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A feast where all are welcome

Eleventh Sunday after Trinity, 2026. Year C.

Readings: Hebrews 13:1-8,15-16; Luke 14.1,7-14

Jesus does seem to have liked a good meal.  It is commentated upon in the Gospels as something that sets John the Baptist apart from him.  John spends most if not all of his ministry in the Jordanian desert, surviving we are told on a diet of locusts and honey.  Jesus, apart from his 40 days in the wilderness at the start of his mission, remains amongst the people, where he is most needed.  John makes the people come to him for baptism; Jesus comes to them, bringing them healing where they already are.

And this split illustrates two different forms of ministry that persist down to this day.  John, we can assume, doesn’t spend his life in the desert because he enjoys privation.  I assume that he does it because he feels that it is necessary for him to do this in order to prepare himself to better know God.  He needs to shut out and remove from himself the distractions and temptations of our everyday lives.  And when he calls out to people to repent of their ways and change their lives, the implication is there that in order to do so, people should follow that pattern of life, and retreat from the world into a place that is less cluttered, less distraction, less tempting.  Some do follow him into the desert, while others just come for the baptism and return to everyday life.  In this call for people to remove themselves from an unholy world, he is working in the tradition of the Essenes, who he seems to have belonged to.  They looked to bring the age of the messiah by creating a new Israel, more exclusive and purified of the outside influences that they thought had corrupted the old Israel.  There are the seeds of the monastic movement here, and also of many Christian sects throughout the centuries that have followed a narrow definition of a chosen people of God, and have minimised contact between the chosen and the ordinary world.

Jesus though, walks a different path.  Obviously for him, there is no need to prepare or purify himself in order to know God, because he is God.  But he does establish patterns for us to follow in how he conducted himself.  He does withdraw into the wilderness to prepare himself for his mission.  He also withdraws for short periods throughout his ministry into the wilderness in order to pray and be nearer the Father, which indicates that even for him, the busyness of the world was a distraction.  This is a pattern that we are all encouraged to follow – to find times of quiet and contemplation, whether an hour snatched here and there, or the luxury of a formal retreat – such opportunities are a time for spiritual growth and renewal.

But Jesus mixes this in with a life led fully in the world, and he joyfully celebrates the mutuality of human existence, especially in eating together.  Many of his parables about the coming kingdom of God liken it to a great feast, where all are gathered together, irrespective of rank or position.  

I myself have just come back from Greenbelt, and that is a wonderful example of the Church embracing the world in all its diversity and confusion.  As always I come back having been thoroughly entertained, stimulated and challenged by what I have encountered.  In many respects it feels like a retreat in reverse – rather than clearing myself of distraction, I am subjecting every sense to the totality of God’s infinite creative expression in the world; letting God’s bounty pour over and through me.

Jesus, interestingly, initially goes low in this passage, where he is appealing to our natural sense of shame and embarrassment in order to persuade us to act in ways that are appropriate for the coming Kingdom.  Do not assume that you are an honoured guest when you are invited to a formal feast, and take a seat at the top table, because there might be so many that are more honoured than you that you are kicked off the top table in full view of everyone else, and by then the only place left might be at the bottom table.  Rather sit at the bottom table, and wait for the host to puff up your ego by insisting that you come join him.  The ancient world was incredibly obsessed with status and position in society, and trying to step outside one’s position was highly disapproved of.  In some respects, we haven’t changed as much as we would hope. 

If anyone else were offering this advice we would decry it as deeply cynical and self-serving.  And yet, of course, this is what Jesus himself does in his incarnation – he joins us at the bottom table, and no-one ever invites him to the top table where he should by right sit.

Even his second argument, that we should be welcoming those who cannot return our hospitality, feels like he is suggesting that this is a transactional arrangement, rather than being something we should be doing because it is how we, as humans, can reflect God’s unconditional love for us.  God certainly doesn’t love us because he needs anything from us – he does so because his very essence is love that cannot help but overflow and fill all of creation.

Jesus is right that eating together is one of the great human bonding experiences.  It is unfortunate that so often throughout history we have corrupted it in pursuit of our own selfish interests.  We are using this incredible gift that God has given us – the enjoyment of flavours and textures and smells and tastes, the enjoyment of company and conversation, of mental stimulation and relaxation, and we use it as a tool to indicate who is included and who is excluded; who is within our social circle and who is beyond it; who is powerful and influential, and who is powerless and ignorable.

Jesus knows exactly what he is doing when he uses the example of a feast as a metaphor for the kingdom of heaven.  He is taking what should be an expression of God’s love and bounty, and showing us how we have corrupted and misused it, and how God will restore it in the new creation.  He is showing us how easily we create boundaries and exclusions; groups of us and them.  It is what John and the Essenes were doing, maybe with good intentions, but any attempt to divide the world into us and them will always run counter to God’s kingdom.  Salvation is not for the elect, but for all of creation.

We may think we are beyond such things – but actually the politics of us and them are still all around us.  

We see with the current debates around immigration, how easily people fall back into the politics of inclusion and exclusion – drawing arbitrary boundaries around groups of people. We are too easily drawn into rational arguments about whether there are economic benefits from immigrants, or whether they pay more tax or commit fewer crimes, statistically, than the average of the population.  But as Christians, surely we should be helping those in need because they are, above all, human beings.  We do not help the poor and suffering because we might get something in return, we help them because they are poor and suffering.  

People say that if we don’t do something about immigration, then in 30 years time, this will no longer be a Christian country.  But what is Christianity if it is not compassion for the desperate and love for all that God loves?

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The many voices of the Bible

9th Sunday after Trinity, 2025. Year C.

Preached at St Barnabas, Pitshanger Lane.

Readings – Jeremiah23:23-29; Hebrews 11:29-12:2 & Luke 12:49-56.

Our reading from Luke might strike us as being unusual language from Jesus, and yet this episode appears in all of the synoptic gospels.  Jesus is making an emphatic point about the necessity of remaining alert and expectant for events that are to come. 

In doing so he uses the apocalyptic language that we also find in the Old Testament used by the prophets, especially when they are warning of the fate that will befall Israel as a result of its unfaithfulness towards God – a fate realised in the Babylonian sack of Jerusalem and destruction of the temple.

