The Spirit of the Lord is Upon Me.

(I Cor. 12, 1-11; Luke 4,14-21)

I wonder how you would feel if somebody gave you the same present every year on your birthday and Christmas – and you knew that they gave exactly the same thing to everyone else they knew. I don’t suppose it would make you feel very special. We all like to think that gifts are given after a lot of thought, and are chosen especially for us, to fit our needs and our interests.

In our reading from his first letter to the church at Corinth, Paul is talking about the gifts that come to the believer from God through the Holy Spirit; and one thing he emphasises is that they are all different. Each one is specially chosen to fit the task assigned to the person who receives it.

The Spirit who gives is the same Spirit – and is the Spirit of God and of Jesus. Paul uses different names for the source of the gifts – God, Lord, Spirit – but the source is one and the same. The variety of gifts comes from a God who is known as the Trinity – so has variety and relationship within the Godhead; but the gifts are rooted in the nature of that God, who is a unity.

Paul is trying to teach the Corinthians – and us – that just because we all belong to the same Church, we don’t have to be the same. We won’t all learn in the same way, we don’t all worship in the same way, and we aren’t all meant to serve God and the Church in the same way.

God needs different people to do different things to build the Kingdom on earth – and through the Spirit is equipping us with what we need in order to do what he asks of us.

This can be a problem for some of Christians. They seem to want everyone to be the same. Perhaps they only feel secure in the company of people who are exactly like themselves, who see things their way, and do things as they want.

But the Spirit of God is not like that, because God is not like that. The Spirit is the source of the wonderful variety of people and gifts in our world, and God appears to be happy to be served and worshipped in a variety of ways – so long as those who serve acknowledge that people who do things differently are also serving God.

This variety is not a problem if we are truly listening to the Spirit – it is only a problem if we are actually only listening to ourselves and our needs.

We learn from Paul’s letter that the Corinthians had a big problem with unity, and with appreciating the gifts of others. Even when they acknowledged that all gifts came from God, they wanted to put them in an order of importance – with the showy gifts, like speaking in tongues, at the top of the list, and less obviously spiritual gifts, like simply caring for people, lower down. Paul would have none of this. As he demonstrated by using the analogy of the human body for the Church, every gift, every part is important; and perhaps we need to take most notice of the less obviously ‘spiritual’ gifts if the Body of Christ is to be healthy and grow.

It is very much a lesson for today’s Church. Perhaps we need to listen very carefully to what the Spirit is saying to us through those whose voices have not previously been heard much in the  Church – however hard it is for those who were previously ‘top of the pile’.

The Spirit, Paul says, gives a variety of gifts – but all the different gifts have some things in common. First the gifts of the Spirit bring faith and commitment. They inspire us to proclaim through our words and our lives that ‘Jesus is Lord’. That implies that God comes first in our lives, before all our other commitments.

Second, the gifts given to believers are not given for their private benefit or advancement, to get them a better job or to make their lives easier. They are given for the common good, to build up the Body of Christ. They only remain ‘gifts of the Spirit’ when they are used in that way.

In the passage we heard from Luke’s Gospel, Jesus quotes from the Book of Isaiah, to claim that the Spirit of God is with him. This scene is like the setting out of Jesus’ manifesto, outlining what his ministry will be all about. In some ways, this proclamation at Nazareth is Luke’s Epiphany, the time when Jesus is revealed to the world as the Spirit-filled Messiah.

In Luke’s view, the ministry of Jesus is about serving the lowly, the outcast and the poor. It is the earliest Liberation Theology, proclaiming freedom for captives and liberty for the oppressed. It is about healing society, and educating  people so that they see things with God’s eyes. It is about challenging the powers that be, and announcing that the year of the Lord’s favour has arrived – the Jubilee year, when all debts were cancelled and land returned to its original owners.

Luke’s is very much a social Gospel. It is about politics and economics, not just private spirituality. Beginning with the shepherds ( the outsiders who are the first to worship the Messiah) and through the canticles like the Benedictus and the Magnificat, Luke tells us that the Good News of the Gospel has a particular significance for the poor, the sick and the outsider.

Luke does emphasise the need for prayer, and openness to the Spirit, but  only because these are necessary to equip the followers of Jesus for action. Like Paul, Luke sees the Spirit as providing the inspiration and the impetus to take action to change the world.

In the service in which he was welcomed to the diocese last September, and in his visits to deaneries in the months since, Bishop Alan has been challenging us all to make three aspects of our Christian life our priorities. First, to go deeper into God – to be open to the Spirit, to read the Scriptures and to pray; second, to make new disciples -  to teach and to nurture those of any age who are new to the faith. But the third priority is to transform the communities in which we live. That is what Paul was talking about in his letter to the Church in Corinth; that is what Jesus was proclaiming he came to do in Luke’s account of the beginning of his ministry in Galilee.

How equipped are we to respond to that challenge? We are spending a lot of our time at the moment talking about how we can keep this building safe and watertight to be the church for this parish.  But do we ever ask ourselves what it is that this church does which makes any difference to the community around us. Are we transforming our community? Would it actually make any difference to the community if our church was not here? And if not, why not?

Do we ever ask ourselves:  “How are we showing this community that, for us, Jesus is Lord, that the Gospel comes first in our lives? How are we using the gifts of the Spirit to try to transform this place?”

At the beginning of his ministry, Jesus proclaimed “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me”.

At the beginning of this year, can we all ask ourselves: “Is it upon me?”

Word in Time

(Reading: John 1, 1-18 )

“In the beginning was the Word”.

In John’s theology, before the coming of human beings who measured time, before the creation of the earth and the planets and the sun and the other stars by whose movements humans count the passing of time, before the light of the stars of the furthest galaxies came into being, the Word of God already was. The memra, the creative power, the reason, the wisdom, the Sophia, the Logos existed before and outside time – and had the character and quality and essence of God.

And once the universe came into being, the Word is the creative force behind it, the Word is the pattern that underlies it, the Word is what gives it light and life.

Our western part of the world is hung up on the word – but not on the Word of God. For most of the last 2000 years it has been obsessed with human words, written and spoken. It delights in definitions and reasons. It tries to control human bodies and minds by laws, by creeds, by articles of religion. It seeks to contain God within written scriptures – a selection of the sacred writings of pre-Christian Jews and an even smaller selection of the writings of first century Christians. But, as a civilisation it has largely lost contact with the Word of God.

Our Western civilisation has tended to replace faith in the Word of God with the idolatry of the human word. The French sociologist and anthropologist, Jean Danielou, writing an introduction to a study of Hinduism, said that the West accuses Eastern religions of idolatry, because they have things that humans have made to represent the divine – but he accuses the Semitic religions – Judaism, Christianity, Islam – of being equally idolatrous, because they worship the words which represent the divine.

We in the West find it so easy to forget that our words are just approximations, representations of reality as we understand it. They are one means by which we seek to impose order on our experience – but they are not the experience itself. All words are human constructions, we share them with others, and we come to them with the assumptions of our own time and our own people. We cannot do otherwise.

