Using your talent ( notes for Family Communion address)

( Mark 6, 14-29 )

If “Britain’s got Talent’ came to X would you go for an audition? What would you do? If David Beckham opened a football academy ( or Andy Murray a tennis academy) would you go for trials? Or if Bill Gates opened a school for computer whizz-kids would you apply?

I know there’s lots of talent among adults in our congregation. ( examples from the congregation – performing and skills like woodwork etc)

Children too ( more examples).

Part of growing up is identifying the talents you have, trying things out, finding out what you’re really good at. Devoting time to being as good at it as you can.

But another part of growing up is learning to use your talents wisely – so they don’t bring harm to you or other people or the world.

Herod’s daughter ( some say called Salome, others Herodias like her mother) had a talent for dancing. She danced so well that she could persuade her father to give her anything she wanted. She was led astray by older people to use her talent to destroy the life of another person. Very wrong. A misuse of talents.

For older people – parents and others who encourage the young – also hard questions about how far you push young people who have talents and what is it for – for the good of the young person – for our own pride or satisfaction – for money or fame ?

God has given all of us talents – may be performing arts – may be sporting – may be writing, or speaking – or talent for medical science or research; or politics or advocacy; or may be something less newsworthy, but equally necessary for society – encouraging people to develop or being kind and sympathetic and simply making them feel better.

At whatever age – need to identify what your particular talent is – then learn to put it to proper use – to build God’s Kingdom on earth – make world a better place.

Herod & Herodias didn’t make proper use of their talents. Ask God to help us to use our talents wisely.

Size doesn’t matter!

( 2 Cor. 12, 2-10; Mark 6,1-13 )

Do you remember the ad for the Renault Clio with the slogan “Size matters!”. They were talking about cars – but the church gets het up about size too. Every so often a set of church statistics is published which purports to show declining congregations and church membership, often coupled with gloomy forecasts that churches will close and the Christian religion will cease to exist in the UK in about 30 years time. But, on the other hand, there are claims from one wing or other of the church that only churches advocating their sort of Christianity are ‘growing’, and, by implication, that this proves  their version of the Gospel is ‘right’.

I sometimes wonder if people who talk about size and success in relation to the Christian faith have ever really read their New Testament.

Look at the passage we heard from 2 Corinthians. This shows Paul far from being the honoured founding father of the church in Corinth that we imagine. His position is under challenge from so-called ‘super apostles’ who argue that Paul can’t possibly  be  major church leader: he doesn’t do miraculous signs, he hasn’t had a great spiritual experience, he doesn’t preach great sermons – he doesn’t even look the part!

In response, Paul  talks about his visions as if they happened to someone else, and boasts of his weakness. The whole passage is enigmatic. We don’t know what he means when he talks of being taken up to the third heaven. Is it closer or further away from God than the  “seventh heaven” which we often speak of as absolute bliss? We have no idea. Paul also doesn’t give us any details of his “thorn in the flesh”. We don’t know whether it was a physical ailment, or some sort of neurosis or mental disturbance, or even a family problem. All we do know is that he has eventually come to see it as a gift from God, to prevent him from getting too big-headed about his own success.

In his letter, he parodies the complaints of the ‘super apostles’ about him, and boasts of his own weakness, and the insults, hardships, persecution and calamities he has suffered for the sake of Christ. And why? Because Christ shows us a God revealed in weakness – in a man put to death as a criminal on a cross.

What we can take from this passage is comfort.  It tells us that even the giants of the faith have good days and bad days: times when they are in the third heaven and feel really close to God, and other times when they are in despair, in pain, when their relationships with their congregations have all gone wrong, and they feel hopeless and desolate.

This gives us the assurance us that it doesn’t mean you are a bad Christian, it doesn’t mean you are not doing God’s work, if you happen to get ill, or you lose your job, or you get depressed, or your family life is less than perfect. Only God knows  the true significance of such experiences, and God alone is is the judge of our success. Flashy events and big numbers are not necessarily the mark of success in a church  which follows a crucified Saviour.

Our Gospel reading ( like much in Mark’s Gospel) shows that even Jesus himself did not have what we would think of as ‘success’ in his ministry. He was rejected by the religious authorities of his time, by his family ( who thought he was mad! ) and even by the people of his own town. They are impressed at first, but when worldly considerations come to be taken into account ( “he’s only one of us; his father was a carpenter; his brothers and sisters are nothing special; who is he to be putting on airs?”) they turn against him and drive him out. In a way, this passage is  a true life example of the Parable of the Sower from Mark 4, where the Word of God is sown widely, and bears fruit at first, but then worldly things choke the growth and much of the seed doesn’t bear fruit.

As if to reinforce this, in the second half of the passage we heard, Jesus sends the Twelve out to extend his ministry in Galilee. He promises them success – but also warns them that they must expect to face the same rejection and opposition that he has. Failure will be part of their experience as well.

Given these readings, how should we judge the ‘success’ of a church?

Paul often used the concept of being ‘in Christ’ and spoke of the Christian community as being ‘the Body of Christ’.  This says to me that the only criteria of ‘success’ in a Christian context is how Christ-like a thing is.

Jesus was a man who was  as one with God and as one with the Holy Spirit. So anyone and anything which claims to be Christ-like should also be Spirit-filled. Here again we need to be careful. Some sections of the Church appear to claim that the only manifestations of the Spirit are ‘supernatural’ things, like speaking in tongues, freeing people from demon-possession and miraculous healings. But in his letter to the Galatians, Paul also talks about ‘the fruit of the Spirit’ being made manifest in the enhanced quality of natural human qualities – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.  It is less easy to measure the volume of such qualities than the number of ‘bums on seats’ – but if we were to measure those qualities, wouldn’t we have a very different picture of what constitutes a ‘successful’ and ‘growing’ church?

At the end of April, I attended a conference organised by the Beds and Herts Churches Media trust. It was about Communicating Christian Festivals – how churches of many different denominations and traditions can use the major festivals of the Christian year to reach out into the community and make contact with those on the outskirts of, and outside our congregations. We had sessions on event management,  and how the music we use might affect our success; a Muslim academic outlined a Muslim perspective on Christian festivals ( make them more religious and less commercialised, he said); and the Bishop of Hertford urged us to be bold and take risks, and not just keep repeating  what has worked before.

The Anglican Diocesan Mission and Development Officer spoke of six words which should characterise mission today: simplicity, goodness, prayer, rhythm, companionship and story. Nothing about large numbers or miraculous events there, you note. ‘To be effective in communicating the Gospel, people must see something of God in you. Our lifestyle speaks to people’, he said.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the conference was the Question Time, where panellists ranging from an Anglican Bishop to a Salvation Army Captain answered queries about how to communicate better with those outside and on the fringes of our churches. Among the answers were: “ Relationships are important. You need to cater for people where they are.” “You don’t need trendier worship to bring people back to God; you need a relationship with them so that you can address their needs.” “We should not make too many distinctions between ‘us’ and ‘them’. After all, it’s not true that ‘God so loved the holy people…..’ We  know that ‘God so loved the world that he sent his only Son….’”.

Again, nothing about large events or flashy events. Just the fruits of the Spirit in action.

The witness of the New Testament to the life of Christ, and the mission of the early apostles guides us to a different way of assessing the successful church. The criteria for discerning God’s presence are shown to have been radically redefined by the cross. God’s true power is expressed in weakness, not in events that demonstrate might and power.

Size doesn’t matter!

