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)

Transfiguration

Sermon for Sunday before Lent. Yr B .  ( 2 Kings 2, 1-12.  2 Cor 4, 3-6, Mark 9, 2-9.)

Last summer, I spent one afternoon at a local beauty salon. I have to say that this is not something I do often. But a special birthday last year, and I was given  a voucher  for the salon as a present.

 

As I sat there having a manicure, I looked around me at the posters on the wall, advertising products and procedures. These promised to remove wrinkles and lines from face and eyes, restore plumpness to hands, tighten chins, taken away fat, in short, to restore youthfulness to bodies that had lost it through the ravages of time. Later, the beautician who was attending to me tried to persuade me to buy several products, at £30 – £50 a bottle, which she assured me would restore the collagen in my skin, moisturise and cleanse me and keep me from suffering from the aging process which all flesh ( up to now !) has been prone to.

 

What was on offer at that beauty salon was transfiguration, a change of form, or, at least,the visible aspect of form  – from one which showed the signs of age back to the more youthful form which had been lost.

This was not what was on offer at the Transfiguration of Jesus that we heard about in the reading from Mark’s Gospel.  There, what happened was a metamorphosis – a complete change of not just the outward aspect, but also the inner essence of Christ, from the human form of his earthly life into the form he would possess after being raised to heaven; the form of glory, which in Jewish understanding was a shining ethereal substance of which all heavenly beings, including angels and God, were made. So this transfiguration was not looking back but forward, to the resurrection, ascension and the second coming of Christ, and to the end of the world, when all the faithful would experience the same transformation themselves.

 

In Mark’s Gospel in its original form,  no resurrection appearances of Christ are recorded. So, the transfiguration story is the only picture Mark’s readers are given of the glory that is to be Jesus’ after his passion and death, and which will be theirs if they follow Christ faithfully.

 

The Transfiguration story comes in chapter 9 , at a turning point in Mark’s story. The first half of the Gospel has told of Jesus’ baptism, temptation and his ministry in Galilee as teacher and healer, proclaiming in word and deed that the Kingdom of God was near.  Then, in chapter 8, Jesus asks the disciples:, “ Who do people say I am?” and Peter makes his confession, “You are the Messiah.” Then comes the first of three times in chapters 8, 9 and 10 when Jesus teaches the disciples about the sort of Messiah he is to be, and speaks about his rejection by the people and religious authorities, his suffering and death. When this awful prospect is rejected by the disciples, he goes on to teach that those who follow him must be humble like him, must suffer like him, but  will also share in his glory. From chapter 10 onwards, Jesus sets his face towards Jerusalem, and begins his journey to death on the cross.

 

So, the transfiguration comes in the centre of this change of focus from Galilee to Jerusalem, from active ministry to passion.  It is obviously a story designed to encourage those who are called to follow that journey of their Master. Did it actually happen?  Was it an experience given to Jesus to strengthen him with the Father’s approval for the coming Passion?  An experience where his aspect was transformed, as stories tell of the saints being transformed by intense spiritual experience ? Was it a vision given to the three members of Jesus’ inner circle of disciples in order to reinforce Jesus’ teaching about the nature of his Messiahship and to fortify them for the trials ahead? Something like a dream, as Luke’s account implies? Does it mark the inauguration of the Kingdom, the fulfilment of the promise given by Jesus in verse 1 of chapter 9, that some of the disciples will not see death until they have witnessed the Kingdom coming in power? Or is it an account of a resurrection appearance, written back by Mark into Jesus’ earthly ministry, in order to provide a suitable turning point for the story, as some biblical scholars think?  

We can’t know. 

 

What we can know, if we read the story carefully, is what Mark is telling us through this incident about Jesus the Christ, and about us as his followers. For that to happen, it doesn’t matter whether this is a true story in the sense of an actual historical incident or not. For the Jews tended to express their theology in the form of narrative, not abstract philosophy. Thus, in the Old Testament, theology was revealed through the stories of the creation, the fall, the patriarchs and the history of Israel. In the New Testament, Jesus revealed the deepest truths about God in parables – story form – and all the NT writers saw the reality of the nature of God expressed through the story of Jesus’ life.  The picture of Jesus given in the Transfiguration remains true, whether you believe it happened at the particular time and place and manner described by Mark, or not.