Words from other times and other peoples may be translated for us – but translations are inevitably imperfect, because people in different times and in different places do not think in the same way.  We never have perfect understanding of others. So there is always a tendency for us to be like Humpty Dumpty in Alice Through the Looking Glass – “When I use a word, it means just what I want it to mean.”  Which is why it is dangerous for any of us to try to impose the words that convey our understanding of experience, especially religious experience, on others.

The Word of God is outside all of these human limitations – but unfortunately we can only understand it through human words

The Western world, especially the contemporary Western world, is also hung up on time. We mark the passage of time and celebrate anniversaries as no other people have done. We are especially obsessed with round numbers, like the Millennium, or the beginning of a new decade like 2010, investing them with a significance that is beyond reason.

But again, we tend to forget that time is, like words, a human construct, another attempt to impose order on what is beyond our control. And again, it only works if we share our understanding of time with others. At the lowest level, this means that spies and soldiers have to synchronise watches before setting out on a mission – a scenario we know from innumerable films! At a higher level, it means that societies have to agree on how to measure time.  We do not measure days in the same way as the Jews of Jesus’ time did – they counted days from sunset to sunset; we do it from midnight to midnight. We measure years from different significant events. It also means  that when such agreement changes, we may lose time – as we seem to have done with the measurement of time since the birth of Christ, who was probably not born in what we think of as the year zero.

But differences of human understanding of time go deeper than that. In the Greek of the New Testament there were two different words for time, conveying different understanding. First there was chronos – clock-time, weeks, months and years time, time like an ever rolling stream, which had no significance except to mark human mortality. But then there was kairos, significant time, eternal time, the time for decisions, the time that can change things. In the understanding of the Gospel writers, the life of Christ was when chronos and kairos intersected.

Both word and time are only of significance when they are embodied, enmeshed in human life, in a particular place and a particular people. This is what the evangelist John asserts happened in the life of Jesus of Nazareth.

“And the Word of God became flesh, and lived among us.”

The eternal power and reason and wisdom of God became a human being and so part of the human world in all its reality – messy, sinful, confused; subject to the influences of human psychology, social forces, illness, imperfect knowledge, and mortality.  Above all, the word became subject to change.

All living things are subject to change – both renewal and decay and death.  They cannot avoid it. Those humans who seek to deny change become ridiculous – mutton dressed as lamb – or dangerous. The main thing that has stayed with me from my first teaching practice are some words of the teacher in whose class I worked. “Some teachers”, he said, “say they have had twenty years experience; but what they have really had is one year’s experience twenty times over”.

That is not just a danger for teachers. It is also a danger for other professions, and  for societies, for religions, for any individual. We are all subject to time, to chronos, which faces us with a series of kairos events, when we have the opportunity to change or to stagnate. And because “The Word became flesh” it is true also of the Word of God.

Outside a  local evangelical church near my home a notice has appeared over the last few days. “Happy New Year”, it says, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and for ever.” I don’t believe that is a very helpful way to express our belief. Christ is no longer embodied in the same way as he was. Two thousand years ago, he was embodied in the flesh of Jesus of Nazareth; now he is embodied in a multitude of different people, who believe that he carried the Word of God for them. Their belief will be affected by the understanding of all those who have embodied the Christ down through two millennia, from Jesus himself, through the first disciples, the theologians of the Patristic Age, and the Reformers, and also by their experience of life in the modern age. All those understandings will be subtly different, and it is a mistake to try to confine valid understanding to the words of one time, as people have tried to do through defining writings as Scriptures and by Creeds.

“The Word became flesh, and lived among us. And we saw with our own eyes his glory, full of grace and truth”.

We will only see the glory of the eternal Word of God if we see it with our eyes, the eyes of our own flesh and our own time. We will only share the glory and truth of the Word with the world if we speak of them with the words of our own time, with our own understanding of what it is to be a human being, and of what brings life and light and love. The only way the eternal Word of God will make an impact in our world is through those who receive the Word, meditate on it and reflect it in our own time and in our own words.

But it needs to be a reflection in kairos not just in chronos. John the evangelist recognised the coming of the Word as a challenge to our understanding of time and of words, a challenge that demanded change in those who received it.

The Biblical writers of the Old Testament understood the Word of God not just as sound, but  also action.  If we really receive the Word of God, it demands action from us, action to embody the Word, and reflect it in what we say and do in the world.  The epistle of James warns us against being just hearers of the Word, and not doers.

It is only when we act in obedience to the Word  that we  can ensure  that God’s time and God’s eternal Word have entered once again into our time and our world, and that we are receiving still its grace, and truth, and light, and life.

Which Jesus?

Sermon for Christmas Morning 2009.   Luke 2, 1-20

Children’s nativity plays are often a source of memorable and humorous moments. I treasure the tale of a small boy picked to play ‘first innkeeper’, who was so annoyed at not being given  a star part like Joseph or the Angel Gabriel that he resolved to sabotage the whole thing; when ‘Mary’ and ‘Joseph’ knocked at the door of the inn, instead of saying ‘No room!’ he said ‘Come in. I’ve plenty of room!’. Luckily the boy playing Joseph was resourceful enough to look past him and then say ‘No thank you. I wouldn’t bring my wife into an inn like yours!’ and the play continued as normal.

Sometimes there is an unexpected theological moment. A small child playing Mary at the nursery in my previous church, pushed ‘Joseph’ away when he tried to take the Baby Jesus. ‘Go away’ she said. ‘He’s nothing to do with you!’ She had obviously absorbed the doctrine of the Virgin Birth at a very young age!

I am told that at the nativity in my granddaughter’s church toddler’s group, the child playing Mary took the ‘Baby Jesus’ out of the manger, and substituted her own favourite doll instead. She wanted her own version of Jesus, not someone else’s.

And that got me thinking. How often do we do that – create our own version of Jesus, and refuse to allow anyone or anything to change our set ideas?

It is not surprising that we do that, because people have been doing the something similar  since the first Christmas Day.

In the Bible, we have three different version of the birth of Jesus. In the Gospel of John, we have a Greek hymn  to the Logos or Wisdom (personified in the Old Testament as  a female companion of God since the beginning of time) adapted by the Evangelist to provide an explanation of how the Word of God became  a human being in the person of Jesus; born through the will of God to bring Light and Truth and the opportunity to become ‘children of God’ to all who believe.

The writer of the gospel of Matthew took themes from the lives of Old Testament leaders such as Moses, Samson, Samuel and David, and from the writings of prophets like Hosea and Isaiah to create the tale of the birth of Jewish Messiah. Born in a house in Bethlehem ( like David) he will become a saviour, like Moses; a judge and a Nazarene, like Samson; coming from the dynasty of David, he will be King of the Jews. As the prophets and psalms predict, the wise and powerful of the pagan world  come from afar to pay homage to him. They are  drawn to his light in the form of a rising star and  offer him gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. Matthew’s Jesus is the fulfilment of all these Old Testament traditions. Like the Jews of old he has to flee from persecution to Egypt, before going to live in Nazareth.