It can at first feel jarring when we encounter passages like this, which seem at odds with Jesus’ normally more measured way of speaking, and with his emphasis on love and peace as the key to the Kingdom, rather than violence and division. 

But he is speaking here with a purpose, because he is trying to shock his audience out of their assumptions about what they think is God’s eschatological plan.  He knows that their wish for a military messiah who will confront the hated Romans is a route that will lead to death and the destruction of Israel.

When he talks about the division of families against themselves, he is quoting from the prophet Micah, who is speaking about this previous destruction of Israel.

He is speaking prophetically – he knows that his message is not one that will be received openly by many, but rather only by a few.  It will set people against each other.  It will cause division, because it is a message that is hard, while appearing simple.  There will be many who prefer what they think of as the easy route.  But this is a necessary message that he is bringing.  He is impatient to deliver this message, to have it taken up by humanity.

The language of division that he uses is a familiar one to us today, as we live in a world which seems to be more and more reverting to nationalism and tribalism.  And yet Jesus is not seeking to use the language of division and othering to further his aims, instead he is being honest when he admits that the truth will cause division – that there will be those who refuse to accept the truth because they are unable to adjust or change, or admit that they were wrong.

A superficial reading of Luke 12 can allow us to portray Jesus as an apocalyptic judgemental figure, dividing us into the saved and the damned.  Other extracts of the Gospels can help support this view.  Many Christian leaders throughout history have leant into this idea of the final judgement where the righteous will be saved (normally themselves) and the others will be damned.  They will say that there is a single route to righteousness, and we must all follow it to be saved.  All too often though, they want us to listen to what they are saying, and not what God is saying.

But we have to read the Gospel, and indeed the whole of scripture, in its totality, not picking on the bits that we want to listen to.

The Bible is not a self-help manual, with a simple remedy for the human condition or a ten-step programme, logically arranged to take you in a straightforward and logical progression from discontent to contentment.  

Instead the Bible is the product of that innumerable cloud of witnesses that the writer of Hebrews invokes.  It is a myriad of stories about people and their relationship to God, each told in a different voice, and each testifying to a different experience of God. 

Few of these stories have happy endings.  There is no simple remedy for the broken-ness of the world.  These people may have had faith in God, and God certainly had faith in them and in his covenants with them, but ultimately they are still trapped in sinfulness. 

They cannot lift their heads up high enough to see that it is not their own salvation that is the end-goal, or the salvation of Israel, or the salvation of humanity, but the salvation of all of creation that is the goal and that God is asking up to partake in. 

But God never gives up, and ultimately, in the faithfulness of his Son, who is faithful to death, in that faith, all of creation is reconciled to God.

Because Jesus isn’t just some wise-man dispensing philosophical one-liners about being nice to each other.  Jesus is King and Prophet, the Messiah, the Son of God.

Jesus is very aware that he is part of God’s overarching salvation work that permeates the whole story of creation.  The secret to life isn’t just being nice to each other.  The secret to life, true life, is God, because life isn’t just a transient existence between what we perceive as our birth and our death.  Life is us being invited by God to partake in God’s salvation story.  And that salvation story is not just us ensuring that we, individually, will be saved.  Yes, God loves and cherishes each of us individually, but he also loves and cherishes all aspects of his own creation, and we are called into his work of salvation for all of creation, not just for ourselves.

And as Jesus warns us here, aligning ourselves with God’s plans for creation runs the risk of causing friction, dissent and disagreement.  Not because God is looking to create disorder or disharmony – exactly the opposite.  God is looking to bring everything into harmony with Him.  No, it is because we seem to be so often naturally disinclined to act in a way that brings us into harmony with God.  It is in our God-given nature to be rebellious, because God created us free-willed, not as slaves or servants.

God did not choose to populate his creation with puppets, but with free creatures.  It is more pleasing to God that we should choose to be good and faithful, than that we should be compelled to be.

What does this mean for us as God’s creations.  It certainly does not mean that there is one ‘right’ way to live – a single formula which if only we all followed, we would all be righteous.  Scripture shows us a wonderful set of stories about people and their relationships, good and bad, with God.  It shows us that God values our diversity and our differences.  The Bible is not simple.  In some respects, it is not helpful.  The Bible, like Jesus, rarely, if ever, provides straightforward answers.  What it does is affirm that the questions that we ask are questions which we should be asking of God and of ourselves, because we can see that faithful people have been asking these questions of God for all of history. 

Each of these people is faithful in their own way, because God has created us all wonderfully diverse, and that creation is fundamentally and essentially good in every way.  Like all of creation, we will be perfected when creation is returned to the state that God created it in, but that perfection will be a perfection in diversity and community, not a perfection in unity and uniformity.  Just as the Father is not the Son, and the Son is not the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is not the Father, so too we are not each other, but each are uniquely ourselves, fearfully and wonderfully made by God, individually loved and cherished by him.

Jesus’ warning is valid though, even for us today.  As a church, as Jesus predicted, we are divided by many things.  We seek out prophetic voices, but we must take care, as God warns Jeremiah, to discern between the prophet who just has a dream, and the one who has God’s word faithfully.

Jesus says that he has not come to bring peace to the earth, but rather it is the case that the earth is not fully prepared to hear of the peace that he brings because it is too radical a type of peace, that we are unable to comprehend the full strain that such a peace will put upon us.  We are not able to change ourselves enough to embrace the peace that he brings, and instead we demand peace on our own terms, which is just division against someone else, further off.

But Jesus has come to us, and has given us a taste of that peace.  Only in Jesus can we see the peace that he brings; the peace that is harmony and rightness, not just with each other, but with God and all of his creation. And in us, in his church, we are the harbingers of the Kingdom that will come.  We are the clouds in the west, that foretell the rain tomorrow, or the wind from the south that foretells the heat to come.  We are called to be faithful to God, as he is faithful to us, so that all may see the signs of the Kingdom to come.

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Faith and certainty

2nd Sunday of Easter, 2025. Year C.

Readings: Acts 5:27-32 & John 20:19-31.

