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www.stephendawes.com SERMONS (2)
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If you read the introduction to the sermons 1 page you'll know that these are not all the sermons I've preached! The sermons here are in liturgical order, based on the Revised Common Lectionary. Some were written for publication in the Expository Times, a few were preached as examples to the South West Ministry Training Course first year Preaching class in recent years and some were preached to real people in real places. The five most recent postings are indicated by date. INDEX
(Sermon for November 30, Advent Sunday, 2003 (Advent: Year C) published in Expository Times, October 2003, vol 115, no 1, pp25-26: Jeremiah 33:14-16, 1 Thessalonians 3:9-13 and Luke 21:25-36) The Book of Psalms is full of it, but there’s not much of it in modern hymns or worship songs. Full of what? Of lament. Or rather, of lament in its Old Testament sense: anger, protest, complaint and accusation directed against God. Why is this happening to us, O Lord? Why are you absent, O Lord, and why do you let the cause of evil prosper? Where are you, O Lord, when we need you? How long, O Lord, is all this to go on? The Temple in ancient Jerusalem frequently echoed to these cries as God’s people voiced their despair and desperation, their fears and their pain, their demands for a better future. Sometimes their preacher prophets tried to stop them, pointing out that their suffering was their own fault, brought on themselves by their own sin and folly. But not always. Sometimes they shared the people’s agony and took up their complaint. And sometimes they thought that God heard them, and they heard him saying,
And it was out of such words of promise that the ancient hope grew. Hope for a new and better future. Hope, literally, for the kingdom of God on earth; when the God of Heaven would rule the whole earth through his anointed King of David’s line, the true Messiah in Jerusalem. Hope for the end of war, oppression, poverty, injustice and need. Hope for the days when
That’s what we see in today’s powerful but very difficult Gospel reading from Luke 21. In the story Jesus is in the Temple in the days just before his death and the talk turns to the future of Herod’s magnificent building. It will be pulled down. There will be wars, arrests, siege and terror. These will be the signs of the end times. Then by God’s power the Son of Man will be victorious and he will reign in God’s name: the kingdom, the power and the glory will be God’s on earth as it is in heaven. And it will happen soon, within this generation, Jesus says. Mark and Matthew have something very similar, but Luke’s version has obviously been coloured by what he knows about the real fall of Jerusalem to the Romans in AD 70. But Jesus, the Son of Man, wasn’t visibly victorious, and the coming of God’s kingdom hadn’t happened yet, and that fact is obviously beginning to worry Luke. He cannot give up on the idea that the New Age would dawn soon, as St Paul and the rest of us have had to learn to do, and we see him fighting down his new doubts as he asserts the old creed that the day really is near and insists that his contemporaries should not lose their eager expectation of it. He has seen the destruction of Jerusalem and believes that to have been a sign of the end. He sees the persecution of Christians by the Jewish authorities on the one hand and the Roman Empire on the other as yet another sign. So he writes to encourage the faithful to hang in there, because the end of the old and the beginning of the new really is near. But this is 2003 and we modern Christians, just like those ancient worshippers in Jerusalem and just like St Luke and his contemporaries, are still waiting even though we do it with proper restraint and greater politeness. The nearest we get to voicing our anger, frustration and disappointment at the wait is the hymn ‘Thy kingdom come, O God; thy rule, O Christ, begin’. It asks God directly,
Why, I wonder, do we go on singing it? After all, Christians on and off for two thousand years have been hoping and praying for the end of the old and the beginning of the new, only to be faced with more and more of the same. We can ask the same question about Advent Sunday. Why do we go on celebrating it? I know we usually manage to divert the Advent season these days into a preparation for Christmas, but Advent Sunday itself resists that and readings like those we have had today won’t let us off the hook. They are straight out of that old tradition of expectancy, anticipation and hope and they reinforce it powerfully - the days will come! - they insist. There is, of course, the old saying that, ‘Hope deferred makes the heart sick,’ and there are those who have ceased to follow the way of Christ because these promises have simply failed and these hopes have been dashed. Sometimes hope deferred makes the hopers even more determined, and there are ample signs of that sort of apocalyptic fervour in contemporary Christianity and other religions too. The end days are here, all the signs are there, and the worse things get the nearer the end is; so take heart, for they who endure to the End will be saved and ‘the End is near’. For others the whole future hope side of Jewish and Christian faith has been moved from earth to heaven. It has become a promise of fullness of life after we have died, in a heaven where earth’s hurts are healed and life’s injustices are recompensed. Others simply set the whole thing aside, leaving it to the theologians who delve into such arcane mysteries. But there is another old saying, one from the Bible this time, which praises God that ‘by his great mercy we have been born anew into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead’ (1 Peter 1:3). This saying sees the resurrection of Jesus as the heart of faith and the key to hope. That whatever might happen in the meantime, and no matter how long that meantime might last, the final outcome of life is guaranteed: that the last word, on earth as it is in heaven, will lie with light and not darkness, with good and not evil, and with life and not death. Here is an Advent Hope which invites us to defy darkness, evil and death and to live for light, goodness and life. Here is an Advent Hope which conquers our advent despair and nerves us with the encouragement to persevere in faith and hope and love. Here is the only Advent Hope which is real and which does not disappoint.
(Truro Cathedral, First Sunday in Advent, 2011, Year B . Isaiah 64.1-9, 1 Corinthians 1.3-9, Mark 13.24-37) Grant, O Lord, that the words of my mouth and the
meditations of all our hearts be now and always acceptable in your
sight, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer.
Amen Sam Harris, the American equivalent of our Richard
Dawkins, keeps pushing the statistic that 40% of American Christians
believe that Jesus will return and the world will end within the next 20
years or so. I don’t think
we’ve got too much of that nutty Christianity in the UK, but we’ve
certainly got some and these weird Adventist ideas are around.
I preached here on Mark 13 just before Advent two years ago and
said that the key to making sense of the strange Bible pictures of the
end of the world and all that was to recognise the kind of specialist
literature it is and to learn the codes needed to read it properly –
which is most definitely not to take it literally! I said that getting
into that kind of literature (‘apocalyptic literature’ to give it
its technical name) is a bit like getting into Lord
of the Rings – to understand it, you’ve got to know what sort of
book and film it is, which I told you last time that my mum just
couldn’t do. This time I
want to tell you about an old girlfriend. When I was in the Sixth Form and doing ‘A’
Level RE and finishing off my Methodist Local Preacher training, I was
going out with a girl who worked in a small solicitor’s office.
There was her and her boss. He
was a Christadelphian, one of these bizarre Adventist groups, but very
English, old fashioned, middle class and polite.
One Saturday I found myself being dragged around Wellington Town
Hall looking at a special Christadelphian Bible exhibition.
She had given in to her boss’s repeated invitations to attend
one of his dos, but there was no way she was going by herself.
So there I was looking at the centrepiece of this exhibition.
It was a recently issued Israeli postage stamp.
The blurb was simple – ‘The Bible says (and there was a quote
from today’s Gospel – Mk 13.28-31) that ‘when you see the fig tree
putting forth its leaves then you know that the Son of Man is near’.
Here is the fig tree putting forth its leaves - arrow pointing to
the picture on the stamp - so we know that the End of the World is near
as foretold in the Bible’. At
which point my girlfriend’s boss saunters up and asks us what we
think. I don’t remember
what I said, but I do know that when we got outside she started
wondering if she’d still have a job on the Monday.
Things have got worse since then, with the Internet
and the spread of American Fundamentalism, and the biggest victim is the
Bible itself. So let’s
have a look at today’s Gospel: ·
‘Sun darkened and moon stopping shining; stars falling
from heaven and the heavens themselves shaking’.
It’s a quote from the Old Testament book of Isaiah (13.10) from
Isaiah’s vision of the destruction of Babylon on the ‘Day of the
Lord’ – powerful imagery about an Evil Empire getting its
comeuppance. That’s also
what our Old Testament lesson from Isaiah was about this morning –
‘Tear open the heavens, O God, and come down’.
But this is not the End of the World.
Isaiah longed for a New Dawn, but he knew he’d still have to
get out of bed in the morning and go to work: it’s just that then
he’d be free and the world a better place than it was before.
It shouldn’t be like this – it needn’t be like this – it
won’t always be like this - that’s the hope that the vision is
expressing. ·
‘So you’ll see the Son of Man coming in clouds’ and
sending out his angels to gather in God’s chosen people.
Another Old Testament quote, this time from the apocalyptic
visions of the Book of Daniel (7.13).
It’s the Maccabean Revolt and the vision is about the end of
another Evil Empire (Greece, this time, represented by a terrifying
beast with iron teeth and ten horns) and the dawn of a new age when
God’s people (represented by a human figure) come to God’s throne
and are blessed. Hang in
there, is the message – the end of our persecution is coming soon, and
we’ll be free. It might be
bizarre imagery, but the message of hope is plain enough, and ‘End of
the World’ it isn’t. ·
But there’s more. Look
where the character in Daniel’s vision is ‘coming with those
clouds’. This character -
‘one like a human being’ (or in the older translations ‘one like a
son of man’) – is ‘coming’ to God, into heaven and up to God’s
throne. He is not coming
from there to here, but going from here to there.
And if you’re ‘up there’ where the vision is being shot,
he’s coming up to where you’re filming.
So why do we turn it round when Mark quotes it, and make it talk
about Jesus returning here from there?
It’s not about that. It’s
about Jesus being crowned in heaven, as we celebrated last Sunday. ·
Then there’s the fig tree bit, and notice that bit about
‘this generation’ not passing until it has happened.
Mark has already said that ‘some of those standing here will
not die until they have seen the kingdom of God come in power’ (9.1).
And that, in Mark, is pointing to the events of Easter.
·
And finally there’s that ‘about that day or hour
nobody knows’. Where’s
that come from? It comes
from the fact that the first Christians, very properly, expected the
great Easter events to be followed pretty shortly by the dawn of the New
Age. And they weren’t; and
haven’t been yet. And this
bothered them, and they had to do some thinking about it, and we can see
several explanations of the delay in the New Testament.
There’s no explanation here in Mark, just a firm warning about
trying to plot the day and the hour plus an equally firm instruction to
live today in the confidence that that Kingdom will come and God’s
will be done on earth as it is in heaven, so make sure you live that new
way each day! Exactly what
we heard St Paul telling the Corinthians in our epistle.
There is New Dawn, New Kingdom and New Age stuff here, though not
‘New Age’ as in crystals, beads and sandals, of course: but
there’s no End of the World, Rapture, Second Coming and goodness knows
what else kind of thing here, as per the Fundamentalists
and the Christadelphians and that American crank a few months ago.
Not if you read the codes properly. So, please, let’s have some sanity in our Faith,
and some decent Bible study, lest we get deceived by false teaching, and
bring our Christianity into disrepute, just as the Fundamentalists have
brought theirs. But above
all, as our Gospel reading instructs us, let’s have some real Advent
Faith and some ‘kingdom living’ here and now, alert and awake
because Christ is king, even though we do not yet see that here. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
(Sermon for December 23, 2001 (Advent 4: Year A) published in Expository Times, November 2001, vol 113, no 2, pp60-62: Matthew 1:18-25 and Isaiah 7:1-16. For an older article on which this thinking is based see no 5 'How does the birth of Jesus fulfil the prophesy of Isaiah?' in the articles section of this site) The Christmas Story begins at Easter. Or let me put it another way. We are here today – in the middle of our Christmas celebrations, singing carols, with tree, crib and Advent Candles – because of Easter. Without Easter we would not be here; we would not be doing this or anything like it; we would not be celebrating "Jesus, our Immanuel", as Wesley’s hymn so magnificently puts it. St Paul says the same: if Christ had not been raised from the dead he would have no good news to share and we would have nothing to believe. So there it is: no Easter means no Christmas, but because we are Easter People with an Easter Faith we can celebrate as we do. It’s the same with the Gospels themselves. They were written backwards, if you like, starting with the Easter ending and finishing with the Christmas stories. Mark, the earliest Gospel doesn’t say a word about Christmas. John, the latest, has that most amazing Christmas introduction which we ought to spend every Sunday until Easter unpacking but never do. Matthew and Luke come in the middle, telling quite different stories but with the same aim; to explain and highlight the significance of Jesus, to say who and what he really is and what he means to them. That’s the clue to reading the Christmas stories. Read them as parable stories aiming to explain the tremendous significance of Jesus – of who he was and is and what he meant to the gospel-writers and can meant to us – the Jesus who is crucified and risen. So to today’s Gospel reading from Matthew. It follows a long and detailed genealogy, which calls Jesus the "Messiah" and traces his line back to King David and ancestor Abraham. It divides the history of the People of God so far into three epochs, and the birth of Jesus marks the beginning of the fourth. A new age has dawned. The story is full of rich images and powerful metaphors: the "Messiah" is born, the "Holy Spirit" is at work, an angel announces the events and a prophecy is fulfilled. Then there are the names: not only "Messiah", God’s anointed king of David’s line, but also "Jesus" itself, the current version of the old Joshua, meaning "Saviour"; and then there’s "Immanuel" – "God with us". It’s a powerful passage pointing up the tremendous significance of Jesus for Matthew. But we also read Isaiah 7:1-16 which Matthew quotes. He says that the birth of Jesus fulfils the "Immanuel" prophecy of Isaiah 7:14, and no doubt the difficult words of the Creed about the Virgin Birth came to mind. But let’s ask a different question. Let’s ask what Matthew is doing when he quotes this verse from Isaiah that "the virgin shall conceive and bear a son" and says that this prophecy is "fulfilled" in the birth of Jesus. Isaiah chapter 7 is quite straightforward. Around 738 BC little Judah’s bigger northern neighbours, Syria and Israel, have come together in a coalition against the rising power of Assyria from further north still and they are putting real pressure on Judah to join in. King Ahaz of Judah is panicking about what to do. Isaiah, God’s prophet, his spokesman, goes to him with a message from God about his predicament. "Don’t worry about this coalition", he says, "Ignore it and it will go away. Put your trust in God". Then Isaiah invites the king to ask God for a sign. Up to now the king hasn’t had much faith in God at all but now he comes out with the pious, "Far be it from me to ask the Lord for a sing". Isaiah retorts that he’s getting a sign whether he likes it or not. So we come to the crucial bit. The sign Isaiah gives him is the birth and infancy of a child. The meaning of the sign is plain enough. By the time a young woman can conceive – and the passage talks about a "young woman", not a virgin – have her baby and the child grow old enough to tell right from wrong, then this threat will be past. Isaiah doesn’t say which young woman he is talking about, probably one of the king’s wives, as this baby is mentioned again later where he appears to have grown up to be king. This detail apart, there is no problem with Isaiah 7. It is as straightforward as any passage you will find in the prophets. It’s a word of advice to a frightened king: sit still, do nothing and in the time it takes for a woman to conceive, bear a son and wean him, this problem will have gone away. Just hang in there and God’s time will sort it! In the setting of the king’s panic in 738 BC it is no use at all for Isaiah to tell him not to worry because the Messiah is coming in 740 years’ time! Isaiah’s word is not that sort of prediction. But Matthew uses this sign to speak of Jesus and it’s important to see why. Ask yourself why the words of these ancient preacher-prophets were preserved at all. It wasn’t, mostly, because they predicted the future. It was because they spoke of what God had done or was doing in their own day and age; and if God was the God of yesterday, today and tomorrow, the way he had been seen to act in the past was a sign of how he would act in the future. The words of the prophets were preserved and stories about them handed down so that later generations could gain that kind of help and inspiration from them. Later generations could look back and read such words and be encouraged, tell the stories and be given new hope for changing days. This is exactly how Matthew is using the old Immanuel sign. In its original setting it was about salvation, about God saving the king and the people of Judah from foreign invasion. Isaiah promised through this sign that they would be delivered and they were. The enemy coalition was destroyed by Assyria, and the king and the prophet sat there safely in Jerusalem while it was done. The sign had come true: God had delivered them as he said he would. Seven hundred years later, Matthew reuses this story to make the point that a greater and fuller salvation is now here – in Jesus the crucified and risen Saviour – the one whose life-story he is telling. This Jesus, Messiah and Saviour, is God’s true deliverer, the one who brings God’s full salvation. Matthew uses that old Immanuel sign to say that although God’s deliverance of Jerusalem at the time of Ahaz was marvellous enough, now in Jesus Christ – crucified and risen – God has done something which makes that old victory pale into insignificance. It is in this sense that Jesus is indeed the "fulfilment" of Isaiah’s word and sign, the fulfilment f God’s salvation, our Immanuel. Jesus Christ, crucified and risen, is God’s great and final deliverance: that is Matthew’s Easter conviction which shapes his Christmas story. Thanks be to God for it.
