He later explained this to his disciples in order
that they could take his message out into the world.
The task which faces us today is to walk in Christ’s reality each and
every day. If we can do this, even in a very small way, Christ’s
message of forgiveness, love and hope will become a reality for so many
more people in our world.
Amen
Trinity Sunday 09
Isaiah 6.1-8, Romans 8.12-17, John 3.1-17
What’s your image of God? In theory we may know
that God is beyond imagination; that’s why the second commandment tells
us not to make any graven images of God. But human beings have always
found it pretty hard to resist the temptation to give God some sort of
form or face.
The image of God which Isaiah paints for us in the first reading is
pretty clear. It’s very much drawn from the world he lived in. He’s
writing at a time when Assyria and Babylon were the dominant forces in
the area –the people of Judah were in exile in Babylon for some of this
time. If you go to the Assyrian and Babylonian galleries in the British
Museum you can see the kind of images that surrounded him - lots of
carvings of winged supernatural beings just like the ones he describes
here. They were common all across the Ancient Middle East. I’ve put a
picture of one in the pew leaflet. Although Isaiah doesn’t describe God
himself in any detail, his mental picture is of him is of someone
awesome, majestic, and mysterious, with the trappings and attributes of
the rulers of his world.
Perhaps our image of God is similar – the great king on a throne. Or
maybe it is quite different – shaped by our own age. Christians over
the centuries have imagined God in many ways, usually heavily
influenced by the culture in which they live. Some have thought of him
as remote, some as a familiar friend. Some have seen him as ferocious,
some as gentle. God has been portrayed as male, female, black, white.
Often, of course it is Jesus who has been our image of God, but we’ve
depicted him in many different ways according to our culture and our
own inclinations too. Look at paintings of Jesus over the ages and you
will find they almost always reflect the time they were painted. We’ve
imagined God through the symbols of the Spirit too; as wind, flame or
dove.
We can’t seem to help ourselves – we need images. Most of us aren’t
good at thinking in the abstract.
I don’t think it matters in the least that we do this, though, so long
as we are aware of two things.
The first is that our imagination is just that: imagination. No matter
how often we have described God in a certain way, we can’t limit God to
that form, or to any form. If God can’t be however God wants to be,
he’s not God at all. We have tended, for example, to call God “he” –
just as I did then - but that doesn’t mean he is male. The Bible is
clear that God is above our gender distinctions. Actually, there’s more
female imagery for God, both in the Bible and in later Christian
Spiritual writing, than people often realise, but because for most of
human history men have had more power than women in the public sphere
that male image of God has become almost totally dominant and the
female images have been overlooked. We easily lose sight of the fact
that our picture of God is just a picture, but when we do that we limit
our vision of God, and of what God can do.
The second thing we need to be aware of is that our imagination is OUR
imagination. It often says more about us than it does about God. Our
background, our personality and the needs of the moment can all affect
how we think of God.
A writer called Dan Clenendin put it very well in an article he wrote
recently:
“If
I'm honest, it's disturbing to consider my pictures of God. There
is God as Candy Man or Sugar Daddy who reinforces my self-aggrandizing
narcissism. Sometimes God feels like the Absentee Landlord or Reclusive
Neighbor. I know that He exists, but He feels hidden, silent,
incommunicative, and far away… God as Vending Machine, Concierge, or
Short Order Cook is there to cater to my whims. To make my problems
disappear there is God as Magician, and to engineer a parking space or
fine tune some petty detail of my life there is God as Puppeteer. When
I feel the weight of my faults and failures, God looms as a High School
Principal, Probation Officer, or Divine Accountant. He snoops around in
the dirty details of my life, exposes me, and I am found in arrears.”
I wonder whether we recognise any of those images in the way we see
God? I wonder too what the image of God we have tells us about
ourselves, about what we need or long for, or perhaps fear?
That writer goes on to talk about the way we often understand God in
election times – as Partisan Politician or as Tribal Deity – God who is
on our side…
In this time of turmoil in our political system we do well to remember
that. It’s not just individuals who can promote a limited and
limiting picture of God, but societies and groups as well.
You might be forgiven for wondering whether there’s any real point
talking about God at all, if we are so full of bias in our view of him.
But I think the New Testament readings we heard today can help us here.
They aren’t concerned with who God is – his identity in a philosophical
sense. They are much more bothered about how we relate to him, and how
he relates to us; our relationship with God and the effect he has on
us. St Paul reminds us that we call him Abba – “Father” in Aramaic, a
familiar and loving term. And John’s gospel tells us of God’s love for
us – a love so great he sent his own Son to us to demonstrate it on the
cross. God can’t give up on us, he says. Even Isaiah’s grand vision
ends up telling us more about God’s relationship with us than about
God’s identity. Isaiah is shrinks from God, terrified, but God sees
things differently” Whom shall I send and who will go for us?” he calls
out. He doesn’t just accept Isaiah; he wants to use him too, as a
trusted envoy.
We will never be able to describe or explain God in an intellectual,
abstract way, says the Bible, but we can know him in relationship,
through the effect he has on us when we spend time with him in prayer,
when we work with him in service, when we find him in others, in those
in need.
In a way that is just the same as the way we know one another.
When I am preparing to take someone’s funeral one of the most important
things I have to do is to find out about them, of course. Usually I
haven’t known them myself. So I visit the family, and I say to them,
“Tell me about John – What was he like?”
Almost always there is a long pause. Nine times out of ten, even if
they loved him very much indeed, they struggle to think of the words
that would describe him. And the reason is obvious. They can’t sum up
an entire life in something as slippery and inadequate as words. Even
if they could tell me everything he ever did, words couldn’t express
the husband, father, brother, son, colleague, friend that they knew. It
is a different experience for each of them, and it changed over time.
Words can never capture the emotional flavour of that relationship, the
sense of knowing and being known by someone who is woven into their
hearts, who was and is and always will be part of their lives, someone
who has helped to shape them into the person they are. No wonder they
struggle at my questions. I often have to reassure them that we don’t
need to say everything, that the funeral is just a focus, a reminder of
what that person is to them.
Knowing about someone is not the same as knowing them. Knowing about
them may be more objective, more accurate in a technical sense, but it
will never be the same as the kind of knowledge we have when we let
someone else get under our skin, and we get under theirs. Often the
better we know someone, the closer we are to them, the harder it is to
describe them; we see nuances, contradictions, new depths, new
discoveries. But it’s also true that when you know someone in that way,
you often don’t feel the need to describe and define them. That is the
kind of knowledge of God which the Bible talks about as our goal – not
the head knowledge, but the knowledge that comes from letting God touch
us and change us. Isaiah and Nicodemus both discover God through what
God does for them and with them. Isaiah is called to serve others in
God’s name. Nicodemus is invited by God to have a new start – to be
born again in relationship with him.
There are reasons why the Church has so stubbornly held onto the
doctrine of the Trinity, despite the fact that it seems like nonsense.
One of those reasons is that it does seem so ridiculous, so beyond our
understanding. If ever we think we have God all buttoned down, boxed
up, within our grasp, the doctrine of the Trinity will soon pull the
rug out from under our feet. Like a juggler juggling with three balls –
the idea of God as Trinity reminds us that there’s no way to hold onto
the whole of God at once. We have to keep letting go of our ideas, and
letting God be God, someone who is beyond our grasp. The wind blows
where it chooses…says Jesus to Nicodemus…you hear the sound of it, but
you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.
Another reason why the Trinity matters, though, is that at the heart of
this odd understanding of God is relationship. The Father, the Son, the
Spirit – not one, all alone and ever more shall be so, but an endless
flow of love continually giving birth to love in the world.
Who is God? On Trinity Sunday we are invited to stop telling God who
and what we think he should be, and let God be God instead – infinite
and intimate, wider than the bounds of space, but closer to us than our
own selves, known, familiar and yet someone who calls us constantly to
see him in new ways, and to meet him afresh.
Amen
Some examples of female Images of God
in the Bible and in Christian Spiritual writing.
Genesis 1:27, Hosea
11:3-4, Hosea 13:8, Deuteronomy 32:18, Isaiah 66:13, Isaiah 49:15,
Isaiah 42:14, Psalm131:2, Matthew 23:37 and Luke 13:34, Luke 15:8-10
St Anselm
of Canterbury (11th C)
Jesus, as a mother you gather your people to you: You are
gentle with us as a mother with her children; Often you weep over our
sins and our pride: tenderly you draw us from hatred and
judgement. You comfort us in sorrow and bind up our wounds:
in sickness you nurse us, and with pure milk you feed us.
Julian of Norwich (14th C)
And thus in our creation God Almighty is our natural father, and God
all-wisdom is our natural mother, with the love and goodness of the
Holy Spirit. These are all one God, one Lord. In the knitting and
joining he is our real, true spouse and we are his loved wife and his
fair maiden. ….
May 31 2009 Pentecost
Acts 2.1-21, Romans 8.22-27
“When the Day of Pentecost had come, the disciples were all together in
one place.” The Day of Pentecost. What do you think of when you hear
those words? The rushing wind, the fire dancing on the disciples’
heads, the babble of languages… the coming of the Holy Spirit to fill
the first Christians with confidence and joy? Those are the symbols and
events we associate with this festival. We grow used to the sights,
sounds, smells and tastes of different festivals. Christmas with its
spicy smell of mince pies and mulled wine. Easter with its spring
flowers. Harvest with apples and grain. And Pentecost – Whitsun - with
the familiar images of the Holy Spirit – wind and flames. Those are the
things which are in our minds today.
But have you ever wondered what those first disciples were expecting on
that Day of Pentecost, as they gathered in the upper room? They weren’t
thinking of fire and wind – all that was yet to happen.
The feast of Pentecost is an ancient Jewish feast, still celebrated
today - and nothing to do with the Holy Spirit at all. Pentecost means
fiftieth, and this is the fiftieth day after the great feast of the
Passover. Pentecost is also known to Jewish people as Shavuot and, for
them it is the feast of the first fruits. Its roots are agricultural.
It celebrates the first fruits of the crops gathered in the Promised
Land, after the long trek out of slavery in Egypt, which was recalled
at Passover. Passover is celebrated as the spring crops are being sown
- Shavuot is celebrated when the first of them is harvested. If
Passover celebrates the beginning of the journey across the wilderness
towards the Promised Land, Shavuot celebrates the moment when they
start to live there.
In Israel there were seven different crops which ripened in the seven
weeks after Passover - and traditionally people would gather and keep
the very first cut of each of these seven crops for this festival. They
would tie a ribbon around each crop, put the fruits in a basket and
bring them to the temple as an offering to God, giving him thanks for
the good things that he has given them. Traditionally they brought
wheat, barley, grapes, figs, olives, honey, and pomegranates.
But there’s another sort of first fruit which is celebrated at Shavuot,
as well as all these delicious things. Shavuot is also the time when
Jewish people remember the giving of the law on Mount Sinai – Moses
going up the mountain to receive the Ten Commandments from God. The
commandments were a sort of foretaste – a first fruit - of the way the
world could be. By trying to live justly, treating each other and the
rest of creation, and God, with respect and kindness, the people of
Israel believed they were bringing that world into being. The law
enabled them to grow the first fruits of a new harvest of
righteousness. You can see how it all ties together, perhaps.
But what does that have to do with the Holy Spirit? Let’s go back to
the disciples, gathered together, thinking of pomegranates and
figs and olives on this Day of Pentecost, of the first fruits of the
Promised Land, the new world which their ancestors had been given by
God, but thinking too, I am sure, about the new world they had suddenly
found themselves in.
Fifty days earlier, they had seen Christ crucified and buried, but
then, just when they thought all was lost, he had been raised from
death. In the weeks that followed they had had to re-examine everything
they thought they knew. They had learned that God’s love was stronger
than death. They had learned too that they were to be the ones who
would take the message of that love to the ends of the earth. This was
their new world and it was one which felt utterly bewildering and
overwhelming. How could they possibly achieve this task they had been
given?
There’s a story from the time of the Exodus about the first glimpse the
people of Israel had into the Promised Land. They came near to its
borders and decided to send spies into it to see what it was like. The
spies came back with glowing reports of the rich crops they saw there,
but with alarming tales of the strength of the inhabitants as well.
“There are giants in the land – we were like grasshoppers to them! “
they said. The Israelites took fright at this and turned back,
wandering for a whole generation more in the wilderness until they
found the courage to cross the Jordan.
As Jesus’ disciples gathered on the Day of Pentecost that’s how they
felt too – faced with an impossible challenge, and wanting to retreat
to safety.
But as they sat there together, full of fear and incomprehension, they
had an extraordinary experience of the closeness of God. Later on they
tried to describe it, but all they could do was come up with some
images. It was like fire, like a rushing wind…but then again it wasn’t
actually burning or blowing. In the end you get the feeling that it was
beyond description – you just had to be there to understand…What really
mattered was the effect it had. Suddenly, the obstacles – the giants in
the land – the fear and doubt – are swept away, and the disciples
themselves swept out into the crowd which has gathered in Jerusalem, a
crowd from all over the world, but a crowd which somehow understood
what the disciples were telling them. Again, it’s not an experience
they could explain, and neither can we, but the effects were clear.
Many people joined the disciples that day, convinced by what they saw
and heard. And the disciples themselves were changed by the
experience too. Suddenly now they knew that God really would do as he
promised – be with them, giving them the words to say and the strength
to say them.
Of course, that was only the beginning of the story. Not every day was
as easy as that. But they needed that experience – that extraordinary
beginning - to reassure them that God was working in them, and that
extraordinary things really were possible.
Some of you by now, if the cogs have been whirring, may have realised
why all this happened on that Jewish feast of Pentecost, Shavuot – at
the time of the first fruits. The disciples had come together
thinking “first fruits”, and first fruits were what they got, the first
fruits of the new world that God was building through them.
St Paul, as a good and learned Jew, would also have linked Pentecost
with the “first fruits” too. That’s why he writes to the Roman church
in our second reading about the “first fruits of the Spirit”. That is
why in his letter to the Galatians he talks about the fruit that the
Spirit produces in our lives – “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy,
peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self
control.” (Gal 5.28) These are fruits the world is hungry for; just as
the people of Israel were hungry for the delicious food of the Promised
Land and the order and peace of the law. On the Day of Pentecost, the
disciples started to see and trust that God was changing them, bringing
those fruits into being in their lives, but what about us?
The Shavuot basket God wants us to bring to him today, the Shavuot
basket he wants us to share with the rest of the world, isn’t one that
just contains pomegranates and figs; it has in it those far more
important fruits of love, joy, peace and the rest – the evidence of the
changes he has made to us. The coming of the Spirit is not just about
extraordinary experiences – speaking in tongues or mystical visions –
but the steady growth of goodness in us. Just as people couldn’t miss
the effect of the Spirit of God in the lives Jesus’ first followers,
they should be able to see changes in us too. If our faith hasn’t made
a difference to the way we live our lives then we should be wondering
why.
If we can see those changes in us though, that doesn’t mean that the
work is finished. First fruits are just that - the promise of things to
come. The changes that we can see should make us hungry for the harvest
that is still unseen. Often we are satisfied with so little – and
complacent about seeking more. We are content with a meagre faith, the
faith we had as children, the knowledge we picked up at Sunday school.
We are happy with a sketchy understanding of the Bible; relationships
with one another that are cordial and pleasant but nothing deeper; the
occasional bout of generosity or kindness, but nothing that will really
make a lasting difference; one exciting day, one great spiritual
moment, but nothing that lasts. Today, on this feast of first fruits,
we need recognise that this is a beginning, not an end. Our Christian
lives are supposed to get richer, deeper, more life-changing, more
world-changing as we go on with God.
We are called by God today to build on our relationships with one
another and with him, to find ways to serve others, to further that
world of peace and justice which we are called to build; to catch fire,
to be propelled out into action by the wind of his Spirit. Perhaps,
like the disciples, and like the Israelites crossing the wilderness, we
feel that there are “giants in the land”, obstacles too great for us to
deal with, but God’s promise is that he has strength enough for us,
energy enough for us, love that is strong enough to carry us through,
and that he will always be with us, just as he was with the disciples.
So this Pentecost, what’s in your Shavuot basket? What are the signs
you can see in yourself of God’s generous love for you? And what are
you going to do to make sure that those good beginning are the first
fruits of a bumper crop, not the whole of the harvest. Come, Holy
Spirit, we pray today in word and song, but how are we going to nurture
the seeds of God’s kingdom in us, so that its fruit fills not just one
basket, but overflows to a hungry world?
Amen.
May 24th
2009 Easter 7
Acts 1.15-17,
21-26, John 17. 6-19
As many of you will know, I spent much of the week before last serving
on what is called a Bishop’s Advisory Panel, interviewing and assessing
candidates for ordained ministry. It’s a tremendous privilege – meeting
people at such a crucial point in their lives. It’s also exhausting,
especially because the only time allowed in the rather packed programme
for writing our reports on the candidates is the middle of the night.
Like my fellow advisors I didn’t finish until 3.30 in the morning of
the final day! I’ve just about recovered now, having taken last Sunday
off, but it was a bit of a killer.
But apart from the bit where we burn the midnight oil, I am always very
impressed with the selection process. It’s very careful, very well
thought-through. The candidates’ own Dioceses have already looked at
them thoroughly before they come to a national panel, and we get all
sorts of paperwork about them before we meet them. Then we get to turn
them inside out. There are interviews with each of the three advisers,
tasks to do; presentations, discussions, written exercises. We have
specific criteria to select against – things we know we are looking
for. And at the end of it all there are those dratted reports to write,
tightly focussed reports that have to take into account all the
evidence we’ve seen, not just our gut feelings. I’m sure we get it
wrong sometimes; people are ordained who shouldn’t be, or not ordained
who would have been perfectly ok. But if mistakes are made, it’s
certainly not for want of trying.