 

The details of the story are important. Through them, the transfiguration is linked backwards and forwards to incidents in Jesus’ life, particularly his baptism and his passion and resurrection; but in addition it is linked backwards in the history of Israel, to Moses and the Exodus and the time of Elijah, and forward to the vision of the resurrection of all believers and the coming of the new Jerusalem we read about in Paul and the Revelation of John.

 

So, what do the details tell us. 

The story begins with a time: six days later. Why ‘six days’. Probably because, in Exodus, 24, Moses and the children of Israel waited six days at the foot of Mount Sinai, while the cloud of God’s presence covered it, before Moses was told by God to go up the mountain to speak to him; and possibly, because at the end of the Gospel, Jesus rises after three days, and then tells the disciples to journey to Galilee, which is when they see will see him, three days later.

 

The transfiguration takes place on a mountain, the traditional place of a theophany, an appearance of God.  We don’t know which mountain it was. Perhaps Mark didn’t know; but since Mount Hermon is only 14 miles north of Caesarea Phillipi, that is the traditional site of the Transfiguration. 

 

Jesus is transfigured. The Greek word is ‘metemorphothe’, from which our word metamorphosis comes. So it is more than a temporary, transient change.  St Paul uses the same word in 2 Corinthians chapter 3, when he speaks of Christians reflecting the glory of the Lord, and being transformed by that glory into his likeness. So it is a foretaste not only of the transformation of the risen Christ, but also of the resurrection body of the faithful Christian. The transfiguration extends not only to Christ’s face and body, but also to his clothes, which become dazzling white. It was a belief of the Jews that a person who came face to face with God ( as Moses did on Mount Sinai ) would reflect the glory of God in their face.  Jewish tradition  also believed that the glory of the heavenly body would extend to a person’s clothing. This is expressed in the Apocryphal book of Enoch, and in Revelation, where the saints are dressed in white. The elaboration “such as no-one on earth could bleach them” is intended to reinforce the point that this was heavenly clothing, not simply transformed or enhanced earthly garments. 

 

Next, Elijah and Moses appear. These two figures represented two of the strands of the Old Testament, the Prophets and the Law. They were the only people who were granted the privilege of speaking to God face to face. Their preeminence was reinforced by the manner of their death. Neither had a known resting place on earth. In the account of Elijah’s death, which we heard read, he is taken straight into heaven in a chariot of fire and the whirlwind of God; and although in Deuteronomy we are told that Moses was buried, the location of his grave is not known, and in later Jewish writing, such as the Assumption of Moses, he also is said to have been taken directly  into heaven. So, both these people prefigure Jesus, who speaks to God face to face, who is prophet and lawgiver, and who will be taken up to heaven in glory. What is more, in contemporary Jewish eschatology, the expectation was that Moses and Elijah would appear on earth before the ‘Day of the Lord’ the expected day of salvation. Their presence with Jesus at the transfiguration said that day was near.

 

Then Peter, who so frequently seems to play the role of the fool in Mark’s Gospel, makes his suggestion that the disciples construct three dwellings, or tents, for the heavenly figures. Why tents?  The Greek word, skene, means tents or booths or tabernacles. At the lowest level, the desert tradition of hospitality demanded that you erect a splendid tent  for an honoured guest. But in Jewish salvation history, the idea of the tent or tabernacle had richer overtones. Throughout the Exodus, and in the early Hebrew kingdoms, until the Temple was built by Solomon, God’s presence with his people was signified by the ark in the tabernacle.  Peter’s response shows an awareness that in the presence of Moses, Elijah and Jesus, God is again present with his people, and he wishes to make appropriate dwelling places for them, as his ancestors did. Moreover, there was an expectation that after the Day of the Lord, God would again live among his people. The Jewish Feast of Tabernacles had an eschatological dimension, and as well as looking back to the deliverance of the Exodus, also looked forward to the Day of the Lord and the end of the world. This was taken up in Christian expectation of the Second Coming. Paul spoke of Christians being “tented’ in resurrection bodies: and the passage in Revelation 21 about the new Jerusalem says literally: “God will make his tabernacle among humans and he will pitch his tent among them”. So Peter’s question shows that he interprets the transfiguration as the inauguration of the Day of the Lord. 