4 The Baptism of Jesus (1) - Mark (Sermon preached at the South West Ministry Training Course Preaching Class on Mark 1:4-11 on January 8th 2006 and January 10th 2009: Sunday after Epiphany, Year B) From the sublime to the ridiculous, in one week and thirty years, that’s where our gospel reading has taken us this week. Last Sunday we stood amazed as we heard that God’s creative energy which brought the universe to birth in life and light was born among us, became human for us, was flesh and blood alive with us and for us – for that’s what our key text from the opening of John’s Gospel was saying, that ‘the Word became flesh’. This week, the opening of Mark’s Gospel, takes us to a riverbank, crowds of people caught up in a religious revival, a weird and wild preacher, and in all that chaos a Messiah who is baptised in that river like everybody else and no one notices a thing. Mark has told us, the readers of his Gospel, in the title of his book precisely who he is writing about – ‘Messiah Jesus, the Son of God’; God’s anointed one, the true heir of David the King, the one whose coming has been promised and longed-for. So by the time we come to our Gospel reading for today, three verses into his Gospel, we know who Jesus is. And in today’s Gospel reading, Jesus is told who he is. At that moment of baptism Jesus is told who he is, and so, again, emphatically, are we. He hears a voice from heaven saying, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved, with you I am well pleased’. Jesus hears something important in that voice, and has to decide what to do; and Mark wants us to hear something important in that voice too, and then we too must decide what to do. ‘You are my Son, the Beloved, with you I am well pleased’. Mark knows his Bible, and he’s already quoted something from it to explain who John the Baptist is and where he fits in, and now we hear two important Bible references in this voice from heaven. ‘You are my Son, today I have begotten you’ are words we find in one of the OT coronation psalms when the king in David’s line was crowned - adopted by God as his son and crowned king in old Jerusalem (Ps 2:7). Mark repeats them here, saying - just as he said at the beginning of his gospel - that Jesus is the Messiah, the true heir of David the king, the true king of Israel. That’s the first thing he wants us to hear when that voice from heaven says, ‘You are my Son’. The second thing that the voice from heaven says is that this ‘Son of God’ is ‘the Beloved’. Only twice in the OT is someone called God’s ‘beloved’, and it’s the same someone each time – Abraham (Isa 41:8 & 2 Chron 20:7), Abraham who heard the call of God, and trusted God to lead him where he wanted him to go. Jesus, Mark is telling us here, is the son of Abraham, the true heir of Abraham. Hearing that this is who he is, the true king and the one called by God to journey in faith on God’s journey, Jesus is immediately put on the spot. What is he to do with this new knowledge, and the gift of the power of God which he experienced as he came up out of the water? What kind of a Messiah is he to be? Where is he to journey with and for God? How is he to use the power and blessing just received? In this real and messy world of competing religious convictions, of dangerous political tensions, and of desperate human needs - for that’s the world gathered at the riverbank – where does he fit? What is he to do? Or to be? Which way is he to go? That’s what the Temptations are all about, which follow next in Mark’s story-telling, but which, for some odd reason our lectionary readings will not mention. But we, the readers of this passage, are put on the spot too. Mark tells us that Jesus is the true heir of David and the true heir of Abraham, the true king and the true example of faith and trust in God. So what are we to do with this knowledge? When Mark first wrote his story, he did it in a world with one king – the Roman Emperor, and many religious gurus. And addressing that world he made this huge claim for Jesus, that as God’s anointed one he is the true king and the best guru. That was, and is, a huge claim. We no longer live in a world with only one king – but it often feels as if our world does only have one world empire – politically and culturally – the United States – with its attitudes and values extending across the globe. Our world is becoming one great consumer society, which seduces us to walk in its ways through the shopping malls, worship at the shrine of the till and believe that life is about what we can buy and get and have and keep. Mark says that Jesus and his kingdom is a better king and a better kingdom than this! Our world is becoming one huge pleasure palace, which invites us to believe that life is about whatever turns us on and the enjoyment of whatever we find fulfilling, the fulfilment of every need and want known to the ‘me’ generation who know that they are ‘worth it’. Mark says that Jesus is a better king and his a better kingdom than this! Our world is also becoming an uncomfortable place for sane and humane religion, of any kind, as extremism and exclusiveness assert their demands for total allegiance in defence of or in opposition to this new cultural imperialism. Mark says that Jesus and his kingdom is a better king and a better kingdom than this! ‘And a voice from heaven said, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved, with you I am well pleased’.’ Jesus had decisions to make – what to think, what to do, how to live – when he heard that voice from heaven. So did Mark’s first readers. And so too, do we. Amen.
(Sermon for South West Ministry Training Course Preaching Class on January 9th 2005 on Matthew 3:13-17: Sunday after Epiphany, Year A) Today in our Gospel reading we have jumped in one week from the arrival of the wise men to pay homage to the baby ‘born to be king of the Jews’ to the adult baptism of that baby, as a thirty-something, by John the Baptist in the River Jordan. Matthew told us, the readers of his gospel, in the very first verse of his first chapter precisely who this baby and this thirty-something is – Jesus, ‘the Messiah, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham’; God’s anointed one, the true heir of David the King, and the true heir of Abraham, the one who journeyed in faith. Sixteen verses later, and in case anyone who ploughed through those sixteen verses of genealogy had forgotten it, he repeats it as he tells us about how the birth of Jesus - the Messiah - took place. In that story the first person to be told who Jesus is, is Joseph; told because he was about to put away his young and pregnant bride to be. Presumably Joseph then tells Mary, though Matthew doesn’t tell us that. The next people to be told who Jesus is are the wise men from the east, the foreigners who see the star, believe the message and give homage to the child. They pass the message on to Herod and all Jerusalem with him, and Herod reacts very differently. So by the time we come to our Gospel reading for today in Mt 3, we know who Jesus is, Joseph knows, the wise men know, and Herod and all of Jerusalem know; and in today’s gospel reading, Jesus is told who he is. We can infer from this little snippet of legend that Matthew gives us here, that Jesus had some idea of who and what he was, because when John refuses to baptise him because it isn’t appropriate, Jesus tells him not to make a fuss and ‘Just do it. Man!’ John the Baptist himself, waiting for the Messiah, has recognised Jesus for what he is; and so obeys the Messiah’s instruction and baptises him with water. And it is in that moment, Matthew tells us in his story, that Jesus knows for sure; that Jesus is told who he is, and so, again, emphatically, are we. A voice from heaven says, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased’. Jesus hears something important in that voice, and has to decide what to do; and Matthew wants us to hear something important in that voice too, and then we too must decide what to do. ‘This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased’. Matthew knows his Bible and time and again he makes clear references back to his Bible in explaining who Jesus is, and there are two important references in this voice. ‘You are my Son, today I have begotten you’ are words we find in one of the OT coronation psalms when the king in David’s line was crowned - adopted by God as his son and crowned king in old Jerusalem (Ps 2:7). Matthew repeats them here, saying - just as he said at the beginning of his gospel - that Jesus is the son of David, the true heir of David the king, the true king of Israel. That’s the first thing he wants us to hear when that voice from heaven says, ‘This is my Son’. The second thing that the voice from heaven says is that this ‘Son of God’ is ‘the Beloved’. Only twice in the OT is someone called God’s ‘beloved’, and it’s the same someone each time – Abraham (Isa 41:8 & 2 Chron 20:7), Abraham who heard the call of God, and trusted God to lead him where he wanted him to go. Jesus, Matthew is telling us here as he told us at the beginning, is the son of Abraham, the true heir of Abraham. Hearing that this is who he is, the true king and the one called by God to journey in faith on God’s journey, Jesus is immediately put on the spot. What is he to do with this new knowledge, and the gift of the power of God which he experienced as he came up out of the water? What kind of a Messiah is he to be? Where is he to journey with and for God? How is he to use the power and blessing just received? That’s what the Temptations are all about, which follow next in Matthew’s story-telling. But we, the readers of this passage, are put on the spot too. Matthew tells us that Jesus is the true heir of David and the true heir of Abraham, the true king and the true example of faith and trust in God. So what are we to do with this knowledge? When Matthew first wrote his story, he did it in a world with one king – the Roman Emperor, and many religious gurus. And addressing that world he made this huge claim for Jesus, that as God’s anointed one he is the true king and the best guru. That was, and is, a huge claim. We no longer live in a world with only one king – but it often feels as if our world does only have one world empire – politically and culturally – the United States – with its attitudes and values extending across the globe. Our world is becoming one great consumer society, which seduces us to walk in its ways through the shopping malls, worship at the shrine of the till and believe that life is about what we can buy and get and have and keep. Matthew says that Jesus and his kingdom is a better king and a better kingdom than this! Our world is becoming one huge pleasure palace, which invites us to believe that life is about whatever turns us on and the enjoyment of whatever we find fulfilling, the fulfilment of every need and want known to the ‘me’ generation who know that they are ‘worth it’. Matthew says that Jesus is a better king and his a better kingdom than this! Our world is also becoming an uncomfortable place for sane and humane religion, of any kind, as extremism and exclusiveness assert their demands for total allegiance in defence of or in opposition to this new cultural imperialism. Matthew says that Jesus and his kingdom is a better king and a better kingdom than this! ‘And a voice from heaven said, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased’.’ Jesus had decisions to make – what to think, what to do, how to live – when he heard that voice from heaven. So did Matthew’s first readers. And so do we. Amen.
6 The Baptism of Jesus (3) - Matthew (short) (A sermon prepared for, but not actually preached at, the South West Ministry Training Course Eucharist on January 13th 2008 on Matthew 3:13-17: Sunday after Epiphany, Year A. For the actual sermon preached see ‘The Baptism of Jesus (4)’) A short sermon is required today, so I focus on our Gospel reading where we have jumped in one week from the arrival of the wise men to pay homage to the baby ‘born to be king of the Jews’ to the adult baptism of that baby by John the Baptist. Readers of Matthew’s Gospel have known from its opening verse precisely who this baby and now this thirty-something is – Jesus, ‘the Messiah, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham’; God’s anointed one, the true heir of David the King, and the true heir of Abraham, the one who journeyed in faith. By this point in the gospel story Joseph also knows, the wise men know, and Herod and all of Jerusalem know; and in today’s gospel, Jesus himself is told who he is. In the story, it looks as if Jesus had some idea of who and what he was, because when John demurs he tells him not to fuss and just do it. ‘Just do it!’ John the Baptist, waiting for the Messiah, has recognised Jesus for what he is; and so obeys the Messiah’s instruction and baptises him with water. And in that moment, so Matthew’s story goes, Jesus knows for sure because of that voice from heaven, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased’. Jesus hears something important in that voice, and has to decide what to do; and Matthew wants us to hear something important in that voice too, and then we too must decide what to do. ‘This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased’. Matthew knows his Bible and time and again he makes clear references back to his Bible in explaining who Jesus is, and there are two important references in this voice. ‘You are my Son, today I have begotten you’ are words we find in one of the OT coronation psalms when the king in David’s line was crowned - adopted by God as his son and crowned king in old Jerusalem (Ps 2:7). Matthew repeats them here, saying - just as he said at the beginning of his gospel - that Jesus is the son of David, the true heir of David the king, the true king of Israel. That’s the first thing he wants us to hear when that voice from heaven says, ‘This is my Son’. The second thing that the voice from heaven says is that this ‘Son of God’ is ‘the Beloved’. Only twice in the OT is someone called God’s ‘beloved’, and it’s the same someone each time – Abraham (Isa 41:8 & 2 Chron 20:7), Abraham who heard the call of God, and trusted God to lead him where he wanted him to go. Jesus, Matthew is telling us here as he told us at the beginning, is the son of Abraham, the true heir of Abraham. Hearing that this is who he is, the true king and the one called by God to journey in faith on God’s journey, Jesus is immediately put on the spot. What is he to do with this new knowledge, and the gift of the power of God which he experienced as he came up out of the water? What kind of a Messiah is he to be? Where is he to journey with and for God? How is he to use the power and blessing just received? That’s what the Temptations are all about, which follow next in Matthew’s story-telling. But we, the readers of this passage, are put on the spot too. Matthew tells us that Jesus is the true heir of David and the true heir of Abraham, the true king and the true example of faith and trust in God. So what are we to do with this knowledge? When Matthew first wrote his story, he did it in a world with one king – the Roman Emperor, and many religious gurus. And addressing that world he made this huge claim for Jesus, that as God’s anointed one he is the true king and the best guru. That was, and is, a huge claim. We no longer live in a world with only one king – but it often feels as if our world does only have one world empire – politically and culturally – the United States – with its attitudes and values extending across the globe. Our world is becoming one great consumer society, which seduces us to walk in its ways through the shopping malls, worship at the shrine of the till and believe that life is about what we can buy and get and have and keep. Matthew says that Jesus and his kingdom is a better king and a better kingdom than this! Our world is becoming one huge pleasure palace, which invites us to believe that life is about whatever turns us on and the enjoyment of whatever we find fulfilling, the fulfilment of every need and want known to the ‘me’ generation who know that they are ‘worth it’. Matthew says that Jesus is a better king and his a better kingdom than this! Our world is also becoming an uncomfortable place for sane and humane religion, of any kind, as extremism and exclusiveness assert their demands for total allegiance in defence of or in opposition to this new cultural imperialism. Matthew says that Jesus and his kingdom is a better king and a better kingdom than this! ‘And a voice from heaven said, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased’.’ Jesus had decisions to make – what to think, what to do, how to live – when he heard that voice from heaven. So did Matthew’s first readers. And so do we. Amen.
7 The Baptism of Jesus (4) - Matthew (very, very short) (A sermon preached at the South West Ministry Training Course Eucharist (annual High Mass) on January 13th 2008: Sunday after Epiphany, Year A. Isaiah 42.1-9, Acts 10.34-43, Matthew 3.13-17) My instructions were that this sermon be short. It has three expositions and an application, and is short. Exposition 1. Our first reading was the first of the so-called ‘Servant Songs’ from the chapters of Isaiah penned during the Exile. Who or what the anonymous author meant by this ‘Servant’ no one knows, but Jesus himself, or early Christian preachers, were quick to make connections between this Suffering Servant figure and Jesus. In this Song the Servant is commissioned to fulfil the unfulfilled calling of God’s people to be a light to the nations and to establish God’s justice in all the world. Exposition 2. Our second reading from Acts is another of those speeches Luke puts on the lips of Peter about just who and what Jesus is. He is nothing less than Lord of all, the one in whom all who believe can find ‘peace’. Exposition 3. Our Gospel reading was Matthew’s version of Jesus’ baptism by John in the Jordan, in which Matthew also says who Jesus is. He is the ‘Messiah’, ‘the Anointed One’, ‘the King’, the ‘Son of God’ – ‘son’ as in royal metaphor, not as in Trinity, of course. In his punchline Matthew conflates the first verse of our reading from Isaiah about God’s ‘chosen’ or ‘beloved’ and the ancient Davidic coronation words from Ps 2, ‘You are my Son, today I have begotten you’. In doing that he too proclaims Jesus as ‘Messiah’, God’s Chosen One. Application. Years 2 and 3 have been doing a weekend on Evangelism and Apologetics – so let’s not beat about the bush - our good news, our mission message, our word for our world - is quite simple. It is, in a sound-bite, that ‘Jesus is the One’, ‘Jesus is the Special One’. The challenge to the Church is to live that out so that people see, as well as hear, what that means. Our challenge in ministry is to do the same. So may it be. Amen.