So it’s a bit galling to hear in our first reading today about the
selection process of the early church, because, frankly it seems a
doddle by comparison. They want to choose someone to take the place of
Judas, who has betrayed Jesus and then taken his own life. So, what do
they do? They cast lots. No 3.30 in the morning report-writing for
them. No lists of criteria. No agonising over the paper work, looking
for just the right words, trying to make sure they’ve really sifted the
evidence. They just pray and then toss a coin, or pull a name out of a
hat, or something like that. They’d specified that the person chosen
had to have been a follower of Jesus from the beginning and that had
narrowed it down, but that’s as far as they went in terms of using
their own human reason to make the decision. Frankly it all looks a bit
ropey to modern eyes. What kind of way is that to determine the future
of the church, and the future of the individuals concerned?
But however odd this seems to us, I think there is an important message
for us here, not just for those who select priests, or apostles for
that matter, but for all of us as we make our journey through life. I’m
not for a moment suggesting that we should take our decisions by
casting lots today - however appealing it might feel when I am
struggling with reports at 3.30 in the morning. But this story reminds
us that however much we think we are in charge of what we do with
our lives, or the lives of others, however carefully we ponder the
choices we make, in the end there’s a huge amount that isn’t down to
us, that we can’t control or predict. As the Yiddish proverb puts it –
“People plan, God laughs”. Casting lots was a common practice at the
time of Christ. Those who did it didn’t think that by doing this they
were leaving their decisions to chance; they thought of it as leaving
those decisions to God, trusting that their lives were in his hands.
They recognised that it is often the things we don’t choose, the paths
we are forced down by circumstance, which turn out to carry the richest
blessing for us.
Many of the candidates we saw had discovered this too. They were a very
varied bunch. The youngest was in his early twenties; the oldest in her
mid-sixties. Male, female, rich, poor, from all sorts of different
backgrounds and walks of life. Their life stories were full of twists
and turns and setbacks. Many had gone through profound pain or loss in
their lives, and, like most of the candidates I’ve seen over the years
they were surprised to find themselves at this point, surprised their
lives had led them to this. They’d assumed that the church, and God,
would be looking for priests who were some sort of model Christians,
paragons of virtue and certainty, and they didn’t feel like that at all
(which is just as well, because if that was the case I’d never get
through the selection process!)
As we looked together at their lives, though, they were able to see how
those twists and turns – the things that seemed to have gone wrong as
well as the things that had gone right – were important in their
journey. It wasn’t just, or even mainly, their own choices which had
shaped them and given them the gifts they were offering, but also the
things life had thrown at them. The setbacks they’d experienced weren’t
blind alleys or detours, they were a vital part of the journey. We may
not have cast lots to select them, but nonetheless there were a lot of
apparently random factors which had brought them to this point, things
they had had no control over at all.
We know almost nothing about the two men in that selection process in
the book of Acts we heard about today, Joseph and Matthias. We don’t
hear anything of them before or after this moment. But we can use our
imaginations to think about them, and by doing that, perhaps think
about our own lives too.
The one thing we do know is that they’d been followers of Jesus from
the start, but that they weren’t part of that inner circle of 12 whom
Jesus had chosen to be closest to him.
They were out on the fringes. I wonder how they had felt about that?
How would you have felt?
Did they feel left out, jealous of Peter, Andrew and the rest?
Or were they quite happy to tag along and not be noticed too much?
And how did they feel when they found themselves suddenly thrust into
the limelight at this point?
If the Christian community thought they were good candidates to be
apostles now, why hadn’t Jesus picked them in the first place?
Did they feel that they were second-best, or perhaps that they
shouldn’t even be there at all?
Did either of them actually want this role – no one seems to have asked
them?
How would you have felt in their shoes?
And how did it work out?
Was Matthias any good at being an apostle – better than Joseph would
have been?
Was he glad he had been chosen?
Was Joseph perhaps glad that he hadn’t been?
And what did he do next?
Did he discover his own calling, something perhaps quite different, but
the thing that really fitted him?
Or did he spend the rest of his life with a chip on his shoulder and a
feeling of resentment?
If it was us, how would we have reacted?
Their lives and futures are thrown up into the air at this point, and
whatever they felt about it, it is bound to have changed them. This
selection process is something that happens to them rather than being
their choice. It happens because of something else they couldn’t have
predicted either; Judas’ betrayal and death.
Perhaps, when we look back at our own lives we can identify times like
that as well. Times when things didn’t turn out the way we expected,
when we set off in one direction, only to find that we ended up
somewhere else entirely. Times when we were pushed into something we
didn’t want, or held back from something we did.
At times like those often the only choice we have is how we react to
what has happened to us. We can think of those times as blind alleys, a
waste, a sign that we have gone wrong somehow, or that God has
forgotten us or is punishing us; or we can make a decision that,
however painful they might be these are opportunities to learn and
grow, to seek and to find God at work.
I don’t like the TV programme, “The Apprentice”. Apart from encouraging
nastiness, it seems to me to promote a very narrow view of success.
You’re hired or fired, a winner or loser. And to be a loser seems to be
the worst thing in the world to those taking part. In real life though,
we are certain to lose at some point, certain to meet with failure and
disappointment. At those points the Apprentice will be a lousy
spiritual model, not one that will help us at all, which is why it
worries me that it seems so popular.
The model Jesus gives us in the prayer we heard in the Gospel reading
is quite different. He’s in Gethsemane when he utters these words,
waiting for his arrest. He knows he is going to look like the ultimate
loser to those around him. But he prays that his disciples will
discover that this isn’t so, that his death is the gateway for him, and
for them, to a new life, and a new sort of community. “Sanctify them in
the truth” he prays. To be sanctified means to be set apart, taken out
of the rut of the world and allowed to be different. His path – the
path his disciples will have to follow too – is one that won’t look
successful in the world’s terms. They’ll need to have the courage to
see a different reality, different truths to those that are commonly
accepted – truths about Jesus and about themselves, truths about life
and about what real success looks like.
The candidates we saw will be hearing from their Bishops round about
now. I hope that whether we felt that priesthood was right for them or
not, they will find that wherever they go from here God is with them on
the journey and waiting for them at the end of it too, just as he is
for all of us.
Amen
May 10
09 Easter 5
Acts 9.26-40, John 15.1-8
“An angel of the Lord said to Philip, Get up and go toward the
south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.” (This
is a wilderness road).”
This is a wilderness road, says the author of the book of Acts, in an
apparent aside, in brackets. We might think that means it’s not really
relevant at all. But if we think that we’d be wrong, because actually,
it’s the key to the story, the thing that makes sense of this strange
little tale. This is a story about wildernesses and people who find
themselves in them.
In it we meet two people who are out in the wilderness – literally, but
in other ways too. The first is Philip, sent out here by the voice of
God. It is very early days for the Christian faith. In fact it isn’t
really a separate faith at all, just a reforming movement within
Judaism. But already we can see the cracks appearing. Stephen has just
been stoned to death, and a wave of persecution has broken out, driving
many of the leaders of the church out of Jerusalem away from the
Temple, away from the familiar spiritual landmarks. Philip has gone to
Samaria, which probably seemed strange enough to him, but now God has
called him to what really feels like the middle of nowhere, and he has
no idea why.
He’s not alone in the desert. He soon comes across an official from the
Ethiopian court; the Queen’s treasurer, no less, riding in his chariot.
He’s a man of status and wealth, but that hasn’t helped him much in the
journey he has just been on. He’s been to Jerusalem to worship in the
Temple. We don’t know whether he was Jewish by birth – there were
Jewish settlements all around the Mediterranean and North Africa – or
whether he was an ethnic Ethiopian who was just interested in Judaism
and wanted to live by its tenets, but whichever was the case this
journey doesn’t seem to have met his needs, because when Philip finds
him, he is evidently puzzled. He seems to have come away from Jerusalem
with more questions than answers, no wiser than when he set out.
Philip hears him reading from the book of the prophet Isaiah, but the
Ethiopian is quick to admit that he doesn’t know what it means. “How
can I,” he says, “unless someone guides me?” There’s more than a touch
of frustration in his voice. He wants to know what it’s all about, but
no one seems to have been willing or able to explain it to him. If he
was going to Jerusalem at this point we could understand it, but he’s
coming away. He’s been in a place that was stuffed full of religious
teachers, people whose lives centred around the study of these ancient
texts, but either no one had the answers he was looking for, or, more
likely, no one was prepared to meet with him at all.
And there’s a reason for that, a reason which hinges on the other thing
we have been told about this man. He’s a eunuch. That’s the bit we
usually feel a bit awkward about – some translations coyly just call
him an official - but the Greek says he’s a eunuch, and there’s no
reason to doubt it. Eunuchs were common in the ancient world.
They were often slaves who were castrated when they were small
children. It seems cruel and barbaric to us – it is cruel and barbaric
– but this was a brutal age and ironically it gave them access to much
better positions in society than they might otherwise have had. This
man is the treasurer to the Queen. Bearing in mind that he probably had
no choice in the matter, he might well think that being a eunuch had
served him well. Until he got interested in Judaism, that is.
While most of the ancient world wasn’t at all bothered by the idea of
eunuchs, Judaism most certainly was, especially when it came to
worshipping in the Temple. The book of Deuteronomy, the book of the
law, was clear. Eunuchs couldn’t enter the Temple, however deserving
they were in other respects. (Deut 23.1) the principle was that you had
to be whole and unblemished if you wanted to meet God, so most
disabilities would bar you from worship. Eunuchs certainly
weren’t considered to be whole, and that was that. So this man
has trekked all the way from Ethiopia to Jerusalem, only to discover
that the very place he most wants to be, in the Temple, is closed to
him. He can never play a full part in this community of faith. And
there’s nothing he can do about it because he can’t change what has
happened to him.
It seems to puzzle him especially because he’s been reading the
prophecies of Isaiah – that’s what he’s doing when Philip arrives - and
they seem to say something quite different. Isaiah talks about a
suffering servant of God, rejected by others, humiliated and denied
justice. He’s been rejected, says Isaiah, because he is mutilated and
disfigured. “So marred was his appearance, beyond human semblance “
that “we accounted him stricken, struck down by God and
afflicted.” But Isaiah says that this isn’t how God sees him. The
truth is that “he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our
iniquities (53.5)...through him the will of the Lord shall prosper.”
(53.10) We probably associate these words with Jesus, but the Ethiopian
didn’t; he’d never heard of him. And neither did Isaiah; he lived 500
years before this. We don’t know who he had in mind. When the
Ethiopian asks, “Is he talking about himself, or someone else?” he’s
asking about the principle, rather than about a specific individual.
Can someone like this, someone who is maimed, not whole, someone like
himself, really be chosen by God, blessed by God, used by God as a
blessing for others?
I’m sure he’d read on in Isaiah too, just a few chapters later, to the
point where God promises “to the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths, who
choose the things that please me and hold fast my covenant, I will give
in my house and within my walls, a monument and a name better than sons
and daughters;”
No wonder he is puzzled. Something doesn’t add up. Isaiah’s words are
clear, yet 500 years later it’s still only the physically whole who are
allowed into the Temple, into the community of faith. Whatever the
scriptures say, the religious leaders proclaim that God will only
accept the strong and the perfect, not the weak, the wounded or damaged
like him. He was pushed out into the wilderness long before he got onto
this road from Jerusalem to Gaza, and he’s desperately in need of
answers.
And there’s Philip, with a story to tell him of another man who was
rejected, a man who was flogged, mocked, humiliated and executed as a
common criminal. If anyone looked as if God had rejected them it was
Jesus. Yet on the third day God raised him from death, turning what
looked like defeat into triumph. Suddenly the penny drops for this
eunuch. If it could be true for Jesus, it could be true for all who
were despised, all who were disfigured and maimed. It could be true
even for him.
“Look, here is water!” he says, full of excitement. “What is to prevent
me from being baptized?” And the answer is nothing. For the first time
in this man’s spiritual journey there’s no barrier to him being fully
part of the community of faith. It’s just a question of him getting out
of the chariot and into the water. It may not have been what he
expected – a waterhole in the desert rather than the splendour of the
Temple - but it is in this wilderness that he finds the gateway to God,
his holy ground. Isaiah talks in another place of the desert
blossoming, waters breaking forth in the wilderness (Is 35) and that is
exactly what happens. Philip’s wilderness blooms too as he starts
to understand that it doesn’t matter how strange the landscape seems –
geographically or spiritually – God can work wherever he wants to. That
knowledge is going to matter as the church moves out beyond its Jewish
roots into unfamiliar territory.
So what has this to do with us? My guess is that every one of us has
been in the wilderness at some point in our lives. If we haven’t, then
we probably will be one day. Life has a way of throwing us all out into
the desert sooner or later. Some people live all their lives there, of
course, treated as outsiders for one reason or another. Others are
exiled from the places of comfort and power they have known by illness,
breakdown or some other reversal of fortune – the present financial
crisis is meaning many who once felt secure, for example, are losing
jobs and homes. When we find ourselves out in that wilderness, what do
we do? Do we stand pressing our noses against the windows of the world
we long to be part of, a place of strength, health, wealth and social
acceptability? Or do we, like Philip and the Ethiopian, turn around and
face the desert and make the truly wonderful discovery that God is
already out there with us, and that we’re no less his children, no less
loved, no less valuable or able to be a blessing to others because we
are struggling or in pain, or because there are things in our lives
that have gone wrong and can’t be put right.
God longs for us to know this, but to do so we often have to ask that
same question the Ethiopian asks. “What is to prevent me…?” The
barriers that stop us feeling confident and of value when our lives are
in a mess, aren’t usually the ones that others have put there. They are
the ones we have put there ourselves. “What is to prevent us…?” We can
be prevented from taking the steps we need to by our fear of getting it
wrong. We can be prevented by cynicism or apathy. We can be prevented
by pride – it would have been easy for this important official to have
fallen prey to that. We can be prevented by old resentments; by the
chips we’ve carried on our shoulders all our lives. All these things
can mean that the desert stays a desert, and our gifts wither in the
wasteland.
This story tells us that the wilderness can be the holiest ground of
all if we are prepared to let it be, if we are prepared to get out of
the chariot and into the water of God’s love.
So “what is to prevent us…?”
Amen
May 3 09 Easter 4
John 10.11-18
“I am the Good Shepherd” says Jesus. It’s an image that’s very
familiar to us from hymns and stained glass windows – an image of Jesus
surrounded by suspiciously clean and well-behaved sheep. But my guess
is that while we are familiar with the image, most of us know far less
about the reality of sheep and shepherding. I don’t think we’ve
got many practicing shepherds in the congregation.
The people of Jesus’ time knew all about sheep, though. As well as
being an important source of meat, milk and wool, they were vital to
their worship. They were sacrificed in large numbers in the Temple in
religious rituals – thousands of Passover lambs, for example, were
killed each year. Shepherds were essential to their communities. A
whole way of life depended on them and everyone would know that. That’s
why Jesus chose this image when he wanted to talk about true leadership
and care.
But, as I said, shepherds aren’t part of our everyday experience, so
perhaps we need a different image to work with, one that is more
familiar to us. It seems to me that the job of the security guard might
be one that we could choose instead. It may not seem as romantic – I
don’t see it catching on in the stained glass windows – but I don’t
suppose shepherding is all that romantic in reality either. Just like
those first century shepherds, security guards are an essential part of
our society. As the shepherd safeguarded the sheep, security guards
safeguard us and the things that are important to us, and they are
everywhere once you start to notice them. They patrol our
shopping centres. They keep watch over office buildings and warehouses.
They are on duty in hospitals, at airports, in any large institution,
and at major events like festivals. We may not really notice them as
people, but we are aware that there is someone there in a uniform who’s
got their eyes open for danger.
The uniform’s important, of course, because it is the thing we notice
first – sometimes in fact, it’s the only thing we notice, and that can
be rather dangerous. The trouble is that when we see someone in uniform
we tend automatically to assume we can trust them and that they will do
the job the uniform represents. That’s not just true of security
guards. Any uniform will do: a doctor in a white coat, a construction
worker in a hi-visibility jacket, a priest in a dog collar. The uniform
says, “trust me – I know what I am doing”. But it’s only when those
people come to do the job that we really discover whether they are can
live up to the promise of their uniform.
I trained for the priesthood alongside a man who had been a security
guard at a GCHQ listening post – one of those top-secret places where
they monitor communications around the world. On his first day he put
on the uniform and reported for duty. “What am I supposed to do? “ He
asked. His boss solemnly took him to a little booth by the front gate
and said to him, “you just sit there…” And that’s what he did.
Hour after hour after hour he just sat there. As far as I know nothing
dramatic EVER happened – no one EVER tried to break in. But he knew
that if a terrorist did turn up, he’d have to be ready. At that point
he’d be right in the firing line, risking his life. And it would only
be then that he, and everyone else, would discover whether he had the
courage, commitment and character he needed to do the job. The uniform,
the outward appearance of the security guard, was no guarantee of
anything. It was his actions that would reveal the truth about him.
Jesus is making the same point when he talks about shepherds. Just
because someone is wearing the official badge from “Shepherds R Us PLC”
that doesn’t tell you anything. It’s not the outward appearance, the
contract they signed, the uniform they wear that matters, but what they
do when a wolf shows up. At that point only those who really care
about the sheep in their charge will stick around, he says. Those who
are simply doing it for the money, for what is in it for them, will
head for the hills.