As we heard in our reading this morning, we get a very different story of the birth in Luke’s Gospel. Jesus’ parents come from a provincial town, from a region despised as semi-pagan by the religious leaders. They are humble folk, pushed around by the Roman authorities, forced to leave home to register for a census when Mary was heavily pregnant. They were not important or wealthy enough to be given a guest chamber, so her baby was born in the lower part of the house, where the animals were brought in from the cold, and  placed in a manger. The news of the birth is given first to more outcasts – shepherds, keeping watch over their flocks on the hills outside Bethlehem ( as King David was doing when Samuel summoned him to be anointed as the next king of Israel). They are the ones who recognise him as King and Messiah, as do other poor and despised people like Elizabeth and Zechariah, Simeon and Anna.

In Luke’s tale, the birth goes unnoticed by the rich and powerful – there are no wise men, no star, no slaughter of babies in his story. After the purification, the family goes peacefully back to Nazareth, and Mary ponders all that has happened in her heart, as Luke means us to do.

There are some themes in common to all three stories; they hint at a virginal conception, to make the point that the birth marks a new spiritual beginning for the whole human race; and they tell us that the people who accepted this child as the Messiah were those outside the religious mainstream: people from the provinces, the poor, shepherds and pagan astrologers.

Over the years, many more have elaborated the story. New Testament writers, theologians, composers of hymns and carols, authors of mediaeval mystery plays and folk stories, all have added their own interpretations, some of which have become part of the main story for us. Even saints have done their bit, like St Francis, who gave us the crib scene, with the stable, the ox and the donkey, none of which are mentioned in the Gospels. The birth of Jesus has been set in every place and time, until we come to the rich tapestry of the Christmas story we enjoy today.

None of this matters. God gave us his son to be born into obscurity, in a time when no official documents, like birth certificates or passports, and no technology like cameras or videos existed to record the exact details for future generations. It was as if God was saying to us: “Here is my gift to you. Take it and make of it what you want. Tell his story in the way that is most meaningful to you and your people.”

The only proviso is – don’t think (like the child in my granddaughter’s nativity) that your  Jesus is the only proper one. Read and listen to all the accounts of the birth of Jesus, don’t muddle them up, and try to hear what God is saying to you through the elements of each different story.

Nick Baines, the Bishop of Croydon, has been in big trouble with some sections of the media recently. (That seems to be an occupational hazard of being a C of E bishop these days!) He was accused of saying in his most recent book, ‘Why wish you a Merry Christmas’, that we shouldn’t sing traditional carols or have infants doing nativity plays. If you read his book ( which many who commented hadn’t!) you will find he is not saying that at all. What he did write is: sing carols, enjoy them, but don’t stop there! Some of them are good theology, but some of them are nonsense – especially those that imply that the baby Jesus never cried, or that the birth was beautiful and easy and Mary and Joseph had no problems. Enjoy your children and grandchildren performing the nativity story, but don’t stop there. Don’t leave the birth story as a tale for children, anaemic, tame and a fantasy, like Tinkerbell or Father Christmas, to be rejected when you grow up.

Go back to the Bible and read the accounts in the gospels and think about the characters as real people with real problems. Think how difficult it must have been for Mary and Joseph to accept this child, how their lives were disrupted by his birth, how the religious people missed the point, how the news was given to outcasts and strangers, and that it was not the faithful, but the faithless who came to adore him – and meditate on what that says to us about how God chooses to be present with us in the problems and uncertainties, the disasters and messiness of real life.

Then think about what that says to us as Christians, about where we are meant to be and how we are meant to live, so that we bring light and truth and love to others as Jesus did; and how we can demonstrate what it means to know that, because of this child and the man he became, we have the chance to become children of God  – and so does everyone else.

That is amazing and life transforming stuff – and a very good reason to ring bells and decorate our houses and celebrate and wish everyone a very happy Christmas.

Wants and Needs

Reading Isaiah 41 17-20 (God provides) An address for a Family Christingle Service

What do you want for Christmas?

Children? Grown-ups?

What will your life be like if you don’t get these things?

Will it be very different? Will you be unhappy? Will you be really unhappy? Or just a bit disappointed?

Now think about some of the children that the Children’s Society helps.

Pictures – Tammy who is 15. Ran away from home,  Six weeks on the streets, cold and hungry. In danger from some of the people who offered her shelter but she didn’t really know.

What did she want? What did she need? Both the same. Children’s Society met her needs.

Paul was 11 when he ran away at Christmas. No cards, no presents and missed his Mum. What did he need? What did he want? Children’s Society met his needs.

Robleh aged 15 is a refugee from Somalia. Came to UK on his own to escape war in his country that had been going on for years. Stayed with relatives but they eventually refused to care for him because he was ‘grown up’ On the streets until Children’s Society found him and helped him with legal advice to get safe sheltered housing. Also provided a ‘Refugee Club’ where he could find friends and feel loved and appreciated. Both his wants and his needs met.

Our reading shows how God met needs of people of ancient Israel. Very hot dry country – needed water more than anything, and shelter and trees like olive that gave food and oil, and acacia to build with.

Christingle – the sweets and fruits symbols of? 4 seasons and the food that we get in each season. Symbols of how God cares for us. Orange and red ribbon symbol of how God meets the world’s  spiritual needs, by sending Jesus to show us how to live, how to love each other and how to sacrifice what we want, to give other people what they need.

Because God meets our needs, we who believe in God should meet other people’s needs. Giving to Children’s Society is one way to meet the needs of our brothers and sisters who won’t get what they want and need this Christmas unless we help them.

We have no King but……

Sermon for Christ the King Sunday Yr B  (2 Samuel 23, 1-7; John 18, 33b-37)

I wonder what image comes into your mind when you think of a king?

 

Henry V ( or Laurence Olivier as Henry V!) all done up in his shining armour, leading the English into battle at Agincourt? Or Henry VIII, grotesque and cruel, disposing of wives at will? Or Charles I, going to the scaffold to maintain the divine right of Kings? Or George IV or Edward VII, living lives of pleasure and debauchery?

 

I suspect we tend to think of kings in historical terms, because  it is difficult for most of us in the United Kingdom to have a contemporary image, since we haven’t been ruled by a king for nearly 58 years. We are becoming like the late Victorians, whose female monarch lasted so long that her image defined monarchy for them.

 

Our readings today are both about kings.

 

The first, from 2 Samuel purports to be a psalm written by King David at the end of his reign ( though it probably came from a later period). In it the eternal covenant between God and the house of David is affirmed. David is defined not just as ‘the son of Jesse’ ( his earthly lineage) but as “the man whom God exalted, the anointed ( messiah) of the God of Jacob, the favourite of the Strong One of Israel” affirming that his authority and legitimacy come from the divine. David claims that ‘The Spirit of God speaks through me’ (a claim echoed by Jesus in the synagogue at Nazareth at the beginning of his ministry) and that God’s support of his descendants will last for ever.