 

The way that the story continues however indicates that  ( in the evangelist’s eyes ) Peter has got the wrong end of the stick again. The voice of God comes from the cloud to tell the disciples to listen to Jesus, who is called the Beloved Son, one of the titles of the Messiah. That is, listen to what he tells you about the Messiah’s path to glory, that it goes through rejection, passion and the cross. The full arrival  of the Kingdom of Heaven is not yet. It cannot be brought in or preserved that easily. 

 

But  Mark also gently offers an excuse for Peter’s foolishness. He is terrified, which is an appropriate response to the presence of God; it is the reaction of mortals to the shattering events of the resurrection; and  you will remember that one of the gifts of the Spirit , according to the confirmation prayer, is the fear of the Lord.

 

The voice of God comes to the disciples out of a cloud. In the Old Testament, the cloud always signifies the presence of God. The technical term for this cloud of glory is the shekinah. A cloud leads the people of Israel through the desert. Mount Sinai is covered by a cloud into which Moses goes to speak to God; and a cloud covers the Tent of the Presence in the Tabernacle when God is there. Mark uses the same Greek word for the overshadowing of the figures at the Transfiguration as was used in the Greek Old Testament for the overshadowing of the Tabernacle. A cloud takes Elijah into the heavens, the Son of Man appears on a cloud in the Book of Daniel, as do heavenly figures in other apocalyptic works, including the Book of Revelation. Luke’s account of the ascension in Acts says a cloud received Jesus from their sight; the equivalent of saying he was received into the presence of God.  But the cloud too was a foretaste of the end of time; for Christian expectation was that Jesus would return to earth on the clouds of heaven, and that the saints would be taken into heaven on clouds.

 

The words which God speaks from the cloud are a repeat of the words spoken at Jesus’ baptism. However, in Mark’s account, they are heard at the baptism only by Jesus himself. Now they are heard by his closest followers. He is given the Messianic title, Beloved or Chosen Son. This echoes the psalms, where the Kings of Israel are adopted as God’s sons, and the Servant Songs of Deutero-Isaiah, where the servant  is named as God’s chosen one. In Deuteronomy, also, Moses gives the people God’s promise that a greater prophet than himself will be raised up from among the people, and they must listen to him. So the voice from the cloud confirms Jesus’ teaching that he is the Messiah King, the Messiah prophet and the Suffering Servant Messiah – all the expectations of the Jews contained in one person.

 

As the voice speaks the two great figures of the Old Testament disappear, and Jesus is left alone.  Moses and Elijah, like John the Baptist, belong to the old order, which is passing away. Symbolically, the Old Covenant embodied in the Law and the Prophets is superseded, and only Jesus remains, as the one to whose teaching we are to listen.  Only Jesus was with them, Mark says; only Jesus is Emmanuel, God with us. And immediately Jesus reminds them that his way to the resumption of his transfigured form lies through suffering and death.

 

So, what are we to make of the story of Jesus’ transfiguration? If we read it with all its echoes of the Old Testament and all its anticipation of the rest of the New Testament, then it speaks to us of the true nature of Jesus, who reflects the glory of God in this world. It speaks to us of that mysterious intersection of our time ‘chronos’ with God’s time, ‘kairos’, where the Christ partakes eternally  of the glorious nature of God himself. It speaks to us of our future hope, that, when the trumpet shall sound, we too will be changed and clothed with that imperishable body in which the disciples saw Jesus.

 

But it tells us, as it told Peter, James and John, that the glory is not yet ours to rest in. The Kingdom of Heaven is nearby, it is being brought in by Jesus’ life on earth and his death and resurrection; in technical theological terms it speaks of inaugurated eschatology, not realised eschatology. It tells us, as it told Peter, James and John, that we have to come down from the mountain top, carrying with us the vision of future glory, and follow Christ faithfully on the road to Jerusalem, Gethsemane and Golgotha, which is the only Christian way to glory.  

 

That is why the story of the Transfiguration is placed for us to read on the Sunday before Lent – as we prepare ourselves to relive the Passion and death of Jesus, so that we may , in God’s good time, experience with him the transfiguration into our resurrection body. Which will be a lot more permanent and glorious than anything a local beauty salon can provide!

Up Close and Personal

2 before Lent.  ( 2 Kings 5, 1-14; 1 Cor 9, 24-27; Mark 1, 40-45)

I wonder what you think is the most amazing phrase from the Gospel reading that we have just heard?