Of course, Jesus’ concern wasn’t really with security guards or
shepherds. These are both just images. What he was really interested in
was those who claimed to be “shepherds” of the people of Israel, the
people who led and guided the nation. And he’s taking a huge risk in
what he says, because it is precisely those people who he is addressing
here. He’s talking to a group of Pharisees, who are often portrayed as
self-appointed and rather self-righteous guardians of the public
morals. It’s probably not an entirely fair picture – many of them were
good people - but it sounds as if there were certainly some who thought
they and they alone had the right to decide who was acceptable and who
wasn’t.
To them Jesus was a complete fraud. A carpenter’s son from Nazareth
with no connections, no official status, no position in society. “Who
does he think he is?” they asked. The ideas he preached were so
strange. A God who welcomed all – tax-collectors, prostitutes,
Samaritans, Roman soldiers, people who were unclean in myriad ways.
What kind of message was that? As far as the Pharisees were concerned
it was heresy, blasphemy. Their people, their flock, shouldn’t be
exposed to this sort of thing – they were convinced it would lead them
astray.
We sometimes forget how WRONG Jesus’ message must have seemed to many
at the time. We’ve had him on a pedestal for 2000 years. But to these
Pharisees it was obvious. THEY were the shepherds of their people, the
ones with the official training, the official approval, the right
“uniform” so to speak. Jesus didn’t look right at all. When he tells
this parable about true and false shepherds, they know which group they
think he belongs to. Where’s his uniform? Where’s his badge of office?
Where’s his authority?
But Jesus turns their preconceptions upside down. It’s not the outward
appearance that matters, he says, it’s what happens when the chips are
down, when the wolf comes, when the sheep are threatened that reveals
whether the shepherd is up to the job, worthy of the name. Until that
point you can’t tell which is the good shepherd and which is the hired
hand, no matter what they look like, what qualifications they seem to
have, what uniform they wear. Of course we are meant to read this story
with hindsight, to be aware of the fact that the person saying these
things goes on to do just what he talks about. He is the shepherd who
lays down his life for the sheep, facing the onslaught of human hatred
and suspicion because of his love for his people.
In our first reading today we hear the same message. Peter and John
have healed a man who was begging outside the Temple. They had healed
him in the name of Jesus, the one whom the High Priest had just had
crucified. The Temple authorities are furious and call Peter and John
before them and round on them. What right do they have to do this? They
are followers of a heretic, someone who the powers-that-be have decided
can’t possibly be from God. Peter and John’s answer is simple. “Look at
the facts – the man has been healed. Isn’t that enough? Isn’t that
something to rejoice over?”
I’d like to assume that the Pharisees’ blinkered thinking was all
ancient history, but of course it isn’t. Nor is it something that just
relates to the way people saw Jesus or his followers. It is a universal
human tendency - to see the outward appearance, the uniform, rather
than the person inside it. It is a hard discipline to look deeper, to
see people for who they actually are and to judge them by what they do
instead. But it is a discipline we need to practice.
It’s a discipline that is especially important, it seems to me, in an
increasingly multi-cultural society. There seems to be a rising tide of
panic among some Christians at the moment – often whipped up by
simplistic reports in the media – as the reality dawns that we no
longer live in a society where Christianity is the default setting. Of
course, our nation has changed – other faiths are more numerous than
they once were, though still a minority. More significant are the large
number of people who once would have called themselves Christians but
now reject any religion. It is tempting, in the face of these changes,
to focus our energy on maintaining the outward symbols, structures and
rituals of belief, to insist that the cultural markers of Christianity
– the uniform – is on show. Wearing a cross to work or maintaining the
old privileges that came with being the state religion assumes huge
significance – a way of marking our territory. The danger is though
that the uniform becomes more important to us than the actions it
should represent. I value the Christian history and tradition of
our nation and I’m all for standing up for my faith – I do it for a
living. But we have to make sure it is our faith we are standing up
for, not just those cultural markers that have come to be associated
with it – not just Christianity as an institution but Christianness – a
way of thinking and living and behaving towards others. The fruit of
the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness,
gentleness, faithfulness and self-control, says St Paul, not an
irritated insistence that we should have a special place at the table.
The message of the gospels is that God doesn’t judge us by how loud our
voices are, or how many churches we have, but by how many people we
have loved and how well we have loved them.
Jesus, the good shepherd, didn’t look to the people of his time the way
they expected the guardians of their society to look, and he knew
it. The uniform, the outward appearance, the things he said were all
wrong. In him God took on what seemed a very unlikely form. But in
doing so he called us to look beyond our expectations too, to listen
for the voice that calls out in every tongue to every nation and
culture to a flock that is far wider and more diverse than we can dare
to imagine.
Amen
April 26
2009 Easter 3
I’m going to begin by asking you a couple of questions which might seem
a bit strange.
Who are you? And who am I?
You see what I mean; you’re probably thinking that I’ve finally lost my
marbles. It’s bad enough that I don’t seem to know who you are, but if
I don’t know who I am either we are in real trouble!
Actually, though, those questions aren’t as daft as they might seem.
What do we mean when we talk about our “selves”, when we use those
words I and you? Are we just thinking of our bodies? Is that who I am?
Is that who you are? – these particular assemblies of limbs and organs,
put together according to the blueprint laid down by our DNA? I doubt
whether many of us think that’s all there is to us. After all, bodies
change. They grow, they age. When we are new-born we look quite
different from the elderly person we might one day become, but we don’t
stop being “us” because our physical appearance changes.
Most people, for most of history have believed that humans are more
than just physical, more than just bodies because that’s how it feels.
Whether we call it soul, spirit, mind or consciousness, we can’t shake
the belief that there is something that makes us essentially us. It may
not show up on a CAT scan or an autopsy, but most of us stubbornly
believe it’s there. But although people might agree that human beings
have bodies and souls, they haven’t always agreed about how the two fit
together, or on what value we should place on each part. How we answer
that question can have a profound effect on the way we live.
At the time of Christ there were lots of different ideas about bodies
and souls around. The early church was a melting pot for those ideas.
Some of the first Christians were gentiles; they’d grown up with the
assumptions of the classical world – the ideas of Roman, Greek or
Eastern philosophy. Other early Christians were Jewish; they’d
been steeped in the stories and teaching of the Old Testament. Both
groups thought humans had souls as well as bodies, but they understood
them very differently.
Many Classical philosophers thought that bodies were the inferior part
of the package. It was the soul that mattered, a spark of something
divine which was housed, or even imprisoned, in treacherous flesh and
blood. Souls were pure and immortal. Bodies were fallible and
transient; they got ill, they didn’t do what you wanted, they were
filled with inconvenient appetites and impulses. They always let you
down in the end. Those who believed this wanted to be able to rise
above their bodies, to control them, and ultimately shed them and
fly free again, returning to their rightful place in the world of the
spirit.
Jewish belief was very different, though. It started from the story of
the creation in the first chapter of Genesis. God made his universe and
he looked at what he had made, and he declared that it was good – all
of it. Matter was good, earth was good, bodies were good too. The body
was a blessing, not a prison. Of course you needed to use it aright,
but it was something to treasure, not to try to escape from.
When we read today’s Gospel – the story of Jesus appearing to his
disciples after the resurrection - we might be able to hear echoes of
the debate between these two different strands of thinking in the early
church, those Gentile and Jewish ideas about bodies and souls. Of
course we often get so caught up with our modern questions about how
the resurrection could have happened, or if it happened at all that we
miss these messages, but they were really crucial to the original
writers and hearers. They weren’t bothered about the “how” of the
resurrection. If God wanted it to happen it could happen, and they
certainly believed it had. If we want to hear what Luke was
trying to tell us in this story, then, we have to try to put aside our
modern questions and hear the story as his first hearers would have
done. It’s worth the effort, because actually that message is still
important for us today.
So, what would they have heard in this story of the risen Christ
appearing to his followers? The crucial point – the point Luke hammers
home – is that when Jesus appears it is not as a disembodied spirit, it
is as a very real, flesh and blood body. The disciples are petrified
when they see him – who wouldn’t be? They think they are seeing a
ghost. But Jesus tells them it isn’t so. “Look at me,” he says, “look
at my hands and feet – see the marks of the nails – touch me. A ghost
doesn’t have flesh and bones.” He even asks for some fish and eats it
in front of them. Disembodied spirits don’t eat, so this is not a
disembodied spirit. Whatever God is doing in the resurrection, Luke is
saying, he is doing it in bodies, not just souls.
We may not understand how any of this can be, but that doesn’t matter.
What I want us to do is to hear the underlying messages – and there are
two things in particular that I’d like to draw out this morning.
The first is that by stressing the bodiliness of Jesus’ resurrection
Luke is telling us that bodies matter, the material world
matters. He is affirming that Jewish attitude to the physical
stuff of the world. It is good, he says. It is worth saving,
cherishing, redeeming. Jesus’ resurrection, as he tells it, isn’t about
God rescuing Jesus from the world, whisking him straight off to some
spiritual realm. It is about God’s transforming power being within the
world. It‘s not about what happens after we die – or at least that
isn’t its main focus. It is about what happens in the here and now, in
the world we know. This is a message which would have sounded new and
strange to many of the Gentile Christians. And because it was the
Gentile version of Christianity, with its classical philosophical
flavour which gained the upper hand in the early church, we who have
followed them have often lost sight of it too. The funeral service in
the Book of Common Prayer, for example, written in the 17th Century,
praises God that those who have died have been “delivered from the
burden of the flesh… and out of the miseries of this sinful world.”
I can understand why people might feel this way. For most people over
most of human history life has been hard, and suffering and death a
constant threat. If you look around this church you will find memorial
stones to people who died of diseases that would now be easily
preventable or treatable, cut off from life prematurely. The ornate
Latin tombstone on the wall to the left of the altar records the death
of a young couple who were suddenly struck down with an illness and
died within 24 hours of each other. Maintaining a positive view of the
flesh is bound to be harder if you are constantly reminded of its
frailty and if there is little you can do to control it.
The problem is that if we have a negative and fearful attitude to the
physical world we can easily find ourselves tempted simply to turn away
from the world, to stop enjoying it, stop caring for it, stop caring
for others and for ourselves. That’s disastrous for us personally, for
our attitudes to those around us, especially if they are in need, and
for the environment too. We need to hear that this world is God’s
world, the world he loves and is committed to.
The second reason why we need reminding of the blessedness of our
bodily existence is that our physicality ties us to one another. We can
talk about our souls as if they are private, individual things,
existing in a personal bubble, but bodies can’t survive on their own.
They are always going to need other bodies. We are born from the
relationship between our mother and father – without them we wouldn’t
exist. We rely on countless other people for our daily needs; those who
grow the food we eat or deliver the services we need. Individual
self-sufficiency is impossible. And it’s not just people we need. We
rely too on the whole chain of physical matter around us, air, soil,
plants, insects, other animals. Our bodies remind us that everything is
connected.
When the Gospel writers insist that the risen Christ had a body, and
wasn’t just a soul, they remind us that he has chosen to be woven into
the world, to be as dependent on it, as affected by it as the rest of
us, even when it wounds him. He’s part of that same chain of being
which we all belong to. The salvation and hope he brings aren’t about
handing out individual tickets to heaven to the lucky few while the
rest of the world is left to stew in its own juices. They affect
everything. This is an ancient truth, but one we have often lost sight
of in the West, with our rather individualistic mind set. Eastern
Orthodox Christians place much more emphasis on our collective
relationship with God. They talk about the divinization of the Cosmos,
God transforming all things. And it’s there in the New Testament too.
St Paul says that in Jesus, God was “reconciling to himself all things,
whether in heaven or on earth” (Col. 1.19). It’s either about all of us
or it’s about none of us. When Christians get involved in issues of
social and environmental justice, or campaigns to end poverty or
alleviate suffering they aren’t following trendy liberal fads. They are
listening to that deep message of the Gospels which tells us that
everything is connected, that when one part suffers all is damaged and
when there is any healing anywhere, everything is made a little more
whole.
So, who are we? Bodies or souls? A mixture of both? However we answer
the question today’s Gospel reminds us that this world around us, with
all its vulnerabilities and failings as well as its joys is worth
redeeming, worth cherishing, worth caring for. It tells us that bodies
– ours and other peoples are a blessing, not a curse, to be enjoyed and
looked after. Whatever comes after death, this life, this world,
this flesh is a place where God wants to be at work. Taking that
seriously can make a world of difference.
Amen.
April 19 2009
Easter 2 Breathing Space
Acts 4.32-35, John 20.19-31
Today is traditionally known as Low Sunday and perhaps we might think
it is easy to see why. After all the work and business of Lent, Holy
Week and Easter Sunday itself it would be no surprise if everyone was
feeling a bit low – low energy, low numbers in the congregation, low
level of preparation as well often, since many clergy take time off. In
fact, though, Low Sunday doesn’t get its name for that reason. “Low” is
actually thought to be a corruption of the Latin word “Laudes” which
means praise. It’s the first word of the Latin Sequence set for the day
– the chant that came before the Gospel in the Latin Mass. Laudes
Salvatori voce modulemur supplici – let us sing praises to the saviour
with a humble voice.
Far from being a day when we experience the “let-down” from the high of
Easter Sunday it is supposed to be a day of great rejoicing, a day when
we begin to think about what the Resurrection might mean, what
difference it might make, when we let it sink in.
Last week we left the women running in terror from the empty tomb. They
had been told by the young man they found there that Jesus had been
raised from the dead, but it didn’t seem as if they had really taken it
in, and who can be surprised at that? In this week’s Gospel story
though, the disciples begin to encounter Jesus himself in ways that are
both mysterious and mundane. He appears in rooms where the doors are
locked and yet his wounds show him to be very real flesh and blood.
They can see him, hear him, touch him even, if they want to. It is a
very real encounter, but one that is also beyond their understanding.
And Jesus’ words to them show that this is not so much a happy ending
to a sad tale, but the beginning of a story that is new, a
journey that will take them to places – literally and spiritually –
that they could never have imagined. They will find a new freedom, and
the power to set others free too. Thomas will discover a new trust in
place of his old scepticism – not just an intellectual belief, but a
real change in the way he is able to live his life. Old traditions say
he took the Gospel all the way to India. They might even be true – who
would have thought this doubter could travel so far?
In the first reading, from Acts, we see some of the early outworkings
of the transformation the resurrection wrought on those who followed
Jesus. They’re drawn together into a new community, sharing what they
have. It’s noticeable that it’s not about sharing equally though; it is
about sharing according to need, something which you can’t do simply by
establishing a new set of rules to replace the old ones of private
ownership and possessiveness. You have to get to know someone in order
to know their need, and this is what they do, getting to know and to
love people who they might once have thought unclean, people who might
be from a very different social class to them, people of different
races and backgrounds. It was exhilarating, and probably bewildering
too, for those early Christians; most of all it was utterly new. They
were changed, and it was the resurrection which changed them.
So the challenge for us on this Low Sunday – the Sunday when we are
invited to sing a new song of praise – is what that song will be? What
transformation have we seen in our lives? How have we grown in love and
in service as a result of this great good news we have? If we can’t
point to any growth in us, why not, and what are we going to do about
it in this Easter season? Easter isn’t just a day, nor even just
a season; it’s a state of mind, an attitude to life which looks for
transformation and healing in our own lives, which welcomes it when we
find it, and which leads us to share it with others too.
Amen
April 12
09 Easter Sunday
Acts 10.34-43, Mark 16.1-8
In our Good Friday children’s workshops this year, among other things,
we made Easter bonnets. You can see a couple of them in the porch –
extraordinary creations with all sorts of things stuck to them – and
the flower arrangers, as well as the wonderful Easter eggs, have
taken a “bonnet” theme too. You may ask why. After all, what have hats
to do with the real meaning of Easter? Shouldn’t we have been thinking
about the death and resurrection of Jesus? Aren’t Easter bonnets just
sentimental symbols that get in the way of the serious matter of the
cross and the empty tomb? Surely, this isn’t what Easter’s about! Or is
it?
In fact, Easter bonnets, like those other popular symbols of the season
– eggs, fluffy chicks, bunnies, and so on - are all about newness, and
newness, it seems to me is very much at the heart of the Easter
message. As I’ve explained in the display in the porch, most of our
forebears wouldn’t have had new clothes very often. They were a luxury.
But if you could have just one new set of clothes in the year, this was
the day when you would wear them. If you couldn’t afford a complete new
set of clothes, a new hat would do, or, if you couldn’t even afford
that, an old hat with new trimmings – hence the Easter bonnet. Wearing
new clothes was a natural way to join in with the Easter celebration of
new life, not just the unfurling of the buds on the trees and the green
shoots pushing their way up through the bare earth, but also the new
life of Jesus, bursting from the tomb. In a age before efficient
artificial lighting, central heating and all our other modern comforts,
the colour and warmth of spring – the sheer vigour of its new life -
must have been almost intoxicating. It’s no wonder that our ancestors
co-opted those joyful signs of spring and wove them into their
celebration of the resurrection of Jesus.
The Jewish people had done exactly the same thing with their feast of
Passover, the feast which forms the back-drop to the stories of Holy
Week. Passover celebrated the liberation of the Hebrew slaves from
Egypt, but it was also an agricultural festival that marked the
beginning of the growing season. What better time was there, they
thought, to tell the tale of their journey from the death of slavery to
the new life of the Promised Land than when the world around them was
bursting with new life as well?