 

But the passage also informs us that God’s support for this king and his line is not unconditional. The one who rules with God’s authority must rule ‘in the fear of the Lord’, justly, and, as the other covenants of the Old Testament repeatedly emphasise, with a special care for the disadvantaged – children, women and the poor.

 

The second reading, from John’s account of the trial before Pilate, might seem a strange one for this time of year. Next week, we will be into Advent, and heading full pelt towards Christmas, with our minds full of the baby Jesus, cuddly lambs, exotic wise men or kings from the East, and all the rest of that rather escapist sort of religious celebration. But this week, the last Sunday before Advent, the Gospel pulls us firmly back into reality, makes us look on to the end of the story, and forces us to look clearly at the manner of king whose birth we are preparing to celebrate.

 

In our church, we have an picture of that king to help us to get our thoughts straight. On the wooden screen behind the Lady Chapel altar, we have an image of Christ the King. He is dressed as an earthly king, wearing a crown and a robe and girdle of gold; but the lining of the cloak is blue, hinting at a heavenly dimension to his kingship. His arms are stretched wide: to receive acclaim? Or because they are fixed to the cross on which he is suspended? His kingship is clearly not from this world.

 

The Gospel  reading describes a confrontation between two concepts of kingship. Pilate, who has the power of the Roman Empire behind him faces Jesus, who, even more than David, has the power of God behind him. Who is actually in charge of what is happening? Who is really king? Who has the real and lasting power?

 

From the perspective of the 21st century, we know the answer. We know that the power, authority and influence of the Roman Empire crumbled, in the same way as the houses of many monarchs since have fallen. As Shelley’s poem reminds us:

And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

 

But the kingdom of Christ, to whom we now give the title of ‘King of Kings’ has endured: as the lines from that favourite evening hymn tell us:

So be it, Lord; thy throne shall never,
Like earth’s proud empires, pass away:
Thy kingdom stands, and grows forever,
Till all thy creatures own thy sway.

John’s Passion narrative is full of irony. Pilate seems to hold the power of life and death over Jesus, who is apparently a helpless captive. Yet it is Pilate who is terrified. He does everything he can think of to try to avoid exercising his power and putting Jesus to death. He blames the Jewish authorities; he tries to get Jesus to condemn himself out of his own mouth by claiming to be the King of the Jews; he tries to get the crowd to shout for Jesus to be freed; and finally, he washes his hands of responsibility.

 

In earthly terms, Jesus should be the one who is terrified. But he is calm, because he knows he is obeying the One who decides about eternal life or death. So he controls the conversation. Pilate wants to talk about power, conspiracy and politics. Jesus talks about ‘truth’ – a concept that Pilate simply doesn’t understand, asking in frustration  “And what is truth?”

 

Jesus distinguishes quite clearly between the concept of kingship with which the secular world operates – the one in which the king’s will is enforced by fighting with iron bar and shaft of spear (images that come into both readings) and the concept of divine kingship, based on justice and truth and the word of God. HIs words give the lie to the notion that the divine right of kings is something that can be imposed by force; it has to be demonstrated by sacrifice and service. That is the only concept of kingship with which the Church should operate.

 

At the moment we are without a parish priest in this church. One way of referring to our situation is that we are in an interregnum (that is, ‘between kings’). It’s a rather old-fashioned way of describing the way a parish is run; one which fits best with a parish headed by a ‘rector’ a word which comes from the Latin for ruler (although technically in C of E terms it means a priest who has the right to the tithes). We didn’t have a ‘rector’ we had a ‘vicar’, a word which comes from the Latin for ‘substitute’ or ‘in place of’ (because in Church of England terms, he did the work in the parish in place of the person who took the tithes!).  But it can also be interpreted as being a substitute for Christ – ensuring that the kingship of Christ is what holds sway in the life of the parish.

 

However, he was an ‘incumbent’ which means he held the freehold, which gave him certain rights, including  the right to stay as vicar for as long as he wanted. That won’t be the case with his replacement, since the ‘living is being suspended’ which simply means that the next occupant of the office won’t be an incumbent and won’t have freehold. What we are promised, in time,  is a ‘priest in charge’.

 

I haven’t used the term ‘interregnum’ since I heard Bishop Robin Smith, the previous Bishop of Hertford, saying it was a totally inappropriate term to use of the work of a minister in the church, since the only king we have in the Christian context is Jesus! I think that is a good comment for both clergy and laity to keep in mind.

 

The other term usually used for our situation is ‘vacancy’. But that, again, is not really a good description. Yes, the office of parish priest is vacant; yes, the vicarage is vacant. But the church is not ( or shouldn’t be!) vacant.

 

We are in a situation where no one person in the parish is the central figure of authority, the ‘king-pin’ – and some people find that situation uncomfortable. The sad truth about human beings is that many prefer to be in a situation where there is a centre of power or authority, because it means they don’t have to make decisions or take responsibility themselves.

 

In our present situation, there are a number of people with different forms of authority – the bishop’s authority as licensed ministers or as churchwardens, the authority that comes from being elected to serve in different offices, the authority that comes with being entrusted with a particular task in the life of the church. The parish will run most smoothly, and will most clearly reflect the kingship of Christ, if everyone, in whatever role, and with whatever authority they exercise, works together and co-operates for the good of all, as well as with a particular care for those who are most vulnerable.

 

And that situation won’t change after our new priest is appointed ( particularly since he or she will only be paid to work with us half-time!). Collaborative ministry is the buzz-word of the moment – and that implies not just collaboration between people in different forms of authorised ministry, but also between those in ‘official’ ministry positions and those who exercise other forms of informal ministry in administration, in music, in church maintenance and fundraising, in hospitality, in pastoral care and in prayer.

 

When Pilate tried to avoid exercising the authority he had to free or condemn Jesus, the crowd responded by saying “We have no King but Caesar”.  When we in this parish try to work out how we can ensure that the parish thrives during the period until our new parish priest is appointed ( whatever we call that period!) we need to say to ourselves, “We have no King but Jesus Christ”.

 

That way we will be inspired to work together to serve the people of our parish after the model of Christ the King, with the word of God on our tongues, the Spirit of God providing our strength, the truth of God in our hearts and the sacrifice of Christ on the cross as our pattern.

 

Fishing for People

Family Communion Address.

( Mark 1, 14-20)

Have any of you ever been fishing?

What sort of fishing did you do?

‘Proper’ fishing with a rod & line? With bait or flies? What were you hoping to catch?

Or fishing in rock pools with a small net like this – or in a local river for sticklebacks or crabs?

For us fishing tends to be a hobby.

But for Simon Peter & Andrew, James & John, fishing was not a hobby but the way they earned their living.