Faith makes you whole

( 2 Cor. 8, 7-15; Mark 5, 21-43)

Over the last two weeks I’ve been reading a book by Barack Obama, the President of the U.S. It’s called ‘Dreams from my Father’ and it’s a personal memoir of his early life until his marriage, and of the lives of his parents and grandparents.

Barack Obama has been hailed as the first black president of the U.S. – but that’s not strictly accurate.  He was the child of a white American mother and a black Kenyan father. His father left them and went back to Kenya when Barack was very young, and he was brought up by his mother and her parents, and, for a while, his mother’s second husband who was Indonesian. Because Barack looked black, he didn’t entirely fit into the white society of his parents and grandparents; but because of how he was brought up, he didn’t fit into black society either. The book charts his quest to reconcile his divided inheritance, via the history of his liberal mother and grandparents, and his experience at school in Hawaii, through a relatively privileged life in Indonesia, and work as a community organiser in the run-down South Side black area of Chicago, and finally to his meeting with his father’s relatives and his Kenyan half-brothers and sisters in the  families ancestral Luo homeland. That meeting, and his experience as a lawyer, finally brought him to a resolution of his internal conflict.

‘Dreams from my Father’ is about the search for individual wholeness and personal authenticity in a society from whose full benefits people were excluded because of race or colour or gender or poverty. It is about how those who are excluded can find wholeness of life without resorting to violence, or being poisoned by hatred for the dominant group. Obama came to believe that the law, for all its faults and failings, was  a long-running conversation in which a nation argues with its conscience, asking  itself questions about what constitutes its community, and how that community can be reconciled with freedom. He came ultimately to the faith that as long as those questions continue to be asked,  then what binds people together might somehow ultimately prevail.  That became the faith by which he lives, and which motivated his move into politics.

That long-running conversation between law and conscience, those questions about what constitutes community are discussion which the church also has – or should have; and today’s Gospel is a major contribution to those discussions.

On the face of it, this passage of Mark contains the interwoven stories of two of Jesus’ miracles. These two provide the climax to a section of miracles in chapters 4 & 5 of the Gospel; each miracle is more astounding than the previous one, concluding with the healing of an illness that was beyond the help of human medicine, and the raising of a dead child. Corresponding to the rise in the miraculous is a rise in faith of those who seek Jesus’ help – from the demoniac who has no faith, to the woman with a haemorrhage, who has faith in Jesus’ power, but dare not show it, and, finally, Jairus, who proclaims openly his faith that only Jesus can save his daughter from death.

But more importantly for us today, these stories are also about prejudice and exclusion. In the Jewish society of Jesus’ time, all adult women were in a state of ritual impurity for half of the month. The ritual laws of Leviticus ch.15, said they were unclean from the time their monthly period started until 7 days after it ended. During that time they themselves were unclean, everything and everyone they touched became unclean, and they were excluded from places of worship and from normal social life and interaction. This was justified by the religious authorities as a result of God’s curse on Eve for her part in the Fall – but it meant that a normal biological process, essential for the continuance of the race, was considered to be disgusting to God, and that women were permanently second-class citizens.

For the woman in Mark’s story, the situation was much worse. She bled constantly, so she was in a permanent state of ritual impurity, permanently isolated from family life and all community activity. That was why she crept secretly to touch Jesus’ clothes. When her action was discovered she expected Jesus to react with disgust – for by law he also had become polluted and would need to be isolated until he had completed ritual purification.

But Jesus called her ‘daughter’,  including her within his family and community. He praised her faith, which he said had made her well and told her to “Go in peace’, healed of her disease, freed from the curse which had isolated her.

The small daughter of Jairus had just reached the stage of her life when this ‘curse’ of being a woman would begin to affect her. She was 12 years old, the age of puberty, the age at which she could be married. She was considered an adult, and because of this any respectable Jewish male should not have touched her, in case he became ritually unclean. By the time Jesus reached her house, she had died; dead bodies also polluted those who touched them ( which was why the women prepared bodies for burial). Jesus however, ignored this taboo also, took her hand and raised her up. He spoke to her in her own language. ‘Talitha cum’ means literally “Little lamb, rise up”. My Mum always called little children ‘Lambkin’, so thiese words to me are a powerful expression of gentleness and family concern. Christ’s concern did not end with her healing; he immediately asked those present to find her something to eat, making practical provision for her continuing health.

On the surface, these stories are about the healing of physical disease. But the language used means there is also an underlying theme, about salvation and resurrection. The Greek words used for “healing” and “made well” can also mean “saved”; the word Jesus used for “she is sleeping” was used by the early Christian community to speak of those who had died before the expected resurrection to eternal life; the command to the little girl to “Rise up” uses the word also used to speak of  resurrection. And, perhaps, the command to give the little girl something to eat has echoes of the community meal of Christians, and is a command to include her in the Eucharist. Jesus is showing concern for the spiritual health of women and children as well as their physical health.

In his actions towards these women, Jesus overturned centuries of prejudice and exclusion, to declare women full and equal members of the community of the saved – just as by his actions he had included other unclean people – lepers, demoniacs, sinners and Gentiles. He greets them and accepts them with warmth and concern; he is not just going through the motions. It was a radical change in religious practice.

But, sadly, it did not take very long for the Christian community to forget his example and reverse his practice. From early on, women were made to sit separately from men during worship, and forbidden to take communion during their monthly period; and, of course,  they were not allowed to take a significant role in worship by reading, or singing, or leading prayers. After the ‘pollution’ of childbirth they had to be ‘cleansed’ before being readmitted to church and society: the ceremony for “The Churching of Women” was still included in the Prayer Book in use when I was growing up, and in my mother’s and grandmother’s generation, no-one would associate with a woman after childbirth before she had been “churched”.

Jesus included; the Church excluded, preferring the laws of Leviticus to the example of her Lord. During the debates about the ordination of women, opponents still used the laws of Leviticus to argue that women priests would pollute the sanctuary and the sacrament if they presided at communion during certain times of the month, or when they were pregnant. There have been people over the last twenty-five years who would not hear me preach or receive communion from my hands because of my gender. The same irrational fear of normal biological processes lies behind the present objections to women bishops, though those who object may try to conceal it; but the fact that most of them will not allow themselves to be touched by hands that have ordained women show that the fear of being made unclean by secondary contact is far from past.

Jeffrey John, Dean of St Albans, in his book “The Meaning in the Miracles” remarks: “this healing shows Jesus throwing aside the irrational fears and inhibitions of his own culture, touching the supposedly untouchable, and welcoming her as God’s beloved child. The cruel, irrational taboo about menstruation, with all its dark, destructive implications for women down the centuries, was cancelled in one warm  and loving word. Alas, it has taken the Church twenty centuries to notice”.

The forename of the President of the United States, Barack, means ‘blessed’ in both Arabic and Hebrew. The teaching of Jesus proclaims that those whom secular society despises – the poor, the humble, the sad, and those who are persecuted – are ‘blessed’. His actions proclaimed that those whom other religious leaders regarded as unclean and impure were full and equal members of the community of the saved, full members of God’s family.

It took twenty centuries for most of the Church to hear his words about women. It took eighteen centuries for the Western church to hear his words and apply them to  people of colour and the natives of Africa, Asia, Australasia and America. It is perhaps only in this 21st century that the community Jesus proclaimed may become a reality in the civil societies of America and Europe: Barack Obama’s election is a sign of hope, but we still have some way to go.