For the early church, as they told the story of Jesus, the parallels
were obvious. They had found new life and liberation in Jesus’
resurrection; liberation from the fear of death, and liberation into a
new way of living too. Old barriers were broken down in the community
they formed; barriers between Jew and Gentile, male and female, slave
and free. In Christ, the world was made utterly, unimaginably new.
So, Easter bonnets, eggs, chicks and bunnies – signs of life’s
abundance - why not?
But glorious as they are, these symbols struggle to bear the whole
weight of the meaning of the Resurrection. They can only take us so
far. The joy of spring is uncomplicated. It just arrives. Flowers
bloom. Eggs hatch. It all just seems to happen. The new life we hunger
for can be much longer in coming, and when it arrives it can feel risky
and challenging, not simply joyful. If we really want to know what it
means to be made new in Christ we need to dig a bit deeper than bonnets
and eggs, and the story we heard from Mark’s Gospel is the perfect
place to do that digging.
There’s no glorious music in this story, no flower-filled churches; no
one has put on their best new clothes. Instead, all we have is a group
of frightened women. When we first meet them at the beginning of
the story they are afraid; they were on their way to anoint a corpse
that had been dead for three days after all. But as the story unfolds,
they seem to get even more frightened until, by the end of the reading,
the end of the Gospel as we have it today, they are completely
speechless with terror.
Mark’s Gospel almost certainly didn’t originally finish here in fact;
experts think the last page was lost early in its history. But
actually, I quite like this cliff-hanger ending. To me it brings home
the shock of the Resurrection.
In our Lent study groups this year we spent some time looking at this
story. As we thought about these women, we tried to put ourselves in
their shoes. Why were they so afraid? What were they afraid of?
The sheer strangeness of the situation, we decided, would be terrifying
enough. We don’t expect the dead to rise, and neither did they. What
had happened to Jesus’ body? What was going on? But we didn’t think
this was the only reason they were scared. We also wondered whether
they were asking themselves what it might mean if Jesus really had
risen, how it might change their lives. Perhaps, we thought, that might
be even more frightening to them.
They’d followed Jesus from Galilee, hoping he was the Messiah. They’d
watched him as he hung on the cross, horrified by the pain he suffered,
but powerless to help. Many of the other disciples hadn’t even had the
courage to do that; they had deserted him, desperate to save their own
skins. Now he was dead. It was awful. But at least it was all over,
and, so far, the authorities seemed to be leaving them alone. They were
bitterly disappointed, their dreams that Jesus would bring in the
kingdom of God were dashed, but people can adjust to almost anything in
time. These women had already fallen back on the traditions of their
people. They set off to mourn at the tomb, to perform the rituals that
they would have done for anyone dear to them who had died. When they
had done that, they could go back to their old lives and try to pick up
where they had left off. It was sad that it hadn’t worked out, but it
was a sadness they were expecting to learn to live with, to put down to
experience. That was the plan on that early morning, as they set out.
But then they discovered that the tomb was empty, and they were told
that Jesus was alive. God had raised him. Now what? Suddenly the
mission they thought was over was very much on again. They’d been ready
to sink back into their old lives, but instead they were being called
to go forward into a whole new life.
Death is frightening, but sometimes life is even more frightening. The
joy of new life is only half the story. It can also bring challenges
with it that seem impossibly daunting, to us just as to these women. It
takes courage to start again, courage to live, courage to hope, courage
to grow, courage to keep going.
I know that today many of you have come to church carrying heavy
burdens. Some are burdens you’ve shared with me; some are only known to
you and God. I know that there are people here dealing with serious
illness or chronic pain – your own or that of a relative. Others
struggle with problems at home, with marriages that are in trouble,
with children you are worried about, with love that has faded away or
been stretched to breaking point. Others are facing the possibility, or
the reality, of redundancy, or are having to make others
redundant. Even if I didn’t know any of your stories, I would
know that this was the case, because you are all human, and human life
is often messy, fragile and complicated. We may try to look as if we’ve
got life sorted, but the truth is that most of us, sooner or later,
will find ourselves walking wounded, or perhaps not walking at all.
When we hit those times, the joy of Easter can seem empty, unreachable.
I have known times like this myself, because I’m human too. When my
first marriage was coming to an end and for a while afterwards I often
felt like telling people what they could do with their hallelujahs on
Easter Sunday. Whatever the calendar said, it didn’t feel like Easter
to me, not if it just meant fluffy chicks and new bonnets and all that
cheerful stuff. What redeemed Easter for me were stories like these of
the women at the tomb, stories which told me that to be “Easter people”
we don’t necessarily have to have smiles plastered all over our faces
and hearts full of sunshine. We can be terrified, and that’s ok.
Choosing hope is not always easy. Choosing life is not always easy.
Easter isn’t always a straightforward dance of joy, a simple triumph.
Sometimes the gift it brings is just enough courage to keep on walking
with God through the darkness until the morning finally comes.
As well as the Easter bonnets in the church porch, you probably noticed
as you came in the Easter Garden the children made. Beside it, there is
a basket of these glass nuggets. Some of you already have responded to
the invitation on the display there to take one and add it to the
garden as your own prayer for new life. If you haven’t done this yet,
don’t worry, it will be there all this week at least, so do it when the
moment is right for you. On one level, it’s a very simple prayer
activity, but if we take it seriously, that prayer for new life, for
resurrection, is an awesome one, a huge commitment, a great leap into
the dark. Let us pray that we find the Easter courage to take that step.
Lord, even in the midst of terror and
despair, even when the future you offer us scares us witless, lead us
to life, lead us to hope, lead us to Easter.
Amen.
March 29 2009
Lent 5
As most of you must
know by now, I’m sure, I am a mad keen gardener. At this time of year,
the vicarage windowsills are crammed with little pots of seedlings.
But I understand that not everyone shares my passion, and for some
gardening can seem a very mysterious activity, full of strange terms.
Pruning and pinching out, perennials and biennials and half-hardy
annuals, and all those Latin names…where do you start?
There are some basic bits of gardening advice though, which seem to me
to be pretty obvious, but which make a real difference between your
chances of success or failure. The one I know I always need to hear is
this… “Seeds won’t grow unless you take them out of the packet…”
Every year in the depths of winter, I pore over the seed catalogues and
order what I think I’ll need for the coming year. Come the spring I
have all manner of seeds in their packets waiting to be sown. But there
are always one or two of those packets which stay unopened. Somehow, I
overlook them – perhaps they look trickier than I expected, or they
need some very specific conditions, or I meant to get around to sowing
them, but forgot or was too busy. And so they sit there, and sure
enough, they don’t grow into the glorious plants they are meant to;
they don’t grow into anything at all in fact. I could probably stock an
entire garden with the things I have failed to sow over the
years. “Seeds won’t grow unless you take them out of the packet.”
Jesus knew this too. “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and
dies, it remains just a single grain:” he says. It was as obvious then
as it is now, but probably just as important to hear. If you want your
grain of wheat to sprout and grow and produce a harvest, you have got
to be prepared to let it go, to drop it into the earth first. And what
will happen to it there? It will disintegrate, break open, become lost
in the mud. There will be nothing to see of the seed anymore. But in
its place will be a new plant, bearing many more seeds than the
original. Of course, the slugs might get it, or the birds, or some
disease or other – there’s always a risk involved – but if you never
sow it, you can be sure that it won’t come to anything.
Jesus isn’t really handing out horticultural advice here, of course.
He’s talking about himself and his own death. This is a message
directed in particular at some people who had sought him out to find
out more about him. We’re told they are Greeks. That doesn’t
necessarily mean they were from Greece, or were ethnically Greek. Greek
ways of life had spread all around the Mediterranean and the Middle
East during the time of Alexander the Great. Greek was the
international language. Greek literature and philosophy were the
backdrop to the lives of any reasonably educated person. The Jews in
Palestine had fought hard to keep their own culture and religion pure
from these influences, but Jews living elsewhere, as well as Gentiles,
were often Greek in their outlook. The Greeks we meet here probably
come from this “Hellenistic” background as it was called. Their Judaism
is “Greek-flavoured Judaism”. It’s no accident that they come first to
Philip and Andrew – disciples with Greek names, not Hebrew names.
So what are these “Greeks” expecting to hear from Jesus? To understand
that we need to know a little bit about Greek philosophy. Greek
philosophers had some very definite ideas about what it meant to be
divine – what divinity looked like. Ordinary Greek men and women might
still have believed in the colourful legends of the multitude ancient
gods and goddesses with all their dubious goings-on, but Greek
philosophers by this time thought of those stories as just that –
stories. For them God was quite different. God’s most important
attribute, the essence of divinity, was that he never changed.
Human beings changed and eventually died: God didn’t – if he did, he
couldn’t be God as far as they were concerned. God wasn’t tossed about
by passions, subject to the ups and downs of life. He was an unseen
essence who went serenely on, just the same, for eternity, absolute
perfection. If you wanted to be like God, which they did, then you had
to aim for perfection too – physical and mental as well as moral.
Jesus warns them here, though, that his life won’t be like that at all.
He is about to be thrown into a maelstrom of suffering. At the end of
it, he will die, his mission will end in what will look like absolute
failure, not absolute perfection. They want to hear of a Messiah who
will rise above the storms of the world, with a calm, cool divine
mastery. But he tells them that he’s going to fall into the mud, like a
seed, and be broken to pieces. It has to be this way, he says, because
it is the only way that will lead to life in the end. In one of his
letters, St Paul says in one of his letters that the cross is “folly to
the Greeks” . We don’t hear how these Greeks respond, but we can guess
that it didn’t make a lot of sense to them. This wasn’t their idea of
the divine way.
It’s probably hard for us to understand how shocked and baffled people
like this would have been by the imagery Jesus uses here – the seed
disintegrating and dying. We’ve had 2000 years to get used to the story
of Jesus’ death – but the legacy of that Greek way of thinking is still
with us in other ways. We often burden ourselves - or others – with
unrealistic expectations of perfection. To be truly successful,
everything in our lives has to be right. Good job, good marriage, good
home, 2.4 smiling children… When any one of those things doesn’t work
out as we expect we beat ourselves up, or beat someone else up,
convinced that it ought not to be so, that something can be done and
must be done to make it all better. If we can’t manage that we simply
paper over the cracks and pretend all is still well and hope no one
notices that we are falling apart.
Sometimes we can become so scared of failing that we won’t try anything
that feels risky at all, and we end up missing out on opportunities
that might have borne good fruit. We cling anxiously to the one grain
of wheat we have, and we miss what might grow from it. The truth is
though, as many who have gone through times of apparent failure will
tell you, that it is often in those times that they learn the really
valuable, life-changing lessons they need. It’s at these time we
discover the generous love of God, and of others, which doesn’t depend
on what we can do or give, but only on our preparedness to accept that
love. It’s at these times that we discover what really matters to us,
and how easily we are sucked into chasing after things that don’t.
Rudyard Kipling in his famous poem “If” said that we should meet “with
Triumph and Disaster and treat those two impostors just the same”.
Neither is quite what we often think they are. Triumph may not make us
happier or better people, and disaster can be a rich seedbed of new
life.
“Should I ask, Father same me from this hour ?”asked Jesus. But he
knows that it is this hour – the hour of his death – which is the
moment that will really matter. If he turns back now he will be turning
back from his message too, a message of love, forgiveness that includes
everyone. He’ll be saying that it never really mattered. The grain of
wheat - his life - must fall into the ground at Golgotha, if that
message is to survive and spread.
The seed that you were given today when you came into church isn’t a
grain of wheat. It’s a runner bean seed. It’s a beautiful seed. That
lovely black and purple speckled coat, shiny and smooth. It looks
great. You could put it on a shelf and admire it. You could, I suppose
cook it and eat it, but it wouldn’t make much of a meal. Or you could
plant it in a pot on the windowsill (it’s too cold yet to plant it
outside) and who knows, later in the year you might be harvesting
runner beans from it. If you haven’t got a garden, you could team up
with someone who has? I can’t guarantee you success – slugs, birds,
late frosts, all sorts of dangers might lie in its way – but if you
don’t sow it there’s no chance at all it will grow.
Whatever you do with it I hope it will remind you of what Jesus said in
today’s Gospel – not so much about horticulture but about life. Imagine
that this seed represents something in your life. Perhaps it is
something you know you have always wanted to do, but have been afraid
to try. Perhaps it is something you feel you ought to do – something
that needs sorting out or addressing in your life, something that feels
difficult, risky or painful. Perhaps it represents a gift you have to
give – here or elsewhere – a gift that is needed. We can certainly do
with all the help we can get; that’s something I’ve emphasized in our
Annual report and I’ll say it again at the Annual meeting after this
service. We are growing, but to keep growing we need people to have the
courage to have a go, to get involved, to deepen their faith, take on
new responsibilities, to reach out to others and welcome them. Are we
up to it? No. Of course not. One little seed – what can that come to?
But the one seed of Jesus’ life changed the world, so maybe ours are
more important and more powerful than we think.
Seeds won’t grow unless we take them out of the packet. It’s basic, but
it’s true – so whatever our runner bean seed represents to each of us,
let’s pray that we have the courage to let it fall into the ground, and
the faith to believe that God will bring life, hope and joy from it,
however timidly it is given.
Amen
March 8 2009
Lent 2
Mark 8.31-38
“Those who are ashamed of me and of
my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of
Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with
the holy angels.”
These are stern words from Jesus – puzzling words too perhaps – what
can they mean?
The harshness of those words isn’t the only problem with this passage,
though. Deny yourself, Jesus goes on and that opens up a whole new can
of worms. Self-denial is never going to be much of a vote winner, but
for some people it is a very damaging concept indeed. It’s one thing if
you live a life of reasonable comfort and freedom; you might need
reminding of the danger of selfishness. But many people never get the
chance to be selfish. Poverty, race, gender, disability, lack of
education can all rob you of the power to choose how you live. The last
thing you need is someone telling you that you should surrender even
what freedom and self-determination you have got. Women in abusive
relationships sadly have often been told that they should grin and bear
it –“it’s your cross, self-denial is good for the soul”, they are told.
But how can you deny, give up, what you have never really discovered?
If Jesus means us to understand his words in that way then I think he’s
a monster.
So there are all sorts of difficulties in this reading. Frankly, it’s
tempting just to hurry over these awkward statements of Jesus and hope
no one notices. Only a fool would want to draw attention to them. Alas,
you see that fool before you! I am always fascinated by the bits of the
Bible which seem difficult or awkward, because they are often the bits
which, if you wrestle with them, yield real treasure.
The problem is that we easily forget that the Bible comes from a time
and culture that is very different from our own. We may recognise the
words – being ashamed, denying yourself – but we can’t assume people
understood those concepts in the same way as we do. So we’ll need to do
a bit of work if we want to understand what Jesus is saying here.
The first thing we need to take on board is that the culture Jesus
lived in was far less individualistic than ours. People thought of
themselves primarily in relation to others, as part of a group. When
they talked about the “self” they didn’t mean the sort of inner
awareness of thoughts and feelings that we might mean – that’s a very
recent idea. Ask them who they were and they would say that they were
someone’s mother, brother, son, sister, a member of this tribe, that
nation. We value our individualism – “climb every mountain, ford every
stream, follow every rainbow, till you find your dream!” We want to
control our own destinies, make our own choices, not just do what
others expect or accept their view of who we are. But the people of
Jesus’ time would have thought that very odd – and many societies
around the world today would agree with them. To be on your own,
independent, wasn’t a sign of freedom, but something deeply worrying to
them. Who would look after you if you fell into difficulties? Who were
you if you didn’t belong with anyone?
So the “self” to them – this thing Jesus was telling them they had to
deny – wasn’t so much an inner, individual awareness, as something made
up of the expectations and assumptions of their community, who other
people thought they were.
Self-denial, in the way Jesus means it here, isn’t about giving up cake
for Lent. It isn’t about giving up your desires or hopes. It is about
taking a long hard look at the person you think you are, the person
other people tell you you are, and asking yourself how that fits with
who God is calling you to be. The people Mark wrote this Gospel for
knew all about this sort of self-denial. These early Christians were
people who had had to make some traumatic choices because they followed
Jesus. Some of them had grown up in Jewish families; others had grown
up with a variety of pagan backgrounds. Often, when they decided to
follow Jesus, either those communities had rejected them, or they had
found they could no longer live in ways that fitted in with them. The
selves they knew– shaped by and tied up with those communities – were
gone. Who were they now? They felt cast adrift, orphaned. However much
joy there was in their new lives, they had also had to make tough
choices, to lose things that were precious.
Those choices weren’t made any easier by what Jesus goes on to say next
here. “Deny yourself” he begins, but then he goes on “and take up your
cross.” For us the cross has become a well-loved Christian symbol. We
wear it round our necks on a chain; we decorate our buildings with
ornate versions of it. But to the first followers of Jesus it was a
symbol of shame and fear. Crucifixion was a means of execution which
was deliberately humiliating – public, prolonged, painful. The Romans
used it when they wanted to send out a message that they would tolerate
no rebellion. It was regarded with particular horror by Jewish people.
They took it as a sign that the person concerned had been rejected by
God, that God was ashamed of them.
That brings me to the second big difference between our culture and
Jesus’. His was a society in which shame played a huge part in
controlling behaviour. Anthropologists call groups like these “shame
cultures”. They contrast them with “guilt cultures” like ours where we
try to look to the inner voice of conscience to guide us, and we feel
guilty if we do wrong– it’s an inner, personal thing. In a shame
culture, it’s the voice of the community that matters. The worst thing
anyone can do is to dishonour their community in the eyes of others; if
they do that, the community will respond, must respond, to restore
their honour. That means excluding or even killing the one who has
offended, to remove the shame. The awful “honour crimes” that blight
some communities are a product of “shame culture”. When someone does
something that is perceived as shameful, perhaps falling in love with
someone unsuitable, the family will drive them out, maim them, or even
kill them to restore the family honour. They’d rather be guilty
of murder than carry that burden of shame. It may seem incomprehensible
to us, but it doesn’t to them, because shame has such a powerful place
in their thinking.