(A sermon prepared for the South West Ministry Training Course Year 1 Preaching Class on the Gospel reading for the First Sunday in Epiphany, 2010 (Year C): Luke 3:15-17 + 21-22) Grant, O Lord, that the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be now and always acceptable in your sight; O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen. One sermon. 2 points. 12 minutes. 1 Great Expectations. The crowd is buzzing with excitement and rumour. They’ve come from all over the place to see him, and there he is, this wild preacher who didn’t care what he said or who he said it to because he was a prophet, and he’d say what God gave him to say. Some of them were dripping wet, like he was, for he’d plunged them in the Jordan river, ‘baptising them’ he’d called it; make a new start with God, here! now!, and many of them had. He must be him, the rumour went. He must be Messiah. At last, at last. Messiah’s here. ‘O no he’s not’, he says, ‘cos he’s heard them saying it too. I’m not him. I’m not Messiah. But he is coming soon, very soon, very soon. But let me tell you this about him, and let me tell you straight, he’s not going to be what you expect! And you probably won’t like it, either. I know what you want: you want a leader to throw out the Romans – yes you do – a freedom fighter with a sword in his hand, ‘The sword of the Lord and the Messiah’. You want a saviour – yes you do – to end your exile in your own land, where there’s never enough to eat and your children go hungry while the rich get all the bonuses and enjoy the profits. You want miracles, and magic, and marvels – yes you do – with signs and wonders from God to make everything right. That’s what you want. Well just listen. You won’t get it. Any of it. O yes, he’ll come with power all right, the Holy Spirit power of God, and he’ll baptise you with that as I’ve baptised you with water; but it’ll hurt, it’ll be a baptism of fire. Water washes stuff away. Fire burns it up. And his Holy Spirit power of God fire will burn up everything that shouldn’t be there; and that will include all the things you dream about which aren’t God’s dreams, all that ‘kingdom and power and glory’ stuff: O yes, you’ll get there, but only after you’ve been refined in the fire, all the dross and rubbish burned off. What do I mean? Ok, what about this then? You want a Messiah with a sword, well this one will have something in his hand all right, but it’s not a sword – it’s a winnowing fork, and you know what that does – and some of you are chaff, O yes, chaff, and you know what happens to that. O yes, the real Messiah is coming, and you’d better be ready for him. Great expectations, which John does his best to correct. Luke writes it up like that because he believes that Jesus was Messiah, but a very different sort of Messiah from the one they wanted. He knew that some had got it, and that many never did. There are great expectations today. Fundamentalists of all religions look for God to act to sort out the mess. Some Christian ones expect to be raptured to heaven any day now and pray for Armageddon (total nutcases, but they’re around). Some Muslim ones opt for terrorist martyrdom and 70 virgins, though I heard once that the text really meant 70 raisins, which could be quite a disappointment. Some of those who look at all this and conclude ‘religion bad, spirituality good’ dream other dreams – about that perfect spirituality system which brings me fulfilment, contentment, and the maximisation of my well-being, Thatcherism for the soul. Others shop, because Mammon is their god and he’s always promising new and more and better. Sadly, if any modern John the Baptist were to stand up in the middle of Plymouth or Exeter or Truro and rant against all this, there’d be no excited crowd buzzing with interest and expectation – they’d just keep well away and think that there’s another nutter. 2 Jesus comes. Jesus comes. He’s baptised. He prays. The heavens are opened. The Holy Spirit descends on him like a dove. He hears a voice. And this is not the Messiah they had been expecting. Neither is it the Messiah John the Baptist had been expecting. Later on Luke will tell us that John was so confused that he sent some of his disciples to ask Jesus point blank if he really was the Messiah. Our reading ended with that voice from heaven, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased’. Luke knows his Bible and here he weaves together three Bible references:
Hearing that this is who he is, the true king of Israel, the one called by God to journey in faith on God’s journey, and the true ‘Son of Adam’, Jesus is immediately put on the spot. What is he to do with this affirmation, and the gift of the power of God which has come with it? What kind of a Messiah is he to be? Where is he to journey with and for God? How is he to live as a true human being? Sorting that out comes next, starting in the Temptations which we’ll come to on the first Sunday in Lent. But we, the readers of this passage, are put on the spot too. Luke tells us that Jesus is the true heir of David, the true heir of Abraham and the true heir of Adam; the true king, the true example of faith and trust in God and the first truly human being since Adam lost the plot. So what are we to do with this knowledge? When Luke first wrote his story, he did it in a world with one king – the Roman Emperor, many religious gurus, and not a few philosophers claiming to know the meaning of life, the universe and everything. And addressing that world he made this huge claim for Jesus, that as God’s anointed one, the Messiah, it is Jesus who is:
That was, and is, a huge claim, and it leaves each of us with a huge question: What does it mean for me, to believe that about Jesus? What does it mean for us, here, now, in the world we live in? What difference does believing that about Jesus make to what we do and how we live today? That is Luke’s challenge to us in today’s short Gospel reading. In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
(Truro Cathedral Second Sunday in Epiphany, Year B, 15.1.12. 1 Sanyek 3.1-10 Revelation 5.1-10 John 1.43-51) Grant, O Lord, that the words of my mouth and the
meditations of all our hearts be now and always acceptable in your
sight, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer.
Amen There are two parts to this morning’s three Bible
readings – an easy part and a hard part.
There’s all that strange stuff about heaven, angels going up
and down ladders, a sealed scroll written on both sides and a sacrificed
lamb with seven horns and seven eyes.
And there’s the story of God calling the young Samuel to be his
representative and Jesus calling Philip and Nathanael to be his
trainees. So let’s do the hard bit first – those two
stories about people being ‘called’.
They’re stories - and there are lots of them in the Bible -
about vocation, about tasks and responsibilities, about commitments and
duties, about dedication and service.
The youngster Samuel hears an inner voice.
Philip and Nathanael get a personal invitation. Their lives are
changed. Samuel finds
himself committed to a lifetime of leadership in the small but lively
federation of Israelite tribes, and it’s on his watch that things have
to change and he has to manage that change from federated tribes to a
state with a king – despite thinking the whole thing is a bad idea.
A thousand years later Philip and Nathanael meet a stranger and
end up apprenticed to him, disciples to a rabbi, learning so that they
can continue his tasks and his teaching when he’s gone.
There’s a lesson here - it’s by far and away the best thing
not to hear such voices and to be somewhere else when such invitations
are given out. But the
worrying thing is that God keeps doing it – calling people – to big
things or small, to lifetime responsibilities or one-off tasks.
And it’s not easy for God in our time when we’re more into
rights than responsibilities and not to hot at all on commitment.
So if you think this time it might be you that God is calling,
for this or for that, it probably is – so talk to someone about it.
And let’s hope that someone will hear a call to apply for the
post of our Dean when it’s advertised.
But be under no illusion – God’s calls might bring rich
rewards, I can vouch for that in my own experience, but they don’t
lead to easy living. It
would have been a much safer service this morning without those two
challenging stories. Now let’s go on to the strange stuff – though
it is much less odd when you understand the codes and know your Bible
genres, as I said in my Advent sermon, and the one before that I expect.
The writer of Revelation creates a series of visions of heaven:
visions full of drama, colour and singing.
The central scene is always the same – it’s God on a throne
at the very heart of things. And
always, next to him, is Jesus of Nazareth – but not as Philip or
Nathanael or anyone else ever knew him.
So here is Jesus in the form of a sacrificed lamb, standing
upright but with the marks of slaughter on him, and like no lamb we’ve
ever seen – with seven horns and seven eyes.
Definitely a Lamb with a capital ‘L’.
What’s this fearsome lamb do?
Takes a sealed and so far unopenable scroll from God’s hand.
At which point heaven erupts in a glorious anthem praising Jesus
for everything he has done so far, which is set people free from burdens
of sin and guilt and create the beginnings of a new and better worldwide
community. End of scene 6.
The vision is a coded statement about Jesus - who he is, what he
means; and also about the Church - what it is and what it should look
like. The format is strange:
but the meaning is easy. It’s the same with the Gospel reading from John.
Matthew, Mark and Luke use the Agatha Christie method – the
story slowly unfolds, there are clues, but you don’t know what’s
what until Poirot gathers everyone together at the end and reveals the
murderer. But with John you
know exactly who Jesus is from the start.
Philip finds his friend Nathanael to tell him that he’s just
met the Messiah. Nathanael
acknowledges Jesus as ‘Son of God’ and ‘King of Israel’ as soon
as Jesus says hello. Jesus
tells him that he’s seen nothing yet and if he sticks around he’ll
see ‘angels ascending and descending on the Son of Man’.
That’s a reference to the Old Testament story about Ancestor
Jacob (Gen 28), who stopped overnight in the middle of nowhere and had a
dream of a ladder between heaven and earth with angels going up and down
it. There were two lessons
in that ancient story. One
was that angels are rather dim. Well,
would you go up and down a ladder when you can fly?
The other was that Jacob had found a holy place, a place where
heaven and earth met, and the stone he’d been using as a pillow was a
sacred stone, so he called the place ‘Bethel’ - ‘House of God’ -
and it became one of Israel’s temples where people could meet God.
So here John updates that old story with a new one in which Jesus
tells Nathanael that there’s now a new way where earth and heaven
meet, but it’s a person not a place.
When you look at me, Jesus says to Nathanael, you’re looking
right into the heart of God, because I’m now where heaven and earth
meet. The story might be
odd, though not as odd as Revelation’s vision, but the meaning is
plain enough – that Jesus is the best clue there is to the meaning of
life, the universe and everything; that Jesus is the human face of God.
In John’s story Nathanael is impressed.
He should be. That’s
why John crafted it that way. Jesus
is impressive. That’s the
good news John wants his readers to hear.
And that’s also what all that singing in heaven is about in the
Revelation vision. And
that’s also what this Epiphany season is about too – a baby is born
and grows up and we see him to be nothing less than the human face of
God, the best clue there is to making sense of life and living.
Impressive? Yes
indeed. And challenging too.
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen
(Truro Cathedral, Fourth Sunday of Epiphany, Year A, 27.1.08. Isaiah 9.1-4, 1 Corinthians 1.10-18, Matthew 4.12-23) The Book of Isaiah, as we have it, weaves together the words of Isaiah of Jerusalem in the eighth century BC and the words of his disciples over the next three centuries into a moving tapestry of hope. Days may be dark - and they were when the Assyrians and then the Babylonians were trampling all over you and carrying anyone who was anyone off to exile – but darkness does not have the last word – the last word lies with God, and it is a word of light, freedom, hope. So John read for us in that strange snippet from Isaiah 9, a poignant reading for Holocaust Memorial Day as we remember the greatest example yet of the power of darkness, evil and oppression. The preliminaries are over, and Jesus gets down to work. So our Gospel Reading says. The days might be dark – Herod has arrested the prophet John – but Jesus starts his ministry, a ministry of light to those in darkness, so Matthew quotes our reading from Isaiah. The time is near - Jesus preaches, teaches and demonstrates – when light and freedom will be real, and God will be king. So he calls Simon and Andrew, James and John, to join him in convincing people of this great truth. And off he goes around dark Galilee preaching, teaching and demonstrating that the light is beginning to shine. Again, a poignant reading, surrounded as we are with the Holocaust Memorial Day exhibition ahead of this afternoon’s service. And then, seemingly on another planet, Mary read to us from Paul’s first letter to the church in Corinth - the reading’s on another planet, I mean, not Mary! There’s no big picture anymore – we’re not reading about national disasters, political hopes and fears, or the drama of a hero setting out on his quest, the Messiah and his message. No, we’re reading about church politics, congregational squabbles and the dirty linen of church life. But it’s this lesson from Paul that I want to focus on for a few minutes now because, as my gran used to say, ‘fine words butter no parsnips’. That always used to seem to me to be a very peculiar saying, but gran would come out with it, usually around a quarter past seven on a Sunday night when they had got home from chapel. It meant that she had disapproved of the sermon, which she did often, because she saw the gap between what the preacher had said and who the preacher was. Most of the preachers at Horsehay chapel were local preachers – Readers, in your dictionary – we only saw a minister once a quarter – and for gran that was quite often enough, given some of the ministers in the circuit – and she knew these local preachers, who they were, where they lived, where they worked, and what they were like. And often she saw that gap between what they preached and how they practiced. That’s the same gap that St Paul is addressing when he writes to the Christians in Corinth, and, many would argue, it’s in that gap where Christian anti-Semitism lurked, that the seeds of the Holocaust were sown. Anyone who harks back to those early days, when the Church was young and the Faith was bright; when the Spirit was at work, the Gospel preached, the Church growing by the day; and when all was Biblical and pure and alive – anyone who harks back to that has obviously never read First Corinthians. You wouldn’t have wanted to be Dean of Corinth, or if you got the job you’d be glad it was only a short-term contract. Look what was going on: this congregation, probably the size of ours here, was riven with conflict. The different parties gave themselves labels – ‘We’re Peter’s People’, ‘We’re for Paul’, ‘Apollos is the one’ and then, and I bet these were the really nasty ones, ‘We’re Christ’s’. The Church at Corinth was divided, and bitterly divided, over real issues of theology, identity, ethics and spirituality. What does it mean to be a Christian? What must we believe? How should we behave? What is the proper way to worship? These were the divisive issues and they were big issues. Opinions varied considerably – from the conservative (the ‘I belong to Peter’ people) to the radical (the Apollos group) with Paul’s followers in the middle. Those who said ‘I belong to Christ’ were convinced that there was only one way to think, act, and worship, theirs. The others thought the same, of course they did. Paul was appalled, and appeals for unity of mind and of purpose; ‘I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you be in agreement, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same purpose’. Unfortunately, he doesn’t say how such unity is to be achieved. A majority vote to settle each question? A lowest common denominator consensus? An agreement to differ? The famous 17th century Lutheran saying: ‘in essentials unity, in non-essentials freedom, and in all things charity’? But then we’d disagree over what are ‘essentials’ and what are ‘non-essentials.’ Paul does, though, go on to do something very interesting – and I don’t mean the lovely and very human bit where he gets muddled up over just who he had baptised at Corinth. No, the important thing that Paul does is, first, to appeal for unity in the one ‘name of our Lord Jesus Christ’ (as distinct from in the different names that three of the divided groups claimed to follow). Then, twice, he refers to the cross; that the cross might not be emptied of its power by their divisions, and that the foolish message of the cross is really what it’s all about. What does he mean by the apparent foolishness of the cross? That God’s ways are not our ways, nor his thoughts our thoughts, nor his values our values. You groups in Corinth might fight for supremacy, to win the argument, to overpower your opponents, Paul says, but Christ on the cross didn’t fight for supremacy, he lost the argument and he was himself completely overpowered. That’s God’s way, says Paul – and those who think it’s not relevant to us and our arguments really need to think again, he suggests. So, why did I choose to preach on the Epistle rather than the Gospel today? Partly because the gap between what we believe and how we behave can be tragic – as in Christian anti-semitism. And partly that at the moment the Anglican Communion worldwide is tearing itself apart – it’s Corinth on an international scale – and the poor old Archbishop of Canterbury has the unenviable job of trying to be its Paul. The same issues – sexuality, identity, gender and power - divide dioceses, deaneries and parishes. Paul doesn’t tell us the way to go, but he does tell us the way not to go, that of names and parties and truth-by-combat. Jesus didn’t go that way either, our Gospel reading hints. He wasn’t the upfront, confrontational, this-way-or-else, ‘smash ‘em with a rod of iron’ Messiah that many hoped for, but a teacher, preacher and carer, with a strange and uncomfortably inclusive charity to which he called Peter and the others to commit themselves. He then commissioned them to invite the likes of us to live in the same way. This strange Messiah with his strange vision of God’s rule took some getting used to, and following him took some getting your head around – they obviously hadn’t got the hang of it yet at Corinth. 2000 years on, we’ve much less excuse, and the consequences, for our Church and our world, are far more serious, for there’s a direct line from the Corinthians’ way of handling difference and conflict to genocide. How those early Christians at Corinth dealt with their real differences was a test case of Isaiah’s vision and Jesus’ whole ministry. So it is with us and ours. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen
(Sermon for 9 February 2003 (Proper 1/5th Sunday in ordinary time: Year B) published in Expository Times, January 2003, vol 114, no 4, pp124-6: Isaiah 40:21-31, 1 Corinthians 9:16-23 and Mark 1:29-39 ) Three Bible readings today, each about good news to tell or hear. But only one of them gives us good news to share and hear in today’s church and for today’s world. Sorry, but that’s the way it is! The first reading gave us the words of an anonymous prophet who looked at what was happening in his world and saw signs of hope. It was 540 BCE or thereabouts, and the Jews had been nearly fifty years in exile in Babylon. But the writing was on the wall for the Babylonian empire, the Persians were gathering in the east and the Babylonian armies were in retreat. Could this be the end of the Babylonians and a new beginning for the Jews? Could Cyrus the Persian be the saviour of God’s people? Could it be a return to Jerusalem and a new dawn, a new Temple and a new kingdom? ‘Yes’, ‘yes’, and ‘yes’, thought this anonymous observer of the political scene. And he said so. ‘Scarcely are those Babylonians planted, scarcely sown, scarcely rooted and a stem growing, than our Lord blows on them and they wither: their harvest field blasted to stubble!’ ‘As for us, we shall renew our strength, mount up on eagles’ wings, run and not be weary, walk and not faint’. That was his good news, ‘We’re going home! Praise to God who is making it happen!’ And it happened. But the reality was much less than the dream. The new Jerusalem never materialised, the new economy was poor and independence would be nearly 400 years in coming – and that reality was much less than the dream too. And so it is for us. The world goes on as it always has. Political regimes come and go. The worlds of politics and economics run their courses, and ordinary people are caught up in them for good or ill. That’s the way it is. Life goes on much as always. The good news that there’s a new home to go to has gone stale. It no longer carries the excitement and energy it did when that ancient anonymous prophet said it, and such words no longer have the effect they had then. We no longer live in that sort of world. We no longer believe in that sort of God, who controls history, acts in it, intervenes in it; manipulates it, guides it and makes things happen. Talking of God like that no longer makes sense to us. Sorry, but that’s the way it is! We read, in our third lesson, about the beginning of Jesus’ ministry and his message of good news about the Kingdom of God, God’s rule in his world, and the imminence of its arrival. We read of Jesus’ healings and exorcisms which were seen as powerful signs of what was about to come. And what we read was true. There is no historical doubt that Jesus of Nazareth was a powerful preacher, an imaginative and gifted teacher and a noted healer and exorcist. That is bedrock history. And there is more, for Christians from the beginning have seen more than that in him. Despised, rejected and crucified, his followers did not see Good Friday as the end. In the events of Easter, too mysterious to fathom but too real to deny, Christians saw and still see deep into the heart of God. They see there a love which shares our pain, which will not let us go, which draws us on and out and from which nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us. But life still goes on much as before. People are born, grow old and die. We get sick and the laws of sin and death continue to rule us and our world as they always have. The promised time has not come. The new day has not dawned. God does not rule in and over our world with freedom, justice and peace for all as Jesus envisaged. And the message that ‘the Kingdom of God is near’ has gone stale. It no longer carries the excitement and energy it did when Jesus said it, and such words no longer have the effect they had then. We no longer live in that sort of world. We no longer believe in that sort of apocalyptic God, who is soon to take control of history and make new things happen. Though some people still do it, talking of God like that no longer makes sense to us. Sorry, but that’s the way it is! So finally, to our second Bible reading, the words of Paul to the Corinthians, the dullest of the three readings, Paul engaged in his frequent theological wrangling. Its message is much the most low-key, but it’s the one for us. Paul writes to the Corinthians after the first flush of apocalyptic enthusiasm has died down. The End has not come. Jesus has not returned. And so to avoid misunderstandings in the circles in which he moves, Paul’s letters say little about the ‘Kingdom of God’, though it had been at the heart of Jesus’ message. He writes too as a Jew of the Dispersion, for whom Jerusalem and Judah are far away places; and his letters show no commitment at all to any gospel of a new Jerusalem and renewed homeland. So both the words of Isaiah 40 and those of Jesus in his Galilean ministry belong in the past for Paul. What belongs in the present for him, and gives him energy and excitement is the message about Jesus – not the message Jesus gave to his contemporaries, but the message about Jesus, that ‘Jesus is Lord’. That, for Paul, is the truth which comes out of Good Friday and Easter and which he is committed to sharing will all and sundry. He shares it without limit, sharing it with both Jew and Greek, friend and stranger, near and far. This message is the good news that the meaning of life, the universe and everything – ‘good news for all, throughout the earth’ – is seen clearest of all in the death of a crucified Jew and what his followers said time and again. He shares the first Christians’ sound-bite that ‘Jesus is Lord’, but what that means has to be unpacked in conversations, discussions and no doubt arguments, as different people outside ask their various questions and different people inside discuss their various points of view. ‘Jesus is lord’ – a statement too mysterious to fathom but too real to deny – is the good news Paul has to share. And life goes on much as before. Some people search for meaning: some don’t. those who do find it in all kinds of places: in religions new or old, philosophies sane or strange, ideologies, lifestyles, interests and commitments of all kinds. This world of searching for meaning is the same as it was for Paul. And for this world, Paul insists, we have good news to share, a gospel to proclaim, something worth hearing – the story of Jesus.
(Truro Cathedral Proper 2/6th Sunday in ordinary time Year A, 13.2.11. Sirach 15.15-20, 1 Corinthians 3.1-9, Matthew 5.21-37) Grant, O Lord, that the words of my mouth and the
meditations of all our hearts be now and always acceptable in your
sight, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer.
Amen Neither congregations nor preachers get any choice
when it comes to Bible readings in worship, and parts of our three
readings this morning make uncomfortable and challenging hearing:
All three readings are heavy, demanding, hard and
uncompromising: but they are there in the lectionary for today, and so
we must face up to them. I
have three things to say. First, when it comes to ‘sin’ the Bible has two
rather different definitions. In
the Old Testament, ‘sin’ is a blatant, deliberate and calculated
decision to do the opposite of what God requires; and so most of us,
most of the time, are not guilty of it.
That’s the view taken by the Psalmist in today’s psalm, and
by them all. We might not be
very good human beings. We
are certainly not immune to mistakes, failings and even doing wrong
things. We’re often weak
and frail and foolish: but for all that the Old Testament is slow to
label us as ‘sinners’. And
there’s something very humane and understanding in that Old Testament
approach. By contrast the New Testament gets tough: we are
all sinners; we have all fallen short of the glory of God; there is no
health in any of us; and we all desperately and daily need God’s
forgiveness. I’m not sure that, most days, most of us really
do. And on those days when
we really, really do we’ve so devalued the currency of sin and the
language of forgiveness that we can’t hear the words of grace that we
need just then and which God wants to speak to us. Second, judging other people is a universal human
trait. It’s been in our
genes for millennia. That’s
why there are old English proverbs about people living in glass houses
not throwing stones, or about pots not calling kettles dirty and sooty.
That’s why there’s that alleged old Chinese proverb about not
judging someone until you’ve walked a mile in their sandals.
And that’s why Jesus himself warned his disciples, later in the
same Sermon on the Mount as this morning’s reading, against judging
each other (‘Do not judge, so you may not be judged.
For with the judgement you make you will be judged, and the
measure you give will be the measure you get’ Mt 7.1-2); and why on
that other memorable occasion, he quietly said to the angry judgemental
crowd, ‘Let the one among you who is without sin throw the first
stone’ (John 8.7). Judging
other people is an ancient and universal human trait, condemned alike by
ancient and secular folk wisdom and by our Lord. And so, third, what of today’s hard sayings about
human morals, especially those in today’s portion of the Sermon on the
Mount about anger, lust, divorce and personal integrity?
How shall we read these hard sayings of Jesus?
I suggest, quite simply, that we apply these
readings to ourselves and not to our neighbours. That if we apply these
words at all, then we apply them to ourselves and not to our neighbours.
That is, of course, the opposite of our normal way of doing
things, which is to look at ourselves and make allowances and look at
others and not. I suggest doing it this way because that is what
Jesus seems to say as we read on in his sermon, as we’ve just heard:
that we should learn to look outwards with compassion and understanding,
and learn to look inwards with honesty and rigour – at others with
understanding and compassion, at ourselves with rigour and honesty. Though I must add a serious health warning at this
point. This is not the way
for those who habitually look inward and beat themselves up with guilt,
usually over what at the most is weakness rather than sin.
If that is you, you need to learn to look inwards with compassion
and understanding, for that is how God looks at you.
But if that isn’t you or me, then today’s hard
sayings challenge us to look inwards, to apply these rigorous standards
to ourselves, and to stop thinking about how they apply to other people.
Doing that might have a positive outcome:
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen
(A sermon preached in Truro Cathedral, 21st February 2010. Readings: Deuteronomy 26.1-11, Romans 10.8b-13 and Luke 4.1-13) Grant, O Lord, that the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be now and always acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen I get cross on the first Sunday in Lent two years out of three, and that’s not very good when being grumpy is one of those things I think I ought to give up for Lent. I didn’t get cross last year, but I am cross today and will be next year. I get cross because we always read the Temptation Story on the first Sunday in Lent, but only one year in three do we read it all. The whole episode is a story in three parts: Jesus’ Baptism, his Temptation, and the beginning of his ministry: but only when our Gospel readings are from Mark do we read the full story on this Sunday. So let’s do that briefly now. Imagine that you are Jesus, the hero of the story. Yesterday you were at the River Jordan and your cousin John the Baptist baptised you with the rest of the crowd. When it was over and you were praying you had felt yourself overcome by the mighty power of God surging into you, and you heard God’s voice telling you that you were the Messiah, and how good God felt about it. Now that same power of God has led you out into the wilderness, that desert area where God traditionally met those he wanted to meet; and so you were here, like Moses and Elijah had been here before you, waiting. If it was true, if you really were the Messiah, then just what did God want from you? What did it mean? And that’s when the voices start. You are hungry, the people are hungry, you could rescue them from poverty. You could give them new and better manna; they need never go hungry again. They’d do anything for you then. But wait a minute. If I could do that, why not go all out for power, absolute power, take on Caesar, carve out a kingdom as big as Solomon’s? No, no, that’s not it, remember what absolute power did to him; not that way. OK then, but what? If I am the Messiah I can do anything, what about a big miracle in Jerusalem, the mother and father of all signs and wonders? If I am the Messiah? I am the Messiah. So what shall I do? Where do I go from here? The voices stop, the truth dawns, and you go back into Galilee. You start to teach in the synagogues. You’ve got the message; you know the mission; and so in your first sermon in the synagogue back home in Nazareth you announce your text,
That’s the full story, one episode in three parts. Now let’s change tack a bit. Why, do you think, does St Luke tell it like that, and include details that Mark didn’t include, and put things in a different order from Matthew who is also telling the bigger story? What about this for a possibility? It’s now about 85 AD, and St Luke is writing his Golden Jubilee Memorial Gospel, 50 years after the death of Jesus. Things have changed greatly in that time: the first Christians were Jews, and they believed that Jesus was the Messiah, the new King of the Jews, who would bring freedom and prosperity back to the Promised Land and the Chosen People. But it hadn’t happened. Instead Christianity had gone global; it had become a Gentile Church, a new religion, and Jesus the Jewish Messiah had become Jesus Christ, Lord, Saviour and God. And that was Luke’s Church. In it they sang worship songs, like the one from Philippi which Paul had taught them about Jesus being equal with God and the name above every other name, the name at which every knee would bow and confess that ‘Jesus is Lord’; or the one from Colossae which called Jesus the ‘ikon of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation, the one by whom and for whom everything was created’. That was heady stuff, very heady stuff; and I wonder if Luke had begun to see some dangers in it. Might he have pondered whether or not they had moved too far from Jesus of Nazareth? Did he wonder if this new great Church really was what Jesus had had in mind? Did he write a back to basics sort of Gospel, describing Jesus as he thought he had been, and saying what his life and message really meant? Did he see the Church of his day tempted to do things differently, and want them to pause, reconsider and reflect on where they were actually going? This service on the first Sunday in Lent began with a moving penitential litany, because in our Christian tradition Lent is the season of reflection and self-examination. That’s important, valuable and helpful, as we begin our annual journey through Lent with Jesus on his last journey up to Jerusalem, and the temptation story gives us benchmarks to do it – what about
What are we looking for in them all? And is that what we should be looking for? But that’s only a small part of what this story is about. It’s much more about the Church and God’s intentions for it. It reminds us that Life, Faith, God, Mission and the Church is about more than economics, consumption and prosperity. More than politics, power and glory. And more than religion, magic and miracle. Those were the three great temptations that Jesus resisted, and they may have been the temptations which Luke saw facing his own emerging church, and they have certainly surfaced time and again in the history of the Church to seduce and entice. Instead, Luke’s full story insists, Life, Faith, God, Mission and the Church is about something much simpler – being in the places where people hurt and there living out the love of God; which is exactly what St Luke pictures Jesus going on to do in the rest of his much more simple ministry. By all means let’s audit our lives in Lent, but more than that let’s audit the life of the Church too. Just how closely does the life of the Church today compare, in its priorities and its practices, with the life Jesus decided was the life he needed to live for God? Just what is it that God really wants his Church to be about? That’s the bigger question today’s Gospel story forces us to ask. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen
(Truro Cathedral, Second Sunday in Lent, 2006, Year B. Genesis 17.1-7, 15-16, Romans 4.13-25 and Mark 8.31-38) Grant, O Lord, that the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be now and always acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen All our three Bible readings for today, the second Sunday in Lent, are difficult. All of them are strange. We read of God, an aged patriarch, his barren wife and God’s promise of a son. We missed out the painful bit in between, that the cost of that covenant was circumcision. We read that hard passage from Paul that has been much fought over down the centuries, about what faith really means, about the relationship between what we believe and what we do. And hardest of all, that Gospel reading. That one missed a bit out too, because that passage really starts where Jesus asks the disciples who people think he is, and then what they themselves think he is and whether or not they are really committed to him, to following him. We picked it up where Jesus teaches them and teaches the whole crowd who were with them about what it really means to have faith, to be a disciple, to follow Jesus. And what he is talking about is the cost of discipleship, the cost of discipleship. As you know, I’m a Methodist; and often in the past the Methodist Church has been caricatured as ‘The church which likes to say No’. Methodists were people who ‘didn’t’: they didn’t drink, they didn’t gamble, they didn’t do this, and that and the other as well. We were fond, so those who didn’t like us used to say, of wagging our fingers and saying, ‘Thou shalt not’. Some Cornish historians have even gone so far as to say that it was Methodism in Cornwall in the 19th century which drained the colour out of the Duchy. The Methodists didn’t think they were saying ‘No’, but that they were saying ‘Yes’ to something better, richer and fuller – to better news, to a richer life, to a fuller hope. But that’s not how it was always seen. Reading this powerful Gospel passage, Jesus is talking about some hard realities, for himself and for the disciples. He is to journey to Jerusalem to face rejection, humiliation and death, as well as life after it. The disciples are to deny themselves, take up their crosses and follow. He is talking about the cost of discipleship, for himself and for them; about the downside of faith, and about that commitment to God which means that sometimes we have to say ‘No’. And it wasn’t easy for the disciples and the crowd to hear any of it. Peter took him on one side and told him to snap out of it, get a grip, he was the Messiah and that meant life and success, not death and failure. Some of the crowd were embarrassed, and slipped away, ashamed to be associated with this sort of a Messiah. Saying ‘No’ wasn’t popular. And today, of course, we never say ‘No’ at all, do we? ‘No’ means failure, and no one is allowed to fail – we just succeed differently. We have to say ‘Yes’ because everyone has their rights. And if you try to tell me ‘No’ I reply with a ‘Yes’ – because I’m worth it, because as a fully paid up member of the ‘Me-generation’ I have my rights and they are rights to my personal fulfilment. Now of course, we are in Lent, traditionally, for Anglicans at least, a time for a bit of self-denial. Now Methodists actually used to do self denial, though not for anywhere near as long as Lent, but for a week; ‘Self- denial Week’ we called it, when for seven days we gave up something and gave the money saved to overseas missions. We don’t do it any more. But Anglicans are supposed to do it, aren’t you? - to do self-denial for the forty or so days of Lent. I was talking to some students the other day and the conversation turned to what they were giving up for Lent. One said she was giving up alcohol, she was a Methodist. Another said she was giving up chocolate, and was already feeling withdrawal symptoms. The other one said she was giving up being hard on herself; and while that made us all smile, I think we rather felt that that wasn’t quite the idea of Lent, really. Because Jesus, in this tough reading, is telling the disciples that the time has come to be hard on themselves, to take up their cross – and how powerful a metaphor is that? – and to deny themselves. He tells the disciples that there comes a time and place in their journey with God, where the way becomes hard, and the journey difficult. Self-sacrifice is called for; and there is a struggle ahead. It is not just a personal struggle, he tells them, but a cosmic one, between life and death, good and evil, light and dark. It is a struggle for truth, it is a clash of cultures, it is a conflict of values, he says: his, and God’s on the one side, and ‘this adulterous and sinful generation’, as he calls it, on the other. Strong stuff. Now I didn’t choose these Bible readings today, and had I been preaching in my own little chapel today I might have sidestepped them and done something else entirely: but they are our appointed readings. So what is the lesson here for Lent and for the church today and for each of us? Is it possibly that we need to think carefully about whether or not the time has come in the mission of the church in our culture today to be counter-cultural? To say to our society, for example, that life does not consist in the abundance of our possessions? That our personal fulfilment is not the most important life goal that we can imagine? That there is no profit in gaining the whole world if we forfeit our soul? Because that’s just what Jesus said, and it went against the grain of his society then just as it goes against the grain of our society now. And saying it then cost Jesus his life. It is very hard to say ‘No’. It is hard to talk to disciples about the cost of discipleship. It is hard to talk to anyone about self-denial. It is hard to talk to a self-focused culture about a better way. All that is a foreign language today. So,
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
15 Rehpidim and Sychar (two stories about the waters of life) (A sermon preached at Wimbourne Methodist Church on 27th February, 2005. Lent 3, Year A. Bible readings: Exodus 17:1-7 and John 4:4-15) 1. On Sunday afternoons on ITV we currently have the chance to see old classic westerns again – and one of these Sunday afternoons I might manage that – and one frequent storyline in those old westerns is fighting between the cattlemen and the farmers, often over water rights. Water, vital for life in the arid wild west, and a cause of trouble. 2. One of my students training to be a Reader in the diocese of Truro is a weekly commuter – to Jerusalem . His day job is in the mediation team between Israelis and Palestinians; and chatting with him over lunch at a Study Day the other week he was explaining to us that a major, but hidden, issue in that complex situation is the question of water – everybody needs it, but who has it, and who controls its supply? 3. And then there’s the tsunami – just to remind us that water can be dangerous in itself, as well as refreshing, death-dealing as well as life-giving; one of the pictures that stays in my mind is that shot of a mass of slow-moving, solid looking, black water rolling through a street at balcony level. Terrifying. 4. The Bible knows about both types of water, the water of life, the still waters beside which the Good Shepherd leads us and to which he takes us, the soft, refreshing rain. And the waters of death, the storm on the lake, the miry waters which come up to the drowning psalmist’s neck, and the evil sea, which will be no more when the new heavens and the new earth are established. And in the Bible, God freely gives the water of life and he powerfully conquers the enemy waters of death. That’s the background for our two Bible readings this morning. 5. In our OT story, the rescued Israelites are in the desert. They have escaped from the Egyptians – delivered by God through the parted water of the Sea. They have been hungry, and God has fed them with quails and manna. And now they are thirsty, and not for the first time; and they are grumbling at Moses, again. Understandably. Moses, instructed by God, strikes a rock and there is water for everyone to drink. Obviously this is the stuff of legend here, and this kind of incident is repeated two books later, but keeping to our theme, we mustn’t throw out babies with the bathwater, and stories like this were told with a purpose. God gives life, water in the desert, but God’s own people are very quick to grumble. 6. In our NT story Jesus is thirsty. He is the traveler now, and is sat at a foreign well, outside a Samaritan village in the heat of the day. And ‘Jews had no dealings with Samaritans’ or vice versa. Unconventional as ever, he talks to a woman, obviously an unpopular woman with a past and a present. She banters and teases, talks theology, gets a lecture, comes to believe in Jesus and presumably gives him a drink, though the story never says that. The disciples come back, and aren’t too happy about all this, and when the whole village believes in him too, they are quick to put the woman back into her outcast place. Sad that. But Jesus, who is the water of life, has given that water to her, and she need never thirst again. And to them, though it doesn’t seem to have changed their bad attitude very much. Jesus gave life, water at the well, to strangers, foreigners and outcasts and they drank it greedily. 7. These readings both testify that God gives the water of life, and the Gospel reading pictures Jesus as the way God gives that life, that he is the one through whom that life-giving water is given. And in our closing hymn we shall sing gratefully that that is our experience too – (I heard the voice of Jesus say / Behold, I freely give / the living water; thirsty one / stoop down and drink and live / I came to Jesus and I drank / of that life-giving stream / My thirst was quenched, my soul revived / and now I live in him Hymns and Psalms 136 v2) – that in responding to his invitation to discipleship we have found a way to live which is fulfilling, not always easy or always happy, but real and true. That is the good news about Jesus which is ours to share. 8. But I don’t want to end on that, true though it is, I want to look at something else in these two stories. Jesus gives the Living Water, that’s true, but who gets the water, that’s my last point. God’s own people grumbled about their lack of water in the desert, and Moses gave them fresh water to drink; but by the time of Jesus, God’s own people wouldn’t share their water with their Samaritan neighbours, and their Samaritan neighbours were very happy to reply in kind. Each was convinced that the well of living waters – God - was theirs alone, and the Samaritan woman was prepared to argue that out with Jesus. But Jesus wouldn’t play. He said something startlingly different – read John 4:21-24. There’s a parable here for our multi-faith world, and eyes to see and ears to hear might see and hear that the time for squabbling between Jerusalem and Samaria, between the great faiths is over, and the time for humbly drinking from the one well of spirit and truth has come. For me, and for all of us here, it is Jesus who gives the life-giving water from God; for those of other faith communities there will be another giver with another title, because God, however we name him, is the Father who responds to all who worship in spirit and in truth, in sincerity and in integrity, in faith and in trust, and who is the eternal spring of life-giving water for each and for all. 9. We can, and we may, like in the old wild west, fight over who owns the well and who gets access to the water; but our New Testament lesson really does suggest that we shouldn’t do that.
(Sermon for April 7, 2002 (Easter 2: Year A/B/C) published in Expository Times, March 2002, vol 113, no 6, pp197-198: John 20:19-31) ‘Christ is risen!’ ‘He is risen indeed!’ ‘Hallelujah!’ That ringing Easter acclamation echoes round our churches each Sunday of the Easter season every year. But what does Easter mean? What is it all really about? What difference does it make? Even as we sing our Easter hymns and proclaim our Easter Faith these kinds of questions are there, lurking underneath and usually unsaid, but there none the less. And they always have been, even from the very beginnings at that first Easter. They are not new. Neither are they wrong, bad or faithless; for the resurrection of Jesus Christ is too important a creed to be believed just because Christians are supposed to believe it. ‘He is risen!’ That’s what Mary Magdalene rushes to report to the disciples. In the way John tells his Easter story, she had met her risen Lord at dawn in the garden. Peter and another disciple had been there with her, but they had gone and they hadn’t seen him. What they and the rest made of Mary’s breathless news we are not told. But here in the first of the three scenes in today’s Gospel reading, the doors of their Upper Room are still locked, and they are still afraid of the Jewish authorities. That much we are told. Then, that night, so John tells his story, Jesus comes to them even though the doors are locked, and he greets them with the conventional, ‘Peace be with you’, which must have sounded like they’d never heard it sound before. He shows himself to them, drawing their attention to his pierced hands and side. They are glad, overjoyed, delighted – just as Jesus had said they would be half a dozen times in as many minutes as he talked to them at the Last Supper. They would be hurt, bereft, confused, he said, but then they would be glad, overjoyed, delighted. He blesses them, repeating what he has already said, ‘Peace be with you’. He commissions them, ‘As the Father has sent me, so I send you’. He blesses them again, by breathing on them and saying ‘Receive the Holy Spirit’, a quiet, gentle, life-giving breath of a blessing. Then he gives them authority to forgive or to retain sins – make of that what you may – and there the visit ends. There it is, the familiar, bold Easter story, or at least there is John’s version of it, as different from Luke’s as Luke’s is from Matthew’s. ‘Lo, Jesus meets them, risen from the tomb; lovingly he greets them, scatters fear and gloom’, as the hymn nearly says. ‘He is risen!’ – Mary had said; ‘He is risen indeed’ – the disciples now affirm. But, and there seems to be a ‘but’ of some kind in every one of the Easter stories, but Thomas is not there. And when he comes back and they tell him what has happened he will have none of it. Nonsense, he says, it doesn’t make sense. He voices those lurking questions. And he’s right. It doesn’t. It is unbelievable. Thomas can’t and won’t believe it. So to the second scene. Eight days later. Same place. Same locked doors. But this time Thomas is there. Jesus comes to them again and greets them again. Then he shows himself to Thomas, drawing his attention to his pierced hands and side, inviting him to touch, feel, believe. Thomas doesn’t touch but he does believe. Nowhere in any of the Gospels do we find any greater statement of faith than this one uttered by Thomas, ‘My Lord and my God’. He sees and believes. ‘Blessed are those’, he is told, ‘who haven’t seen and yet believe.’ Thomas doesn’t reply. That’s the end of the scene. ‘Christ is risen; he is risen indeed’, affirms Thomas as he declares his faith in Jesus as his Lord and his God, a faith based on that experience of meeting the Risen Lord. Thomas is a changed man after the resurrection. The disciples are changed too, into apostles. The Jewish faith is changed, a new sect emerges. The world is changed, a new world religion grows out of that little Jewish sect. There are many unanswered and unanswerable questions about the resurrection of Jesus and the first Easter: What happened in the tomb? – the Bible is silent. Who first discovered the empty tomb? – the Bible gives three different combinations of women. What was the risen body of Jesus like? – parts of the Bible say it was as real a body as ours, others say it could come and go through locked doors, appear and disappear in ways our bodies can’t. In what order did the appearances take place? – it is impossible to put the Bible stories into diary order. Why do so many of the stories say that the disciples doubted? – why indeed. And so we could to on , just about the Easter stories themselves, but there is that one huge fact to be reckoned with, that huge change, the beginning of the Christian Church. And that fact needs to be explained. The only explanation big enough to fit the fact, our reading asserts, is that Christ met his disciples again after his death, that he was raised and is risen, and that changed things. Then we come to the third part of our reading, the last two verses of John 20; and they read like an author’s concluding note. They tell us why he has written what he has written – and why John’s Easter story carries on for another chapter after it is another of those Bible questions without answers. But what it says is plain enough. John tells his readers that he has written what he has written because he, like Thomas, believes in Jesus as Messiah – Son of God – Lord and that he has found new life in this new faith with Jesus at its centre, that he too has been changed by meeting Jesus. That’s why he hasn’t written a biography of Jesus, he says, but a work of testimony, written by a believer that others might come to believe as well, written out of a lifetime’s experience of believing and of working out what this means in all the chances and changes of daily life. He knows that his readers have not seen what Thomas and the others have seen – in all probability this John who wrote the Fourth Gospel hadn’t seen it either – but have they seen enough in this testimony to find in it the clue to a new way of living, a new experience of life, as he had? Has he written it compellingly enough, that they will see that the resurrection of Jesus is the greatest life-giving and life-enhancing sign of all? That is his aim and hope in writing his Gospel. He is convinced that the story of Jesus is the key to the meaning of life, the universe and everything, and he tells us his story with its Easter ending to invite us to join him in living by it, in making it our story too. May God help us to hear John’s testimony and to respond.