It was a very hard way to make a living. They had to work all night, and sometimes they caught nothing, so didn’t make any money out of it. They had to look after their boats and mend their nets. Sometimes it was dangerous – on the Sea of Galilee, storms blew up unexpectedly and their little boat could be overturned and they could drown. But it was one of the few ways for people to make a living at that time and in that place.

They didn’t work with bait. They threw their nets over the side of the boat and then pulled them in, hoping they were full of fish. In order to be successful, they needed a good deal of local knowledge – where the best spots were where the shoals of fish lurked – what time of day, and what type of weather was best for catching a large haul of fish.

But although their life was difficult as fishermen, it was not an easy decision to give it all up and follow Jesus to become ‘fishers for people’. They had to leave their equipment behind, and their homes and their families – and who was going to look after their families while they were away following Jesus and working to spread the Gospel? And they were going off to do something for which they had no training and no experience. It could all have been disastrous.

They went because they believed in Jesus, and they had faith in him. They learned from him how to do what he did and how to encourage people to listen to God and follow him. The ‘bait’ they used now was the teaching of Jesus, his example of love and care for everyone, and the power they were given through the Holy Spirit. They said, like our first hymn “I will come, Lord, if you call me”.

When we are baptised, we become disciples of Jesus – and he expects us to ‘fish for people’ in his name, using just the same bait as the original fishermen disciples did – love, service and the good news of the Gospel.

It may not be our full-time job – but it is more than just a hobby – it is a central part of our lives as Christians, not just on a Sunday but every day of the week.

It may be hard – lots of people don’t want to listen. Just like people who fish for trout or fresh water fish or big fish in the oceans, we have to work out what sort of bait is right for different sorts of people, and we may have to work hard for a long time, without seeing any obvious ‘catch’ Just like real fishermen we have to learn patience and persistence.

Not many of us will be in the business of catching large hauls of people ( like those who fished with nets). But every one of us can fish for individual people.

Each of you has been given a small ‘fish’  with your service sheet. In a moment of quiet, I wonder whether you can think of one person – or a group of people – that you would like to catch for Christ. If there is such a person, write their name on the fish, and when you come up to communion, or when the service is over, come and place the ‘fish’ in the ‘net’.  When you leave continue to pray for that person, and ask God to show you how you can ‘catch them for Christ’. And we will pray now that God’s Holy Spirit will give you the wisdom and the skill and the persistence to be good ‘fishers for people’.

Holy Spirit of God, help us to become good ‘fishers for people’. Help us to be good examples by the way we act and what we say. Help us to tell other people about you, and to welcome them into church so that they will know you and follow you.

Amen

Water of Life.

Notes for an address at Harvest Family Service 09

Readings: Exodus 2, 15b-21, John 4, 5-15

Can you tell me all the ways you can think of that you use water at home? What have you used water to do already today? What might you use water for later on?

 

Any other ways you use water?

 

Some of you may have used water this summer to grow your sunflower from the seed I gave you in June. Anyone brought sunflower back? Reward – bottle of clean water.

 

We can see water extremely important to us.

 

Was as important, if not more so, to the people who wrote our Bible.

 

If we run out of something – can go to the shops and get it. But people in Bible times grew their own food, raised animals for food and milk, not as pets. If could not get water they needed because rains failed or rivers and wells ran dry – no shops to provide. Crops wouldn’t grow so went hungry – and no seeds to plant for next year’s crop, so went on being hungry. If could not get water, animals died, so no food and no wealth. If could not get water – they died.

 

Our Bible readings show how important water was to people of Bible times. Jethro’s daughters could not water their animals if others opposed them. Jesus was thirsty – no shop to buy bottled water; had to ask woman to help him.

 

Water so important to people who wrote Bible that it became a symbol for abundant life. In one of the stories written about the creation that we find in Genesis, they imagined the perfect world in the beginning of time – and one story described a garden with a river running through it. (Gen 2.10) And when they imagined the perfect world there would be at the end of time, again they imagined a river, this time flowing out of the throne of God and flowing through the heavenly city of New Jerusalem. (Rev 22,1) Because water was so essential to life, that river was called ‘the water of life’ and in our second reading, that is what Jesus says he gives us – everything that is essential for living a rich, holy and fulfilled life.  Because water was so essential to life, the first Christians chose water to be the symbol of the new and eternal life that is promised to us through baptism.

 

If we want some water, we turn on a tap. Or we go down the road, and buy some bottled water from the supermarket. We can all afford to do that, and there is a plentiful supply of clean water.  And to water our gardens, we can collect water in water butts, because we live in a country where, most of the time, it rains a lot. But for many people in the world, life is not as easy as that.

 

I wonder what you would feel like if you had to carry all the water  you use from somewhere a long way away from your home. Average consumption of water in the UK is 150 litres per person per day. Can two small people volunteer to go and fetch water bottle from back of church. This is 5 litres. Was it heavy. You carried it a short way. How would you feel if you had to walk to the Harlequin Centre and back with it. What if you had to go to St Albans? And what if you had to do that ten times in a day. Think how many hours it would take you.

 

And what if it wasn’t along a road, with pavements and people and safe places to cross. What if it was along rough ground, through lonely places, where there might be wild animals or people who might want to hurt you?

What if there was nowhere to eat or drink on the way. What if the need to collect water meant you had no time to play or go to school?

 

And what if when you got there, the water was not clean and safe to drink, but was muddy and polluted by the droppings of animals?  What if it made you ill when you drank it?

The water we get from our taps is clean, safe, reliable, always there. We don’t have to spend long hours collecting it, and we don’t get ill when we drink it. We are so lucky. It really is ‘Water of Life’ for us.

 

The Bishop of St Albans has asked us to think about how lucky we are this Harvest time, and to give lots of money to help those people in some parts of Africa who don’t have access to clean water. In a little while you will hear the stories of two people who have been helped by Water Action, one of the many charities that is helping people in Ethiopia to have enough clean safe water to drink, to wash and to water their animals and irrigate their crops.  You can see pictures of some of those people on the leaflets you have been given and the posters around the church.

 

Clean water is only the beginning. It leads on to improved health, security, education and work prospects.

 

When we have heard those stories we will pray that God will help us to give as generously as possible to the appeal.

 

Jesus gives us Water of Life through our faith. And he expects that living water to flow through us to transform lives as ours have been transformed through him. We have the great privilege of sharing God’s work  to transform other people’s lives so that they are are as rich and healthy as ours. We pray that  many of the people we are thinking about will have Water for Life as well as the water of life after our service today.

 

Through Jesus Christ our Lord

 

 

Amen.

What do you want me to do for you?

(Proper 25. Yr B. Jer.31, 7-9) Mark 10, 46-52)

“What do you want me to do for you?”

The question which Jesus asks of the blind beggar, Bartimeus. Bartimeus calls him “Teacher” and asks to be allowed to see again.