But still the Church avoids the clear lead of Jesus in his words and actions, and returns to the taboos of Leviticus to refuse some Christians full participation in the life of the Christian community and positions of leadership. How long will it take before discrimination against Christians on the basis of their sexuality is seen to be as irrational as fear of pollution by menstruating women?

Jesus said to the woman who was healed simply by touching his cloak: “Your faith has made you whole, Your faith has brought you salvation.” In the Kingdom of Heaven, race, gender, colour, sexuality are all irrelevant. It is faith in Christ alone which makes us whole.

Three into One does go.

(Isaiah 6,1-8; John 3,1-17 )

In  an edition of The Reader magazine a few years back there was a page of suggestions to help the unfortunate ones among us who have been assigned to preach today, Trinity Sunday, to explain the doctrine of the Trinity.

There were the usual suggestions that we’ve all used sometimes, especially when we have had a Family Service on Trinity Sunday: water, ice and steam, three different forms of the same substance H2O; one person who is known in different relationships ( father, son, brother ) or different roles (teacher, churchwarden, golf cub secretary). And others that I’ve not come across before: three parts of an egg – yolk, shell and white ( though that falls short because none of the three is in itself a complete egg, while each of the three persons of the Trinity is fully God );  or one that appeals to me: a blend of three different varieties  which make up a particular tea ( though this was criticised on the basis that although each variety is completely ‘tea’, they each have different flavours and are thus essentially different from each other, whereas the three persons of the Trinity are not.)

Today I came across another suggestion in the Bishop of Huntingdon’s blog – a power cable which has three leads in it. I am afraid I am not a physicist, so I don’t know whether his explanation of the cable showing us we must be earthed in the love of God, come alive in Christ and complete the circuit with the Holy Spirit works or not!

Some people say  that maybe it is better not to try to explain the Trinity in words, but to use pictures. So, some people find Andrei Rublev’s icon called ‘The Hospitality of Abraham’ a helpful representation of the Trinity – three figures seated around a cup – of wine or of blood? – heads and hands inclined to one another.

A more abstract representation is the Trinity shield – a triangle of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, each joined to the word ‘God’ in the centre by the word ‘is’, and joined to each other by arcs of a circle on which are the words ‘is not’.

Another pictorial representation which people find helpful is a shamrock, and I have found that this ancient Celtic symbol speaks to me of a unity of three parts endlessly interacting.

But perhaps the real problem is that we are trying to explain God the Trinity, or to represent it, when what we really need to do is to experience it. As Paul explains in Romans, we are justified by faith – and that is not faith in a set of abstract propositions, but faith in the validity of our experience of God, made known to us as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Belief in God as Trinity grew out of the experience of the first Christians. They were Jews and monotheists, who believed in one  unseen God. Their God spoke to them through major figures in their past – prophets and kings. They saw God’s activity in nature and history, and believed him to be the god of both. They saw him, as our reading from Isaiah illustrates, as a mighty, otherworldly ruler. They used many names and titles to describe God’s being and activity – Yahweh, El, King, Lord, Shield, Shepherd, Ancient of Days.  And they spoke of certain aspects of God almost as separate beings, but still wholly God; the  Spirit, active in the creation of the world and in the inspiration of the prophets; and Wisdom, also at God’s side during the process of creation, and speaking directly to human beings on behalf of God.

Then the disciples encountered Jesus, and in him they came to believe that they were experiencing God incarnate in a human being – someone who reflected so closely the God of their history, their Law and their Wisdom, that they could only describe him as ‘Son of God’. And Jesus spoke of God as his Father. But these were  not terms which spoke of physical parentage, but of spiritual.

After Jesus’ death, the disciples experienced a time when this feeling of being in the living presence of God was lost – but then it returned again with the gift of the Holy Spirit. Again, the disciple’s experience was that the Spirit had the character of both the God of their history and their scriptures, and of Jesus.

When the first Christians came to speak and write about their experience of Jesus and the Holy Spirit, they drew on the language used in their Scriptures about God. But they didn’t at first go into exact definitions of the relationship between Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Those sorts of definitions came later, when the Gospel was taken out into a different cultural world, that of  Greek and Roman philosophy. In particular, they  came as the experience of a direct encounter with the living Jesus retreated  further into the past, and people began speaking of him in ways that did not ring true to the accounts of those who had that direct experience. The definitions came about in opposition to what was defined as heresy, and that affected the way the doctrines were expressed.

One of the essays that almost all people training for ministry have to write at some time in their training is entitled something like ‘Describe the steps in the development of the doctrine of the Trinity that led to the formulation of what we now know as the Nicene Creed’. That Creed was put together in its first form about the beginning of the 4th century AD for the Council of Nicaea and in its final form in the middle of the 5th century for the Council of Chalcedon.

So, our creeds, or definitions of faith, were drawn up four centuries after the experiences they were trying to define. What is more, they were drawn up in a very different cultural milieu from that in which the first disciples lived. Another complication, for us, is that they were drawn up in a different language from the one which Jesus and his disciples spoke, and from that which we speak. The technical terms in which the relationships of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit were defined  – persons and substance – meant very different things to the ancient Greek theologians who drew up the Creeds from what they mean to us – and hence our problems with the doctrine of the Trinity which they defined.

Religious experience – the experience which the doctrine of the Trinity attempts to encapsulate – is  akin to the experience of viewing art or listening to music or reading poetry. Sometimes, attempting to analyse the experience can help us to a deeper experience; but very often, the analysis simply destroys the experience all together. How many of us have been put off Shakespeare, or the poetry of Keats and Wordsworth, or a splendid piece of opera or orchestral music  by being force to pick it to pieces and define why it has the effect on us that it does have?

Should we then abandon the observation of Trinity Sunday all together. A good many preachers would answer yes!

But I think Trinity Sunday is a useful corrective to our all too human tendency to make our God too small. It reminds us that God has been made known to us through many forms of revelation, and yet is still beyond our understanding.

It reminds us that  our faith is not just in the God of the Old Testament, nor in the incarnate Son, nor in the Holy Spirit, but in God revealed as all three. It reminds us that the persons of the Godhead are in relationship, and that a relationship is a living, growing, constantly changing thing. So we cannot limit our faith to belief in the God revealed through the Scriptures; nor to the God we experience in a personal relationship with Jesus Christ; nor to a God who inspires us through the Spirit. A complete faith needs to encompass all three, and needs to be open to new experiences and interpretations of all three, while being faithful to the revelation of Scripture.

In our reading from St. John’s Gospel, Jesus tells Nicodemus that entering the Kingdom of Heaven is likely to be a transforming experience, akin to being born a second time into a completely new life. Elsewhere in the Gospel he tells his disciples that his Spirit will be sent to guide us into new truth and to reveal things that could not be understood in previous ages. Trinity Sunday reminds us to remain open to those new truths and new experiences of God.

Trinity Sunday also has important things to say to us about how we live and work as God’s Church. Our Christian life  should reflect the character of God. The doctrine of the Trinity reminds us that we cannot be Christians on our own. We can only truly reflect the character of God when we are in relationship with others – respecting their differences from us, but acknowledging their essential oneness with us, as we believe the persons of the godhead do.  And that is something which both our world and our churches  need to be reminded of, not just once a year but constantly.