I don’t know how many of you here today are amongst those who have driven the almost 300% reported increase in viewing of the film Conclave over the last week.  If you haven’t you may yet come to it in the next couple of weeks – it is, as far as I can tell with just one irritating and probably irrelevant factual error, as good a documentary on the process of selection of a new Pope as you can get.  And beautifully shot as well.

It is interesting to contrast the speed with which the Roman Catholic church moves to select a new supreme pontiff with the long deliberations that the Church of England is undertaking to select a new Archbishop of Canterbury, especially if you consider that Archbishops of Canterbury normally have a scheduled retirement date, and popes tend not to.  Is speed of selection an advantage in this process, or a problem?  It certainly emphasises the difference between the role of the Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury that the Church of England and Anglican Communion seem to think that they can happily function without Canterbury for 6 to 9 months, whereas the Roman Catholic Church, at least in modern times, keeps its periods of sede vacantia to a few weeks.

In both cases of course, the intention is that the Holy Spirit should point the way towards someone who is most suitable to lead this part of the church at this time.  This is not a naïve expectation.  Of course this is a group of human beings, with a greater or lesser degree of representation of the whole of body of Christ.  These are people with agenda and politics.  We no longer just chose at random who is going to lead the church, as the apostles did when they looked to fill Judas’ place on the twelve, although even they narrowed it down to two, presumably equally qualified, candidates.  These are people who are of their time and place.  But that is the whole point.  The church exists in time, not in eternity, and the electors of the church are people of their time.  Their role, at its best, is to discern the person whom the Holy Spirit is calling at this time and in this place to be the person who can best lead the church as they see it.  Obviously they are not perfect – that would be two great a burden to place on anyone.  Bad choices are made.  But sometimes it is easier to see issues in hindsight and from outside than it is in the moment of history.  

It is a process built on trust – our trust in our representatives that they will listen to the voice of the Holy Spirit, and their trust in the person who they chose, that they will chose someone who will lead in humility and wisdom.  Pope Francis, it seems to be generally agreed, was a good choice by this standard.  He rewarded the trust placed in him, not by being perfect, but by being humble.  Trust is a word we will come back to later.

One of my favourite scenes in Conclave is the sermon that Ralph Fiennes’ character delivers as Dean of the College of Cardinals before the conclave starts, where he says ‘Certainty is the great enemy of unity. Certainty is the deadly enemy of tolerance.’  This is something that I have observed for myself in the debates that are currently raging in the Church of England.  There are a great many people who are absolutely certain that they know what God’s will is, and that therefore there can be no compromise or accomodation.  

He then goes on to say that ‘Even Christ was not certain at the end.’, which is something that I am not sure I do agree with, both trivially because to see crucifixion as Christ’s end is to completely ignore the resurrection and ascension and eternal existence, but also more fundamentally because while a superficial reading of the passion narrative might indicate doubt on Jesus’ part, a deeper reading of it shows that he is completely certain in his faith in God the father, and in God’s promises to him.  He does not necessarily understand how those promises will be fulfilled but he is certain in his faith in God, and we ourselves are saved by that faith that Jesus has in the father.  We are saved not by our own works or deeds or actions but by the faith of Jesus Christ.

How does this sit with our gospel account of Thomas that we just heard.  It is common to have poor old doubting Thomas held up to us as an example of lack of faith.  Is that what John is telling us here?  He ends the chapter after all, saying that this whole account is so that we may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God.  Thomas himself, when confronted by the risen Jesus, acclaims him as ‘my messiah and my God’ – he becomes the first person to hail Jesus unambiguously as divine.  And Jesus says that those, like us, who do not get to stick our fingers in his wounds, but still believe, as to be praised even more.  Is certainty to be exalted over doubt?

Peter is similarly uncompromising when he declares in our Acts reading that “We must obey God rather than any human authority.”  that might seem to be an uncontroversial position, that we have a duty as Christians to do what God commands us to do, rather than submit to human authority.  

Indeed, a couple of weeks ago you would have heard me preach exactly that point, that we should be recognising Jesus Christ as our ultimate authority in all things.  A single sermon though, like a single verse of scripture, is not something that necessarily allows for examination of a nuanced point of view.  I agree with Peter that we must obey God rather than human authority, but we have to ask ourselves what does obeying God look like?  Are God’s wishes always clear and unambiguous.  Always certain?  Should we allow ourselves room to doubt ourselves in how we hear God’s command?

I ask myself, does God order us to force our beliefs on others?  Does God order us to loudly and ostentatiously demand the right to wear a crucifix at work?  Does God order us to picket abortion clinics and demand an absolute right to harass vulnerable women making one of the most difficult decisions of their lives?  Some would say that we should, that this is what Christian witness is all about.

On the other hand, did Jesus go to the cross raging and cursing?  Did he stand before Pilate demanding his rights?  Did he condemn those who condemned him?

Or did he go to his death humbly, but with certainty?  Not certainty that he would not suffer.  Not certainty that God would raise him.  Not certainty that he understood God’s plans and mind.  But certainty that God had called him to be faithful even if that meant that he had to suffer and to die, and certainty that he would be faithful to God’s covenant with him that by going to this death, God’s will would be done.

In Francis, the Holy Spirit gave us a pope who showed what humility can look like, even in the powerful, in life as well as in death.  

Let us obey God, but let us do so in humble faith, always doubting in our own strength and certainty.

Amen

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All Jerusalem was afraid

1st Sunday of Advent 2024. Year C.

For the first Sunday of Advent, we are treated to Matthew’s account of Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem for the passover festival.   It might seem strange to be reading about this as are minds are anticipating his birth, but, while I don’t subscribe to a theology that says that Jesus was only born in order to die, it is helpful to remind ourselves of the circularity of time, and how so much that Jesus does is leaning back into the established covenants and prophecies.  We often forget how much of what he does has these echoes back into Jewish messianic expectation, and also how much expectation there was in Jewish society at the time of the imminent arrival of the Messiah, and therefore how attuned many people were to the key prophecies that would announce the arrival of the Messiah.

What Jesus is doing is choosing which of the prophecies he is going to fulfil.  And they way he enters Jerusalem is very intentionally positioning himself in a particular messianic tradition, that of Isaiah’s suffering servant.  His entry into Jerusalem matches his entry into the world, humble and meek.