Just before this incident, Jesus has asked the same question of his disciples, James and John. They had been walking behind him on the road to Jerusalem, arguing amongst themselves. Their answer was “When you sit on your throne in your glorious kingdom, we want you to let us sit with you, one at your right and one at your left.”

Jesus’ reaction to this request was not very encouraging. He asked them if they were prepared to suffer with him, and then, when they said they were, replied that it was not for him to choose who would sit with him in heaven. Then he reminded them again that he was not like an earthly king or master, and his fellow rulers would not be like earthy rulers. If they wanted to be first in the kingdom, they would have to become like slaves, the last in line, ready to give their lives to redeem others.

He was much more encouraging to Bartimeus. “Go, he said to him, “Your faith has made you well.” And immediately, Bartimeus was able to see again, and he followed Jesus ‘in the Way’.

When you read these two passages together, you discover that the narrative can be read on two levels. On the surface they are about a discussion between master and disciples, and a simple healing. But underneath, they are about the call to discipleship, and about understanding what that really means.

James and John are already disciples. They are insiders. They have already been called, and they think they know what this means. They think they can see, both physically, and spiritually. They think they are ‘on the way’.

But, in reality, they are blind to the true nature of Jesus’ Messiahship. They think it is about power, and prestige and status. They don’t really understand that the way to the kingdom is through service, humiliation, even death.
They’ve lost their way.

Bartimeus is not yet a disciple. His poverty and his disability mean he is an outsider and powerless. All he has is his faith, but that is strong. Like the woman with the haemorrhage he is prepared to do anything to make contact with Jesus.

So, he shouts – and in spite of discouragement and disapproval from the people on the inside, he keeps on shouting. And Jesus calls him; in verse 49, the verb call is used three times.

When Jesus asks him what he wants, Bartimeus answers that he wants to see again. But, ironically, because he has such faith in Jesus, although he cannot physically see, his spiritual sight is much better than that of the so-called disciples.

Jesus responds with a phrase that,again, can be understood on two levels: “Your faith has made you well” or “Your faith has brought you salvation”. Then the outsider becomes an insider; the beggar becomes a disciple; he throws away his only possession, his coat, leaps up and follows Jesus ‘in the way’ – on one level, the way to Jerusalem – but on another ‘The Way’ of the Christian life.

Every time we come into church, every time we pray, Jesus is asking us, too, “What do you want me to do for you?” What is your answer?

Are you here because you like flower arranging, or church music, or you enjoy the quiet? Are you here to escape from the outside world, to find refuge in something that doesn’t ever change much? Are you here because you can feel someone important in this small community ? None of these things is wrong. Jesus calls us first of all in order to heal us, so that we may be  free to follow in his Way.

But are you here in the hope that it will ensure you get one of the thrones beside Jesus in his kingdom (or at the very least your own cloud and a harp and a halo!)?That was James’ and John’s mistake, for which they were strongly reproved by Jesus. It is not what disciples are called for.

Or are you here to learn about being a disciple, to practise being a servant, to learn what it means to take up your cross and follow Jesus ‘in the Way’? Are you here to have your spiritual in-sight restored, to be strengthened through word and sacrament, to give your life and your time and your talents for other people? Are you here to have your life turned upside down, if that is what God is demanding of you? This is what these stories of discipleship say is Jesus’ purpose when he calls us.

Our new Bishop, Alan Smith, as he began his ministry among us, has given the diocese three priorities to work on. If we were to ask him “What do you want us to do for you?”, his answer would be: “Go deeper into God; transform your communities; make new disciples”.

Going deeper into God involves placing prayer and worship at the centre of the life of our church, exploring what it means to pray, and ensuring our worship is of the highest quality and attractive to all those who experience it – insiders and outsiders. Worship is important because it transforms us, displaces our own selfish egos, exposes our lust for power and our own self-aggrandisement, and gives us the inner security that enables us to turn outwards.

True, God-centred worship allows us to go out into our communities and transform them in the name of Christ. The Bishop reminded us when he spoke at Deanery Synod that the faith of the Christians of the Victorian age prompted them to transform their communities in the physical sense. They built schools and hospitals, they struggled for social and political reform. They left a real legacy. What are we going to leave as our legacy? How far is our congregation a blessing to the community we live in? Each church, he said, needs to connect prayerfully with the communities in which they are set, and become increasingly open to welcome others to share the journey into God. Just because other people in our communities have different cultures or different religious beliefs, it doesn’t mean we can’t work with them to build up social cohesion and transform our communities into better places for everyone to live in.

Bartimeus was made whole because Jesus called him. Each one of us is here because someone, a parent, or a friend, or a teacher, or a neighbour, called us to come and explore the faith with them; and we have stayed because others have called us to discuss with them when our faith has been challenged. Those people made us ‘new disciples’. How equipped are we to present the faith to other thoughtful educated adults like us? How confident are we to share our faith with our children, and our teenagers, who are constantly challenged to deny their faith in the world outside? How ready are we perhaps to be converted again ourselves (as James and John needed to be converted again) before we are ready to go out and evangelise others?

And if, though God’s grace working through us, we were to become more successful in calling new disciples, how ready will we be to meet their needs? How ready are we to ask those who come though our doors “What do you want us to do for you?”. Will we actually be as disapproving and discouraging as the bystanders were to Bartimeus?

Bishop Alan spoke at some length about the importance of welcoming people properly when they come to church, and gave us some pointers about how to do that. He told us not to assume that everyone wants the same thing of us – or wants what we want. He urged us to be sensitive to the body language of newcomers. Some will come in quietly, and want to leave with just a smile and a handshake, and an expression of interest, especially if they have been bereaved or are going through a personal crisis. Others will want to talk – and be listened to, not talked at! Others come ready to get involved – but we need to train ourselves to distinguish the different needs of different people. He also warned us that new disciples will change our church – and if we don’t want that, we shouldn’t go recruiting them!

In our Old Testament reading we heard the prophet Jeremiah speaking words of encouragement from the Lord, proclaiming God’s promise that a time was near when the sad and the sick in body and in mind, the young and the old would return. Could we make that passage part of our inspiration for our efforts to renew and revive this church?

“What do you want me to do for you?” Jesus asked his disciples – and they gave him the wrong answer. “What do you want me to do for you?” Jesus asked blind Bartimeus – and he was made whole again.

This week, as you say your prayers each day, can you hear Jesus saying to you “What do you want me to do for you?” – and will you give him an answer?

And will you also say to God “What do you want me to do for you?”

And will you be prepared to do what God asks?

Amen.

Escaping the ‘Finger-shaking’ God

( James 1, 17- end. Mark 7, 1-8,14-15, 21-23)

How do you imagine God?

When you worship, when you pray, what picture do you have in your mind of the Being you are addressing?

I have recently been reading a book by Marcus J Borg, called “The God We Never Knew”. It is all about how he moved from the image of God he was taught in his childhood, which became increasingly unsatisfactory as he grew up and studied, to a way of thinking about God and living with God that he never knew as a child, a way that was consistent with the Bible and the tradition, but which made sense to a 21st century mind.