All you need is Love? ( Version 2)

(Acts 10,44-48; 1 John 5,1-6; John 15,9-17)

 

Some of the older ones among you may remember the Beatles song “All you need is Love’.  It was first performed  on June 25th 1967 as the UK contribution to the first live global TV broadcast, made possible by a new satellite link. John Lennon, who wrote it, said he thought it had a message which everyone around the world could understand.

 

It was a very ’60’s’ sort of song! In the church, the same sort of attitude that inspired the song led to the advocacy of something called ‘situation ethics’ This said that when you face a moral decision, you don’t need set rules – all you need to do is decide what course of action would be the most loving thing to do. Paul Tillich, the theologian wrote “Love is the best law” and one of my great heroes in the faith, John Robinson, the radical Bishop of Woolwich, also supported situation ethics at first, saying this was the only sort of ethics appropriate to ‘man come of age’ – though he later withdrew his support, saying that the use of situation ethics would lead to a descent into moral chaos.

 

The sort of love which this theory was talking about was ‘agape’ – absolute, unchanging, unconditional love for all people, regardless. This is precisely the sort of love we see demonstrated in the life and death of Jesus.

 

When you read the writings of John the Evangelist in the New Testament – the Gospel and the three Epistles – you might think that “All you need is Love” was a summary of his teaching on the faith. But would that be true?

 

Certainly agape love is very important in his theology. It forms the main topic of his first Epistle  which is the third reading for today. For John, God is love, and those who live in loving relationship with everyone in their community, live in God.  It is only when we love God that we can love the children of God; and we show our love for God by obeying his commandments, which when carried out in love, are not burdensome. 

 

The gospel passage, which  continues from last Sunday’s reading, and uses the metaphor of the Vine to describe the relationship  between Jesus and his followers, also talks about love – the sort of love that leads a person to lay down their lives for others. This is  what should be the distinguishing characteristic of Christ’s disciples.

 

And how do we learn about this sort of love?  Most modern psychologists would say that we learn first from our families, and they are right. In an ideal family ( an ideal that few of us achieve, because we are human and fallible!) children are given from birth that absolute, unchanging, unconditional love, which enables them to grow into whole, confident adults, able to love everyone else with the love they were once given. But that sort of love is ‘family love’ and only a few people learn to extend it to those outside their families.

 

 We also learn to love from our communities, especially, we would hope,  our church communities. But church communities are made up of fallible humans too, and it is not surprising that they tend have exactly the same quarrels, disagreements and rifts that secular communities suffer from. But, at their best, churches can be schools of love.

 

The message of John’s writings, however,  is that we learn best about this sort of love from God – and in particular from his son, Jesus Christ, who was sent into the world to live out a life that was all love.

 

Because agape love comes from God, John indicates that we do need more than just ‘love’ if we are to be faithful members of Christ’s body on earth – and in that John is supported by other New Testament writers.

 

The Gospel passage we heard came from the part of John’s Gospel known as the Farewell Discourse. Jesus is about to be betrayed and crucified – and in this last address to his disciples, he is trying to prepare them for life without his physical presence. He is trying to prepare them for a situation in which they will be his body on earth – a body dedicated to loving action and service.

 

So, first of all, he emphasises the importance of community. He speaks of himself as the Vine. Not just as the trunk, or the stump, you notice, but the whole Vine – roots, trunk, branches, leaves and fruit and all. His followers, he says are the branches – so they are intimately a part of him – and it is these branches which will bear fruit to feed the world. Christ will bear fruit through us, the metaphor says – but only if we remain connected to him, and through him to God,  and only if we stay connected to everyone else in his fellowship of love.  It is a major challenge to the individualism that is so prevalent today.

 

A second important element ensuring that we remain in Jesus is his Word. The Gospel  and the Epistle  say that if we love God we will obey God’s commandments. These are not a burden, like the Law of the Old Testament. Rather, they are a series of guidelines which set out the way of love which Jesus lived, and therefore the way we should live.

 

Prayer is another important element emphasised by John.  In prayer we listen to God’s word, and in prayer we are able to share our concerns with God. We are not meant to be Christians on our own – we need to be in communication with God and with each other if we are to bear fruit. Keeping in touch with Christ and with God our Father and our fellow Christians through prayer is another channel through which we are nourished in the faith.

 

Our human, imperfect love is fed through the gift of the Holy Spirit. John’s Epistles and Gospel  emphasise that it is the Spirit who enables Christians to testify to the Truth; and in Acts we hear how the Spirit led Peter to Cornelius, and how the gift of the Spirit, even before their baptism,  persuaded him that these Gentiles should be admitted to the Christian community; and in other passages in the New Testament we hear how the Spirit inspires us to speak and act with courage and with love. Through remaining in the Vine, we are fed by the Spirit and our faith and love are strengthened. The Spirit gives us constant assurance as we act and as we serve that we do so ‘abiding in God’s love’.

 

Finally, as well as love, we need the discipline of confession, repentance and renewal. Through the metaphor of the Vine, John reminds us that in viticulture, fruitfulness is ensured by the cutting away of branches that have ceased to bear fruit. Though it may be painful, loss and renewal are a necessity if we are to continue to do God’s work. We all of us – individuals and communities  – go wrong sometimes,  take courses of action which turn out to have unforeseen consequences, or lead to different results which were not what we hoped for.  We sometimes have to face this, leave  a course of action which is not fruitful, and start again. Loving does not always mean preserving what we love. Sometimes, we need to let  go, even face some sort of death, if we are to experience renewed life and fruitfulness. Repentance and confession, reflection and renewal  should not be things which Christians fear – as John’s Epistle reminds us, perfect love casts out fear – because through the life and death of Christ we should have confidence that when we abide in God, we will be renewed.

 

The agape love which John’s writing speaks of, and which Jesus practised, is not a wishy-washy, ‘anything goes sort of love’. It is ‘tough love’  – which makes demands and requires sacrifice  and discipline of those who undertake to practise it. It is divine love in action; too difficult for ordinary humans to achieve unless they are as closely and completely open to God as Jesus was; unless they live in God, and God lives in them.

 

So, can we say as Christians “All you need is love?” 

 

No! – but when it is God’s love – Yes!

All we need is love ( version 1)

Acts 8, 26-40; 1 John 4, 7-21; John 15, 1-18.

http://watfordtrinity.org.uk/2009/05/11/all-we-need-is-love/

Thomas and Resurrection

(John 20, 19-31) .

I consider today’s Gospel reading to be very dangerous. It is dangerous, I think, because it tempts us to feel smug – and I think smugness is death to true religion. We sit here in church, and listen to the story of poor Thomas, struggling to believe the unbelievable: that someone who had been tortured and executed by the Romans ( and we don’t need Mel Gibson to tell us what that was like); someone who had been pronounced dead, and laid in the tomb for three days, could be alive again. How many of us would have believed such a tale? Would we not have demanded the proof of our own eyes and ears and touch before we accepted it? Then we hear of Jesus’ second appearance in the upper Room, of Thomas’ change of heart; and finally we get to the punch line, which inevitably leaves us with that dangerous feeling of smugness, self-satisfaction and superiority: “Blessed are those who have not seen, yet have come to believe”.

We feel smug because Jesus is talking about us, isn’t he? We weren’t there in Jerusalem and Galilee in the forty days after the first Easter Sunday. We didn’t have the opportunity of seeing the Risen Lord appear in locked rooms, or of putting our fingers into the marks of the nails and the spear. Yet, the very fact that we are sitting here in church instead of cleaning the car, or playing golf or visiting the family, especially on Low Sunday, marks us out as ‘believers’. And from our Lord’s own lips, we have been labelled as ‘blessed’.