Not that you might think it from Matthew’s account of the crowd singing hosannas as they accompany him into Jerusalem.  Matthew’s account of this differs in minor details from those of Luke and Mark, but one of them is quite telling.  He seems to make it explicit that the crowd that are accompanying Jesus are his followers from Galilee, rather than locals.  The locals obviously don’t even know who Jesus is, because they have to ask the crowd, who tell them that this is Jesus the Prophet  of Nazareth of Galilee – conspicuously identifying him as a foreigner, from the strange and untrusted land of Galilee.  Matthew also describes the city as moved or troubled by his arrival – no doubt with the city crowded with pilgrims, the nervous Romans in control, and the Passover about to start, the last thing they want is a disturbance that might threaten their peace and prosperity.  But it is interesting that in the same way that his birth caused Herod and all Jerusalem to be frightened, his arrival now occasions the same fear in the city.

Establishing that the fervent welcome is by his long term followers from Galilee, and that his welcome from the locals is ambivalent at best, if not positively unwelcoming, gives us a different insight into the events of the next week.  We do not see a crowd of fervent admirers fade away when the going gets rough.  Instead we maybe see dedicated followers just swallowed up in a sea of indifference – people who haven’t seen at first hand the miracles he has been working and heard the words he has been preaching, and therefore can’t understand why there is such a fuss about this pseudo-Messiah who doesn’t even have a warband, let alone an army to take on the Romans.  It feels like the perfidy and inconstancy of the Jerusalem mob is so ingrained into our narrative of the Passion that it seems strange to think that actually, many or most of his supporters stayed loyal and true to him throughout this week to come, stayed loyal to him, like John at the foot of the cross, even to the point of death.  It feels though, living as we now do in a secular world that is mainly indifferent to the teaching and presence of Jesus, that we have more in common with those loyal followers.

So, in the same way that Jesus’ arrival in Jerusalem has echoes of his birth in Bethlehem, and of the prophecies in Zechariah, what echoes does it have for us in this Advent season as we await again for Jesus’ birth, and for his coming again in glory in the full realisation of his kingdom.  This year, more than most, it has felt like it can’t come too soon.

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Mission here and now

17th Sunday after Trinity, 2023. Year B.

Readings: James 3:13—4:3, 7-8a & Mark 9:30-37.

The epistle of James is not one of the better known of the books of the New Testament.  This is unfortunate because James is a key figure of the early church, and his letter provides a unique view on early Christian theology.

One of the possible reasons why James is so ignored, especially in protestant circles, is because it can easily be seen as contradicting Pauline theology, and proposing a doctrine of works which the early protestants associated with the excesses and abuses of the Roman Catholic church of their times, rather than a doctrine of salvation by faith alone, that Luther and the other protestant founders found in Paul’s letter to the Romans.

This is a somewhat simplistic reading of both epistles though, and also very rooted in the context in which Luther found himself.  If we look back to the original context of the epistles, I think we can recognise that Romans is far from the academic theological treatise that it is sometimes claimed to be.  

Instead it is, like all of Paul’s epistles, written at a particular time, to a particular church and for a particular reason.  In the case of Romans, it is the only letter written to a church that Paul did not found, and therefore lacks some of the more personal and pastoral content that his other letters contain.  

This is not a church that Paul has particular influence over, or that he is admonishing or teaching.  Instead, this is a long established and influential church of its own, being present in the capital of the Roman empire, but one which we now think probably had deep divisions, following Claudius’ expulsion of the Jews from Rome.  It is likely that many gentile Christians remained in Rome, and when the Jews returned after the death of Claudius, there may have been rivalry between the two groups on who was going to lead the Roman church.  

Certainly it was a church with a strong Jewish character, which is why Paul is so keen to stress his Jewish credentials in the letter, and also why he spends so long in justifying why and how gentile Christians can be included as those justified in the eyes of God.  

Faith is key to this, not just the faith or faithfulness of those gentiles, but also the faithfulness of Christ to both the ancient covenants and to the wishes or will of God.  This faithfulness of Christ, the Jewish messiah, is the key bridge that allows him to justify both Jews and gentiles, and Romans is a long and carefully reasoned letter to persuade the Jewish Christians of this.

This Jewish Christian faction or party is one that Paul has locked horns with many times, and its leader was James, who wrote our epistle.  James, also called the Just and the brother of Jesus, was the leader of the Jerusalem church up until his martyrdom at the instigation of the high priest some time in the sixties AD.  He is the James who presides at the council of Jerusalem and proposes the compromise that allows Gentile Christians to avoid having to follow the whole of the Mosaic law.  He was widely regarded by all the Jews as a pious and devout man, which may have been why it took so long for the authorities to move against him.

We think that the church in Rome was probably started by Jewish Christians from Jerusalem who followed many of James’ teachings, which is why Paul needs to go to such pains to assure them of his Jewish Christian roots, given what seems to have been a history of antipathy between him and James.

James, from his letter, has a theology that seems more rooted in the gospel teachings of Jesus about living a righteous and just life, rather than some of the more spiritual theology of Paul’s epistles.  

This seems entirely appropriate for someone who was one of Jesus’ disciples as well as his brother, and whose congregation was mainly Jewish, and therefore inhabited the same culture as Jesus was preaching to.

James therefore is almost certainly one of the disciples that we hear about in our Gospel reading today, arguing over who amongst them was the greatest.  It is possible indeed that James would have been establishing a case for himself, given his relationship with Jesus.  We never find out unfortunately what other criteria are being advanced?  Length of acquaintance?  Miracles worked?  Lepers healed?  Closeness of friendship?

What we do know is that Jesus uses this to teach them something of the nature of Christian leadership and behaviour.  Christian leadership is about service, to each other and to the world.

The disciples have faith in Jesus – they have given up their families, the livelihoods and their homes to follow him as teacher, prophet and messiah.  But that faith in him is not yet translating itself into the behaviour that Jesus expects of them, and Jesus is always very clear that words without action are not sufficient.  The repentance that he is calling all people to is a physical repentance, a turning round of their lives.