In Jesus' time, shame ruled too. The prodigal son’s real crime, in the
eyes of the people of the time, wasn’t that he wasted his money on
loose women and wild parties, but that he left home, abandoned his
responsibilities to the family, to pursue his own way. It was an insult
to his father’s honour. Couldn’t he control his own flesh and blood?
What kind of father was he? No one would have expected him to take the
prodigal back – to do so brought even more shame on him. The father did
take him back, of course – that is what was so revolutionary and
baffling about the story to those who first heard it– but that doesn’t
lessen the shame the father suffered because of his actions, the damage
that was done to his reputation. Jesus message wasn’t that there was no
shame in what had happened. What he was saying to this shame obsessed
society was that shame wasn’t to have the last word. Reconciliation and
healing were more important even than family honour and the respect of
those around you.
“Take up your cross” says Jesus. In the eyes of his community, the
manner of his death will bring enormous shame on him and on anyone
associated with him, shame which the resurrection won’t cancel out – it
was only his disciples who witnessed that. To everyone else Jesus would
be just another failed Messiah, a deluded fool.
His followers have already seen Jesus courting shame and disapproval,
of course, through the people he has associated with in his ministry.
He’s eaten with sinners, talked with women with dodgy reputations,
touched the unclean and the outcast - shameful actions in the eyes of
others. But his death will be the most shaming act of all and his
disciples will have to choose how they react to that. If they want to
share his work and the building of his kingdom, they will also have to
share his shame too and risk being despised and rejected by those
around them. Which do they want? To be approved in the eyes of their
society – to gain the world – or to be loyal to Jesus, to stick with
him and his vision of justice and peace?
So where does all this leave us? Our choices probably aren’t as stark,
but if we want to follow Jesus there are choices for us to make too,
choices about who we are, and where our loyalties lie. As I’ve said,
our society is different to theirs, but perhaps it’s not that
different. We value individualism but we still let ourselves be shaped
by others too – our social circles, our family or friends, the media.
Sometimes the “self” that we become under their influence isn’t the
“self” God calls us to be.
And though shame isn’t as powerful in our society, it still matters to
us what others think. We’ll compromise our principles so our friends
will like us. We’ll spend our money, time and effort to impress
others we want to keep in with. We’ll avoid people we don’t want to be
seen with so others won’t think we are like them.
Look carefully, think carefully, says Jesus, before you make your
choices. God is not always to be found sitting on the throne of public
acclaim and popularity. Choosing his path may mean changing the way we
look at the world, at other people, even at ourselves. Now, as in the
time of Jesus, God may be at work in those places we would rather not
go – outside us and inside us too in the broken places of our own
lives. God may be at work in those people we don’t want to be
identified with - for whatever reason – in whatever seems shameful to
us. If we can’t go to those places and be with those people, he tells
us, we may find we have missed him, and missed the blessing he brings
us.
Amen
March 1 09
Evensong Lent 1
Sermon by Kevin Bright
Genesis 2.15-17; 3.1-7 & Romans
5.12-19
I am
convinced that the vast majority of people want to be good; whatever
they understand that to mean. Possibly even more importantly they want
other people to think of them as good people, honest, trustworthy and
reliable. But the reality is that we all fall short of where we want to
be and often feel bad about it, sometimes hating ourselves for falling
short of our aspirations.
The story we heard in the Garden of Eden is more complicated than
simply whether we are good or not, our story is more than a story about
disobedience and sin. It is a story about relationships and the
fact that consequences always follow the breakdown of trust in what has
been a beautiful relationship.
In relationship there is responsibility, in our case we are to care for
and keep the world in which God has placed us.
We hear how man is given permission to eat freely of any tree in the
garden. This tells us that humanity is given freedom to live in God’s
world, to carry on the activities necessary to maintain life. But this
freedom is not absolute. There is a limit of just one tree from which
man may not eat.
The story is clear what the consequences of disobedience will be if we
fail to leave that one tree alone: they will be immediate ("when you
eat of it") and final ("you will surely die"). At this point in the
story there is no alternative to God’s justice which will be enforced
if man crosses the boundary God has set.
It is the task of humanity to recognize those boundaries and live
within them.
The relationship has boundaries defined for human existence in God’s
world. It seems to me that the more we feel we must know everything, do
everything and control everything the less we rely on God and the more
out of balance our world becomes. Increased fires, floods and
hurricanes may all be consequences of the global warming caused by our
desire to take control
Here we start to recognise ourselves in the story. It is rapidly
becoming our story, for we human beings, even today, do not like limits
and boundaries. Maybe the fact that we tend to focus on the one
prohibition, the one forbidden tree, reveals something important about
us. We too frequently see God as One who prohibits. But He is also the
God who permits. Why do we not ask about all the other trees that are
permitted? Why does the prohibition bother us so much?
What is it that we see as the one forbidden tree today? Is there
something we obsess about, that we know oversteps the boundaries of a
healthy relationship with God? Sex and drugs and rock ‘n’ roll seem
obvious. Selfishness, lack of compassion and greed are likely to
manifest themselves as the ‘forbidden tree’ which beckons us in far
more personal and complex ways.
As we heard of events in the Garden of Eden we are reminded that God
has left us free to choose for ourselves. The example of picking
forbidden fruit highlights the consequences of bad choices made for
short term pleasure. We are all tempted to make these selfish choices,
often without thinking through the impact they can have.
It’s a mind blowing dilemma; we are people who know what God wants from
us. We are not the people who should have trouble trusting in God yet
it is many of these negative things which we allow to take up so much
time and energy without seeing all the ‘trees we can eat from’, the
positives which massively outweigh the negatives. It’s so easy to feel
angry and hard done by at present when we see the mess we are in and
the RBS pensions debacle being played out in the media just seems to
rub our noses in it all the more.
Yet as Christians it is essential that we have the faith and discipline
to think deeper than the news headlines and tabloid stories.
A sign seen outside a Methodist church was trying to get this message
across, it read ‘Don’t let worries kill you. Let the church help’.
Crazy as a £700,000 per year pension is for anyone, do any of us
stop to think that when the bandwagon was rolling along nicely we spoke
out less about disproportionate rewards. Could it be that the shambles
we see before us is just one consequence of the world’s damaged
relationship with God? Those natural balances in functions of needs and
suppliers have got out of kilter.
Can we see ourselves anywhere in the story which is unfolding in front
of our eyes or is someone else always to blame?
Can we see a way forward which is positive and relationship restoring?
I think the answer is ‘Yes’ on two levels.
One involves recognizing that Jesus Christ repaired the relationship
with God damaged by Adam; the other requires us to keep working for a
world which edges closer to something God might recognise as his
kingdom.
.The theologian Tom Smail makes sense to me when he said’ when we are
most aware of the…power of sin in ourselves and our world the
possibility (of refusing God’s love) seems all too real, but when we
look away from ourselves to the love that has faced and overcome all
evil and goes on giving evidence of its presence and power in ourselves
and in the world, then hope prevails.
We know where the way forward came from after the relationship
breakdown in the Garden of Eden but there is also an important part for
us to play in finding a way forward for our world with its broken
morals and ethics of which just one consequence is a broken financial
system.
Lent is a good time to remind ourselves that we need to overcome the
temptation to leave the broken things broken because they might not
impact on us today. But doing nothing is not an option.
Christ showed us the way by holding to the truth no matter what the
consequences. Christ is sometimes referred to as the ‘second Adam’,
highlighting the fact that he came to fulfill what Adam was unable to.
When we use the word obedience nowadays it commonly implies that an
inferior party is involved or that an oppressive situation exists.
Whilst as an innocent victim Jesus is in solidarity with those who
suffer forced obedience through evil regimes this is not what motivates
him.
In more positive terms the word can imply trust, self control, courage
and hope and it is this line of thinking which helps us get closer to
the obedience of Jesus.
This evening’s readings could be summed up as a tale of two gardens.
In the Garden of Eden Adam chose disobedience, he chose to sin, and
destroyed what had been a beautiful relationship with God. This brought
consequences for the whole human race.
In the garden of Gethsemane Christ chose obedience to submit to the
Father’s will and ‘die’ to pay for the sin of mankind symbolized by
Adam.
The power of Christ’s obedience to overcome the consequences of
disobedience is demonstrated by the fact that his death and
resurrection established a reign of life, not death, of grace, not just
deserts.
The relationship between God and man has been restored through Christ.
It’s now for us to live as people secure in our relationship with God,
and in doing so make it a reality for many others.
Amen
March 1 09 Lent 1
Traditionally
on this first Sunday of Lent, we always hear the story of Jesus’
temptation in the wilderness. It’s a familiar story, but if I asked you
to tell me it, I suspect that it isn’t the version we’ve just heard
that you would recall. It is the version in Matthew and Luke’s Gospel
that sticks in most people’s minds. They both have that famous
conversation between Satan and Jesus as the devil tries to tempt him
away from his mission. “Turn these stones into bread”, “Throw yourself
from the Temple to test if God will help you”, “Bow down and worship
me” he says, but Jesus is having none of it, and eventually Satan
realises he has no power over this man.
The story we’ve just heard from Mark’s Gospel doesn’t include any of
that. It seems sparse by comparison. What goes on in the desert is only
hinted at. But I don’t think Mark’s version is any less powerful,
though. What we see instead in Mark – something we might miss in the
other versions – is how this episode in the wilderness fits in with the
rest of the story. Matthew and Luke give us a rather stylised static
encounter between Jesus and Satan – you could imagine it taking place
on a stage - but Mark’s account of the beginning of Jesus’ ministry is
full of movement, more like an action film. There’s no time for detail,
no time to stop and talk. The story rushes us along.
Jesus comes down from Galilee to the Jordan, right down into the Jordan
for his baptism. He comes bursting up out of the water as the Spirit
comes down on him from Heaven. The Spirit doesn’t bring tranquillity
though; instead it drives Jesus straight out into the desert, and there
is no peace for Jesus there. To ancient peoples the wilderness wasn’t a
place to retreat to – it was the place where demons lived, a place of
chaos and danger, a place where Jesus will be in the midst of a battle.
The wild beasts prowl around him. The angels circle him protectively as
he struggles. And when the battle is over, there is still no time for
Jesus to rest on his laurels or regain his strength. He is propelled
out of the desert and straight back to Galilee. His message spills out
of his mouth as he arrives, as if he can’t contain it. “The time is
fulfilled; the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the
good news.”
And if we read on in the Gospel, we’d find that that was just the
beginning of a breathless sequence of events as Jesus explodes onto the
scene in Galilee, healing the sick, calling his disciples to him.
As I said, the story is full of movement and action. Mark’s story
leaves us in no doubt. Something momentous is happening here, something
to do with the kingdom and the good news. It’s not explained or
explored, but instantly we know it matters.
It’s like that moment in C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch and the
Wardrobe” when the Beaver makes a mysterious announcement to the
children. “Aslan is on the move” he says,” – perhaps he has already
landed.” The narrator goes on. “None of the children knew who Aslan was
any more than you do; but the moment the Beaver had spoken, everything
felt different… Edmund felt a sensation of mysterious horror. Peter
felt suddenly brave and adventurous. Susan felt as if some delicious
smell or some delightful strain of music had just floated by her. And
Lucy got the feeling you have when you wake up in the morning and
realise that it is the beginning of the holidays or the beginning of
summer.” (Ch 7)
In Mark’s Gospel, the news that Jesus is on the move, bringing with him
God’s kingdom is electrifying. Instantly crowds start coming to him,
looking for and finding the healing that they assume will signal the
arrival of the Messiah. But Jesus’ announcement of the kingdom and the
good news is about far more than just individual healing from disease,
and that is something that many of those who crowd around him never
seem to grasp. Physical healing – however welcome - simply allows them
to go back to the life they had before. What Jesus is really announcing
is a whole new life, a whole new world, a whole new way of thinking and
seeing, something he calls the kingdom of God.
At the heart of that kingdom isn’t a set of policies, a big idea or
two, some rules and regulations. At the heart of that kingdom, at the
centre of his message is a relationship, a relationship with God.
That’s what really matters, he says. Understand that relationship
right, catch a hold of it and treasure it and all the rest will follow.
We can tell that this is what matters most to him from the words he
hears from heaven as he comes up out of the water of the Jordan, the
words that launch his ministry. “You are my Son, the Beloved;
with you I am well pleased.” It’s not a policy statement; it’s a
declaration of his relationship with his Father. It’s the same voice we
heard last week at the Transfiguration, addressed to the disciples
“This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him” says God. And at the end
of the Gospel, we hear it echoed by the voice of the centurion who
crucifies Jesus. “Surely, he says, “this man was the Son of God.”
Exactly what Mark meant when he called Jesus the “Son of God” is
something we’ll never know. He probably didn’t interpret it in quite
the same way as later Christians did, once theologians with backgrounds
in Greek philosophy got hold of it. It may have had much less to do
with biological sonship than we think, and much more to do with family
likeness, but however Mark understood it, the message is clear –
somehow Jesus embodies God in a way that is plain for all to see. When
you look at him you can’t mistake who his Father is – when you have
seen me, as he says to his disciples elsewhere, you have seen the
Father.
But this is not an exclusive relationship – and that’s the really good
news. It is not just Jesus who is part of this family of God. God’s
commitment – the commitment of a father to his children – isn’t just to
Jesus; it is to all of us. That was nothing new to the people of his
time; it was just that they, like us, often forgot it, and failed to
live in its light. They knew very well that they were people of the
covenant, people who lived in a covenant relationship with God. It’s
there in our Old Testament reading today, the end of the story of Noah.
After the devastation of the flood, God makes them a promise. “I am
establishing a covenant with you…” he says. No matter what happens, he
will not abandon them. A covenant, in Biblical terms, is an
unconditional promise of unconditional love. No ifs and buts, no
exclusion clauses. It is the promise that any loving parent makes to
their children – I’ll always be there for you, even if you aren’t there
for me, even if you let me down. You can’t undo parenthood – once you
have children, they are always yours.
I’m sure we’ll all have been moved by the news of the death of David
and Samantha Cameron’s son this week. It’s not just his death that is
moving though, but also the story of the relationship they had with
him. They were people, say those that knew them, who had been in many
ways lucky in their lives, protected to a large extent from struggle
and hardship until Ivan was born. Then, suddenly they had to deal with
the fact that their child was not going to be the healthy, perfect
child they hoped for and perhaps assumed they would have. But they
discovered that Ivan’s disabilities didn’t alter the love they had for
him at all. However he was, whatever he was capable of, or not capable
of, he was their son, and they loved him. And they aren’t at all
unusual in that. I have met many parents of severely disabled children
with life-limiting illnesses, and nearly all have made that same
discovery. They can’t imagine why anyone would suggest that their child
is less precious or important than one who is able bodied.
It is this kind of relationship, this kind of love, a love that
transcends the frailties of humanity – physical, mental, or moral –
that Jesus comes to declare. At his baptism, he hears the truth of his
relationship with his Father “This is my Son, the Beloved”. In the same
way, he comes to us to declare the truth about us and God. We too are
his beloved children, all of us. God has declared it to be so, has
committed himself to us, and that commitment has not and cannot be
destroyed, and he will find a way of continuing to declare that love to
us, however much we try to reject it. Jesus’ death on the cross, above
all is a declaration of that limitless commitment to us.
Christian faith is not, first and foremost, about rules or doctrines,
though we often seem to behave as if it is. It is about this
relationship with God. It is about learning to trust its strength and
indestructibility as we come to God to ask for healing and forgiveness.
It’s about learning to live in its light as we let it shape our lives
and our attitudes to those around us, who are as much beloved of God as
we are. We’re in the middle of Fairtrade Fortnight at the moment, to
take a timely example. If we really believed that those who supply the
goods we buy were God’s beloved children, just as we are, how could we
allow them to suffer from unjust trading practices?
Aslan is on the move, said the Beaver to the children in Narnia. Jesus
is on the move, Mark’s Gospel says to us. Something is stirring that
can make all things new if we will let it. This Lent, as we share in
Jesus’ forty days of reflection and struggle, let’s ask ourselves what
it might mean for us really, deeply to hear those words that Jesus
heard, “You are my beloved son, my beloved daughter; with you I am
well-pleased.” Let’s ask ourselves what it might mean really, deeply to
believe those words and to live by them.
Amen
February 22
09 Last Sunday before
Lent
Today’s Gospel story is one of those illustrated by our stained glass
windows. The story of the Transfiguration is there at the back – a
typical Victorian stained glass portrayal. The three disciples – Peter,
James and John – fall back in amazement at the sight of Jesus, who has
been, as the story tells us, transfigured before them, his robes
suddenly glowing with dazzling brightness. And beside him are Moses and
Elijah, two of the greatest figures from the Old Testament who people
believed would return to herald the Messiah.
I’ve printed another image of the same story on your pew leaflets, so
you don’t have to get a crick in your neck turning round to the window.
Frankly, one depiction of the Transfiguration is much the same as
another. Every version I’ve ever seen follows the same conventions. The
three shining figures are always at the top, higher up the mountain
than the disciples, or even in the air above it, though the story
doesn’t say that this was how it was at all. The three confused
disciples are always at the bottom of the picture, often thrown down on
the ground. You could draw a line between the two groups, as if they
represented the worlds of heaven and earth, of glory and bewilderment.