(Sermon for May 29, 2011 (Easter 6: Year A) Truro Cathedral Acts 17.22-31; 1 Peter 3.13-22; John 14.15-21) Grant O Lord, that the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be now and always acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer, Amen. It’s the sixth Sunday of Easter today and so I intend to preach on Easter. That means I’m not going to mention today’s Gospel reading at all: because it’s got nothing about Easter in it, because it’s about the Holy Spirit and you’ll get a sermon on that in a fortnight’s time; and because it’s about Christian behaviour and I preached on that last time. So let’s look at today’s epistle and its little instruction ‘Be ready at all times to answer anyone who asks you to explain the hope you have in you, but do it with gentleness and respect’ (1 Pet 3.15-16, GNB) and at how St Paul does just that in his address to the Greeks at their Hyde Park corner in Athens. For the writer of the First Letter of Peter, who probably wasn’t that Peter, the hope that is in us – the expectation that we can grow in grace until in God’s good time and God’s eternal good ways we are matured and made perfect as God intended us to be – that hope has one beginning and one great sign; it starts from the resurrection of Jesus and Jesus’ resurrection is its great sign. Why have you signed up for Christian discipleship in a tricky world where discipleship is counter-cultural and tough? Why have you joined a new, suspect and minority religious group which the authorities barely tolerate and sometimes even persecute? When they ask you that sort of question, Peter suggests, just give them the answer. It’s because God raised Jesus Christ from the dead. So far so good. When Luke tells the story in Acts about Paul debating religion at the Areopagus in Athens, he tells us that Paul and the Greeks had no problem in starting off their discussion. They all believed in God, and Paul is quite happy to accept their Greek belief in God as ‘the one in whom we live and move and have our being’. But then Paul goes further; he goes on to talk about what is distinctive about his Christian message, which is the bit in the message about ‘Jesus and the resurrection’ (Acts 17.18, 31). For him the resurrection is the crucial part of his argument: but for them it is a point too far, and the debate ends. They are, unlike Richard Dawkins and many of his militant atheist friends, very happy to talk seriously about God, religion, theology, faith and spirituality: but they draw the line when Paul starts to talk about a man being raised from the dead. They know how to handle myths and metaphors, and unlike Richard Dawkins they can handle the subtlety of religious language, but they also know the difference between fact and fantasy and they tell Paul that he has crossed the line there. So what do those two readings have to say to us at the end of Easter 2011? Two things. First, they challenge us about what happened. Those Greeks had a point – the resurrection of Jesus is a tough idea to get our heads around. Dead people do not come back to life: they didn’t then and they don’t now. No wonder that Greek audience was sceptical. And yet Paul insists on it, and so do the rest of the New Testament writers. It would have been so much easier for them to have gone straight from the crucifixion to the Ascension. They could have preached perfectly easily that God had taken Jesus to heaven where he now reigned at God’s right hand in power and glory as Son of God. Jews and Greeks would have had no problem getting their heads around that – problems with believing it, yes, but not with understanding it - but they didn’t preach that. They preached instead that between his crucifixion on Calvary and his glorification at the right hand of God, Jesus had made himself known physically to the disciples, and that on a number of occasions, as a dead man raised from the dead. Their stories about it don’t tally, and it’s impossible for us to say what the risen body of Jesus was like, or to put the meetings in diary order, or even to say who discovered that the tomb was empty: but one thing is clear, that that is what they preached and they didn’t even try to put together a clear and watertight press release. The only explanation big enough to explain why they told it like this is because that is actually what happened - incredible and unbelievable, confusing and baffling though all this was and is. Second, that incredible and baffling event is where Christian Faith and Church begin. You won’t have it here, thank goodness, but there will be churches in a fortnight’s time at Pentecost decked out with balloons and birthday cakes celebrating the Birthday of the Church. You won’t have it here because by and large Perran doesn’t do balloons, but mainly because this Cathedral tries to read the Bible properly, and doing that we read that Easter is the Birthday of the Church; that without Easter Christians have nothing to believe and preachers have nothing to preach – as Paul starkly puts it when he writes to the Corinthians (1 Cor 15.12-19). Christianity is Easter Faith and Christians are Easter People – that’s the ‘hope that is in us’. It is a hope for living here and now because it assures us that the last word does not lie with death but with life, not with darkness but with light, and not with evil but with love, and that’s a ‘living hope’, a hope to live by. It is also a hope for our and the world’s eternal future in a God whose love will bring each life and each fragment of creation to its eternal fulfilment in a new creation, a hope for all and for everything and for eternity. When they ask you what it’s all about, says Peter, tell them that our Christian spirituality starts with Jesus, who was crucified and who was raised from the dead; and that we take that unbelievable and baffling event to be our sign from God that now and eternally the last word lies with Life, Light and Love, no matter how deadly, dark or evil our circumstances might be, and that that is the hope by which we live. In the name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
(Sermon for May 30 2004 (Pentecost: Year C) published in Expository Times, April 2004, vol 115, no 7, pp238-240: Acts 2:1-21, (Genesis 11:1-9), Romans 8:14-17 and John 14:8-17) We played an interesting game before the young people left for their teaching session. Many of the worship aids for today simply call Pentecost the ‘Birthday’ of the Church, and the suggestions they make for all age worship include balloons, birthday cakes, candles, streamers and party poppers, even singing ‘Happy Birthday’! But we put that to the test, and asked ourselves the question - What really is the Birthday of the Church? We got some interesting answers. Today – Pentecost, was, of course, one. Christmas, was another. The calling of the first disciples was an unexpected one. Then there was Good Friday and Easter Day. When we added up the votes we found that the majority of us had got it wrong. For the right answer, at least according to St Paul, is Easter Day (1 Corinthians 15:13-14). Without Easter Day we would not be here. No Easter Day would have meant no Faith to preach or believe, no Christianity and no Church: but with the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ at that first Easter, St Paul insists, the Church is born. That’s also the way John’s Gospel tells the story. In its Easter Day story it is on the evening of that Resurrection Day that the Risen Jesus breathed his gift of the Holy Spirit onto and into the first disciples in the Upper Room as he had promised (John 20:19-23). That is rather different from Luke’s way of telling it in the Acts of the Apostles. So if we go with Paul and John on this one we are left with a teasing question: if today is not the Birthday of the Church, then what is it? What is Pentecost? What is that reading from Acts 2 about? There is, fortunately, an answer. We know, for as near certain as we know anything, that Jesus was crucified at Passover. In that festival the Jews celebrated their salvation, their deliverance in the days of Moses, the great events in which God rescued their ancestors from slavery and lead them out of oppression into freedom. That’s what Passover was about, and the early Christian thinkers and preachers were not slow to point out that in the death of Jesus God had brought about a new salvation, done another rescue and delivered them from the powers of death and sin into a new life of freedom. Forty days after Passover came the celebration of Pentecost. That festival celebrated the arrival of Moses at Mt Sinai, when the slaves God had brought out of Egypt gathered at the holy mountain to worship their Saviour God and receive his blessing. Moses went up the mountain, into the wind and fire of God’s holy presence on its summit, and came down with God’s gift of a new covenant. The LORD would be their God; they would be his people. His practical blessing was the gift of Torah, which we so misleadingly call the ‘Law’, but which Jews celebrate to this day as God’s great gift of Teaching, Guidance and Blessing, which helps them to walk in his ways and live as his people, in faith and hope and love and blessing. Pentecost was and is a celebration of God’s presence with his people and of his blessing them with his gift of the Torah, the Teaching that gives life, strengthens faith and builds up the community in love. So now we can see what St Luke has done. Forty days after God’s mighty new act of Passover salvation in the death of Jesus, at the Pentecost celebration of God’s gift of Torah at Sinai and all that that Holy Covenant means, Luke is giving the early Christians their festival in which to celebrate the new gift of God’s Spirit and the New Covenant. As Easter is the Christian Passover celebration of God saving his people, so today is the Christian Pentecost celebration of God blessing his people, equipping them to walk in his ways, to live and work to his praise and glory, to be his people named with the name of Christ. And we can spell that out a bit more from our readings. In the wind, fire and strange languages drama of the gift of the Holy Spirit in Acts chapter two, Luke is pointing to the presence of God with and for the community as it gathers together - remember its opening key words ‘Day of Pentecost’ and ‘all together in one place’. God’s presence is experienced in that gathering in a powerful way which equips them for mission, for telling the good news of God’s salvation throughout the world. This blessing, Luke is at pains to explain, is for all, young and old, men and women, near and far. It is the blessing of experiencing ourselves to be the children of God, as we read in that snippet from Romans, feeling the intimacy and the warmth of God’s love for each of us to which we respond by calling him ‘Abba, Father.’ It is the blessing of being strengthened, confirmed, assured, individually and corporately, by God’s inner strengthening, as promised in today’s Gospel reading from John. For some Christians today, this is dramatic stuff. For them it speaks of the power of God at work, of things happening, people and situations being affected, changed and transformed. They rejoice that Luke’s Pentecost is noisy, that people outside hear and want to know what is happening; that Paul’s Roman Christian cries out, ‘Abba! Father!’ with exclamation marks and that John’s promise is for an Advocate, a Champion, a Helper who stands with us and among us. For them these Pentecost readings talk of spiritual power given to empower the Church and to transform the Christian with tangible results in mind, a Church and a Christian nerved and equipped for sharing in God’s mission to transform the world. Other Christians today find this uncomfortable. They see that there can be harmful and dangerous results when churches and Christians go down that ‘power’ road, and so they move quickly on, embarrassed, to quieter spiritualities and less obtrusive missions. They look at Luke’s Pentecost picture and see Moses and Mt Sinai behind it, and remember that the Jews never went back to Sinai, but went on and found their God with them wherever they went and in their ordinary days and ways. They see Paul’s Roman Christian blessed by a quieter intimacy with God. And they are grateful that the Spirit promised in John 14 is called ‘Comforter’ in the Authorised Version and ‘Counsellor’ in some modern ones. For them these Pentecost readings testify to a supporting and encouraging presence, a companion on the journey, as God seeks to bind all creation together in love. At Pentecost the Jews celebrated the blessings they had been given – a God who loved them, their exodus rescue from slavery and the gift of God’s Story to live by. At Pentecost Luke invites us to celebrate our blessings too – the same God who loves us, our Easter rescue from death and the gift of God’s presence to live in and by. For all our differences in understanding these mysteries, Luke’s invitation is one we can all share.
(Sermon for June 6 2004 (Trinity Sunday: Year C) published in Expository Times, May 2004, vol 115, no 8, pp275-276: Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31, Romans 5:1-5 and John 16:12-15) It won’t surprise you that today, Trinity Sunday, is, statistically, the day most preferred by preachers for a Sunday off. Perhaps it’s because they are confused by the esoteric mathematics of three in one and one in three? Perhaps it’s because they have used the famous Irish flora illustration - the three in one of the shamrock leaf – and can’t find another one? Perhaps it’s because they know that the Doctrine of the Trinity has created more heretics, more schisms and more martyrs than any other doctrine and don’t want to take the risk? Perhaps it’s because they like to preach about the Bible, and find that the Bible has very little to say on the topic of the Trinity? Or perhaps it’s because they just don’t want to add to the levels of confusion about, boredom with or incomprehension of the idea that are already dangerously high? But we haven’t taken the Sunday off. We are here, gathered in worship, on Trinity Sunday, and I want you to use your imaginations. I don’t want you to imagine that you are sitting among the disciples in the Upper Room, listening to Jesus as he talks at length to them after sharing in that last Passover Meal on the night before his death. Instead I want you to imagine that you are an old man, writing to the younger members of your church in Ephesus, about your long, so long, journey with God. But you’re not writing about yourself. You’re writing about the one who transformed your life those long years ago, whose name you are proud to be called when they call you a ‘Christian’, even if they say it with a sneer. You were never actually a disciple, but you had met him, listened to him, followed him and for many, many years, let him be the one who shaped your life in every part. And now you are writing what would be chosen as the Fourth Gospel, your testimony to Jesus, your meditations on what he had said and done, and your reflections on the meaning with which he has filled your life, and the lives of others too. You have long since left the synagogue, for the ways had parted with a bitterness on both sides which you still feel: but you have kept hold on that old truth, that God is Father. He is the Father of creation, the Father of Abraham and the Patriarchs, the Father of His People, ‘our Father who art in Heaven’, as Jesus had taught you to pray. You look at the starry night sky and are moved with awe at this mighty God’s power and authority. You look at the failings of his creation and are moved by his patience and courage, by how he continues despite it all to be merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love. You look at your own frailty, moral and spiritual, and are moved by his understanding and his forgiving kindness. To call this great God ‘Father’ is a privilege and a blessing, and this is how over the centuries he has made himself known. It is a title you use with respect, but it speaks to you of God’s eternal care which holds you and all life secure in those eternal arms which are underneath and round about. This is the faith into which you were born, and this is the love which will not let you go. Then, as a young man and a believer, you met Jesus. He confirmed all of that for you, as he spoke and acted in the name of that God of eternal, fatherly love and authority. Like everyone else you struggled to make sense of the man. What should you call him? What is he? Who is he? Those had been the questions. Was he a teacher? Of course, but more than a teacher. A healer? Yes, and more. A prophet? Undoubtedly. The Messiah? Yes, and more than messiah. Whatever you called him, he had an amazing presence. He was the awesome holiness of God personified, he was God’s glory made visible in the flesh, he was the love of God in action. He was killed, but you had received him back again, and though it stretched your mind and your words to breaking point, you had to call him ‘Lord and God’ and you had dared to say he was ‘God incarnate’ in your introduction to these meditations. It was as if in looking at Jesus you felt you were seeing right into the heart of God, that he was the human face of God. In the end, that was the only way you could think of him, as ‘Son of God’, as ‘God with us’. But Jesus was not with you any more, at least not like he had been in Galilee and Jerusalem. Nor like he had been so briefly after his death. But there was no denying his real presence. It was as if he was with you, almost at times tangibly, when you gathered together in worship: in the quiet of the silences, in the power of the preaching, in the study of the scriptures, in the emotion of the singing, in the joy of forgiveness and, many said, nearest of all in the breaking of the bread. It was as if he was with you, in the love that bound you all together in unity, in the common sense of purpose, in the warmth of fellowship. And it was as if he was with you when you were apart too, in the solitary moments, a companion, a voice; an inner calm and a peace which passed all understanding, or a stirring, challenging, insistent, uncomfortable presence which drove you on. Either way, among you and within you, it was as if Jesus was there: not a dead hero, a voice from the past, or a memory, however dear, but a presence, real and constant, a spiritual presence. You had struggled for the words for this as you wrote your meditations, and you still weren’t quite sure that ‘the Spirit of Truth,’ the ‘Holy Spirit’ and ‘the Comforter’ said what you really wanted to say. So here you are, John, struggling after a lifetime to talk about God. You know that there is only one God and that God is one: but you want to find words to speak of how you experience him and invite others to experience him too. You experience him as Father, creator and sustainer of life, exalted in power and glory as Lord God, yet rich in sympathy, kindness and love. You experience him as the man, Jesus of Nazareth, God’s anointed one, who had lived so amazingly and still lived - risen, ascended, glorified. You experience him as the Spirit, the holy and life-giving presence within you and among your brothers and sisters. The One, Eternal, God, encountered and experienced as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, that is the good news you want to share. You don’t use the ‘Trinity’ word but you want people to have a trinity experience. Perhaps that is what Trinity Sunday might be about?
(Sermon for 22nd June 2003 (Proper 7/12th in ordinary time: Year B) published in Expository Times, May 2003, vol 114, no 8, pp273-275, 1 Samuel 17:32-49, 2 Corinthians 6:1-13 and Mark 4:35-41) It is probably neither politically, liturgically nor theologically correct to preach today on the Old Testament story of David killing Goliath. The alternatives are Paul’s account of hardships overcome in his missionary journeyings or the Gospel story of Jesus stilling the storm: but David and Goliath is our theme and the last phrase of our reading is the key one – ‘Goliath fell face down on the ground’ (1 Sam 17:49c). that is not, actually, the end of the story but our squeamish lectionary compilers spare us the ending, when little David takes the giant warrior’s own sword and hacks his head off with it. What can we make of this ancient, bloody, story? It has all the stuff of legend about it – drama, character, plot and an against-all-the-odds victory for its unlikely hero: but we should probably not seek its meaning in the legends of the beginnings of David’s dynasty in Jerusalem. Much more likely we can find its meaning in the catastrophic end of that dynasty when Jerusalem fell to the Babylonians at the beginning of the sixth century BC, when that appalling catastrophe needed to be explained. And the explanation, provided by the anonymous writer of the epic of Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings, was a simple one. The nation had turned away from God, and brought its own destruction down upon its own head. And if the finger of blame was to be pointed anywhere in particular it should be pointed at the kings themselves and especially at King Solomon! Despite all his failings, David had trusted in God: not so his son, Solomon, who had gone after many gods. David had declined to don the warrior’s armour he had been offered: Solomon didn’t hesitate. David had boasted in the Lord: Solomon had just boasted. And as most of their dynasty had followed Solomon rather than David it had all come to a sorry end. David had killed Goliath, who lay face down on the ground, but now it was Jerusalem which lay razed to the ground, and it was the pride of Israel’s own Goliath, Solomon, which had ultimately brought about the city’s downfall. This might not be the way the old story is read in Sunday School, but if you have ears to hear, then hear. Are there any connections with the other two readings? Well, yes there are. David couldn’t even lift the armour he was offered, but the shepherd boy killed the Philistine champion with his slingshot. Paul, that wandering preacher who met controversy and unpopularity at every turn and suffered for it, conquered the Roman world without the backing of any Legion or any ecclesiastical power base. Jesus, rabbi and healer, stilled the storm with a word, a powerful parable if ever there was one, about the defeat of Evil and its overcoming with Good. All three readings have a common theme in that they warn against pride and force, and give encouragement to those, individuals, groups or churches, who feel that their backs are to the wall or that they are in danger of going under because the odds against them are so great. So what of us, here and now, worshipping in church today and living out our third millennium lives tomorrow? For a whole variety of reasons those of us in mainstream churches no longer sing hymns like ‘Onward Christian soldiers’ and no longer think of ourselves as the Church ‘militant here on earth’. And when we are faced with new incarnations of those old ideas in transatlantic triumphalism or second-coming spiritualities we feel very uncomfortable indeed. And rightly so. But equally rightly so, the words ‘baby’ and ‘bathwater’ come to mind at this point. So does the huge impact of the second part of Lord of the Rings, the latest Harry Potter and the newest updates of Star Wars. The images and symbolism of militancy, of the struggle between good and evil, light and dark, life and death is alive in our cinemas even if it is no longer alive in our churches. And in each of these films, remember, the victory in the struggle lies with a David and not with the Goliath power. These images of conflict are indeed dangerous images, easily misused by human beings who are inherently prone to violence rather than to peace, but they are too important images to lose from our Christian resource pack. We can see the problem though, all too clearly, in the so-called ‘War against Terror’ which has been waged since September 11th. The language used has often been apocalyptic. The USA sees its citizens and its military as the ‘children of light’ at war with the ‘children of darkness’. So too, of course, does Al Qaieda and those who identify with its campaign against the ‘great Satan’ of the USA itself. The war in Afghanistan against the Taliban – (and so too the war against Saddam Hussein in Iraq if it materialises) – was not only portrayed in such violent Biblical and Quranic imagery but was also promoted and encouraged by such terms. Each side sees the other as the aggressor, intent on world domination. And we have occasionally seen the David and Goliath imagery actually used, portraying Al Qaieda as little David against the superpower of the USA. So there is plenty of evidence that these ancient images of conflict and victory are dangerous tools readily employed. There is plenty of evidence, too, that the Goliath way of doing things is still thought to work – else why would the USA resort so readily to it? – the strength of brute force, economic and military muscle, boasting in arms and power, the mode of challenge and confrontation, the conviction that wars can settle things. Goliath and goliaths are alive and well in our world, and they wreak their havoc with the little people as their victims as ever. We do not see many David victories with Goliath – death, darkness, evil, Satan, injustice, poverty – put your own name to it – lying face down on the ground. Too often in our experience it is the poor of the earth whose faces are being ground into it by the goliaths of today: but we still pray the Lord’s Prayer. We say, ‘your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as in heaven’ and ‘the kingdom, the power and the glory are yours, now and for ever’, and that is the language not only of conflict, but of victory and of a hope for all. The way to it, say all our readings today, does not lie in taking up the weapons of the big battalions – David couldn’t even lift the armour he was offered, Paul conquered the Roman world without the backing of any Legion, and Jesus stilled the storm with a word – but it does lie in praying that trusting prayer that one day every Goliath will be found lying face down on the ground, and in the meantime, living in that patient hope. And if, by chance, you should be called upon to use your slingshot, may your aim be true.