He is also clear that it is not about putting ourselves first.  A superficial reading of some of Paul’s writings can make us think that our personal salvation through faith is important, but I think Jesus is making it clear that we are to put others before ourselves.  Our role as Christians, as leaders, as lights to the world, is to put the needs of the world first, and ourselves last.

Mission, literally going out, is what being a Christian is all about.  God doesn’t help us by waiting for us to come to him.  Instead he sends his son to become one of us, live amongst us, become human, while still at the same time remaining God.  In the same way, we are called to go out into the world, meet people where they are, live amongst them, while still at the same time remaining distinctly Christian.

James is the first to admit that this is difficult.  We are still profoundly human, and therefore we carry all the troubles and weaknesses of being human with us.  We should rise above them through the grace of Christ, but all too often we fail.  We should and would like to be recognised as Christian by our actions, and bear witness to the gospel in all that we do, but unfortunately we have in the past and continue to fall short.

Our response to this though should not be to withdraw from the world, or hide ourselves from it, but to redouble our efforts, admit our shortcomings, ask for forgiveness.  Whatever the world asks of us, we should do twice as much for the joy of life in Christ.  

As an example, given our gospel reading, when we seek to welcome children amongst us, we would like to be trusted as Christians that we would only every thing to treat them as Jesus commands us in the gospels, as our neighbours and fellow citizens of the kingdom, but historically all to often we have failed in this, and abused positions of power and privilege.  The response to this is not denial and secrecy, but should be to embrace safeguarding not as a chore, or a secular imposition, but instead an expression of our common failings and repentance, and of our determination to live a gospel-inspired and Christ-like life in the future.  We should rejoice in the opportunity to demonstrate to the world what the kingdom will look like, where all are valued and respected equally.

What then is our mission as a Christian community?  What are our values, and how will we live out these values, not here in this building on a Sunday morning for an hour, but for the other one hundred and sixty seven hours of the week in the world that we have been sent into, to be a light to?

Next weekend we have a chance to think, debate, meditate and pray on what our mission is, not just individually, but as a community.  How are we going to be that city on a hill, the light on the lampstand?

It is easy to be overwhelmed when we think about Christian mission.  The world is a big and broken place, and we seem few and poor in comparison.  We are not called upon to do this alone though.  There are I think two considerations that we need to remember as we prepare for next weekend.

First we are called to do this as a community by God, and God will always be there to help and support us.  Nothing that we do will bear fruit without God, although God will work through us, as he worked through his Son.

Secondly we are in the context that we are in, alongside many other churches in contexts both similar and very different.  We have the gifts and skills we have in the place we are, and we should be seeking not to emulate others but to serve God in the way best suited to us.  

We are blessed with many gifts amongst us, gifts of money, time and skills.  Empathy, love and understanding, Talking, listening and doing.  We are called upon to grow the kingdom of God, let us do so with a vision that is bold and clear and Christlike.

Amen.

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Speaking truth to power

7th Sunday after Trinity. Year B.

Readings: Ephesians 1:3-14 & Mark 6:14-29.

John the Baptist always seems to be a rather marginal figure in the modern church given how prominent he is in the gospels.  

We probably know more about him than any other figure apart from Jesus.

Unlike the disciples, we get an account of his miraculous birth and parentage, we get constant updates on his provocative and impactful mission, and we get an account of his death.

Born only a few months before Jesus himself, he obviously hits the ground running in order to fulfil his scriptural role as the voice crying in the wilderness.

By the time Jesus is ready to undertake his ministry, John already has a large and dedicated following for his message of repentance symbolised by a ritual of baptism.

Indeed, it seems like Jesus is waiting for John to lay that ground work, to make smooth the way of the Lord.

One of his first actions after all is to go to John and undergo this ritual of baptism that John has been using.  No, surely, to wash away his sins, but more to show that he is building upon the foundations that John has laid.

Not that this stops John’s followers from remaining a distinct and at times antagonistic group from those following Jesus. 

The message that John was giving was obviously distinctive enough that disagreements like this could break out.

John was a prophet in the great tradition of old testament prophets.

A biblical prophet is not someone who predicts the future – that is a more modern usage of the word.  A biblical prophet is someone who publicly declares God’s truth.  Often this does involve speaking of the future, but normally only of immediate consequences of anticipated, current or past actions, not grandiose predictions of the end of the world.

The important thing that a prophet is doing is warning people that their actions are not righteous, not in accordance with the way we should be behaving if we want to be true to God.

And often prophets are warning those in power.  Prophets are the antidote to the corrupting influence of unchallenged power.  

A particularly apposite example from the old testament is the prophet Nathan, who lived in the reign of King David.  When David sleeps with Bathsheeba and then has Uriah the Hittite killed, in order to be able to marry her, Nathan is on hand, using a parable, to get David to admit that what he has done is wrong.  It is to David’s credit that he doesn’t punish Nathan for his truthfulness.

John is in a similar position with Herod.

This is not the Herod of the nativity – who was Herod the Great.

This is Herod Antipas, one of his many sons, who ended up as ruler or Tetrarch of Galilee.  It’s the same Herod that Jesus is sent to by Pilate, presumably because, coming from Galilee, he is one of Herod’s subjects.

The Herod who executes James and imprisons Peter is yet another Herod – Herod Agrippa, who was his step-nephew, and brother of Herodias.

And this was the nub of John’s problem – Herod had married Herodias who was both his step-niece, and also his step-brother’s ex-wife.  And not because his step-brother was dead – this was no levirate marriage where a brother marries his brother’s widow in order to provide for her.  That would have been fine under the law.  No, the brother, also confusingly called Herod, was still alive.

So John very publicly called out Herod for marrying Herodias on two counts – she was his niece and his still-living brother’s divorced wife.  Unlike Nathan, he doesn’t seem to have done it with a subtle parable, but then he wasn’t a court prophet so probably didn’t have the level of access that Nathan had to David.  No, he has done it publicly, and Herod has had him thrown in jail for it.

Herod though seems to be content to stop at this though – he recognises that John is a prophet, and righteous and holy.  It is an interesting observation that he enjoys his sermons, even if he doesn’t understand them.  It feels like Herod is guilty mainly of falling in love with someone that he shouldn’t have, although that is a failing in someone in a position of authority like Herod, and if you want to go and read more of the history of the period, you will see that his love for and marriage to Herodias is the root of events that lead to his downfall, and probably a lot of grief for his subjects as well.  