The concept of God with which Borg ( and perhaps many of us) grew up was of a supernatural being ‘out there’ far away, who created the world a long time ago. The best metaphors for this  being are King or Judge, or an authoritarian patriarchal father, totally different and separate from us, all knowing and all powerful. Sometimes, he ( this being was always thought of as masculine) intervened in the world, in the sort of events described in the Bible. But essentially this God was not here, but somewhere else. If we were good enough, and believed strongly enough, we might be allowed to be with this being after death.

Borg calls this way of thinking about God ‘supernatural theism’ or ‘the monarchical model’. Because human beings need something concrete to speak to, when he worshipped or prayed, his picture of God was based on the Lutheran pastor who led the services in his church each Sunday – a big man, with grey hair and a black robe, who always shook his finger as he preached. So Borg saw God as the big eye- in-the-sky, always watching, always disapproving, always judging.

But as he grew older, and studied theology and read the works of theologians such as John Robinson and Paul Tillich, he came to a different understanding of God, panentheisim. This thinks of God as all around us, within us, but also more than everything. What is more, we are within God. God is constantly creating, constantly nurturing,constantly present in the world, but is infinitely more than the world. In this model, the best metaphors for God are Abba/Daddy, lover, mother, Wisdom, companion on the journey. Borg calls this way of thinking about God ‘The Spirit model’. The concrete image which sums up this picture of  God for him is of his wife, a priest, bending down to give a small child who is kneeling at the altar rail the consecrated bread. He says: “I was struck by the difference: an image of God as a male authority figure, shaking his finger at us versus the image of God as a beautiful loving woman bending down to feed us”.( p.71)

Our image of God matters. It affects not only what we believe about God, but also what we think the Christian life is all about, how we think about sin  and how we think we achieve salvation. Borg emphasises that both the monarchical model of God and the Spirit model are true to the Bible and to the tradition, and have nurtured Christian belief and worship through the ages; but that supernatural theism is becoming more and more difficult to maintain alongside a modern world view.

In our readings today, from the Epistle of James and from the Gospel of Mark, we get two different pictures of the requirements of the religious life, of what constitutes sin, and how we achieve salvation.

For the Pharisees who challenge Jesus in the Mark passage, the religious life is about keeping the rules. Over time, the basic rules of the Decalogue and the Torah had grow into a multiplicity of rules about every aspect of life and worship. Salvation is only possible for those who manage to keep all of these rules, or who make proper sacrifice to appease the ‘finger-shaking God’. This view of the religious life became one which was adopted by Christianity, with the added refinement that salvation was possible for many who couldn’t manage to keep all the rules, because the sacrifice of Jesus had been provided to make up for their disobedience – but this was only possible if they acknowledged their sinfulness, and believed all the precepts of the Christian faith without doubt or question.

For the writer of the Epistle of James, the Christian life is less about keeping the rules, and more about living in the right relationship with God and with each other. It is not beliefs that are important but actions. People can study religion and think themselves holy, but unless that results in a life lived for others, their religion is worthless. James ends with a passage that echoes the prophets Micah and Isaiah, saying that what God requires of us is to care for the weak and vulnerable, and not to adopt worldly values. James indicates that the way to salvation is to live a life of compassion, in obedience to the God who gives us birth and who nurtures us with gifts.

There is a danger in taking this view of the Christian life, which is that we can end up believing that we earn our place in heaven ourselves through our good works. It is what Luther seemed to be arguing against when he condemned the idea of justification by works. The counter balance to this is the teaching that our salvation  comes as a gracious gift from God, regardless of how good we are. All we have to do is to accept that, and to demonstrate that we are ‘doers of the word, not just hearers’, by living in the light of that belief. This puts us in a right relationship with ourselves and with our neighbours and with God, such that we begin to experience salvation in this world.

With  the monarchical model of God, religion is all about sin. Sin is disobedience to God and breaking his rules. In this model, Jesus came and died so that we could escape punishment for our sin. Our part is to believe that, to acknowledge ourselves  as miserable sinners, to feel guilty and to repent.

The problem is that the dynamic of that way of religion is hard to live with. It just becomes impossible to keep all the rules, or even to decide which rules we ought to be keeping in different circumstances. We end up not loving ourselves, and so cannot love others, The only way to escape the overwhelming sense of our own unworthiness is to project the nasty bits of ourselves onto others, usually those who are somehow different from ourselves, people of another race, religion, culture, class, gender or sexuality. This results in a fracturing of society and church, and to the blame culture, which seeks to apportion responsibility for our own unhappiness to others. It can also lead to a conviction that everyone needs follows our particular way to God if they are to be saved.

With the Spirit model of God, sin is about unfaithfulness, or idolatry in Old Testament -speak, putting other things like the desire for money, power, prestige, possessions, food or physical gratification before our desire for God. Sin is also failure in compassion and inflicting harm on God’s creatures ( human and other species) and on God’s world. Sin is not breaking laws, it is betraying relationships, and what it results in is not punishment but estrangement – from our fellow beings and from God. As such, we feel the consequences not in the life to come after death, but in this world.

The central dynamic is not guilt and blame with the Spirit model, but nurturing relationships. If we do not say sorry, and do something to mend the hurt and show our change of heart, the relationship will be harmed.

One element in every service of Christian worship is the Confession and Absolution, when we say sorry as individuals and as a congregation. Some confessions are difficult to say. I always disliked leading the confession in the Prayer Book Evensong service, in which we called ourselves ‘miserable sinners’ and asserted that ‘there is no health in us’ – largely because I just didn’t believe that was true. God made us, God’s Spirit lives in us, so of course there is health in us! I know that Norman Moore, the previous Vicar of St Andrew’s, disapproved strongly of what he called ‘grovelling before God’ and sometimes omitted the Confession from services in the belief it was unhealthy.

I agree, confession can be unhealthy if you are working with the model of the ‘finger-wagging God’, if you are trying to earn God’s approval and avert punishment by wallowing in a sense of unworthiness and guilt.

But if you are working with the Spirit model  of God, then reflecting regularly on where we have fallen short of reflecting the image of God within us, as individuals and society, saying sorry and resolving to do better, can only be good for us and for our relationships. And hearing what the standard Methodist Absolution calls ‘the Word of Grace’: “Your sins are forgiven” does, I believe, make a real difference to our ability to live the Christian life. This assures us that, no matter what we do, we are loved the way we are, by a God who is with us, around us and within us, and that makes a real difference to the way we see the world and other people. This model of confession and absolution is not a power relationship, but a dynamic of mutual  support, expressed most  obviously in the confession of the Iona Community, where both minister and congregation confess and are absolved by each other.