But my suspicion is that these traditional images can obscure as much
as they reveal about this story. In reality it is a far more ambiguous
and subtle tale than they suggest.
The Transfiguration is a strange story to our 21st Century ears, of
course. “These sorts of things don’t happen,” we protest, “they can’t
happen. It’s against the laws of nature.” But those who first heard
this story wouldn’t have been thinking that at all. Of course, they
didn’t expect that people would suddenly shine with light or that long
dead heroes would appear at the drop of a hat any more than we would,
but they wouldn’t have thought such a thing was impossible if that was
what God wanted to happen. They weren’t bothered about the laws of
nature; it was the will of God which governed the world as far as they
were concerned. So, “Did it happen?” is our question, not theirs, and
we’ll never find the answer to it. The question that is worth asking
though, is what this story might have meant to those who first told and
heard it, and what it might mean to us today.
To answer that, we have to understand a bit more about the characters
involved. Let’s take Moses and Elijah first. Both of them are
inspirational leaders of their people at times of great need. Moses
confronts Pharaoh, and persuades him to let the Hebrew slaves go. Then
he leads them across a vast and barren wilderness to a land that
neither he nor they have ever seen. Elijah confronts the powers of his
own day – King Ahab and Queen Jezebel - speaking truths they don’t want
to hear about the injustices of their rule. He stands up for the God of
Israel, in the face of their hatred, challenging the prophets of
Jezebel’s God to a contest on Mount Carmel. No wonder the Jewish people
looked up to Moses and Elijah as heroes. Of course they did.
But Moses and Elijah were far from one-dimensional. They weren’t just
heroes. They were also human beings, fallible human beings, and the
stories told of them don’t downplay that side of their character at
all. Moses spent much of his early adult life on the run having
murdered an Egyptian in a brawl. When God called to him from the
burning bush, he fought tooth and nail against the task God asked him
to do. “Go to the Egyptian Pharaoh!? Tell him to let the Hebrews go!?
No one will listen to me!” says Moses. He made it out of Egypt and
across the wilderness in the end, with a great deal of help from God,
but he’s not exactly heroic material at the outset, and this isn’t a
job he ever wanted.
Elijah too has his struggles and doubts. That famous contest on Mount
Carmel ends in victory for his God, who sends down fire from heaven to
consume the sacrifice Elijah has made there. But in the wake of that
triumph, Elijah has all the prophets of Jezebel’s god killed. That
wasn’t something God had told him to do; it was a bit of private
enterprise on Elijah’s part. Unsurprisingly Jezebel doesn’t like it.
She decides to have him killed in revenge. All that courage he knew on
the mountaintop disappears and he runs for his life, out into the
desert. It is there, as he sits in a cave contemplating the ruins of
his ministry, that he meets with God, not in something dramatic – an
earthquake, wind or fire – but in a still small voice, the voice he
should have been listening to in the first place. Elijah’s most
profound encounter with God doesn’t come when he is triumphant, but
when he is defeated and feeling utterly alone.
Moses and Elijah aren’t plaster saints; they are real people who get
things wrong and sometimes take the wrong path completely. Their lives
and their ministries are marked by pain, fear, struggle and loss.
Forget the shining figures of the stained glass – I don’t think that’s
how their lives seemed to them at the time, despite the tremendous
things they achieved.
Of course, the middle figure of the three – Jesus – now surely, we say,
he is as wonderful as he is painted, worthy of being on a pedestal, a
true hero. But we are looking at him with 2000 years of hindsight, 2000
years of theology, 2000 years of images of Christ the King, Christ in
Glory, Christ on the throne of heaven. It doesn’t seem at all strange
to us that he would shine with glory. What we need to remember, though,
is that to his first disciples – Peter, James and John – however much
they respected him, he was basically still a carpenter from Nazareth, a
man with a background very similar to their own. He’d acquired a
following because of his teaching and healing, but they saw him as an
ordinary human being. And he’s an ordinary human being whose ministry
is setting him on a collision course with the authorities as well,
which will lead to what looks to them like total failure. Peter had
acclaimed him as Messiah just a chapter earlier, but the disciples
increasingly doubt this as he heads for his death. In their minds,
suffering and death aren’t in the script if he really is the Messiah.
It’s very significant, then, that this story comes just at this point
when the disciples realise that Jesus is deliberately turning away from
the successes of his ministry, the adulation of the crowds, and setting
his face towards Jerusalem and that ignominious death on the cross. It
is significant because to their eyes he is turning away from the kind
of glory they expect from the Messiah, and yet, here he is transfigured
and blessed by God’s voice. “What kind of saviour is this?” the story
seems to ask. Not the saviour they were expecting, clearly.
Even the Resurrection, wonderful though it was, doesn’t fit the gung-ho
stereotype of a heroic happy ending. Jesus doesn’t come back with an
army to take revenge and smash his enemies into the ground. He returns
with a body that still bears the wounds of the nails in his hands and
feet. And he doesn’t appear to those who have killed him, to rub their
noses in his triumph, but to those who already follow him, to inspire
them to continue his mission – something that would lead many of them
to their own deaths. If you want a religion that promises victory
parades and popular approval then Christianity is not the one for you.
What about the other three characters in the story – Peter, James and
John? If Elijah, Moses and Jesus are portrayed in the traditional
images as the heroes, these three are portrayed as the fools, the ones
who fail, who don’t understand. They often seem as thick as two short
planks – like Peter here, rushing in to try to help and breaking the
moment with his mundane offer to build shelters. And yet they go on to
be the rocks on which the church is founded, entrusted by Jesus with
the task of taking his message out into the world. Neither the heroes
nor the fools of this story are entirely what they seem at first sight.
What we have here, then, is a story about the way in which God took
unlikely people - people who were human, frail, vulnerable - and used
them for tasks they could never have imagined. Whether the world
decided to call them heroes or fools, whether they saw themselves as
heroes or fools, God’s glory was seen in them, in lives that were
battered and scarred, in people who got it wrong as often as they got
it right, people who even suffered what seemed like total and
humiliating failure in the sight of others, as Jesus did on the cross.
And that really is good news. Because it means that if I open my eyes,
I might find that God is still shining through lives like that, in
situations like that. I might find God even in my own life, and in
yours, in the things that go wrong as much as in the things that go
right. This story is not about something extraordinary that happens to
people who are extraordinary, but an affirmation that here, now, in
you, in me, God can be at work, no matter how grim or how dark things
look. Like these disciples, we may only catch a glimpse of that glory
now and then, in a moment of unexpected peace, an act of unexpected
kindness, a flash of courage that inspires us to set out on a road we
never expected to take, but a moment is often enough. Did the
Transfiguration happen? Did Jesus’ robes glow? Did Moses and Elijah
appear? Who can tell? What really matters though, is not “did it happen
then?” but is it happening now? Or rather, where is it happening
now? Is my life being transfigured, changed so that it shines
with God’s light? Are my eyes open to see that light in others?
The Transfiguration. It’s not a story about long-dead heroes, or
long-dead fools, but a story about me and about you, in our heroism and
our folly, and about God who can still touch us with his glory as he
gets to work in our mixed up lives.
Amen
8 February 2009
Third Sunday before Lent
Mark
1.29-39,1Corinthians 9.16-23 & Isaiah 40.21-31
The
journey to work has been a little slower than usual this week and most
days I’ve found myself still sitting in the car when ‘thought for the
day’ comes on the radio. Except Monday when there was no journey to
work due to the heavy snow fall.
I heard a speaker saying that the snow had done something that
religions had collectively failed to do, it had made most people just
stop for the day, plans for shopping trips, lessons and important
meetings had to be abandoned. Many shops and schools closed buses and
trains stopped.
No respecter or rank or importance, the snow is a great leveller; it
settles on teachers and pupils without discrimination. It mocks the
self-important and trips up the well sorted, it forces people to notice
things around them - like other people; and it maybe gets some to
consider something bigger than themselves. The author of the book of
Job once wrote: 'God's voice thunders in marvellous ways. He says to
the snow: Fall on the earth. He stops every man from his labour so that
all men may know his work.'
Just for a day we are forced to recognise that we are not in control.
Most accepted their fate cheerfully reaching for toboggans, building
snowmen and throwing snowballs. Some even thought of those for whom the
snow would be difficult and dangerous offering to help where they
normally pass by.
The following day brought blue skies and shone a bright light on this
winter wonderland which made artificial creations by the same name look
quite pathetic. For those of us with eyes to see God’s creation has
been magnified this week.
Isaiah tells us that the whole world shouts out the presence of God.
The puny people who run around full of their self importance have only
to see the vastness of all there is to realise our mistake.
We all need to be forced to stop and look around us sometimes; doing so
increases our chances of recognizing God at work. We need eyes to see
beyond the predictable icey recriminations about health and safety,
shut schools and the cost of it all. If the weather forecasters are
right there may be further opportunities for reflection before spring
finally establishes itself.
These words of Isaiah adorn many posters of majestic eagles soaring
with a sense of place in creation. Unlike weather forecasters one of
the remarkable capabilities of eagles is to sense when a storm is
coming, they soar to a high point in the sky, and then when the storm
winds come, they use the storm's wind to soar even higher, over the top
of the storm itself. It’s a powerful metaphor for coping with loss,
distress, and conflict in our lives. As the storm grows fiercer cling
harder to God, recognise that in the suffering and sadness we see the
opposite to God and his enduring love for each one of us.
In Paul’s letter to the Corinthians we heard him describe his
proclamation of the gospel as an obligation. He is not free to dictate
the terms under which he proclaims God’s message. He cannot insist that
people accept it in only one particular sort of package. It kind of
sums up why being a Christian can lead to a lot of headaches sometimes.
Should we stand up and evangelise with well intended words? Should we
keep our faith quiet and concentrate on living it out rather than
shouting about it? Should we wait patiently for the chance to speak
with others when the time seems right and they are open to discussion?
I don’t know the answer to this but feel certain that sensitivity and
compassion must be involved somewhere in the process.
It may help us to think of the things Jesus taught us that go together.
Words and actions, words are often the easy part. Soul and body, God is
interested in our wellbeing on both counts. Earth and heaven, we need
to care about both.
‘All things to all men’ is a phrase we are familiar with though the
translation we heard today is the more politically correct ‘all things
to all people’. Its use is generally negative, implying weakness and
undue compromise for an easy life. However Paul is more likely to be
highlighting the fact that his purpose in life is to preach the gospel,
he is freely available to all, at the disposal of God and therefore the
disposal of all he comes into contact with.
It’s difficult when people get ‘the wrong end of the stick isn’t it.’
Messages can easily be misunderstood or even mischievously misconstrued
as others fit your words to their agenda. Perhaps this is what happens
after Jesus heals Simon’s mother-in-law and others. Crowds gather to
see the new superstar, but he hasn’t come to seek celebrity and makes
clear that his purpose is to proclaim God’s message. That’s why he
slips away quietly seeking a peaceful opportunity to refocus.
A certain nurse was in the news this week because she offered to pray
for an elderly lady she was caring for. She explained that her well
intended actions arose because she finds it impossible to divorce her
faith from who she is and particularly from her work in caring for
others. She may tread more carefully in the future but it sounds that
she, like Paul is at the disposal of God and therefore the disposal of
all she comes into contact with.
After reinstating this nurse, named Ms Petrie, North Somerset HNS Trust
said it did value spiritual support, which is why there were chaplains
and multi-faith prayer rooms in NHS buildings. "For some people of
faith, prayer is seen as an integral part of health care and the
healing process. ‘’
‘Crikey’ I thought has Somerset NHS trust been looking at the gospel
reading for this week! It’s encouraging to recognise that healing and
well being go beyond what is purely physical.
A Jesus who enacts God’s reign among the broken and marginal people of
his time offers huge challenges to us. Not only to follow his example,
but also not to lose faith in the process.
I definitely don’t have any insight or personal experience of
miraculous delivery from illness or injury but I can see ways in which
we as lowly foot soldiers of Christ can bring healing in so many
practical ways.
A Jesus who acts with compassionate words and touch is critical for our
communities today. Often, people diagnosed with horrible illnesses,
experience a sense of isolation; friends and even family react with
fear and caution. The same can be true for the bereaved and unemployed.
I heard a recently unemployed man saying that friends no longer call to
ask him to go out for a drink because they know he is conserving his
cash. The trouble is they no longer call for anything else and he is
feeling increasingly isolated and outcast from mainstream society.
In these circumstances those who do offer him hope and encouragement,
empathy and compassion are truly bringing much needed healing,
reinforcing the fact that this human being is no less valuable whilst
he is unable to secure work.
Jesus' healing was grounded in vulnerability. He held himself
open to whatever and whomever the day presented, even the terror of
execution at the hands of an occupying government. His service
was one of constant lifting up, in the face of forces that would tear
down.
He restores Simon’s mother-in-law to her family and like an unemployed
person back in work she keenly resumes her role as provider of
hospitality to her guests.
As Simon and his companions said to Jesus when they found him at
prayer, "everyone is searching for you."
Today many are still searching for hope and it’s our actions in
proclaiming God’s message that can make it real for them, in doing so
we proclaim our God and fulfil our very purpose.
Candlemas 09
Malachi 3.1-5, Luke 2.22-40
Mary and Joseph come to the Temple, bringing Jesus with them. He is
about six weeks old in the story we heard in the Gospel reading. The
Jewish law required parents to make a sacrifice 40 days after the birth
of their firstborn son. If you had asked a theologian at the time to
explain why they would have told you that, according to the book of
Numbers God had decreed that all firstborn males – human and
animal – actually belonged to God, and that a sacrifice was necessary
to, as it were, buy them back for their families to bring up. Whether
Mary and Joseph understood this in the same way as the theologians, I
don’t know. Theology is one thing: real life is another as I often find
when families ask me to baptise their babies. They often have a very
hazy idea of what the church officially teaches about baptism. What
they want is a ceremony to give thanks for their child, to welcome him
or her onto the public stage of the world as a new, unique individual –
and why not? That seems like a very valid and necessary thing to do.
The official agenda may not always be the most important or relevant
agenda.
That’s certainly the case when Mary and Joseph come to the Temple. The
official business of the day – the sacrifice – isn’t really mentioned
at all, except to explain why they happen to be in the Temple at that
point. The priest who takes their offering is invisible and unheard. In
his own eyes he may have been the lynch pin of the whole enterprise,
but he is irrelevant to the story. It doesn’t seem as if he noticed
anything special about this family. I have some sympathy for him.
He’s probably busy - too busy really to look at the people before him.
When your mind is focussed on doing your job, getting all the words and
actions right, it is easy to find that you haven’t really seen what’s
under your nose.
It is only Simeon and Anna, an old man and woman with no special status
or position who actually realise what is going on. They have been
longing for the moment when God begins to act to set right what they
are so painfully aware is wrong in their world, and they are overjoyed,
elated, when they realise that today is the day and this child is the
one God will use. The story doesn’t give us any clue about what it is
they see in Jesus. Perhaps there is nothing to see on the surface.
Perhaps it is just an inner prompting that propels them towards him;
but it is an inner prompting that has been fine-tuned by many years of
prayer. Somehow, because of this, their spiritual eyes are open and
they see what no one else does, the dawning of a new age in this child.
God has come, salvation has come, deliverance has come – and they
rejoice that they are there to welcome it.
Candlemas, the feast of the Presentation of Christ – is celebrated 40
days after Christmas in the Church’s calendar. It falls now, obviously,
because this story is set 40 days after Christ’s birth. But there is
another reason why our ancestors decided that now was the moment to
tell this story. Like many other feasts of the Church’s year, it was
actually grafted onto much older pre-Christian feasts. In any society,
human beings seem to need set times of fasting and feasting. Whatever
their religion people have always celebrated things like mid-winter,
mid-summer, harvest, time for seed sowing, or whatever matters most in
their communities. In the ancient Celtic traditions of these islands
before the coming of the Christian faith, there were actually eight
special feasts during the year. Four of them marked the midwinter and
midsummer solstices, and the spring and autumn equinoxes. They cut the
year into four. Halfway between each of those dates, though, there were
four more festivals, cross-quarter days as they became known. Three of
them survive in our modern calendars as May Day, Lammas Day at the
beginning of August, and Halloween, and the fourth falls round about
now at the beginning of February. It was called Imbolc by the Celts –
and it celebrated the first faint signs that winter was weakening its
grip and spring was on the way. It might not feel much like that today,
but go outside and look around and you’ll find that those ancient Celts
were quite right. In my garden, the snowdrops are starting to flower.
The shoots of other spring bulbs are coming through. Buds are beginning
to appear on shrubs and trees. It takes a bit of faith, but if you know
what to look for you can see the signs that winter is coming to an end.
Perhaps you can see, then, why it made sense for the early church to
tell this story of Simeon and Anna at this point in the year. Simeon
and Anna see the first signs of God’s springtime, his coming kingdom,
in Jesus. If you have your eyes open, says the story, you can see the
green shoots that will grow into a whole new world. The priests in the
Temple don’t see them, for whatever reason. The rest of the crowd don’t
see them. And perhaps we wouldn’t have seen them either. But that
doesn’t mean they aren’t there. It is easy to miss God’s presence among
us because, like those priests, like that crowd, we are too busy to
look or just so convinced we know what he will look like that we fail
to recognise him. Surely, he won’t come among us as a squalling infant,
the child of ordinary parents from some backwater town.
Open your eyes, look again, say Simeon and Anna. The prophet Malachi
tells us that “the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his
Temple,” but he may not look as we expect him to.