For me it is “Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him”. The man that “him’ refers to was suffering from what modern versions of the Bible call ‘a dreaded skin disease’ and older versions call ‘leprosy’. Whether it was what we now understand by leprosy ( which is unlikely) or something else, it was regarded at the time as infectious or contagious, and there was no easy cure, if indeed it was a form of skin disease that was curable. Yet Jesus touched the man in order to cure him. In doing so, he not only risked catching the infection himself, but he immediately made himself ritually unclean – unable to eat with anyone else, unable to worship in a synagogue or the Temple until he himself had gone through a ritual of purification. He made himself as much as an outcast from normal society as the sick man was. Yet, Jesus went ahead and touched the man. It reminds me of the stir it caused when Princess Diana was filmed holding the hands of those suffering from AIDS/HIV, a disease that terrifies modern people as much as leprosy terrified the ancient world.

 

Yet this action typified the life and ministry of Jesus. As the wonderful prayer from Iona puts it “Lord God, in Jesus you touched the scabby, listened to the ignored, gave the broken something to hope for. You bandaged the broken with love, and you healed them”.  

 

In Jesus we believe that God was with us and among us. Jesus lived in a time when many people believed that the world of matter was so evil that nothing divine could live in it; but the Gospels tell us that in Christ, God came among us in a human body. But though divine, he did not distance himself from ordinary people. He got emotionally involved with people and their concerns – he got angry at the way sick people were shunned and excluded, he wept with people who were mourning, he joined in celebrations of marriage  and went to parties. He also got physically involved with human beings. He lived among the outcasts from society and ate with them. He allowed those who were unclean to approach him, and if they could not do so, he approached them. He touched the leper, the woman with a haemorrhage, the dead daughter of Jairus, the woman who lived a sinful life, and he healed them. He was no distant God cocooned  in a temple, protected from the real world. In Jesus we see a God who is willing to get ‘up close and personal’.

 

 

We all know how important touch is in human life. Being touched, stroked or hugged builds up bonds of affection and trust no matter what age we are – and human beings who  cannot bear to be touched are isolated from an important part of  family and social life.  

 

Touch is also important in healing; from the “Mummy kiss it better” to a child who has fallen, to the gentle massage that helps us to recover from serious operations, touch can help us to recover more quickly.

 

But it is not only physical touch that contributes to our well-being. We also benefit from eye contact and being spoken to. I am sure we have all experienced medical staff who don’t bother to introduce themselves to us, and who talk about us to other members of the team as if we weren’t there. Or officials who don’t look directly at you as they are speaking to you, and who treat you as simply a case number. Or even worse, a modern twist on this, the telephone enquiry system where you never encounter a real human being at all – just a  series of recorded messages telling you which button to press next. All these things tend to dehumanise us, make us feel unimportant and destroy our self esteem. What Jesus did was exactly the opposite – he treated all those he met as so important that he was willing to risk his own health and his own place in society for their sakes.

 

The absence of touch and direct human contact highlights the difference between the healing of Naaman in the Old Testament and that of the leper in the Gospel. No wonder Naaman was annoyed when he reached Elisha’s house. He had risked ridicule by  following the advice given by his wife’s small female slave to travel to a foreign country and seek the help of a foreign god.  He had gone to the king, the ‘top man’ and had been accused of warmongering, before being sent off to some out of the way place to consult a prophet. And when he arrived, the prophet didn’t even come out to speak to him. Naaman hadn’t expected physical contact – that would be too dangerous – but he hoped at the very least for a personal appearance and some gestures and magic words. Instead he was told by a lowly servant to go off and wash in a nearby stream. It was a severe blow to his pride – and no doubt it made him feel very unimportant and humiliated.

 

Contrast this with what Jesus did. He came close to his patient, spoke to him, showed emotion at his plight and actually touched him. His involvement didn’t end with the cure. He gave the man instructions about the best way to complete the process, to ensure that he was quickly re-integrated into the society of normal healthy people. We make a lot of fuss nowadays about ‘holistic medicine’ as if it is something which the modern age has discovered. Jesus knew about it and practised it in the first century!

 

Treating the whole person involves being with people where they are.  It was not only Jesus who did this. In the verses before the ones which we heard from Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, Paul explains how he tries to make his missionary activity effective, by getting alongside the people he is evangelising. When he is with the Jewish community, he lives as a faithful Jew; when among Gentiles, he lives outside the Jewish law, though under Christ’s law; when among the weak, he admits his own weakness. In the well known phrase, he becomes all things to all men, in order to win them for Christ. 