(Sermon for August 15th 2010 in Truro Cathedral at the Patronal Festival of the Blessed Virgin Mary: Isaiah 61:10-11, Galatians 4:4-7 and Luke 1:46-55) Grant O Lord that the words of my mouth and the meditation of all our hearts be now and always acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer, Amen. That prayer is particularly important this morning, because as a Methodist I need to be careful preaching in this cathedral church of St Mary, at the Patronal Festival of the Blessed Virgin herself, and in the presence of my fellow Salopians in the ecumenical St Mary’s choir who are our visiting choir this week. Many of you, I gather are from Telford – and I was born and brought up in Horsehay – your conductor tells me that he knows the Station Inn well, and that’s where I went every Saturday morning as a youngster to get my good Methodist gran’s supply of Guinness for the week, so welcome. Anyway, I have to be careful this morning because Methodists aren’t very big on Mary, and that’s because the Bible isn’t very big on Mary either. In the New Testament, Mary is a minor character – and ‘minor’ doesn’t mean ‘unimportant’ – whereas in parts of the Church she has become very centre-stage; and in some of those places, to the simple Mary of the Bible have been added ideas about her perpetual virginity, immaculate conception and bodily assumption into heaven. I’m not going into those strange and unbiblical places this morning*. Let’s start with the Bible. The earliest New Testament documents – Paul’s letters – don’t mention Mary by name. The only reference to her, unnamed, is the one we read for our epistle, and that is interesting in itself, for Paul, despite the accusations of misogyny often made against him, is actually very pro the equality of women and the ministry of women, has no problem with women apostles and gives women church leaders equal credit to the men. So it’s odd that he doesn’t name Mary in that earliest reference we have to Jesus’ birth, which just says that he was ‘born of a woman and born under the Torah’ – that he was a good Jewish boy. After that, twenty or more years after that, we get the Gospels, and the earliest, Mark, has no birth story and only one incidental reference to Mary by name (6.3). She actually appears in his story only once when, with Jesus’ brothers, she turns up at Capernaum to talk to him, and he ignores her (3.32f). She’s got a bigger role in Matthew and Luke because they tell stories of Jesus’ birth, where Mary is the young virgin chosen as mother of the Messiah, and whose faith is seen in the Magnificat which we have just read. But then, after the Temple visit when Jesus was twelve years old and the attempt to speak to her son at Capernaum, she disappears from their stories completely as well. In John she appears first when Jesus tells her to mind her own business when the wine runs out at the wedding feast at Cana, a very rude thing for a Jewish man of any age to say to his mother and which she ignores, and then at the cross where he tells John to look after her. She makes her last Bible appears in Acts, again with Jesus’ brothers, with the disciples in Jerusalem after the first Easter (Acts 1.14). And that’s the lot. So, two points. Point one: those short and famous words when God’s messenger angel appears to Mary, as a girl on the verge of adulthood, and tells her what God wants her to do. After she has expressed both surprise and scepticism – well, you would, wouldn’t you - she replies, ‘I am the Lord’s servant, let it be to me according to your word’ (Lk 1.38). Remember that as a virgin girl, Mary doesn’t count. Unlike the Church which came to praise virginity, in Judaism virginity was something to get out of as quickly as possible, by becoming a wife and mother – that was, and in many parts of Judaism still is, what it means to be a proper, good and religious woman. Virginity, at least past marriageable age, was something to be pitied, and something of which God disapproved. That’s what Luke is getting at in his Magnificat, when Mary sings that God has looked with favour on her lowly status, and how he’s given her a way out of it, albeit a very unusual one. He has indeed, but he did not force himself on her. The angel asked, and she said yes; and in Luke’s storytelling that ‘Yes’ is Mary’s great statement of faith and trust, ‘I am the Lord’s servant, let it be to me according to your word’. That must be one of the best statements of commitment in the Bible. And it’s the start of a difficult journey for her – in Matthew, Mark and Luke, she can’t understand her eldest boy at all; in John she does understand him, but the price is that she has the agony of seeing him die. That’s Mary in the Bible. Point two: one thing about the Mary of the Church’s faith - the Mary to whom people pray, the Mary of stained-glass windows and statues and to whom churches like this one are dedicated, the Blessed Virgin Mary whose Feast the Church celebrates today. As a Methodist I have no problem with any of this, for the Bible’s Mary is worth celebrating; and I have no problem with prayers to Mary either, for Methodists believe in the ‘communion of saints’ and this particular Methodist knows that he needs all the prayers he can get. We don’t actually pray to Mary, just as we don’t pray to St John Wesley either, but we have no objection in principal to the idea, and of the two I’ve no doubt who would be the more sympathetic. And that’s precisely why we need the human Mary of the Bible rather than the superhuman Mary of later Church dogma. A Mary who was immaculately conceived, perpetually virgin and bodily taken up into heaven is not real enough to help us; whereas a mother who struggled to understand her son, and who persevered in her faith in God despite all the hassle, pain and grief that came with it, is someone we can respect and even, if I were that way inclined, someone to whom I could turn for help in my own journey. The Letter to the Hebrews makes the point that Jesus can help us precisely because he’s been here and understands our human life from the inside, and for me that’s the important thing about Mary too**. She’s a saint, or heroine, or role-model or what-have-you not because she is pure, free of the stain of sex that so upset St Augustine (whose neurotic legacy and hang-ups about women, gender and sex bedevil the Church to this day, of course) or because she’s so very specially holy, but because she’s a been-there, done that and got the tee-shirt disciple. Put all that other stuff onto Mary and she ceases to be real, and it’s only the real Mary who can be a hero for us and a help to us. So it’s the Mary of the Bible, the model of faith and of persevering commitment through some very rough places, that’s the Mary worth celebrating. That Mary doesn’t need the wild fancies of later Church dogmas, and neither do we. And for that Mary, we do indeed praise God today. In the name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. References (just in case anyone asked after the service – they didn’t) * Perpetual virginity [Hilary of Poitiers (315-367) and Didymus (313-398)], immaculate conception [Duns Scotus (1264-1308) and promulgated by Pope Pius IX (1854)] and bodily assumption into heaven [formally defined by Pope Pius XII (1950)]. ** Heb 4.14-16 and 5.7-10. For the Church Fathers note the comment usually ascribed to Gregory of Nazianzus, but used more widely, that ‘What has not been assumed cannot be healed’.
(Sermon for August 21 2005 (Proper 16/Trinity 13/21 in Ordinary Time: Year A) published in Expository Times, July 2005, vol 116, no 10, pp343-344: Exodus 1:8-2:10, Romans 12:1-8 and Matthew 16:13-20) Today’s Gospel reading marks the turning point in the life and ministry of Jesus - the end of the beginning and the beginning of the end. Up to this point Jesus has been doing the popular and familiar things in Galilee, and has gained a reputation as a teacher and a healer. From here on he turns to face Jerusalem and steps out on an increasingly lonely journey to rejection and death. It’s a turning point for the disciples too. It’s the point at which they are confronted, by Jesus, with the challenge of naming him as he is. So far they have had an easy time of it: learning from his teaching, marvelling at his healing gifts and enjoying his popularity. But now, away from it all at Caesarea Philippi, Jesus puts them on the spot. ‘Who do you think I am? he demands of them. And that’s when today’s Gospel reading begins to get very strange. We could have a competition in church this morning to see how many strange things we can find in it, but we’ll settle for three. First, there is Jesus, a very strange sort of messiah. Second, there is Simon Peter, a very strange sort of foundation for anything. And third, there is something very strange about the future Church. The confrontation begins when Jesus asks Peter what people have been saying about him, and Peter tells him. ‘Some say you are a new John the Baptist, others that you are Elijah returned as promised, others that you are Jeremiah or a new prophet’. Then Jesus confronts the disciples – and what about you? What do you say that I am? And Peter names him as the Messiah, the Christ, the Anointed One, the Awaited One, the Son of the Living God, the True Heir of King David. And it’s strange for Peter to name Jesus like that, because there was very little evidence to go on. Jesus had not done anything so far to claim that title or to look like a messiah, and certainly not the sort of messiah that many of his contemporaries were wanting. They couldn’t decide among themselves what sort of a messiah they did want, but they all agreed that the Messiah would be big enough, dramatic enough, and powerful enough to be recognised when he appeared and then the sky would be the limit for what he would do. Many of them wanted a new Moses to liberate them from the Romans, not to lead them through the desert to a new land this time, but to clear the land they were in of those who had no right to be there. Or a new David, a great national hero and leader. But Jesus had not been, and would not be, anything like any of that. He was not a very messianic messiah. And that explains the strange ending of the reading, that they weren’t to tell anyone that he was the Messiah at all. And so to Simon Peter, the emerging spokesman and leader of the disciples. Simon Peter, it seems, has seen enough to name Jesus as God’s Special One, and Jesus praises God for his insight. He then returns the compliment and names Simon son of Jonah as ‘Peter’ or ‘Cephas’ – ‘The Rock’. He names him as the one on whom the church will be built, the foundation stone. And he entrusts him with the ‘keys of the kingdom’, whatever that may mean. This is a very strange naming for Simon Peter. In the gospel stories we see his strengths and his commitment, but we also see his unpredictability and unreliability, and the same strengths and weaknesses appear in the stories about him in the rest of the New Testament. And in many ways building the Church on Peter is building it on sand, not on rock. Peter isn’t solid enough, he is not a very rocklike rock. He’s a volatile man, capable of huge enthusiasms, great commitments and strong action; but he is equally capable of abject failure, spineless denial, and giving way under pressure. He might be the leader of the disciples, and he might become one of the three early leaders of the Church – but rocklike he isn’t. Yet Jesus names this all-too-human, impetuous, headstrong, flawed and faltering man as ‘The Rock,’ the very strange foundation for God’s Church. And so we come to the third strange thing in our Gospel reading, the future Church and what is said about it. No other Gospel mentions the word ‘church’, or mentions Peter’s role in it in any way. But Matthew is writing his Gospel for the Church of his day and for his own little churches, and he has something important he wants to say to them. They are small and struggling. They are finding faith, discipleship and Christian living tough in a big and hostile world. Matthew wants to remind them of their Easter Faith and Hope, and to encourage them in their mission and work, so he tells them that ‘the gates of Hades will not prevail against them.’ And that is a very strange promise. Think about it. This is not a picture of the Church under attack, and a promise that their attackers will not defeat them – that would have been a sensible picture for Matthew to paint and an encouraging message for Christians who felt beleaguered to hear. But that is not what his picture describes. It is the other way round. This is a picture of the Church on the attack, and a promise that it will be victorious, that ‘no door will keep them out’, not even the mighty gates of Hell itself. This strange community, following a strange messiah and built on a strange foundation, taking on all the forces of evil, is and will be victorious. That is a very strange thing to say to the disciples at Caesarea Philippi, to the Church and the churches in Matthew’s own circumstances, and to us in the Church today. But it is what he wants his struggling churches to hear. We have read about a strange Messiah, a strange foundation and a strange promise to the Church. But in the light of what Matthew believes, it isn’t strange at all. He tells his Caesarea Philippi story this way because he knows the outcome of Jesus’ lonely journey to Jerusalem. He tells it out of the Easter Faith which nerves him, faith in the victory of life over death, good over evil and light over darkness; faith that death, darkness and evil do not have the last word, and that they do not reign eternally. It is a faith proved for him in the Easter experiences of the disciples and in what God can do with the Peter’s of this world. It is the faith by which he challenges the Church, his churches and ours, to live; not being conformed to this world and its ordinary ways, as St Paul puts it in today’s Epistle, but transformed by and into the strange ways of God.
Sermon for September 14 (Proper 19/Trinity 13/24 in Ordinary Time: Year B) published in Expository Times, August 2003, vol 114, no 11, pp378-379: Proverbs 1:20-33, James 3:1-12 and Mark 8:27-38) We’d been with him for nearly eighteen months, James and John and the others and me. ‘Disciples’, he called us. It had meant leaving the family and the business, sometimes for weeks on end, but it had been exciting. We’d learned things we’d never heard before, and to see the crowds hanging on his words, the sick cured and some of the hypocrites in the synagogue made fools of, well it was worth it. Then he took us off by ourselves to Caesarea Philippi, to get away from it all for a bit he said, though a small crowd followed us even there. Anyway, there we were, by ourselves, when he put us on the spot. It sounded an innocent-enough question to start with, ‘Who do people say that I am?’ And, of course, we answered him. We had heard the rumours and the speculation, we knew the sort of things people were saying about him. That he was another John the Baptist, or John the Baptist’s successor, that kind of thing. Some went so far as to say he was Elijah returning, the Forerunner, coming to announce that the End was near and the Kingdom of God was coming. Powerful stuff. Others called him a prophet, like the prophets of old. So we told him what the rumours were, what the people were looking for, and what they were making of him. No problems there. But then he turned the question on us - he was like that sometimes - ‘You’, he said, ‘who do you say that I am?’ And of course the rest of them just shut up, didn’t they, like they always did. Left to me wasn’t it. So I told him. I told him what we were all thinking, ‘You are the Messiah’. Simple as that really, ‘You’re the Messiah’. I didn’t tell him that we couldn’t quite work out what sort of a Messiah he was and that sometimes we were more than a little bit confused, but I gave him the bottom line, ‘You’re the Messiah’. Didn’t say anything. He nodded and then he told us, in no uncertain terms, that we weren’t to tell anybody about him. Okay, I thought, if that’s the way you want to play it, that’s okay. I wasn’t too surprised by that really, because he had never said anything much about himself anyway. He had never gone round saying, ‘I’m the Messiah; I’m this or that or anything’. That hadn’t been his style, or his message, so he wasn’t telling us to do anything different, anything he wasn’t already doing himself. So that was okay. A few minutes later, though, that’s when it got difficult. He told us that he had got to suffer, that he would be rejected by our leaders, be killed and rise again after three days. Well, I couldn’t understand that. It didn’t make sense to me. I could understand that he might offend some people, we’d seen some of that, and I could understand that he might get into a spot of hot water here and there. But to be rejected, killed and rise again? That was nonsense. That sort of thing isn’t supposed to happen to the Messiah. Messiah is going to win. He’s the one who makes all things new, who puts everything right. That’s what we meant when we said Jesus was the Messiah, because we thought we’d seen it beginning to happen. Yet here he was, all of a sudden talking about dying and suffering. So I told him - the others wouldn’t have of course - but I told him. ‘Get behind me, Satan,’ he says, and says it as if he really meant it. That frightened me, but it also hurt. And nobody dared to call me anything like that before. ‘Get behind me, Satan, you’re thinking in human terms not God’s’, he says. But how can God want him to suffer and die? What good would that do? Nobody said anything for ages. Then he calls the crowd together and starts to teach them stuff we’d never heard before. If they wanted to be disciples they had to deny themselves, take up their crosses and follow him. That was bizarre. We had seen crosses - everybody in Galilee and Judea has seen crosses - we know what they mean. And you don’t take them up voluntarily, you get them given to you with no choice. So ‘take up your cross’, what did he mean by that? And ‘follow’? Well we were already following because we’d seen something in this man. We were following because, well, because we thought that he would be our saviour. Yes, that he would save the Jews, save the world, save the poor, and that he would save us! Isn’t that what the Messiah is supposed to do? And then what does he say, that if you want to save your life you have got to lose it? Well of course we want to save our life, that’s why we’re here. But he says, ‘If you want to save your life you’ve got to lose it, and it’s only those who lose their life who will find it’. I couldn’t understand that. And I wasn’t the only one. The crowd couldn’t understand it either. You could tell. He’d lost them. They got restless. They stopped looking at him. They began to mutter among themselves. He stops and he watches them, just sits there watching the crowd. And they’re definitely not happy any more. There’s some raised voices, shaking of heads and not a few begin to slip away. The he shouts at them, "Yes, go on, turn away from me: but you might find that I turn away from you when the Kingdom comes!’ That just made them scamper away all the quicker. Never heard him say anything like that before. Weird. Perhaps it’s all getting to him? But who is this Jesus? That’s what I can’t fathom. Is he the Messiah? We’ve seen enough to believe that everything he’s done so far points to that. But what sort of Messiah? And what’s all that about coming in the glory of his Father with the holy angels? That’s fanatic sort of stuff that is. And what’s all that about taking up our crosses, leaving self behind and losing our lives for his sake and for the sake of everything he stands for? What’s that all about? What does that mean? How does that apply to me? What’s he expect of me, and James and John and the others, and of this bit of the crowd that’s left?