But is it true? We ‘have not seen’ in the physical sense; that bit is true. But do we really believe in resurrection?

Of course we do, you may answer.

We believe in the resurrection of Jesus – although we may have different ideas about what the disciples experienced in Jerusalem and Galilee in the weeks after Jesus was crucified. We may believe in a very physical resurrection body, such as John and Luke describe, one which could be touched, and which could eat fish. Or we may hold with Paul, that ‘flesh and blood cannot share in God’s kingdom’ and so believe that what the disciples saw was a more spiritual resurrection body.

And we may also maintain that we believe in our own resurrection after death – though again we may disagree about how physical or spiritual that resurrection may be. But neither of these beliefs need make any difference to the way we live our daily lives. The one is about accepting (or not accepting) the biblical evidence about what happened in the past. The other is speculating, or accepting the teaching of the Christian church about what might ( or might not) happen to us after physical death.

Neither of these beliefs challenges us to change our present way of life in the way that a belief in resurrection as a present reality would do. A belief in resurrection as a present reality would mean living our lives in the faith that, when we allow things to die – even things we love or value deeply – God will raise them up again to a new life, which is more wonderful, more fulfilling and more permanent than anything which went before. But most of us don’t live our lives that way.

Perhaps we don’t want to live as if we believed in resurrection because to reach resurrection, we first have to go through the experience of death – and most of us are very afraid of death.

We don’t live as if we believe in resurrection, because placing our faith in resurrection involves placing our faith in what is unknown – and most of us would rather have certainty – even a dead certainty!

You can see the lack of belief in resurrection by the way that societies and individuals cling to what is familiar, even if it no longer has life in it; in the way we tend to revere what is traditional, rather than welcome what is new; in the way that unions and professions cling to their restrictive practices; in the reluctance to change political and educational systems which no longer work; and in the way we all look back to a previous ‘golden age’ – no matter how old we are!

And the church is just as bad! For a body supposedly founded on the resurrection experience, we are remarkably bad at letting things die. On the contrary, the church is seen by most people ( insiders and outsiders alike) as an organisation for preserving the status quo rather than exploring the new. Christ said of his own body; “Destroy this temple and in three days I will build it up again”. But how many members of Christ’s present day body, the church, would allow the destruction of any part of it – it’s buildings, its worship, the way it expresses its beliefs, even its hymns – without a pretty good idea of what was going to be put in its place.

As we are reminded during Holy Week, belief in resurrection is not an easy option. Before he was raised up, Christ had to suffer the worst that human life had to offer: betrayal by a friend, desertion by his colleagues and family; arrest; a mockery of a trial, torture, humiliation and death. He was stripped of everything that gave his life meaning: his role as a teacher and healer, his identity as a free human being, his clothing, his dignity, even his awareness of the presence of God. Only through that utter dereliction was he able to come to resurrection.

Most of us ordinary humans would rather not face that experience. All our instincts incline us to do everything we can to preserve ourselves from that sort of hurt; and we protect our emotional stability, our social lives, our economic status, our cherished beliefs and our familiar environment – all the things that give us security – with the same tenacity. However, the Easter story tells us that if we cannot let go in faith and trust, as Jesus did, we cannot experience resurrection. If we cling on to those things, we leave no opening for God’s grace in Christ to work in us.

Many, perhaps most people, will at some time in their lives experience suffering, despair, loss of security, failure, bereavement. Some may appear to be destroyed, all will be marked indelibly with the scars of such experiences. Yet some come through such suffering to a deeper understanding of themselves, a deeper relationship with God, a more profound appreciation of reality. That is resurrection.

As Easter people, we are called to experience resurrection in all the dimensions of our lives. We are called to experience the resurrection of our physical bodies, not simply after death, but also in this life: to recognise in our physical bodies the vehicle by which God is revealed to us, and through which we can reveal God to others; a vehicle which may fail or grow weak sometimes, but which God is constantly renewing for his work, no matter how old or young we are!

We are called to experience resurrection in our minds – to let our old and familiar ways of thinking and feeling die, and to learn to use all the faculties that God has given us – both intellectual, and emotional – in the service of his Kingdom.

We are called to experience resurrection in our institutions, and especially in our religious institutions. This will certainly mean that we will have to allow some things to die – but in Christ we have God’s promise that something new and better will be raised up from that death.

We may experience resurrection and not recognise it, as Mary Magdalene did not recognise Jesus in the garden, and the disciples did not recognise him on the road to Emmaus. We may not at first believe it is possible, like Thomas. We may expect something spectacular, and so not recognise the resurrection experience when it comes. The Anglican monk, Harry Williams, said: “Resurrection occurs to us as we are, and its coming is generally quiet and unobtrusive, and we may hardly be aware of its creative power. It is only later that we realise that, in some way or other, we have been raised to newness of life, and so have heard the voice of the Eternal Word’.

Only when we have the courage to surrender our lives to God will we have that Easter experience, and know true resurrection. Then we will know from our own experience that what was destroyed has been overcome by the creative power of God; that what was hurt has been healed by God’s loving hand; that what was divided has been re-united in Christ; that death and suffering and evil can never have the last word.

Then, like Thomas, we will see the glory of the resurrection life, and say with him, “My Lord and my God”. This Eastertide, may the story of doubting Thomas challenge us to make the hope of resurrection the guiding principle of our lives, and so be raised with Christ to everlasting life.

The Resurrection

1 Corinthians 15,1-11; Mark 16, 1-8

Some years ago, on Good Friday, The Times  reported on a survey by The Spectator  in which the diocesan bishops of the Church of England were asked the question: ‘Do you believe in the physical Resurrection of Christ?’ Rather to the surprise of the author, two thirds of them answered ‘yes’. However, about a quarter of the bishops declined to answer ( sensible men! ) and a further three bishops gave what were called ‘more subtle answers’. Nevertheless, this survey prompted the Times’  journalist to draw the conclusion that ‘At least three quarters of the Church of England’s bishops still proclaim a belief in the literal truth of the story of Easter and the physical resurrection of Jesus as described in the Bible.’

 

However, when you read what the bishops are said to have replied, things are not so clear. The Bishop of Liverpool, James Jones said: “I believe in the physical resurrection of Jesus for both historical and theological reasons. The fact that Jesus appeared to over 500 people at one time shows that it was not a subjective but an objective experience”.

 

A spokesman for the Archbishop of York said: 

“The Archbishop believes that the physical body of our Lord was raised from the dead on the first Easter morning and that it assumed a spiritual form which continued to sustain the Apostles and the early Church until the Ascension”.

 

A spokesman for the Archbishop of Canterbury said: “Jesus Christ is risen. That is a fact’. 

 

The Bishop of St. Edmundsbury and Ipswich said: “It’s immaterial whether Christ was resurrected in body or spirit” and the Bishop of Bristol said: “I stand by the tradition of the church and St. Paul in particular, that we celebrate at Easter the rising of a spiritual body”.

 

The article does not record what other comments these bishops and others may have made. However, it records the results of another survey, of the general public by another journal, which showed that one third of 1000 people questioned believes in the biblical version of the resurrection, and half believed there was another explanation. I was not one of the 1000, but if I had been, I would have been a rather uncooperative respondent. Before answering I would have asked ‘Which of the biblical accounts of the resurrection do you mean?’ and ‘What exactly do you mean by resurrection?’