Knowing we are forgiven and accepted enables us to forgive and accept others. Knowing that our failures do not condemn us enables us to be less quick to condemn others. Experiencing the compassion of God prompts us to be compassionate to others. There has been a great deal in the media over the past weeks that demands that we don’t just hear this word but live it. The disagreements over the release on compassionate grounds of Ronnie Biggs, the Great Train robber; and Ali al Megrahi, the alleged Lockerbie bomber; and the obituaries to Senator Edward Kennedy, which refer back to his involvement in the drowning of Mary Jo Kopechne all challenge us: do we believe and trust, and live our lives in the Spirit  of the God who is all compassion; or do we continue to be representatives of the finger-shaking God?

Which image of God drives your life?

(The God We Never Knew. Marcus J Borg. Harper One. 1998.)

True bread

( John 6, 24-35. )

There has been a lot of discussion recently on the Forum of the Church of England readers web site about the recently introduced advice for the administration of communion to cope with the risk of swine flu. One correspondent was very much against communion in one kind only, and said “If I went to a church where they offered the bread only, I wouldn’t take communion. I’d  go up for a blessing only.” The response implied that unless we all shared bread and wine, just as Jesus did with his disciples, it wouldn’t be a ‘true’ communion at all.

A line from today’s gospel: “It is my Father who gives you the true Bread from heaven”.

In the Greek of the New Testament, the word for ‘true’ is also the word for ‘real’ and the ‘real’ is something that our age values highly.

People are prepared to pay vast sums for works of art, whose value drops dramatically if they are discovered to be copies of an original, deliberate forgeries, or the work of less famous artists. They are then judged not to be ‘real’ or ‘true’.

With food also, we are engaged in a search for the real. We have campaigns for real ale, and manufacturers advertise their food as ‘free from artificial additives and colourings’ – illustrating their belief that what we want is what is natural – what is real.

This morning we have come together to celebrate the Holy Communion. We will receive part of a wafer of unleavened bread and a sip of wine, in the belief that we are experiencing the real Presence of Christ – but how ‘real’, how ‘true’ will that experience be?

To most people outside the church community, the answer to that is obvious. The things we do in church have nothing to do with reality. Religion is at best an irrelevance, at worst a deliberate escape from reality – ‘the opiate of the people’  Karl Marx called it.

But for those of us who do believe, who find that religion enables us to make contact with that reality which is at the depth of our being, how can we judge if what we do, including a celebration of the Eucharist, is ‘real’ or not?

Traditionally, debates about whether a celebration of Holy Communion is valid or not have concentrated on the externals. Was the person who presided validly ordained and authorised to celebrate? Were the right elements used? Were the right words said at the right time? Were the right actions performed by the president and the communicants?

Which is really strange – because Jesus, who gave us the sacrament of Holy Communion was a person who, in his earthly life, sat very light to externals. He was much more concerned with what was within – with people’s attitudes, motivation, beliefs and faith. It is true that he recognised the importance to the religious faith of human beings of things they could physically experience, like water, bread and wine; but he was constantly urging his followers to see beyond the externals, and penetrate the deeper meaning within.

So I want to suggest to you today that what makes a Eucharist real or unreal is not how close the externals are to what Jesus said or did, but how close these internal elements are to his practice.

The overriding characteristic of Jesus that comes across in all four gospels was how open he was to everyone. It was this that was such a stumbling block to belief in him for pious Jews.  He was free with his time and his teaching – he taught people like Mary of Bethany, and the Samaritan woman at the well, and he welcomed little children when the disciples wanted to send them away.  He shared meals and accepted hospitality even with notorious sinners like Matthew and Zaccheus. He was free with his body, allowing himself to be touched by those whom others considered polluting, like the sinful woman who anointed him at Simon’s house, and the woman with the haemorrhage – and even Judas, who betrayed him, did so with a kiss.

So I would suggest that our Eucharists are ‘real’ and ‘true’ in as much as we experience in them the openness to others that Jesus showed, and are ‘unreal’ and untrue’ insofar as we use them to erect barriers -barriers between ourselves and others, between God and others, between God and ourselves.

In Acts and the Epistles, we see the first disciples having to learn this openness again and again: the truth that Jesus’ Body and Blood are available to all. Think of Peter’s meeting with Cornelius and his family, of Paul and others taking the gospel to the Gentiles, of James warning against discriminating against poorly dressed worshippers, of the Corinthians failing to treat the poorer members of the community with generosity in the agape meal.

Yet how many barriers do we present day disciples  erect to prevent others sharing ‘the bread of life’ with us? Denominations bar one another from receiving; people have been, and still are barred from the communion rail because of their race, or age, or intellectual ability or marital status. People are excluded from taking certain roles within the Communion service because of gender or sexuality. Like the Corinthians, and those whom James criticised, we still often try to ensure that those who share the communion elements with us are dressed properly, behave nicely, come from the same class as us, and hold the right theological beliefs.

We try to exclude those whose words or actions make us feel uncomfortable and disturb our peace. This is partly because the sort of openness that Jesus practised is very frightening, very disturbing. Such openness may bring us to face the death of what we have always believed was ‘real’ and true’. It feels – and it is- dangerous. If we adopt such openness, we face the prospect that we might be, as Jesus was, broken, deserted, reviled, rejected. But Jesus’ example says that only when the ‘real bread’ on our supper table is open to all people – as his was – will our Communion be real.

And that openness includes being open to ourselves; not just to our good bits, but also to the unworthy bits that we would rather forget, and that other people didn’t know about.  So often, when we come to church, we leave that part of ourselves behind, or cover it up with special clothing in the vestry.

But Jesus accepted, and accepts  people just as they are. He did not demand that people repent before he helped them or shared a meal with them. He received them as sinners; he accepted their ministry as sinners, and he died for them and for us, while we were yet sinners.

So if we set different standards from his when we come to receive him, for ourselves or for others – we will not receive the ‘true bread’.

George Herbert, the 17th century priest, pastor and poet, expressed this in his poem, called ‘Love’:

Love bade me welcome, yet my soul drew back

Guilty of dust and sin;

But quick-eyed Love, discerning me grow slack

From my first entrance in,

Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning

If I lacked anything.

‘A guest’, I answered, worthy to be here’

Love said, ’You shall be he’.

‘I the unkind, the ungrateful? Ah, my dear,

I cannot look on thee’

Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,

‘Who made the eyes, but I?’

‘Truth, Lord, but I have marred them Let my shame

Go where it doth deserve’

“And know you not,’ said Love, ‘Who bore the blame?’

‘My dear, then I will serve.’

‘You must sit down,’ said Love, and taste my meat.’

So I did sit, and eat.

If our Communion is to be true, and real, and if we are to feed on the true bread that comes from Heaven, then we must come accepting ourselves, and others, good bits and bad bits, without conditions, and accepting the character of the God who invites us to sit at his table and eat with no conditions, no standards, no masks.

We come with only our trust in Christ’s promise, that his flesh is real food, his blood is real drink, that he is the true bread of life that has been sent from Heaven – and that whoever eats and drinks it possesses eternal life.

The table is set. The host awaits us. Come let us celebrate the feast.