This is the reason that I chose today to admit our children to Holy
Communion, as I hinted when we prayed for them earlier. In them, we can
see God growing and working – green shoots of new life. Those shoots
may not always be obvious. Like the rest of us, they are work in
progress, plants with a long way to grow, but they are on the way,
growing in the right direction. That’s why it is so important that we
should encourage them, nurture them, feed them with the food we share
in the Eucharist so that they keep on growing.
It’s not just the children in whom we can see those signs of God’s life
today. It is before us in lots of other ways too, if we have eyes to
see it. Simeon talks about Christ bringing light to the Gentiles, not
just to the people of Israel. If you want to find those green shoots of
divine life, he is telling us, the best place to look may not be in
what is familiar, your comfort zones. Getting to know people who are
unlike us in some way is often wonderfully rewarding once we’ve got
past the initial challenges. As we break down barriers of culture,
race, religion, disability, social background or lifestyle we often
find unexpected blessings – God at work.
Anna talks about the Messiah as someone who will redeem Jerusalem - it
was under the heel of Roman rule at the time. She expected the Messiah
to bring freedom from oppression and injustice, just as the prophet
Malachi did. He talks of the Messiah bearing witness against sorcerers
and adulterers, against those who cheat their workers, who fail to care
for widows and orphans. God is at work, says Malachi, where people are
learning to honour their relationships with God and with each other,
keeping faith with those they are committed to, taking responsibility
for those who are vulnerable, trusting God rather than trying to
manipulate the world to our own ends – that’s what people went to
sorcerers for. If you want to find God at work, those green shoots that
announce the spring, it is where these issues are addressed and taken
seriously that you need to look.
If you wonder how you might do this, you were given today the latest
newsletter from the Sevenoaks Churches Together Social Concern Group.
In it you’ll find news of local projects which are meeting the needs of
vulnerable people in our own communities – a child contact centre where
separated parents can spend time with their children, a Befrienders
scheme that gets alongside people who have hit some difficult patch in
their lives and need a bit of support, a new Debt Advice Centre where
trained advisers can help people in financial problems. We support some
of these schemes through our Away Giving, but they need more than money
– they need people too. I know that there are some here who have got
involved, and I am prepared to bet that in doing so they have found
themselves not just helping fellow human beings, but also being
challenged, growing personally, meeting with God in those they have
helped. Right here in Seal there are needs too. I am pretty sure that
Nicky Harvey still needs helpers and leaders for Beavers and Cubs.
Perhaps that doesn’t sound very dramatic. Will you really discover the
Messiah there? The story of Simeon and Anna should warn us not to rule
it out. “The Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his Temple”.
Sometimes, especially on a cold day like to day, it is hard to believe
that the spring will ever come. Sometimes when we look around the
world, all we can see is trouble, sorrow and need. It can all feel
hopeless, wintry, God-forsaken. But it isn’t. God is among us. There is
no place that is forsaken by God. The signs of his life are there, just
as the signs of spring can be seen too, if we open our eyes and look.
May we have the courage to go to the places where God is at work today,
eyes to see him and hands to work with him so that his new life can
grow to maturity among us.
Amen
Conversion of Paul
25 Jan 09
Act
9.1-22, Matt 19.27-30
Today we heard the
dramatic story of Paul’s encounter with the risen Christ on the road to
Damascus. Officially, today is called the feast of “The Conversion of
Paul” but personally, I have some difficulty with that
title. It’s that word “conversion” which bothers me. You
won’t find it in the story, and I think it is a misleading word to
use.
The problem is that the word conversion tends to bring to mind
something being transformed from something into something completely
different - a change between two mutually exclusive states. You
can have a loft conversion in your home, for example, to give you an
extra bedroom or study – but if you do that, you will have lost the
storage space for all that junk you used to keep there. You can either
have a loft or a living space. You can’t have it both ways.
I recall a story from Michael Palin’s TV programme about his travels
around Eastern Europe last year. He took a train from Hungary to
Ukraine, but when he got to the border he discovered that the whole
carriage had to be hoisted into the air because the undercarriage (or
whatever it is called on a train) had to be changed completely. The
Ukrainian train line had been built to a different gauge because the
Soviet rulers of the time wanted to deter potential invaders – enemy
trains wouldn’t fit Ukrainian lines. The trouble was that friendly
trains don’t fit them either. So every train that crosses the border
has to go through this extraordinary rigmarole. It has to be converted
from one gauge to another, with a complete change of wheels.
Talking about the conversion of Paul can create the same sort of all or
nothing picture, as if this experience on the road to Damascus is the
point when the wheels come off his Jewish faith, to be replaced by a
complete new set of Christian wheels so he can run on a Christian train
track.
Telling the story that way makes it into a triumphalist tale of one
faith defeating another. “See what a big fish Christianity has
caught!” it seems to say, “one of Judaism’s prominent and
respected teachers changing sides. Doesn’t that just prove that
Christians are entirely right and Jews are entirely wrong?” It’s
a bit like when an MP defects from one party to another – the party
that has won the convert can never resist the temptation to parade
their new member about, rubbing the other party’s nose in it, as proof
of their own superiority. To our shame, this is often how the story of
Paul has been told, fuelling the anti-Semitism that has repeatedly
infected the Church over the centuries.
People have even suggested that Paul changed his name from the Hebrew
Saul to the Roman Paul as a sign of his rejection of Judaism – he tends
to be called Paul in later writings when he is working in non-Jewish
settings. The truth is, though, it was common for people in the
multicultural societies of the ancient Mediterranean to have and to use
different names in different contexts, just as immigrants often do
today. Paul never stops being Saul as well, a devout and enthusiastic
Jew. Whatever happens on the Damascus road, it isn’t his conversion
from Judaism to Christianity.
Actually there was no such thing as “Christianity” at this point
anyway. The message which Jesus and his disciples preached was simply a
development within Judaism– one among many. It was a time of great
religious and political upheaval. There were many different Jewish
groups around, all with their own ideas of how their faith needed to
change and develop. Zealots, Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes,
followers of different Jewish teachers and preachers like Jesus. Their
messages varied, but they were all Jewish. Jesus’ message was
that he believed God’s covenant was not just with the Jewish
people, but with all people – Gentiles and other outsiders were welcome
on equal terms. If you were already Jewish you didn’t stop being Jewish
when you decided to follow Jesus. So the conflicts we read of in
the New Testament are squabbles within a family, not between different
families. Sadly, that didn’t make them any less fierce; family
squabbles can be the bitterest of all. But knowing that does make a
huge difference to the way we read the New Testament. Jesus doesn’t
reject the faith of his ancestors and nor does Paul. It was only much
later that the Christian church drifted away from its Jewish roots.
Of course, Paul changes after this experience, but he doesn’t convert
from one faith to another. It is his understanding of that faith that
is different – the way he sees it that changes.
Seeing, and not seeing is a theme that runs right through this story.
When Paul encounters Jesus on the Damascus road, he is left blinded.
That blindness isn’t just physical, its emotional too. It’s the
blindness of confusion. Paul had always thought he knew who the good
guys were, which way was up, how he should live to be right with God.
He was a Pharisee – the name Pharisee probably comes from the word that
means “to separate”. Separating the clean from the unclean, the good
from the bad was at the heart of what the Pharisees were about, what
they thought mattered.
Paul had been clear in his own mind that Jesus of Nazareth had got it
wrong, and that those who followed him were getting it wrong too – they
were leading Judaism down a blind alley and they had to be stopped.
Jesus’ death on the cross, like a common criminal, was proof to him
that God had condemned and rejected him and his message – otherwise why
would he let him die in this shameful way? For the sake of the faith
this dangerous new movement, and those who proclaimed it, had to be
stopped. But on the road to Damascus, a flash of light knocks him to
the ground and he hears a voice, the voice, it turns out of Jesus, the
man he has been opposing. We don’t know exactly what happened, what
Paul saw and heard, but it convinces him that far from condemning Jesus
God has blessed him. It makes no sense to Paul. It leaves him in the
dark.
He is led into Damascus, and there he sits, still blind, in a state of
complete bewilderment for three days until Ananias is sent by God to
heal him. His blindness clears away, but the way he now sees his world
has changed. It’s the same God, the same faith, the same scriptures,
but a new understanding of them. And oddly, in this strange story, full
of supernatural phenomena, the real healing comes simply by Ananias
turning up.
Let’s put ourselves into Ananias’ shoes for a minute. He’s a disciple,
one of those followers of Jesus in Damascus who Paul has come to root
out. Like Paul, he hears God’s voice. “Here I am, Lord,” says Ananias.
“There’s this man called Saul” says God, “he’s from Tarsus. He’s in
trouble, he’s been blinded, but he’s had a vision– a vision of a man
called Ananias, who will come to him to heal him...” “Hmm,” says
Ananias to God. “Saul…of Tarsus…I’ve heard of someone with that name –
word is that he has caused a heap of trouble for the disciples in
Jerusalem and that he’s on the way to do the same to us…” You can
almost hear Ananias desperately hoping to himself that the Saul of
Tarsus who God is talking about is some other Saul of Tarsus – surely,
it can’t be this terrible man he’s heard about. But God has no such
reassurance for him.
God asks him to go to the house of what is probably the most dangerous
man around, someone who has come here expressly to get rid of people
like him. Not only that, he’s supposed to go to HEAL him!
Would you go? I don’t know if I would. What if it’s a trap? But Ananias
does go. And when he gets there, he greets Paul not as an enemy but as
a brother. “Brother Saul…” are his first words to him. That, I think,
is what really heals Paul, what really changes him. Paul, the good
Pharisee, has concentrated on maintaining the boundaries between clean
and unclean, Jew and non-Jew, good and bad, friend and enemy. But here
is Ananias, a man who should have hated him, who had good cause to hate
him, coming to him instead to heal him. Ananias acts out the message of
Jesus which Paul has been fighting against. He ignores the boundary
that ought to separate them, ignores the very real threat that Paul
poses and sees Paul simply as a human being in need, whom he can help.
That’s why I think it is so important that we don’t tell this story as
a conversion from one faith to another, because the message Ananias
proclaims by his actions isn’t a message of opposing truths slugging it
out, of exclusivity, of separation and taking sides, but a message of
inclusion. Even Paul - Saul of Tarsus - the man who’d struck terror
into the hearts of Jesus’ followers is to be treated with love and
welcome. His identity as a child of God, his need for care, trumps any
differences of ideology or outlook.
This message, learnt from Ananias, forms the backbone of Paul’s later
ministry. His letters are full of it – there is neither Jew nor
Gentiles, slave nor free, male and female. All are one in Jesus. God
has broken down the dividing walls, he says. It’s not about ideas or
ideologies, but about people, individuals with all their differences,
but all to be seen and loved as children of God. The story we’ve heard
today isn’t one of two mutually exclusive faiths, struggling for
supremacy. It’s a story of the breaking down of barriers, of the
widening of vision, of two people – Paul and Ananias – learning to see
one another not as stereotypes but as human beings, able to give love,
needing to receive love. It’s a message which the Christian church
through the ages has repeatedly forgotten or betrayed, seduced instead
by a triumphalist vision of faith out to gain power and influence,
suppressing those who disagree. In a world still riven by sectarian
strife, religious and political conflict, prejudice, suspicion and fear
of those who are different, it’s a message which all of us, Christian
and Jew, believer and atheist needs still to hear, to celebrate and to
live by too.
Amen
January 18
2009 Epiphany 2 Breathing Space
I came across a set
of moving advertisements
recently. They were made for American television but you can find them
on the internet too. They were designed to persuade people to volunteer
and to give.
One of them showed a homeless man, lying on a cold pavement.
“This is Jack Thomas” the voiceover said, “today someone almost brought Jack something to
eat, someone almost drove
him to a shelter and someone else almost
brought him a warm blanket …and Jack Thomas, well, he almost made it through the night.”
Other ads in the series featured young people who had almost had a
community centre built for them, an elderly woman who had almost been
visited, a homeless family who had almost been fed by neighbours, and
so on. Almost giving, almost volunteering, said the adverts, was no
better than doing nothing at all.
The ads work because we’ve all acted like this. We meant to get around
to helping, but at the crucial moment we were too busy, tired, or just
distracted by something or other. But the ads also remind us of how
important an apparently small action can be – picking up the phone to a
friend, filling in the form to volunteer or give, knocking on the door
of the neighbour we haven’t seen for a while. If we don’t act, the
person who needs our help won’t get it, and the fact that we almost did
it will make no difference to them at all.
Tonight’s readings are both, in their ways, about small actions and the
difference they make. The people in these stories do act, they do
respond, but it’s easy to see how they might instead have missed the
vital moment, just as those who almost helped Jack Thomas did.
In the Old Testament reading, the boy Samuel hears a voice in the
night. Once, twice, he goes to Eli, the old priest who looks after him,
but Eli brushes him off. Only at the last minute, on the third attempt
does Eli take him seriously. “It is God calling to you – listen to
him.” It would have been so easy for him to have ignored the third call
too, to write it off as a childish interruption, to have almost paid
attention. Why would God be speaking to a small boy and not to Eli
himself? Who is the priest around here?
And Samuel could have acted differently too. He could have decided not
to pass on the message he was given. After all, it was a painful
message – the message that Eli’s family line was coming to an end.
For both Eli and Samuel there are fragile moments in this story,
moments when God’s message could have easily been missed. The story
turns on small decisions made in the middle of the night by an old man
and a young boy, neither of whom really knows what the consequences of
their actions will be.
For Nathanael and Philip in the Gospel, events could have turned out
very differently too. All it would have taken were very slight changes
in what they decided to do that day. When Philip is called by Jesus to
follow him and begins to believe that he is the long awaited Messiah he
decides to seek out Nathanael and tell him too. Why? We don’t know.
Nathanael sounds as if he is one of life’s natural sceptics – not an
obvious choice for Philip to tell. But Philip decides to go anyway, and
that makes all the difference – what if he had decided not to bother?
Nathanael could have missed the moment too if he hadn’t been able to
get past his prejudice about people from Nazareth – can anything good
come from there? – and had decided not to go with Philip. It all hinges
on a small decision to get up from under that tree. Almost responding
would have been no good. If he had done that he would have missed his
calling.
I am sure that any of us, looking back at our lives, could find times
when the future has been determined by a split second decision to act.
Perhaps we can also recall times when we almost acted too, and as a
result let an opportunity slip by that might have been important for us
and for others as well. We can’t change the past, of course, but the
good news is that God doesn’t give up on us as easily as we give up on
him. His call to us to love, to grow and to serve comes afresh again
and again. In the silence tonight, I’d like to invite you to ask
yourselves whether there are things you are almost doing at the moment,
calls you are almost responding to, people you are almost helping,
paths you are almost setting out on. Almost doing something, as those
American adverts pointed out, in practice is no better than not doing
it at all. God calls us to turn our “almosts” into actions.
Amen
January 11 2008 - Baptism of
Christ Sermon
by Kevin Bright
Mark 1.4-11, Genesis 1.1-5, Acts 19.1-7
Most of us who go to work and school have just completed our first week
back after a Christmas break which seems to get longer every year that
is unless you work in the retail sector, are a police officer or a
priest!
For many it offered a chance to re-charge the batteries or at least
break the cycle of passing the flu and vomiting bug amongst colleagues
and classmates, though some are still suffering.
So one week into it do we still feel ready for the challenges and
opportunities that 2009 may put in front of us?
We often resolve to do better, use the calendar to mark a new start, to
do differently as we enter a New Year. When all the carols had been
sung, scriptures read and sermons preached the thing I remember most
from Christmas 2008, even more than the new tie and miniature whisky is
us being asked to think ‘what difference does Christmas make? ‘
A potential problem with Christmas is that it becomes too familiar as
the years pass by. It can suffer in the same way as the January sales
that start in December and go on for weeks, the urgency to respond can
become lost on us.
So if we have allowed ourselves to drift through Christmas mixing up
sentimentality with spirituality, confusing partying with real
celebration and allowing Christmas greetings to replace the Christmas
message then perhaps it will help to move on to John the Baptist and
the message he has for us.
My mind paints a picture of John as a man who would be confrontational
and uncompromising without needing to say much at all. The way he lives
his life, his clothes and his food don’t suggest someone who has come
to enjoy life’s comforts, the sort of person who could leave us feeling
a bit shallow and self centred. He’s not a politician trying to match
his words to the mood of the day, the message he has to deliver is far
too important for such nonsense.
This man is a breath of fresh air to us now and to the Jewish people of
his day. Many had been looking for a sign from God eager to find the
Messiah who would lead them against the Romans. They didn’t expect it
to look like this, a prophet from the wild telling them to repent, to
change direction, turn around and go the right way, God’s way. There’s
urgency to his message, someone very special would be coming very soon,
as what John had done with water the one who was to come would do with
the Holy Spirit.
We like to think that baptism was something that Christians invented,
but in reality, it is an ancient Jewish practice of ritual immersion.
Ritual immersion was required for all kinds of things, after child
birth, after contact with a dead person, after certain diseases, and so
on. Immersion in a ritual bath, or a mikvah, was required. It still is
and many Jewish brides will to this day go to the mikvah before a
wedding. John the Baptist's used the mikvah--a ritual familiar to his
Jewish contemporaries--as a method of calling for repentance.
What an introduction Mark’s Gospel gives John, if you were reading this
for the very first time you could think this guy is going to be the
main character? So it would be a surprise when the main character turns
out to be that nondescript bloke from among the crowds. There’s
nothing whatsoever to distinguish him from the rest. Next to
John, he’s a nonentity: no fiery words, no audience, no entourage, and
no obvious ‘messiah-costume’.