 

The problem is that we communicate our beliefs about the resurrection of Jesus in words; but words are very inadequate and often misleading things to describe the transcendent reality that is the Easter experience. Whenever you put an experience into words, you are already beginning to interpret it. Moreover, you have to interpret it according to words which reflect your thought forms and already existing beliefs, and those of the culture from which you come. 

 

The biblical accounts of the first Easter began with the experiences of 1st century Jews and Jewesses, whose world view was very different from that with which we operate. They would have been expressed in Aramaic, within a Palestinian Jewish culture. When these experiences were written down, they were written in Ancient Greek, within a Hellenistic Jewish culture. After the fall of Jerusalem, the Jewish influence in the Christian church declined, and Greek ideas came to the fore. The Bible as we know it was then translated into Latin, and finally into English at different periods of English history.  Each of these translation processes would inevitably have slightly affected the way the experience was expressed and understood, simply because there is very rarely an exact one for one correspondence between the words of different languages.

 

Let me just give you one example of how it affects our understanding of the Easter story. The Greek noun  ‘resurrection’ amastasir appears hardly at all in the New Testament, and mostly in connection with the general resurrection that some Jews believed would happen at the end of time. When what happened to Jesus is described, verbs are used, and mostly verbs in the passive. That is, the New Testament does not talk about Jesus ‘resurrection’ or even ‘rising’ from the dead, but ‘being raised’ by God from death to heaven. But when we proclaim our faith, we never say ‘Jesus was raised’. always ‘Christ is risen’. Interpretation and translation have altered our understanding.  

 

What is more, there are a number of accounts of the raising of Jesus, and his appearing to people, and these, like the accounts of Jesus’ birth, are contradictory. The earliest account, in Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, speaks of Jesus dying, being buried, and being raised on the third day according to the scriptures. He then appears to Cephas ( Simon Peter ), to the twelve ( note 12 – not 11- even though Judas was supposed to be dead by now! ) then to 500 people at once, then to James, then to all the apostles ( who are they? ) and lastly to Paul himself. There are several things to note about this account. Paul does not mention the women, the tomb, any demonstration of a physical body, and he gives his own appearance of the risen Lord ( at least a year or more after the crucifixion ) exactly the same status as the earlier appearances to the first followers and family of Jesus. What is more, in the same epistle he argues that the body which is raised is a spiritual body, not a physical one, since ‘flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God’. 

 

The Gospel of Mark, as we heard, records that Mary Magdalene and two other named women go to the tomb in Jerusalem and are told by a young man that Jesus is not there, he has been raised and they are to tell the disciples to go to Galilee to see him. No appearances are described. Matthew has Mary Magdalene and another Mary going to the tomb ( no Salome) to be told by an angel that Jesus has been raised and to tell the disciples to go to Galilee to see him. They then meet Jesus, worship him and the message is repeated. The eleven disciples go to Galilee and Jesus comes to them on a mountain and commissions them to  go and baptize in his name. 

 

Luke has an unspecified number of women going to the tomb, to be told by two angels that Jesus has been raised. They are reminded of Jesus’ predictions of his resurrection, and go back to tell the disciples. Mary Magdalene and others are now named. They tell the disciples who don’t believe them. Peter goes to see the tomb, and sees the grave clothes lying but no body.  The first appearance of Jesus is to Cleopas ( a hitherto unknown disciple ) and his companion on the way to Emmaus. It comes in the context of the exposition of Scripture and the breaking of bread. Jesus then appears to the disciples and others in Jerusalem and tells them to touch him and see he has flesh and bones, and he then eats a piece of cooked fish before them. He then tells them to wait in Jerusalem for the Holy Spirit ( no trip to Galilee! ) and then takes them to Bethany, from where he is carried up to heaven. This last story is repeated in the beginning of Acts, except there it is Mt. Olivet near Jerusalem, and happens after 40 days. The coming of the Spirit happens several days later, on the feast of Pentecost.

 

In John’s Gospel, Mary Magdalene alone goes to the tomb and finds the stone rolled away. She calls Peter and the Beloved Disciple who run to the tomb. Peter enters the tomb and sees the grave clothes, as does the Beloved Disciple, who believes ( in what is not specified).  It is specifically said that the disciples did not yet understand the scripture that he must rise up.( John uses the active verb ). Jesus then appears to Mary, and tells her he is ascending to God ( not that he has risen! ) That evening, Jesus appears to the disciples in Jerusalem through a locked door, and shows them his feet and side. He then breathes on them and gives the holy Spirit.  (no separate Pentecost gift ) He appears again a week later the same way, through locked doors, and convinces Thomas to believe. The final chapter of John (which many scholars believe to be a late addition ) records an appearance of Jesus by the Sea of Galilee to Simon, Thomas, Nathanael, James and John and two other disciples. This involves a fishing trip similar to one described before the calling of the disciples in Luke’s gospel. The disciples do not at first recognise Jesus. They share a meal of fish and bread. This is described as the third appearance, but seems very like a first encounter with the risen Lord. Peter is then forgiven for his denial, and commissioned to lead the church and the manner of his death is predicted.

 

So, when people say they ‘believe in the physical resurrection of Christ as described in the Bible’  which of these accounts are they referring to? Quite apart from the discrepancies in the appearances, there are inconsistencies in the descriptions of the burial and the tomb that make it inconceivable that what is being described is an objective historical occurrence. 

 

Rather, I believe, as do  many Christian theologians whose judgement I trust, that the Scriptures attempt to communicate,  in symbol and myth, reworking the religious traditions of Judaism in the form known as midrash, the experience of the first disciples of Jesus, men and women, that we know as ‘the resurrection’.

 

This experience was real. We know that by its effects: by the change in the people who were the first members of the Christian Church from frightened men and women who ran home and hid, to those who were prepared to face persecution and death for their faith in Jesus as their Lord; by the change in them from orthodox Jews who held that the ‘Lord our God is one’ to followers of a new ‘Way’ who preached that Jesus of Nazareth had been taken up into God; by the change in them from those who shunned contact with non-Jews to those who preached the Jewish Messiah to all the known world; from those who saw death on a cross as a sign of separation from God to those who saw it as the gateway to eternal life in God’s presence. 

 

So the proper question to ask of the Easter narratives in the Bible is not ‘Did it really happen?’ expecting answers in terms of things that can be experienced by the senses and measured in human terms. Rather the questions we need to ask of the Scriptures are :What was the experience of those first disciples, especially Peter, Paul and Mary Magdalene, that led to the dramatic change in them?  What was it about Jesus of Nazareth that demanded his story be written and interpreted in terms of the sacred  traditions and  apocalyptic traditions of the Jewish people? What convinced these people that Jesus the carpenter from Nazareth who died as a criminal in a Roman crucifixion, engineered by his enemies in the Jewish hierarchy, could be acclaimed as the Messiah, the Son of Man, the Suffering Servant, the righteous prophet, the priest of the line of  Melchizedek, the Lamb of atonement, the Logos of God described in the Jewish sacred writings.

 

Moreover, what was  the experience of those first disciples that enabled them to communicate their beliefs with such conviction to people from the Greek and Roman cultures of their time, and for that same conviction to be  passed on to other people from totally different cultures down two thousand years and across the globe until our own time, so that Jesus has become the way to God for us, shows us the truth about God and enables us to share in the life of God now and after death? These are questions that go beyond the arguments about what literally happened into the realm of the eternal and the transcendent – the world of the Spirit.