Herod feels like he was a weak ruler – wanting to rule wisely and well, but not able to do so because he couldn’t control his passions, and maybe wasn’t as clever as his father, although also not as cruel as well.  Certainly he gets trapped into making rash promises and then isn’t strong enough to refuse to honour them when they lead to the execution of an innocent man.

Herodias his wife emerges as the villain of the piece, maybe in an echo of the relationship between Ahab and Jezebel.  It is she who wants John to die for what he has said.  Is this the action of a cruel and vindictive woman, or is it someone who is constrained by her time and culture, someone who despite her royal upbringing is fated to be defined by who she is married to, and therefore for whom the validity of her marriage is core to her existence?  By criticising this marriage, is John striking at her very sense of being?  Is this why she is so vehement that he should die?  Do her motives come from a place of weakness rather than cruel strength?  We will never know.

Whatever the motivations, the outcome though is very definite – John’s speaking of truth to power leads to the ultimate sanction for a prophet – his own death.  Speaking truth is dangerous, both in biblical times, and in modern times, as the modern prophets and martyrs Janani Luwum and Oscar Romero could testify, along with many others. 

Speaking these truths is what we are all called upon to do as Christians, wherever we find ourselves.  In every interaction we have, in our families, amongst our friends, in our workplaces, even, or most especially here in church, we can always be aware of behaviour that is wrong, where people are abusing their positions of privilege and power to take advantage of others, or demean them, or aggrandize themselves.  To behave in a way that is not kingdom-affirming, that doesn’t conform to the gospel message of love, harmony and equality before God.  And we can take that opportunity to remind people gently, calmly, lovingly, that there is another way, a better way, a way that affirms the God-given dignity of all human beings.  And filled with the Spirit, our words will be heard.  Maybe not acted upon today.  Maybe not for years.  But those words will be heard.

Amen

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Love in the Song of Songs

Sixth Sunday of Easter, 2024. Year B.

Readings: Song of Solomon 4:16 – 5:2; 8:6,7 & Revelation 3.14-22.

One of the delights of the ‘lesser’ services like Evensong is that the lectionary departs into the hinterlands of the bible, with passages from books that we might not often hear in church for various reasons.  This evening we had two such passages, from books whose content is regarded with suspicion for different reasons.

Our second passage was from Revelations; a book that some Syriac churches still regard as not being part of the canon.  It certainly has a style and tone that sets it apart from all the other books of the new testament, except some particular chapters of Matthew, Mark and Luke, but which follows in the tradition of the book of Daniel, and of many contemporary Jewish works of the first century.  It therefore fits firmly into the biblical tradition, but unfortunately, all too often is read outside of that context, as a literal prophecy of the end of the world, rather than in its proper apocalyptic genre.  The reward for persevering through the heavy metal lyric inspiring section though is the beautiful description at the end of the final culmination of history, the new heaven and the new earth, joined by the glorious city of God where the faithful will once again live in the presence of God, as it was in the beginning in the garden.

Our first passage though is from a book that is indisputably part of the canon, but unfortunately rarely referred to.  Generations of commentators have overlaid on the Song of Songs allegorical structures to explain how it tells of the love between God and Israel, or between God and the individual worshipper, in order, it always seems, to cover the undeniable truth that this, in the middle of the bible is a book of scandalously erotic love poetry.  Undeniably beautifully written and evocative, but not really seemly in a serious religious work, surely.

And yet, why should this not be at the heart of scripture – scripture that celebrates a God who so loves us that he embraces our own flesh and lives amongst us.  At the very start of the Bible, in Genesis, God celebrates loving human relationships.  Nakedness is not sinful in Genesis – it is rather the shame at their nakedness that shows that Adam and Eve have taken a God-given gift and made it something to be shameful of.

Too much of the rest of scripture is filled with admonishments that reinforce this attitude of shamefulness, or that we have interpreted in this way, without seeing that actually many of them are concerned with reinforcing structures of oppressive power inequality and abuse.  Clever and manipulative humans can take God’s words and use them for their own ends – then as now.  The prophets knew this, and that is why they were moved by God to rebuke those who failed to live up to the intent of God’s laws.  The shining thread that runs through the Gospels is Jesus’ preaching of a kingdom of heaven where all are equal and included.

And the Song of Songs gives us a beautiful picture of lovers who are utterly entranced with one another.  There is no coercion, no arrangement, no bride-price, no dowry.  There is no inequality between man and woman in the Song of Songs – both love the other openly and equally.  As Paul says a millennium later, love does not envy, it does not dishonour others, it is not self-seeking, it keeps no record of wrongs.

Yes, the commentators are right, this is a description of the love that God feels for us, and that we hope to feel for him; but it should not be read as only that.  The Song of Songs is God telling us also that our physical love for each other can also be pure and divine, and when it is, it is a wonderful way of showing us God’s love as well.  It is not something that God wants us to feel ashamed of, or embarrassed by, or hide away.

But, we still feel shame and embarrassment, because this is a broken and fallen world, and we are broken and fallen with it.  Physical love is a powerful positive force, but also something that we all too often misuse, in unequal, coercive, manipulative, exploitative or abusive relationships.  And our shame and secrecy often allows such misuse and abuse to flourish, even in an environment like church where we should be modelling the equality of God’s kingdom.  It is our failure to live up to this Gospel and kingdom imperative which means that our safeguarding policies and practices are not bureaucracy gone mad, but are us living out our Gospel driven missional life in the world.  So let us rejoice in our safeguarding policies as an expression of God’s love for us and our love for each other, in all its manifestations.

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Adoption

Second Sunday of Easter 2024. Year B.

Readings: Galatians 4:1-5.

Much of Paul’s literary output seems to be dedicated to trying to sort out his own theological questions, which I suspect is something that links many of us and him, even over the span of two thousand years.

Paul has an outsized influence on early Christianity, probably because of his education and erudition.  As he himself tells us, he was taught in the school of Gamaliel, one of the great Pharisee rabbis of the first century.  He, like Jesus, is steeped in the scriptures in a way that many of the other leading apostles like Peter, James and John, simple Galilean fishermen were not, at least initially.