Almost quietly yet quite suddenly Mark tells us here comes Jesus,
heading for the Jordan, presenting himself to John the baptizer. Jesus,
who has been who knows where for most of something like three decades,
discerning and preparing. He is ready to fling himself into the work
awaiting him. And yet not quite ready just yet. He needs something to
mark the change, a river, a ritual, a recognition.
He is, in a real sense one of the crowd, until the moment he emerges
from the water. ‘You are my Son, the Beloved,’ he hears as he comes up
from the water. This truly is the Messiah, the annointed one, marked
out as God’s son and annointed with the Holy Spirit.
We discover that ‘repent’ means more than ‘be sorry for your
sins’. It means a complete change of life, of values, of
priorities. It means a total re-orientation of life - a
renouncing of the past and the embracing of the Kingdom. This is the
direction John offers but surely it didn’t apply to Jesus.
But in a sense Jesus does ‘repent’. It’s not repenting from sin but for
him it is the baptism into the Kingdom - into his mission. Here,
he publicly renounces his old life, old ties such as family, old job,
old priorities. His mission will require everything of him, and
it begins with the change of direction from his normal daily life. He
has been a carpenter; he is now a preacher, prophet, miracle-worker and
Servant of the Kingdom.
Today’s readings remind us how as Christians we need to be open to
seeing signs from God, open to hearing not only what the powerful with
a platform to speak say but also those who sit outside what many would
regard as the establishment. If we are to be people baptised in the
Holy Spirit we are also people open to hear and understand beyond the
news and opinions pumped out through the media.
John the baptist may have been dismissed as a madman by some in his day
because the version of God’s love he announced didn’t fit the agenda
they had for their lives. We have to ask ourselves how we would receive
such a message.
Jane Williams compares Genesis words telling of the creation of the
world and the bringing forth of light into the darkness with the way
that a mother talks to her newborn baby.
It’s not so much that God is picking us up and doing all that ‘coochy
coo’ talk, the point is that when a mother talks to her unborn or
newborn child even though they don’t actually understand what is said
the talking signifies a loving bond and signs the child as part of a
family and wider community. So God’s act of speech to his newborn world
which we heard of brings it into community with him and marks it, from
the very start, as destined to be part of God’s family.
Reminded and reasurred that God delights in us and has a purpose for
our lives we can look ahead with hope. We have been loved by God since
the very beginning and are reminded again that humanity belongs to God,
we are his beloved and give him pleasure.
Time and circumstances cannot change this even though we often find
this hard to believe, that we each are individually loved and very
important to God. Financial crises, war, anxiety and suffering cannot
change this, death itself cannot change this. It’s as important as it
ever has been for us to take this truth out into the world act on it
and share it.
And so, with the vast majority of 2009 in front of us we are each
challenged to ask ourselves, and God, what work was I was created to
do? If we are to do this drenched in the power of the Holy Spirit we
also may need to consider how can I mark real change in my life? What
ritual, what respite, and what river do I need to take myself to?
There’s no one I know of in this church who lives on Locusts and wild
honey but there is a community of baptised Christians willing to listen
and offer support whereever possible.
May we be empowered in our work and drenched by God Father, Son and
Holy Sprit in the year ahead.
Amen
Epiphany 09 – 4 Jan 09
This story we’ve just heard from Matthew’s Gospel is a very familiar
one. It’s the story of the two kings…
Yes, you did hear me right, and I haven’t had a bit too much “Christmas
cheer”. I did say that it is the story of the two kings… That’s how it
was introduced, at any rate, in a book I read in the run up to
Christmas called ”The Christmas Stories”, written by Trevor Dennis, the
Vice Dean of Chester Cathedral, and I think he is quite right.
The point he is making is that actually the central characters in the
story we heard from Matthew’s Gospel today aren’t the visitors from the
East who come bearing gold, frankincense and myrrh. In any case, they
aren’t described as kings, nor are we told how many there are. The
kings in this story are King Herod and King Jesus. It is about the
tension between the earthly power that rules the world Jesus is born
into and the power of God in him which challenges that rule, the
tension between Herod’s power, which destroys and kills and the power
of Jesus which heals, restores and welcomes.
We might wonder whether the picture of King Herod the Bible draws is a
bit over the top. He can seem like a pantomime villain, a stereotype of
wickedness, but actually, it’s a picture which seems remarkably true to
the historical facts. There’s no independent record of a massacre of
children at Bethlehem but it is quite in line with what we know of him
– he was horribly paranoid, with some justification, and his paranoia
often led to violence. One commentary I read said rather coyly, “his
personal life was plagued with domestic troubles.” In fact, he had ten
wives and an assortment of children by them, all vying to be his
successor, using any trick in the book to gain power for themselves –
like father, like sons. So Herod was always on the lookout for plots,
and often found them. We know he had several members of his family
murdered when they threatened his position. “Domestic troubles” perhaps
doesn’t quite do it justice.
As well as threats from within his family, he was threatened from
outside too. He’d been made king by the Roman Emperor, Augustus, but he
knew that the power he’d been given could just as easily be taken away.
And if Augustus turned against him, no one else would stand up for
him. He didn’t have widespread support among the Jewish people.
The Pharisees disapproved of him because he was only half-Jewish; his
family had come from Idumea, a neighbour and rival of Judea. The
Sadducees – the aristocracy of Judea – didn’t like him either. They had
supported a rival of his for the throne and Herod had executed many of
them as a result. In other words, this is a man who knew his rule was
very precarious – like a house of cards, liable to come tumbling down
around him if he didn’t keep rigid control of everything and everyone
around him. Rather like Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe today, his response
to any suggestion that things might change was to tighten his grip.
So when these exotic visitors come looking for a new king we can see
why he is thrown into a panic. We don’t know much about them – neither
their number, nor their names, nor their precise home – but what we do
know is very significant. The original Greek text doesn’t call them
wise men, but magi, and it tells us they came from the East. Magi were
diviners, soothsayers, astrologers – people who read the signs around
them to try to predict what will happen in the world. We find people
like this in many ancient cultures, called by different names in
different countries. The name magi, though, is what they were called in
the part of the world where the great empires of Persia, Babylon and
Assyria had arisen – in Mesopotamia, modern day Iraq and Iran. These
were the ancient enemies of the Jewish people. We read about them in
the Old Testament – one great empire succeeding another, but each in
turn enslaving and humiliating Israel, taking them into exile, smashing
Jerusalem to pieces and decimating the population. Though Rome now
ruled, the empires of the east still evoked a host of bad associations.
We don’t know anything specific about the background of these magi –
who they might have been working for – but the point is, neither did
Herod. They might have been working on their own account but every
self-respecting ruler at the time would have his own spiritual advisers
in his entourage, people who could interpret his dreams, read the
runes, study the sacred writings, examine the entrails of sacrifices,
or, as in this case, interpret the movements of stars and planets.
Perhaps these magi were really spies, sent to find the weaknesses in
Herod’s defences, or to cook up some new alliance with this newborn
rival?
Herod has no real idea of what these visiting Magi have planned, who
has sent them, what they will do with the information they discover.
All he can see is that something is going on here that he can’t
control. Something is bursting into his world that he doesn’t
understand, and his response to that – as always - is trickery,
manipulation and ultimately deadly violence.
As I said, though, there are two kings in this story. The first is
Herod, but the second is Jesus, born in obscurity in Bethlehem to an
ordinary little family who never expected – or perhaps wanted – to be
thrust into the spotlight. His family’s reaction couldn’t be more
different from Herod’s. They had good reason to be alarmed as well, or
at least suspicious, when the magi turn up on their doorstep but
there’s no hint of that here. They are faced with a bunch of complete
strangers, not only strangers but Gentiles, not only Gentiles but
diviners. They are of the wrong religion, from the wrong country and
they are engaged in occult activities which are strictly forbidden –
forbidden on pain of death - by Jewish law. Just like Herod, the Holy
Family have no idea whether there is any hidden agenda, and they are
risking all sorts of trouble by welcoming them. But despite all
that they are welcomed.
As Gentiles the magi wouldn’t have been allowed anywhere near the heart
of the Temple in Jerusalem – the holy of holies - but they are allowed
to kneel before this child, a child in whom Matthew tells us God is
present and at work. He is the new holy of holies, but anyone is
welcome to approach him.
The magi don’t even have to go through some sort of conversion before
they worship. They aren’t preached at or humiliated or reminded of
their outsider status. They are welcome just as they are, and their
gifts are accepted too. They are seen as people who have something to
give, not just as penitent sinners who have to hold out their hands and
beg for crumbs. And at the end of it all they go home. They take the
insights they have found, this new revelation of God, back into their
own culture, way out of the control of the Jewish faith. What they do
with it we have no idea – perhaps they understand what they have seen
completely differently to the way a Jewish observer would. It doesn’t
seem to matter. God gives himself to them in Jesus, with fearless and
confident generosity. It is completely unlike Herod’s paranoid craving
for control.
The strangeness of the Magi doesn’t seem to bother the Holy Family, or
by extension, God himself. In fact it is seen as a blessing, a gift, a
cause for rejoicing.
That sense of openness to what is different, even strange, is something
that was a vital early church. It was a central fact of their being, so
it’s no surprise to find Matthew emphasizing it here. Jews and Gentiles
had come together in a new body, each learning from the other. As St
Paul put it in our second reading, as they discovered each other they
showed “the wisdom of God in its rich variety”. The blessing of
diversity was a wonderful gift, but it was a gift they sometimes they
struggled with too, just as we do.
As I said, this story is a story of two kings, but in a sense, there IS
a third king to think about here as well. We are the third king. Each
of us rules in some way, has some little kingdom of our own, some power
in some sphere – at work, at home, in the church, in some other group
we belong to. And we can choose how we use that power. We can act like
Herod, anxiously protecting our territory; feeling threatened when
something new comes along. The new employee who brings new ideas, for
example, or the teenager who wants to follow some path we had never
imagined for them. Within the church people often seem to feel
threatened by change too, feeling that they must protect the faith,
even protect God – pull up the drawbridge, circle the wagons, build the
walls high and strong, insisting that people must think like us if they
want to come in.
The story of the Epiphany – and epiphany literally means revelation, or
shining forth – is of a God who gives himself away, revealing himself
in Jesus to the least likely people of all, complete outsiders, without
any strings attached. It is a profoundly challenging story, asking us
to look at the ways in which we, like Herod, might sometimes act out of
an anxious self-protectiveness, and end up missing the good news God
wants to give us. The story of these Gentile magi, to whom God entrusts
himself so casually, tells us that God’s love is indestructible and
limitless in its generosity. This God of the Epiphany is a God who
welcomes diversity, delights in diversity, sees the rich gifts
diversity can bring. He calls us to welcome and delight in it too and
to be open to its gifts. The new ideas, new people, new challenges that
come into our lives are not threats, but promises of new wisdom, wisdom
which can make our lives shine all the more brightly with the light of
God’s love.
Amen
Christmas 108 – Dec 28th 2008
I’m going to
preach a somewhat half-baked sermon this morning, for two reasons. The
first reason is that I’ve spun what seems to me to be an avalanche of
words over the last week or so, and enough’s enough – both for me and
for you too!
The second
reason I shall tell you later.
I wonder what
difference Christmas has made to you?
On a purely
practical level, it has probably left you poorer. I read somewhere that
we spend an average of £450 for every man, woman and child in the
UK over Christmas, which seems an awful lot, but is probably right.
If we’ve lost
pounds sterling, it is quite likely that we may have gained pounds in
other ways. I don’t know how many calories there are in a Christmas
dinner, and I don’t want to know either, so don’t tell me!
But aside from
those sort of things, what difference has Christmas made to you, to any
of us? If you watched the news on Boxing Day you probably saw pictures,
as I did, of crowds of shoppers storming the sales, stampeding each
other in the rush for a bargain, it occurred to me that even with that
£450 of spending over Christmas many still didn’t feel they had
enough. They still somehow “needed” – desperately - that handbag, that
coat or whatever in order to be happy. The joy of Christmas didn’t seem
to have plugged whatever gap they were feeling in themselves.
If Christmas
doesn’t always seem to make much difference on the inside, it doesn’t
change the world outside us either. As we feasted on Christmas Day in
other parts of the world people went hungry, just as they did last
Christmas and probably will next Christmas too. As we gathered in our
homes, others were still sleeping rough, or housed in shantytowns. As
we sang of peace on earth, conflict was breaking out once between
Israel and Palestine. It is easy, looking around at these things, to
become cynical, to say, “Christmas – it’s just a bit of magic to
distract us from the reality of life – it doesn’t change anything
really.”
On one level
that’s quite right. If we think we can treat the stories of the birth
of Christ as if they are some kind of magic wand that we can wave over
the world’s sorrows to make them disappear, then we are sadly
mistaken. They aren’t magic. But that doesn’t mean they don’t
have power. What we need to do is read them as they were meant to be
read.
Only Luke and
Matthew of the four gospel writers bother to tell us anything of Jesus’
birth at all, and the evidence suggests that they don’t mean us to take
them as historical fact. Their stories don’t fit together. Luke, for
example, has the family coming from Nazareth, their home place, to
Bethlehem while Matthew has them living in Bethlehem all along. Matthew
sends the family off to Egypt to escape Herod; Luke mentions none of
this. They can’t both be descriptions of what really happened, and
probably neither of them is. They may contain or be based on some
facts, but it’s hard to know what they are.
That’s not
something that would have bothered ancient writers or readers though.
If it had been a problem, those who put the New Testament together
wouldn’t have included both stories with their contradictions. These
stories are imaginative prequels, signposts to the later events that
they DO know something about; the life, ministry and teaching of Jesus,
events that had been witnessed by people they knew and had access to –
disciples like Peter, John and James.
The adult Jesus
– the person they knew about - was someone who had preached a
message of God’s radical love for those who were excluded in their
society – lepers, the poor, the disabled, women, children. He had
welcomed Gentiles and loved those whom others saw as the enemy. He had
upset those in authority, challenging their power. What sort of birth
should someone like this have had? What sort of birth would foreshadow
a life like this? A birth which was announced, say, to shepherds rather
than kings, which took place in humble circumstances, which was
welcomed by foreign magi - people who were reminders of the Eastern
kingdoms of Assyria and Babylon which had once enslaved and exiled the
people of Israel.
I doubt whether
Luke or Matthew had more than a skeleton of facts at their disposal as
they constructed their stories of Jesus’ birth, but they had ample
evidence of the man he had become – a man who had changed their lives
completely. That wasn’t embroidery or guesswork; it was fact. They told
stories of shepherds who were amazed at the birth of Christ, or
Mary pondering what had happened. Mary and the shepherds wondered what
this child would become. But the Gospel writers and their readers knew
what he had become; someone who had turned their lives upside down.
Paul, in our
first reading, writes to the church in Galatia, in what is now Turkey,
about those changes. It’s a real letter, to a group of real people
whose lives had been transformed by Jesus’ message. It was written
probably in the 50’s AD, around 20 years after the crucifixion. The
people Paul writes to lived in a highly stratified society where
everyone knew their place. They didn’t share our ideas of universal
Human Rights. Some people mattered, others didn’t, and they assumed
that’s how it was and always would be. Masters had power of life and
death over slaves, fathers over their families.
The message of
Jesus blew into their world like a whirlwind, overturning all these
assumptions. In Christ, there is no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free,
male and female, Paul tells them earlier – all are one in Christ Jesus.
And in the passage we heard today he goes on to explain that this is
because each person is fully part of the family of God. “You are no
longer a slave but a child and if a child then an heir.” Most of these
people would never have dreamed even of owning or controlling their own
lives and property; now it seems they are heirs to the kingdom of God.
What might that mean to them?
Being an heir
means that you belong – you are at the centre of the family, at home –
in this case, at home with God. You have a right to be there. It also
means you have responsibilities. Heirs in the ancient world were
supposed to care for the rest of the family too. We are our brother’s
and our sister’s keepers. We can’t just look out for own interests.
That’s not how families work. And Paul is telling us that we are all
lifted to this status of heirs. We have a right to be there, but so do
all the rest of God’s children. None can be excluded.
So, to return to
the place I started, what difference does Christmas make? On its own,
as magical stories of shepherd and angels, magi and stars, not much, it
seems to me. We can hear these tales year after year after year and
remain completely unchanged by them. But if we hear them as their
writers meant us to, as signposts to what was to come, to the life and
teachings of the adult Jesus, then they can have an impact that lasts
far beyond Twelfth Night, just as they did for those who first heard
them. They can turn our priorities on their heads, challenge our values
and the values of our society, challenge us to take seriously God’s
call to us to see ourselves as one family, challenge us to see
ourselves as the heirs of his kingdom, each one of us with the dignity
and status of children of God, even if we are just a bunch of
shepherds, or foreign magi.
I said at the
beginning that this was going to be a somewhat half-baked sermon.
Partly, as I’ve said, that is because there has been a mountain of
words already, but the main reason is that this is a message which has
to be half-baked because you need to finish baking it for yourself if
it is to be real at all. What difference does Christmas make? That is
something each of us has to find for ourselves. Perhaps you need to see
yourself more clearly as an heir of God’s kingdom, someone who really
belongs in it, not on sufferance, or conditionally, but absolutely.
Perhaps you need to be able to see others more clearly in this light.
Each of us is called to our own journey of transformation. The baby in
the manger is just the beginning. It is as we watch him grow, as we
listen to what he says and begin to risk living his message that the
promise of Christmas can become the reality we need it to be.
Amen