 

If I am asked: Do you believe in the Resurrection?, I would answer: Yes. I believe that Jesus was raised after his death to glory with God. If I was asked if the disciples saw the risen Lord? I would again answer: Yes. I believe that at some time after the crucifixion (not necessarily on the third day, or after 3 days and nights, since that is ‘religious time’ ) the disciples saw Jesus in his exalted and glorified body, and that this was an experience shared by many people, some of whom are named in different parts in the New Testament and some of whom are anonymous. If I am asked if I believe that Jesus is alive? I would answer: Yes, in the same way that I believe all of us who have faith in his revelation of God will continue after physical death in a life that death has no power to extinguish.

 

What I do not believe in is that somehow the corpse of Jesus was resuscitated after lying in a grave for about 36 hours. I do not believe that his physical body escaped past a large stone from a tomb, passed through closed doors, ate fish and bread and was finally removed from this planet to an existence in some other part of this universe or outside it. I cannot believe that, because it is meaningless in terms of my beliefs about human life and death, about the physical universe and about the nature of God and God’s interaction with human beings.

 

At one time, the symbols of angels and the tomb, the stone rolled away, the stories of the body that was revived on the third day, the conversations with the disciples, the touching of wounds, eating bread and fish, expounding the scriptures, passing through doors, being in two places at the same time were powerful vehicles of the truth of the resurrection for ordinary people. I don’t believe, if we insist on taking them literally, that they are any more. 

 

For those of us brought up within the Church, these symbols still carry a powerful message of the truth of God which Jesus showed us. But if we are to continue to bring that truth to many in our generation and the generations to come, we will need to engage once again in the task of translation, not just of the language but also of the symbols, so that new generations will be able to say: We believe in the Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ’ and will be empowered by their belief to live his resurrection life.

 

 

 

At-one-ment

Sermon for Passion Sunday 2009   ( Jeremiah 31, 31-34, John 12, 20-33)

About this time last week, I heard that Jade Goody had died. Some of you, especially if you don’t watch a lot of television or read the red-top newspapers may well ask “Who was Jade Goody?”. She was a young woman, with no apparent skills or talent, who gained celebrity status by appearing on Big Brother, a so-called ‘Reality TV’ programme ( which in fact was very far from having any connection with real life!) and behaving badly. After that she made a large amount money by being a ‘celebrity’ and allowing every detail of the ups and downs of her life to be chronicled in the media in return for payment. She was, in short, a very modern media ‘star’, famous for just being herself,  and living a life that seemed completely pointless to me and to many other people.

 

All that changed in August last year, when, live on TV in another ‘reality’ programme, she was told she had been diagnosed with cervical cancer.  She chose not to retire into privacy for her treatment, but continued to be photographed and to give interviews, so that everyone could see the devastation caused by the treatment – especially the loss of her hair from chemotherapy. One of the results of her openness was that many, many more young women, whose lifestyle put them at risk of developing cervical cancer, started to go for tests for the disease – so her honesty was a factor in saving other lives. Then in February Jade was told her cancer was terminal. She continued to allow her treatment and her decline to be chronicled in the press – in order to provide for her two small sons with the fees she earned, but also as a warning to others. 

 

And she turned her mind to more spiritual things. She married her long term partner and she arranged baptisms for herself and her two sons.  When she died last Sunday aged 27, a life which had seemed to be pointless and self indulgent had been transformed. Through her courage and openness in accepting her cancer and turning her situation into a warning for others and a means of providing for those who depended on her, her suffering was a means of redeeming her reputation. After her death, she was praised by people from the Prime Minister down. I saw the end of her life as a modern parable of redemption through suffering.

 

I could have said “ a modern parable of redemption through passion” because our word passion comes from the Latin word for suffering. Today is Passion Sunday, when we turn our minds yet again to the Passion of Jesus, which we believe brought redemption and eternal life to us,  and to everyone who is willing to believe and trust in him and follow his way of sacrificial love. 

 

Our readings today explain how that redemption is achieved.

 

It is not achieved because of some sort of heavenly bargain between God and Jesus, in which God says “O.K.,  son, you suffer horribly and give up your life, and I’ll forgive everyone else all their sins and let them into heaven”.  That, rather crudely, is the interpretation of Jesus’ Passion which is given the technical name of the ‘Penal Substitution Theory of the Atonement’. This says that God is a God of justice and demands that someone has to pay in blood for all the sins and rebellion of humanity, and Jesus did that for us. The Dean of St Albans, Jeffery John, got into a lot of hot water two years ago by explaining, in a talk on Radio 4,  just why this explanation of the atonement was so repulsive.  He said ( and I agree with him) “It made God sound like a psychopath. If any human being behaved like this, we’d say he was a monster. It just doesn’t make sense to talk of a nice Jesus down here placating the wrath of a nasty, angry father God in heaven. Jesus is what God is: he is the one who shows us God’s nature. And the most basic truth about God’s nature is that he is love, not wrath and punishment”.

Our readings point us to a different understanding of the Atonement – one which enables us to read the word a different way – as At – One – Ment.

 

The Old Testament reading shows us the prophet Jeremiah, speaking God’s message of a new beginning after the destruction of Judah and Israel by the Assyrians and Babylonians. Instead of a relationship based on laws and compulsion and penalties, the renewed covenant will be characterised by intimacy, forgiveness and faithfulness. The initiative in this relationship comes from God – he will forgive and forget everything that his people have done wrong. The intimacy will come because no longer will they keep the covenant because society forces them to – the law of God will be written on their hearts.  It is important not to misunderstand this. It is not saying they will keep the law because they love God; for the ancient Hebrews, the heart was not a metaphor for  the emotions, it was  a metaphor for the will. So, to say God’s law would be written on their hearts was to say their wills would be one with God’s.  God’s law would be known by them , not because anyone had taught them, but because they were wholly and completely open to God.

 

And that total oneness with God, that total obedience and submission to God’s will, no matter what the personal cost, that complete dedication of everything to the glory of God is what we see in the life and death of Jesus. The Gentiles who came said “Sir, we want to see Jesus,” and when he was lifted up on the cross, all people, both Jews and Gentiles were able to see Jesus as the one whose life and teaching and pain and passion proclaimed and glorified the God whose name is Compassion and Love.

 

Sometimes John’s Gospel can be quite difficult to understand and interpret, and this passage is  no exception.  I find it helps to remember that John was not writing a historical account of Jesus’ life or an accurate record of his words. Rather he was writing a theological and philosophical reflection on what the life and death of Jesus had come to mean to him after many years of meditation. So, he compares Jesus’ death and resurrection to the wheat seed falling into the ground. In one sense the seed is destroyed in the ground; but in another it’s death produces abundant new life. This comparison says that Jesus’ human body is destroyed by death; but death also frees him from the restrictions of the body, which limit him to one place, one time and one culture, so that he is available as the way to oneness with God for all people in all places and all time. As Brian Wren’s Easter hymn proclaims it: “Christ is alive! No longer bound to distant years in Palestine, but saving, healing, here and now, and touching every place and time.”

There is also the passage about those who love this life will lose it, but those who hate their life in this world will keep it for ever. Are we meant to hate life, when it has been given to us by God? No, that is not what this means. The contrast is being made between those whose whole life is devoted to worldly pleasures – who will lose everything in the end; and those who pay less attention to such things, who sit light to the pleasures of this world, who can separate themselves from worldly pursuits and give more attention to the things of the spirit. It is they who are being promised eternal life. 