This deep scriptural understanding forces Paul to think about the impact that the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus have had on his Jewish history and faith more, or earlier, than we see the other apostles do, although to be fair to them, during Jesus’ life, their expectation is still a traditional Jewish Messianic expectation.  They are not forced to re-evaluate this expectation either until after it stops following the script that they had expected.

Paul has a similar, but at the same time completely different change in his understanding. The difference is that we hear less of Paul before his conversion experience.

Paul’s reflection here, in Galatians, regarded as one of his earlier letters, uses some common themes of his, based on the customs of his time.  As children, we are not in control of our own actions, but are enslaved by our guardians and trustees.  Hopefully not a situation our young people identify too closely with.  But then with the coming of Jesus, he doesn’t do the obvious pivot to us becoming adults, possibly because elsewhere he is keen to continue to stress that we are still children and slaves, but to God rather than to the forces of the world.  Instead, he introduces one of his other great ideas – that of inheritance by adoption, to explain how the covenant that the scriptures had made clear was for Abraham and his descendants could become available to everyone.

Adoption was a big thing in the Roman world – for noble houses where lineage was everything, adoption of a relative, or even a trusted ex-slave on occasions, was the best way to ensure that the noble line continued without interruption.  So the language of adoption for Paul may carry very different overtones to what adoption might mean for us today.

What is consistent in Paul’s writings is an overtone of dispensationalism – the idea that God’s revelation had been progressive throughout history.  First to the Jews in the covenant with Abraham and then with the law of Moses; then later in a completely new covenant based on Christ and the cross.  This finds its most explicit expression in Paul’s letter to the Romans, with its contrast of Jews living under the law and Christians redeemed through grace.  

This, along with other of Paul’s writings, have, unfortunately, throughout history led to a degree of justification for anti-semitism, and a characterisation of Judaism as being narrowly legalistic, which ignores the breadth of belief in second temple Judaism, and the emphasis on divine grace that is evident in extant writings of the Pharisees and Essenes.   

What Paul is trying instead to do, rather than castigating his own race, is to find the fulfilment of God’s promises – not just those to Abraham and Moses, but also the earlier ones to patriarchs such as Noah – find the fulfilment of these covenants, not just in Israel, but in the whole world, including Israel as God’s faithful servants, culminating in Jesus himself.  

In doing this, and in trying to work through this thoughts on this, he introduces a whole new idea, one that fell on more fertile ground in the eastern church than in the western church. 

This is the idea of deification – that Christ became human so that in some way, through his incarnation and scrifice, we might become more divine.

Here it finds one of its earliest vocalisations, the idea that we, as adopted children, can share in God’s own divine nature, through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, who in living and dying as one of us, brings us closer to being one with God.

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Christ is risen

Easter Sunday, 2024. Year B.

Readings: 1 Corinthians 15:1-11 & John 20:1-18.

I remember many years ago taking a spring holiday driving around southern Greece, and on a particular Saturday ending up in Patras, which is not a city I recommend if you are ever looking for accommodation that is both cheap and clean.  Anyway, as we were prowling the city centre late at night looking, futilely, for somewhere to have dinner, suddenly the doors of a church we were passing were flung open and a crowd of Greeks emerged shouting happily at the tops of their voices.  It took us a while to realise that this was Orthodox Holy Saturday, and they were shouting Christ is risen in Greek.

Like them, we are proudly proclaiming the most joyous day, not just of the year, but of eternity.  This is the day that divinely overturns the human verdict of Good Friday.  The day that delivers on the promise of Christmas Day.  And the seventh day that completes the work of the first six days of creation.

It is often a peculiarity of our church calendar that two events that were originally widely separated in time fall within a single year’s calendar on close dates.  Jesus’ presentation in the temple and his baptism for example, despite being separated by thirty or more years, occur only weeks apart in our observations.

It would be easy to assume, from the outside, that Easter was a circumstantial coincidence like this.  It seems extraordinary that Jesus could go from broken agony to triumphant glory within the space of three days.  It hardly feels like we have had a chance to come to terms with the tragedy of Good Friday before we are overwhelmed by the joy of Easter Sunday.  Where is the time to process our grief?

And yet how much more of a whirlwind must it have been for those who knew Jesus in person.  His disciples, overcome I am sure with not just sorrow, but also guilt at how they had behaved at the time of trial.  The women, including his mother, who had stayed true and had stood and watched every moment of his agonising death.  For them surely, a blessing that their despair could be so quickly turned into joy.

People that I work with, when they find out that I am a Christian, exhibit a range of reactions.  One of the strangest to me, but building on a popular trope, is that I will disapprove of anything that looks like fun.  I like to point out to them that Jesus was someone who appreciated a good party as much as the next person.  How many of his parables involve feasts.  I don’t know where generations of Christians have got the idea that enjoyment is ungodly, but it is not from the gospels that I read.  Yes, God has rules for us.  But these are not arbitrary rules and prohibitions.  Jesus said, love God and love your neighbour, and at essence the rules that God gives us are about loving our neighbours – our fellow people.  God condemns fornication and adultery through Paul for example, not because he objects to people having fun, but because it is a betrayal of a relationship.  We do not love our neighbour if we betray them, or exploit them, or demean them, or gossip about them, or lie to or about them.  We do love our neighbour when we rejoice with them, laugh with them, dance with them, or cry with them.  And when we rejoice, laugh, dance and cry with them, we are also rejoicing, laughing, dancing and crying with God as well.

Joy in God’s own creation is right with God, for his own Son becomes part of that creation, not just once, but for a second time this morning, perfected by the sacrifice of the cross, but not perfected into an abstract spirituality, but into a concrete joyous reality, that once again meets, eats, drinks, laughs and rejoices with his followers.

We have, this morning, been given good news.  Let us go out and share the joy of the knowledge and love of God with everyone we meet.

Amen

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Foolishness in Corinth

Third Sunday in Lent, 2024. Year B.

Readings: 1 Corinthians 1:18-25 & John 2:13-22.

“For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God”, says Paul to the Corinthians.  It is “A stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to gentiles”.

The passage we have just read follows from his opening appeal to them to heal their divisions, and stop the factional infighting that he has heard is plaguing their church.