 

This has implications for the church’s mission. We won’t succeed by standing at a distance and pontificating. We will only be effective if we get close to people and listen to their concerns, if we adapt our presentation to different circumstances and groups, and are prepared to get deeply and personally involved. Paul talks about subjecting his body to discipline, even to blows, in order to be fit to preach the gospel. We need sometimes to open our own selves, and our institutions to criticism and danger if  we are truly to serve Christ in the world.

 

 We are the Body of Christ. He was willing to get ‘up close and personal’ to heal and save. So must we!

Light – a Sermon for Candlemas

(Luke 2, 22-40)

Simeon praised God and said:

“My eyes have seen your salvation – a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for glory to your people, Israel.”

 

Light is a powerful symbol – one used not only in Christianity and Judaism, but in all the world’s great religions.

 

It is a powerful symbol because of the many positive associations it conveys. Light shows us the way: we need a torch to help us find the right way in the dark or car headlights and street lights to illuminate the roads.

 

Light helps us to find what we have lost: when you have mislaid or dropped something, often it is only when you are able to shine a light on the place that it is found.

 

Light can also reveal what is wrong; it shows up dirt and damage clearly; think of a doctor or dentist using a small bright light to look in your ear, or down your throat, or at your teeth, to see what needs treatment. Then, sometimes, light and heat is used to help the process of sterilisation and healing.

 

Light is important for life and growth. The sun works to promote growth; we human imitate that when we use artificial light to bring on plants early, or keep them going through the winter.

 

Light is also important to us as a warning. We can think of the revolving light of a lighthouse, keeping ships away from dangerous rocks and sandbanks; or of the flashing lights on emergency vehicles, or around road works; or the warning lights on a broken down car, and the guiding cats eyes in the middle of the road, warning of bends.

 

Light also is a symbol of celebration – fireworks (being used more and more, all the year round, now, to mark special occasions ); the coloured lights we put up at festivals, especially Christmas; and the candles on birthday cakes. 

 

Because of all these associations, we use light to speak of Jesus. John tells us that he is the Light of the World, the true light who illuminates every human being at their birth.

Through the incidents, sayings and parables of the Gospels, we learn that Jesus is the light who can guide us to the truth about God, and the right path of life. We learn that his is the light that will help us to find those who are lost. We understand that his life is like the powerful  light which shows up what is wrong and needs treatment ( as Simeon prophesied ); and his life is also a warning of the dangers that surround our journey of faith.

 

But his is also a light that brings us warmth and growth, the Sun of Righteousness; and, to those who recognise the light, he is a sign of celebration, hope,  reconciliation and joy. 

 

In this technological age, we could just as well use an electric light to stand for Jesus; but we continue to use candles. Why?

 

I think it is because, unlike a beam of electric light, the candle flame seems alive. It moves, flickers, changes; it is affected by the atmosphere around it, growing bigger or fading according to the amount of air that is available. In that respect it is like a human being, vulnerable to its environment; and as the writer to the Hebrews emphasises, Jesus was able to be our Saviour precisely because he too was subject to the forces of nature, as we are.

 

The candle flame is a proper symbol for the little people – the ones who no-one takes much notice of. They are the sort of people who figure large in the Candlemas story: Joseph and Mary, the humble parents from the countryside, going to perform their religious duties in the mighty Temple, symbol of the power and prestige of their religion; and Simeon and Anna, representatives of the old and often disregarded members of society. You cannot disregard the power of an electric searchlight; but like a human being, a candle is vulnerable. If done violence to, it can be snuffed out. 

 

And that possibility is part of the Candlemas story too. As well as the joyful associations, candles are also a symbol of more sombre things. They are light as a sign of our hope for peace amid the darkness of conflict. They are lit to express our fervent prayer for those who are ill. They are lit to remember those who have died.

 

So, as we hold our lit candles at Candlemas, we come to a turning point in our symbolic journey through the Christian year. We turn from contemplating the coming of the light into the world at Christmas, the coming that was made possible through the co-operation of the little people like Mary and Joseph, and was proclaimed by the little people, like the shepherds and Simeon and Anna.