 

And there is the puzzling assertion that “Now is the judgement of this world and the ruler of this world is being driven out.” How does judgement fit with a God of love? How can we believe that Satan has been driven out when there is so much evil and tragedy in the world? The judgement this speaks of is not on individuals, but on the evil forces that bring darkness to people; and Jesus’ death inaugurates the victory over Satan, but that victory still has to be claimed by Christians as they follow Jesus’ way in their lives and struggle in his name against the forces of darkness. 

 

As we Christians do that, we will find that obedience to God, oneness with God, and glorifying God may bring us our own experience of passion. We will live through that passion, though, with the knowledge that God in Christ has been through such an experience before us, and lives through it again beside us, and with the faith and trust that God’s gracious activity in Jesus has already secured redemption for us.

 

Atonement is at the same time very complicated and very simple. The more I read the Scriptures, and think about the life and death of Jesus, and the more I am helped to understand what they teach by the writing of wise and spiritually gifted teachers like our Dean, the more often I am humbled by the realisation of how little we humans understand about the Divine Love who is at the depth of our being. And the more I am driven to accept that, as Paul said in his 1st letter to Corinth, the foolishness of God is wiser than the wisdom of this world.

 

And what of Jade Goody? I now know that the judgement which I and others made about her life, that it was trivial and pointless, was wrong. Because of the way she accepted her illness and used it to publicise the risk of cancer of the cervix to others, she has probably saved many lives; because she used the mass media to speak about her wedding and her baptism, and her wish to have her sons baptised, she has done more to bring the sacraments of the Christian faith into the awareness of people who would never go near a church, or listen to a sermon, than any publicity campaign of the church. And it is precisely because of her trivial, celebrity lifestyle that her death was able to communicate with so many thousands of people who couldn’t be reached any other way. Perhaps, just perhaps, in the wisdom and foolishness of God, the whole purpose of her life was to die publicly and to die well.

 

So, may she rest in peace. Eternal rest grant unto her, O Lord; and let light perpetual shine upon her. Amen.

The Time and the Place

Sermon for Lent 1. Yr B. Stewardship  (1 Peter 3, 18-22 Mark 1, 9-15)

“There’s a time and a place for everything!”  

 

I am sure most of us have been told that at some time in our lives – usually when we were a child or a teenager, frequently when we were found doing something that adults disapproved of, and usually in a tone which implied “And it’s not here and it’s not now!”

 

Mark’s Gospel is full of references to times and places. You could think they are just part of the narrative, to tell us about a sequence of events and to express the busyness and urgency of Jesus’ mission – but they are usually of much more significance than that. So, in our reading we are told that Jesus came from Nazareth and is baptised in the Jordan -from the provinces on the fringe of Jewish religious life to a place that was central to Jewish identity. After his baptism he went into the wilderness for 40 days – perhaps recalling the wanderings of the Hebrews for 40 years in the wilderness before they crossed the Jordan and took possession of the Promised Land. After John had been put in prison Jesus began his ministry in Galilee – so he took over the task from John of proclaiming the Good News. But his proclamation was different  – no longer “The time is coming!” but “The time and the place is here and now!” The task of the Forerunner is done. The task of God’s Chosen One has begun.

 

Christianity is rooted in times and places. It is not a religion of abstract thought, or philosophy or disembodied spirituality. It is an incarnational religion, taking its inspiration from a real person, who lived at a particular time and in a particular place, and provided a window through whom we see God.  It marks its beliefs through dividing up the year and the week into particular times, and through the use of material things – bread and wine, candles and oil and water – which become the outward and visible signs of inward and spiritual grace. Christianity could never be a religion which teaches that matter is evil – for it material things are good. They are part of God’s gift to us, meant to be used to teach the truth about God, meant to be used for God’s work and to God’s glory. 

 

We are at the beginning of one of the special ‘times’ now – the first Sunday of Lent. Traditionally, Lent  is the time when we take the opportunity to consider what we can do to strengthen our faith, and to become more Christ-like. In the past, this was helped by a discipline of fasting, ‘giving up’ some pleasurable material thing, in order to help us to grow spiritually – meat and fat in less prosperous times; chocolate, alcohol and biscuits  more recently. There has been a renewal of this in the last couple of years in the moves to ask people to undertake a ‘carbon fast’, reducing their use of water, electricity and fossil fuels in order to help to preserve the material world for the benefit of poorer countries and future generations. 

 

‘Giving up’ has often been combined with ‘taking up’ – doing something to feed the soul and help us to come closer to Christ. Our Lent course on Monday afternoons and Wednesday evenings is an opportunity to do that – to give up a couple of extra hours of our time to be with God, and take up the study of a portion of God’s word and apply  it to our lives in the here and now. Fairtrade fortnight, which falls this year at the beginning of Lent, provides other opportunities to ‘take up’ something as a discipline to help us get closer to God, while doing something to help those who are at a disadvantage in our present trading systems. This year, we are asked among other things to find one new Fairtrade item to buy in addition to those we usually purchase, and to give out cards asking our usual supermarket to stock more Fairtrade items – and, of course, if you like bananas to ‘Go Bananas’ and join in a record attempt by eating a Fairtrade banana next weekend.

 

The Church of England has is promoting another form of ‘taking up’ encouraging people, through its ‘Love Life, Live Lent’ campaign to do a small act of generosity each day which will help to build human communities ( something as simple as picking up other people’s litter ) as well as giving time to praying for the wider world.

 

Love Life Live Lent also contains suggestions for giving to mark Lent. This also has a long history – giving alms, giving away the money you might have spent on chocolate or drinks, giving time and talents to charitable activities. And the Church through teaching and preaching has encouraged this.

 

Some people say that church, particularly during times of worship is neither the time nor the place to speak about our use of money – that what we do with our time and resources of money and talents outside Sunday worship has nothing to do with our religion. But to say that is to deny the incarnational nature of our faith.  Our lifestyles, our use of time, our bank accounts, everything we do proclaims our values, the values which should derive from our commitment to Christ and the salvation assured to us through baptism to which the Letter of Peter refers.

 

In recent years this church community has used the first Sunday in Lent as the time and the place when we are asked to reconsider our stewardship of the money, time and talents which God has given us. Many in our community give generously of their time and talents to serve the Kingdom both within the church and in the wider community. A recent example of this was the people who generously gave up some of their half-term to repaint the hall, and we are enormously grateful for this. And in the coming months we will be asking everyone to join in fundraising for particular projects, like the new carpet for the hall. Everyone, no matter how limited their resources, will in some way be able to contribute something to that and we will be grateful for the help we will receive then. 

 

But unfortunately, in the time and the place in which we live, we cannot do everything by voluntary activity or occasional fundraising. We cannot generate our own electricity or supply our own water or gas, nor dispose of our own sewage, nor do the repairs to the roof and stonework of our ancient building.  If there is to continue to be an Anglican church here, in this time and this place, we need to have a regular and yearly increasing income on which we can depend to meet the regular demands on our budget.

 

So, as well as anything else you may give up, or take up, or give this Lent, we are once again asking you to make some time and some space to reconsider, prayerfully and sacrificially the amount you give regularly to meet the cost of keeping this church as a going concern.

 

“There’s a time and a place for everything” – and the time and place for your annual review of stewardship is now – please!

( with thanks to the Diocese of Portsmouth ‘Stewardship for Sundays’ site for the germ of the idea for this sermon)