Corinth in Roman times was a wealthy and outgoing trading city, but unlike some of its neighbouring Greek cities, not one with the confidence of antiquity in its culture, because the ancient Greek city was completely depopulated and destroyed by the Romans in 146 BC, and the city we know of from Paul’s letters was only refounded by Julius Caesar in 44 BC, so maybe only 90 or 100 years before Paul was writing his letters.  

So the Corinth he is writing to is a young, brash city still trying to assert its identity amongst its older, more established neighbours, with a population drawn from many different cultures.

And it’s important to remind ourselves that Paul’s letters are pastoral letters – he is always writing in response to a specific situation in a specific place at a specific time.  

The advice he gives is rooted in scripture and his theological thinking, and deeply inspired by the Holy Spirit, but we can’t just take it wholesale and apply it verbatim to another situation.  

In the same way that Paul sifts through the Jewish scriptures that were written for other people at other times in other contexts and creatively reinterprets them in the light of the Cross, so we too have to do the same with his writings, in the light of our context, with our knowledge of the scriptures, and listening to what the Holy Spirit is saying to us.

And to do this in a way that is inspired, that is filled with the Holy Spirit and is true to the whole message of the Gospel from incarnation to crucifixion to resurrection is not simple or easy.  

Anyone who says that understanding and interpreting the Bible is easy is either a saint, or hasn’t been reading their Bible with enough attention.  

The Bible is a complex body of writing, appearing at times to be contradictory, often saying things we don’t want to hear.  It is written in many voices, each reflecting their own understanding of God.  It is hard to understand.

God isn’t trying to make things hard for us, he sent his only Son to die for us after all, but the proper working of his creation as he intended it is too vast and complex for us to easily understand.  

It is his unending love for us that is what leads him to the progressive revelation that we can see at work in the Bible, showing us what we can understand, and then as we grow in the Spirit, revealing the next step of the Gospel message.  

God doesn’t call us to him, He comes to us and walks with us as we progress towards him, however slowly.

The Corinthians come over as brash and cocky in their attitude to life.  A real bunch of know-it-alls.  It feels at times like they have the outward confidence or even arrogance of those who deep down are very insecure about themselves and their place in the world.

The Greeks and Romans amongst them probably included many who had had a good education by the standards of the time in rhetoric, grammar and logic.  The Jews probably included many who had completed much study of the Jewish scriptures.

Paul comes amongst them to preach the Gospel, and he admits elsewhere he is not handsome or prepossessing, he doesn’t speak like a great orator or debate with the eloquence of a leading advocate.

And he says many of them form a low opinion about him and his message because of this.  They think they are more learned and intelligent than him, and they listen to other Christian missionaries who are more to their liking – smoother, more glib, maybe giving a simpler message.

But Paul’s message to them in this passage is that all their learning is of no use to them when it comes to understanding the Gospel message.  Indeed, he tells them, it is actively hampering them from understanding it and becoming one with Christ.

Rather than being rich in learning and wisdom, they are impoverished spiritually.  And they don’t even realise it as they indulge in their petty squabbles.

Because the Gospel proclamation, the message of the Cross, is not something that can be accessed through knowledge or philosophy.

Those amongst them who were students of Greek philosophy might have listened to accounts of Jesus’ teaching and nodded approvingly at some of his parables.  

There a whole strand of literature today still that tries to recast Jesus as some sort of wandering Jewish stoic philosopher, whose simple message was wrapped in a load of religious mumbo-jumbo after his death by his followers to build a sort of religious Ponzi scheme.  

But to do this means we have to ignore a lot of what Jesus said and did because it doesn’t fit into this conceptualization.  

And it becomes hard to explain why the Romans would crucify a wandering philosopher, and requires a complete denial of the resurrection entirely.  

And it reduces Jesus to just another man, whose words we can pick and chose, take or ignore.  

It falls into the trap of all humanism, that there is no baseline truth against which everything else can be measured.  Everything, every experience and every truth just becomes relative.

Maybe this is why Paul so rarely refers to Jesus’ teachings and parables, because he is working so much amongst Gentile populations who too easily seize upon the philosophical teaching, and Paul wants to bring them to a more spiritual understanding.

For the learned Jews amongst the audience expecting the Davidic Messiah of Daniel or Ezekiel or Enoch – the Son of Man coming to God on a cloud of glory, having brought all the world under his rule, then Jesus’ death on the cross is even more of a stumbling block.  The Messiah, taken by Gentiles, broken and tortured, and then hung on a tree, the curse of God in the Mosaic law.  Such a man could never be the Messiah, surely.

But Paul is saying to them that they have things back to front.  They cannot come to Christ through their traditional knowledge and learning, through the categories that they have always thought in.  

The cross has changed everything, he says.  All their previous knowledge and understanding needs to re-evaluated and placed into that context.

They must come through faith, and then, in the light of that faith, they can re-use their knowledge and reason to truly understand the message of the cross.  

The message is not written on the outside of the curtain, but rather on the inside, and we must pass through that curtain so that we can see it from within, and only then will we be able to start reading the true message.  

As he says, the message about the cross is the power of God to us who are being saved.

The disciples in John’s story bear witness to this.  They hear Jesus’ words – “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up”, but it is only after he has been raised from the dead, in the light of that re-understood faith, that they remember that he said this and they believed the scripture and the word he had spoken.

Time and again in the Gospels, we see that despite their faith, their understanding is lacking.  And at times, we also see that despite their knowledge of Jesus, their faith can be lacking.  

But, God has come and met them where they are, and walking alongside them in the poverty of their understanding and faith, he helps them and guides them, so that their knowledge increases their faith, and their growing faith informs their knowledge, so that that increased knowledge can in turn move them forward on that journey of faith.  

It is not a single revelation, but a continuing cycle of growing and understanding and believing.  A cycle that all of us, as disciples of Christ, should be in, and continue to be in throughout our lives, hopefully always humble in the poverty of our human faith and understanding.

Let us pray.

God of understanding and wisdom.  We come before you conscious of our own limitations of wisdom and faith.  Walk with us this Lententide as we seek to follow you more fully in the humility of our faithful witness.

Amen