We turn from the light towards the darkness: the darkness that Simeon spoke of when he warned Mary of the pain that was to come, like a sword piercing her heart; and when he spoke of the judgement and the fall of many that would be precipitated by Jesus’ presence. The darkness we represent in the church’s calendar by the sombre furnishings and bare flower stands of Lent. The darkness of temptation and opposition, of betrayal , torture and death, represented by the absence of colour and of candles on Good Friday.

 

But, as Christians, we do not lose sight of the light as we make that turn. Light is always seen more clearly against the darkness, and as we enter the darkest season of the Christian year, the light of Christ continues to guide us. As John assures us in the Prologue to his gospel: The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it”. We are people of the resurrection, and we know that, beyond the darkness of Good Friday comes the glorious light of Easter, when we shall rekindle the lights extinguished on Maundy Thursday from the great light of the Paschal Candle. 

 

When we are baptised, we are signed with the cross, and we are also handed a small candle, the symbol of the light of Christ. We commit ourselves then  to following that light all our days.

Each time we hold a lighted candle in our hands, or see a light in the darkness, we have an opportunity to re-commit ourselves to following the light, and to sharing the light with the world. So, as we turn from the lights of Christmas to the lights of Easter, let us ask God to help us in that commitment:

 

Eternal God, whose Son, our Saviour Jesus Christ, is proclaimed as the Light of the World; may your people, guided, warned and warmed by the light of  your word and sacraments, shine with the radiance of his glory, that you may be known, worshipped and obeyed to the ends of the earth.

Amen.

Matthew – a nativity story for today

( Isaiah 60, 1-6; Matthew 2, 1-12)

If I were to begin this sermon by wishing you a Happy Christmas, I am sure that some of you would think me rather strange! The secular world has now moved on from Christmas – many people will have taken their decorations down this weekend, even though we haven’t yet reached 12th Night, and people are now thinking about the New Year, the January Sales and going back to work or school after the long holiday.

 

But in the church’s year, we are still in the Christmas Season ( which traditionally extends to Candlemas on 2nd February). And today, as we celebrate the Epiphany, what we are actually doing is hearing the Christmas story again – only this time we are hearing a different version from the one we heard on December 25th. Then we heard Luke’s Nativity story – today we heard Matthew’s.

 

Luke’s story has some elements of sadness in it – the long journey to Bethlehem for the pregnant Mary; no comfortable place for them to stay; the baby placed in a manger. But generally Luke’s Nativity is a happy story with a poetic feel and rustic charm. The baby is laid in clean hay, is visited by merry shepherds with a chorus of angels directing them and praising God, and the family returns peacefully home. It is a story suitable for telling to all ages, and nowadays, particularly for children.

 

Matthew’s is a much darker story, and as a consequence, we don’t usually get much of it told to us at Christmas. Almost all of his version ends up being ignored in our Nativity plays, except for the Wise Men, who get tagged on to Luke’s story, turning up incongruously in the stable amongst the animals and hay to present their gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.

 

This merging of the two narratives is fine for children – but as grown-up Christians we really should be trying to keep the two birth stories separate, because only then will we be able to hear clearly what the two evangelists are trying to tell us about Jesus through their narratives.

 

It must be said that the church calendar doesn’t help us to hear two different stories. It keeps jumping from one to another – we get the annunciation to Mary ( Luke) or to Joseph ( Matthew) on the last Sunday of Advent, then Luke’s story of the manger and shepherds, or John’s philosophical meditation on the Word on Christmas Day. Then ( and only if, as happened this year, December 28th falls on a Sunday) we get the Slaughter of the Innocents, which is part of Matthew’s dark tale of power politics. Then, on 1 January we get the Circumcision and Naming of Christ ( Luke) and on the 6th or the Sunday nearest to it, the coming of the Magi ( which is at the centre of Matthew’s story); but again, we only hear it on the rare occasions when Epiphany falls on a Sunday or the feast day is moved to the nearest Sunday. Otherwise, it too gets relegated to a midweek celebration.  After moving forward to tell of the Baptism of Christ, the Christmas season ends with the presentation of Christ in the Temple or Candlemas, which rounds off Luke’s story. 

 

Both stories tell us that Jesus was born in Bethlehem – to emphasise that he was descended from David and so is the expected Jewish King Messiah. Both tell us that Mary was found to be pregnant by the Holy Spirit before her marriage, so he is therefore God’s Son ( though since his descent from David comes through Joseph, combining the two is somewhat problematical.) Both tell us that after the birth the family settles in Nazareth, and Jesus grew up there. But apart from these facts, the two stories are completely different.