(Preached at the Eucharist at a South West Ministry Training Course weekend, 16th October 2005. Proper 24/Year A. Exodus 33.12-23, 1 Thessalonians 1.1-10, Matthew 22.15-22. This is a revised form of the ‘Render unto Caesar’ sermon) Grant, O Lord, that the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be now and always acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen 1 There is no hotter topic today, is there, than Politics and Religion, Religion and Politics? President Bush went to war in Iraq because God told him to. Islamists are fighting him the world over because God tells them to. 2 They came to Jesus with this very issue, a very tricky question, and they came at a tricky time and in a tricky place –
Jesus’ answer to their tricky question – ‘Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's and unto God the things that are God's’ - was an entirely orthodox answer. 3 ‘Is it lawful to pay tribute to Caesar or not?’ Very neat. Fiendishly tricky. If he said Yes he was finished; if he said No he was finished; in the eyes of different groups of course but the end result was the same. But Jesus could be as wise as a serpent, and could be an infuriating teacher. Even if you come to him with a straight question he wouldn't always give a straight answer, and when crooked people come with a crafty question he could spin a riddle and outfox them. ‘Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's and unto God the things that are God's’ is one such answer. Entirely orthodox, but a very clever riddle. 4 Unfortunately we can’t leave that riddle unriddled. So what can we find here about Religion and Politics, this deadly question bringing terror to so many? What is the relation between Politics and Religion, Religion and Politics? That was, and is, the question. What are we to make of – ‘Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's and unto God the things that are God's’? 5 There are those Christians who say that it means that you must keep religion out of politics – there are also some politicians who say the same, of course, but they would, wouldn’t they? This line can be dismissed in seconds – not only is there Desmond Tutu’s famous saying that anyone who says that you must keep religion out of politics has obviously never read the Bible, there’s also the fact that the Elizabethan Church Settlement, still in force today, established the role of religion in English politics the minute it established the Church of England, and finally, most important of all, is the fact that in our contemporary world, courtesy of Islam, religion is in politics whether we like it or not. And all that was equally true in Jesus’ time and he would have taken it for granted that you couldn’t keep religion out of politics, or out of anything else either. You can’t wriggle out of the problem by building compartments, one for God and religion, one for the rest of life. That’s the message Moses brought down the mountain, Belief and Behaviour go together. That’s why that anonymous prophet in Babylon can call Cyrus, the Persian, God’s messiah as he conquers the Babylonian Empire in 540 BC. 6 The only right understanding of this tricky text is the old orthodox one that every reader of the OT knows or ought to know, that we render all things to God, including those things we render to Caesar. The 20th century began, in Britain, with no-one in religion or in public life having much problem with that at all – it was obvious. The Church was the moral voice of the nation, the ‘Non-Conformist Conscience’ was a political power in the land, like it or not. But by the time most of us were at school that England had disappeared. And for 30 years religion was derided, relegated to the status of a leisure pursuit for those who liked that sort of thing, and any attempt by a religious leader to address the things of Caesar in the name of God was scornfully dismissed – though the same cultural despisers of religion who ran the media also managed to further deride the Church for not giving a moral lead. It took the arrival of militant Islam on the streets of Britain in the 1990’s to make the old and classic point heard anew – that we render all things to God, including those things we render to Caesar. The chattering classes couldn’t understand why they burned Salman Rushdie’s book on the streets of Bradford, but I think they are beginning to understand now, even though they don’t like what they are seeing. If God is God, then religion is the most important thing there is – mess with it at your peril: that is the lesson the western world has been painfully forced to relearn these last ten years. The problems come, of course, when you get down to the nitty-gritty – do you pay taxes to Caesar or not – and I’m sure that if someone had come to Jesus with that problem he would have sat down with them to enable them to theologically reflect on that issue if that was their real problem: but he’s not going to play silly games. 7 But my response this morning to ‘Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's and unto God the things that are God's’? is not to argue that it means that we render all things to God, including those things we render to Caesar. That old meaning is obvious to anyone who has read the Bible, as Desmond Tutu said, and muslims in the modern west are just ramming the same message home. That’s not my concern with this text. My concern is to ask another question, ‘Which God are we talking about here’? Because for me, neither the god of President Bush nor the god of Sheik Ali Bakri is a god to whom I am prepared to render anything at all. These days as well as this text demands that we begin to think hard about which God is worthy of such rendering. That is today’s real question. In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen.
(Truro Cathedral, All Saints, October 31st, 2010. Year C. Readings: Daniel 7.1-3, 15-18; Ephesians 1.1-23; Luke 6.20-31) Grant O Lord that the words of my mouth and the meditation of all our hearts be now and always acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer, Amen. All Saints and All Souls come close together, as a Methodist I knew that, but I must admit that I wasn’t quite sure what we were supposed to do on All Saints, so I looked it up in my Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, the most expensive and most useful reference book I bought as a student – it cost me a fiver, a week’s wages in those days. It told me that All Saints has been celebrated in the western church since the fourth century and annually since May 13th 609 or 610, and that the purpose of this ancient feast was to celebrate all the Christian saints, known and unknown. It also told me that All Souls dates from 998, and its purpose is to commemorate the souls of the faithful departed. Interesting that, I thought, because having two separate festivals rather suggests two separate groups: the saints, and then the rest of us. In years to come, those of you who are good enough to make saint grade will get celebrated on All Saints, while the rest of us will be remembered on All Souls. Now that’s okay, in one sense, because the martyrs, the missionaries, the heroes and the simply amazingly special Christians, ancient and modern, well-known and lesser-known, deserve a bit of celebrity and credit, of course they do, and not only that, their stories are worth telling for their own sake and as examples to encourage and strengthen us lesser mortals. No problem with that, but it’s not quite that simple. First there’s our OT lesson this morning (why do I seem to get all the odd ones?), more of that strange ‘Lord of the Rings’ stuff from Daniel. It’s coded political commentary from the time of the Maccabean War. Terrifying monsters come up out of the sea, each worse than the last, and they rampage across the earth and finally a human being appears – though we didn’t read that bit. Then there’s God on his throne giving out the prize, and it goes to the human being. What’s that all about? Daniel asks his ‘spirit guide’. It’s a promise about the victory of the ‘holy ones of the Most High’, he’s told, ‘the saints’ in the old translation, the faithful Jews who were at that time fighting for their faith and their survival. There’s going to be a free Judea for the Jews, the colonisation by the Babylonians, the Persians and now the Greeks is about to end! That’s its message in and for 165BC. And that new Judea will be a kingdom for the ‘holy ones’, ‘the saints’, those who have fought the good fight, maintained the holy cause, and suffered for it – so, yes, here’s some support for the idea of grade 1 believers, the saints, and grade 2 believers, the rest. Then there’s Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians, or the letter of one of Paul’s disciples written in his name, if you prefer, addressed to ‘the saints and faithful’ in Ephesus, and with two references to ‘saints’ in the verses we read: first when Paul commends the Ephesians for their love towards ‘all the saints’, which probably means the care they have shown in giving generously to his charity appeal for help for the poor Christians in Jerusalem, and second when he reminds them about the great legacy that there is for all the saints, the power of God’s transforming love. There’s no doubt that for Paul, ‘saints’ means everyone hearing his letter read out in the church at Ephesus, and it means all the Christians everywhere, for his letters to Rome, Corinth, Philippi and Colossae all have the same greeting and address; he writes to the Christians in those cities as those who are ‘called to be saints’ (Rom 1.1). And that’s all of us too. Our Gospel reading doesn’t mention ‘saints’ at all. It’s a collection of the teachings of Jesus addressed to the disciples, saying how blessed they are when they suffer because of their commitment as disciples, and warning them against complacency and taking things easy. It ends with that powerful challenge to them to love their enemies, do good to those who hate them, bless those who curse them, and the Golden Rule of doing to others what we would like to be done to us. So, why has this reading been selected for today, I wonder? Is it to remind us that the disciples had some way to go, that they were on a journey, that there is growth and transformation and change expected on the way? They might indeed be saints, it could be implied, ‘God’s holy people’, his dedicated and committed and faithful ones (and that’s what the Greek and Hebrew words for ‘saint’ mean by the way *) - but they aren’t there yet. And neither, of course, are most of us, which is why we prayed in the Collect that God would ‘give us grace so to follow [his] blessed saints in all virtuous and godly living’. So what do we end up with on this All Saints day? · There’s a definition – ‘saints’ are God’s dedicated and committed and faithful people. · There’s a project – saints are all on a journey towards ‘virtuous and godly living’, towards ‘sanctification’ – lovely old word that, towards ‘being made perfect in love’** · There’s a downside – ‘sanctimoniousness’ – sanctification gone off the rails, but that’s no excuse for the rest of us not to try. · There’s a challenge – and it’s a bit like my old school reports: ‘Could do better’. The most memorable was ‘Has ability – pity he never uses it’. But mostly they stuck to the ‘Could do better’, ‘Room for improvement’ and ‘Must try harder’ variations: just like Jesus to the disciples in our Gospel reading. Paul takes a more encouraging and optimistic line to the Ephesians in our Epistle, more of a ‘Making progress’, or ‘Good achievement’ or even ‘Well done’. And in Daniel it’s ‘Keep up the good work’, ‘You’re getting there’ and a definite ‘You’ll get there in the end’. We’re glad of the encouragement and example of those who have gone before - the martyrs, the missionaries, the heroes, the virtuous and the godly, ancient and modern - but in the end, All Saints is a challenging reminder that sanctity, ‘virtuous and godly living’, ‘being made perfect in love’, is the project for us all. In the name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Refs: * QaDoSH and ‘agios ** From 1 John 4.18 etc, see especially Charles Wesley’s hymn HP 109v5
(Truro Cathedral, Second Sunday before Advent, 2009, Year B. Daniel 12.1-3, Hebrews 10.11-14, 19-25, Mark 13.1-8) Grant, O Lord, that the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be now and always acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen There is only one word for all three of today’s Bible readings – bizarre. Or if you insist on another – weird. In the Old Testament lesson from the Book of Daniel we are told that there will come a time of such distress on earth that the great angel Michael will appear to sort it all out. In the New Testament reading from the anonymous Letter to the Hebrews we read instructions to the early Christians on how they could survive the ‘last days’, in which they were living, until the approaching great Day, the day of deliverance, dawned. And in the Gospel, we read from Mark 13 how Jesus launched into a description of the birth pangs of the End Days when the disciples came out of the Temple full of admiration for its magnificent architecture. Three bizarre and weird readings; on one bizarre and weird theme. There is a technical term for that theme, and though I don’t normally use technical terms or Greek and Hebrew words in sermons, I’m going to make an exception now. The technical term for this sort of stuff is ‘Apocalyptic’. Not quite ‘apocalyptic’ like you might find in a newspaper headline about a tragedy or disaster of apocalyptic proportions, but near enough. It’s the Greek word for ‘Revelation’, which is why the Book of Revelation at the end of the New Testament is also known as the Apocalypse. But enough of these technicalities. The point is that this kind of writing was a recognised type of Jewish religious literature from about 150BC to about 150AD. It was common. It was popular. And it was understood. They knew how to read it. They knew what it meant and what it didn’t mean. And the best way I can explain that is by asking you to forget about Apocalyptic for most of the rest of this sermon, and to think about Lord of the Rings instead. I first came across J R R Tolkien, hobbits and Lord of the Rings in college in the late 60s. I went home and told my mum, who was an avid reader. She got it from the Library, and couldn’t get any further than page 6. It didn’t make any sense to her, she couldn’t get into it. She’d never read anything like it, and to her dying day never did read anything like it. Lord of the Rings wasn’t the first piece of what we now call ‘Fantasy Literature’, but it was certainly the book which put that kind of writing on the map, and it has spawned countless other books like it since whose readers know how to read them and love what they read. They aren’t everybody’s cup of tea, but they are very popular. Lord of the Rings then became a great money-spinner at the box office, and I still sit enthralled when it comes on the telly. On the other hand, Margaret disappears into the study to do something on the computer, pick up the sudoku or read a book; it’s not her thing either. We do the same with Harry Potter, for that’s the same kind of book and film. Tolkien got his ideas for Lord of the Rings from two places. One was the ancient Norse and Icelandic sagas. The other was the Bible’s Apocalyptic literature. Now let me do a straw poll – how many of us in the Cathedral this morning have read or seen, or read and seen, Lord of the Rings? ... OK. Thank you. That’s only the first one. Here’s the second: how many of you think, like me, that Lord of the Rings is a great story? ... OK. Thank you. And now for something really challenging; what do you think Lord of the Rings is really about? Any ideas? For the challenge is to join in my sermon at this point. Any offers – what is Lord of the Rings really about? ... Thank you. Yes. It seems to me that Lord of the Rings is really about big issues:
We could ask the same questions and have the same discussion about Harry Potter, or Philip Pullman’s Dark Materials trilogy, or any number of Fantasy books or films: but, don’t fret, Mr Dean, we’re not going to. But if we did, we’d find them giving the same message through their different stories, symbols, images and codes. And to get that message you need to know, as a reader, what the symbols, images and codes of Fantasy literature are. Know the codes and conventions of Fantasy Literature and you’re ok with it: but if you don’t know the codes and conventions, it doesn’t make sense. And that’s why mum gave up on page 6, she couldn’t get her head round the codes and conventions that Tolkien was using in Lord of the Rings; and then after I tried to explain them, she decided they weren’t bothering with and that was that. The point is, these reading codes and conventions matter. If someone asked us to point out Mordor or the Shire on a map, or talked about booking a train tour to Hogwarts School or tickets for the next World Quidditch Championship, we’d think they’d got it a bit wrong, wouldn’t we? But, and here’s where we come back to the Bible, that’s exactly what some Christians have done down the centuries with Apocalyptic literature like our three readings today and with the Book of Revelation. They have taken it literally and concluded that it refers to the future, and then they’ve tried to use it to plot dates for ‘the End of the World’ or spot the signs of such an ending. But doing that is to make a serious mistake, because Apocalyptic literature was always about being faithful to God in the present and never about the End of the World in that sense. It was a word of hope to faithful believers in troubled times, to help them to ‘endure to the end’, to hang in there until those troubled times passed. That, I suggest, is what our three bizarre and weird Bible readings today are about. Just as Lord of the Rings inspires and cheers us – well it does me anyway – so that ancient Jewish apocalyptic stuff was written to do the same. Read it seriously, according to its own codes and conventions, and it makes a lot of sense. Read it literally and it becomes dangerous nonsense. So then. Bible passages like the three bizarre ones we have read today are the ancient Jewish religious equivalent of Lord of the Rings. Their stories, heroes, images, symbols and codes – which ancient Jewish readers understood and enjoyed as much as some of us enjoy Lord of the Rings – are offering exactly the same message as that great film, but with one extra:
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen
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