 

How then can they both be true?

 

They can both be true because the  birth stories are not history or biography let alone science – they are theology – and what they are telling us about is not how and where Jesus was born, but who Jesus was, drawing on prophecy in the Old Testament and pointing forward to the events of his adult life, which they reflect. There can be more than one ‘truth’ about who a person is – we are all different people in different circumstances of our lives – and both the pictures the two evangelists give us of Jesus were true for their communities, and are true for us.

 

Luke’s story is fashioned to emphasise that, from the very beginning, Jesus’ place was among the poor and the despised, those considered unclean by the religious leaders of his time. It is these poor and outcast people people – like Mary, like the shepherds, like Simeon and Anna – who recognise Jesus as God’s Messiah from infancy. Luke is not particularly interested in Jesus as a Jewish Messiah – he often gets the detail of Jewish ceremonial wrong – but he is interested in him as the Saviour of the World. So the characters in his Nativity story are Everyman and Woman. Mary is centre stage in his narrative, and the story is gentle, domestic and intimate.

 

Matthew’s Nativity Story is much darker. Women are virtually invisible in it and even Mary plays only a passive role. Joseph makes all the decisions. He is initially concerned only to protect his own reputation and put Mary away when he discovers she is pregnant by someone else – until the angel instructs him otherwise. Matthew’s angels don’t bring good tidings of great joy – they bring warnings of dirty deeds and instructions about how to avoid disaster. 

 

Matthew’s concern is with the Jewish credentials of Jesus. But his Jesus is a challenge to religious Jews – his genealogy contains four women whose sexual purity was dubious – yet who were key figures in the line of Jewish heroes from Abraham to Solomon. 

 

 

The holy  family is resident in Bethlehem before the birth and has a house to live in. The visitors to the newborn are not poor and ignorant, but rich and powerful enough to travel, bring costly gifts, and enter palaces unannounced in pursuit of their enquiries. They move among kings and religious experts. They are searching not for a Saviour of the World but for a King of the Jews.

 

They follow practices that are slightly suspect in orthodox Jewish eyes, reading the stars and perhaps even indulging in magic and they are foreign. Matthew, in his Nativity Story, wants to make clear from the outset that Gentiles recognise Jesus as the Messiah when the Jewish religious and political authorities didn’t – and also that the Jewish political forces represented by the Herod family try to get rid of him.

 

Herod’s hostility leads to the massacre of the children of Bethlehem, which is unlikely to be a historical event. But through the actions attributed to Herod, Matthew is able to make the infant Jesus relive some of the major events of Jewish history – the massacre of babies in Egypt under the Pharoah, exile in Egypt and return from exile to a country with mixed populations of Jews and Gentiles. So Matthew’s story looks backward into Jewish history as well as forward into the events of Jesus’ life.

 

Politics and power are in the background in Luke’s story – they are in the foreground in Matthew’s. His story allows Matthew to move the Holy Family to Egypt as refugees ( as many of Matthew’s community may have been forced to become). He comes out of Egypt as Moses did, and grows up in Nazareth in Galilee – known as Galilee of the Gentiles. It is believed that Matthew’s community was a mixed community of Jews and Gentiles – the magi represent the faith of the Gentiles, as Joseph represents the faith of the Jews among them.

 

Matthew’s Nativity story shows Jesus as a challenge to the rich and powerful in state and religion. It shows him as both Jewish Messiah and Saviour for the world.

 

It was a nativity story for his first century community – but it is also a nativity story for us and for all ages. It poses hard questions about sexual morality.  It talks about the abuse of power, and its impact upon the poor and innocent, and that is something which is of contemporary concern.  It talks about the plight of refugees, not just the poor, but those who are forced to leave houses and jobs and families because of political persecution. It talks about how we cope with relationships with the foreigners who come among us, a situation we now face with increasing frequency in our country. And it faces us with the message that 

people with customs and belief systems different from our own may possibly have a truer insight into the message of scripture and of our historic faith than we do. The infant Jesus is involved in and affected by all these concerns – as he was in his adult life. Matthew’s story encourages us to be concerned with these problems too, and perhaps to challenge the prevailing responses to them. 

 

Matthew’s is a Nativity Story for the twenty-first century. Pray God we may see and hear it clearly.