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Beginnings

The Baptism of the Lord. Year A.

Readings: Acts 10:34-43 & Matthew 3:13-17.

Both of our readings this morning are stories of beginnings.

Matthew describes Jesus’ baptism by John.  

In the previous chapter he was describing Jesus’ childhood sojourn in Egypt, hiding from Herod.  

Only a couple of years in this case, rather than the centuries that Israel spent in Egypt between Joseph and Moses, but highly symbolic none the less.  

Then, immediately afterwards in the gospel, we have him coming down to the Jordan to be immersed in its waters by John the Baptist.  

From the early church onwards, theologians have puzzled over this, as their understanding of Jesus’ nature developed.  

Once the doctrine had been established of Jesus’ simultaneously divine and human nature, and more importantly of the sinlessness of this combination, _and_ once baptism has been established as being for the forgiveness of sins,  why did Jesus need to be baptised?  Obviously it can’t have been to forgive the sins of one who was sinless.

And John is quick to point out that the whole ceremony is the wrong way round.

It is Jesus who should be baptising John, not John baptising Jesus.

But again, this is a symbolic action.

By being baptised, Jesus is affirming John’s message of the coming of the kingdom of heaven.

And the place is also symbolic – this is where the Israelites entered the old promised land, 

and here is where John is helping them enter the new promised land.

We often focus on Jesus’ words when thinking about his teaching in the Gospel, but it is often just as important to look at his actions.

Like prophets throughout Jewish history, he often uses symbolic actions as much as 

or even more than words in order to deliver a message to people.

Both Jesus and John are notable in how they use actions and place symbolically.

So having returned from Egypt to Nazareth, Jesus now comes south to Judea

To enter the waters of the Jordan, the boundary of the promised land.

But while Matthew has jumped straight from one to the other, for Jesus, 30 or more years may have passed.  

Only in Luke do we hear anything of Jesus between his miraculous birth and this moment of revelation; 

this Epiphany, 

where the Holy Spirit descends again, and God acknowledges him as his Son.  

We are not actually told whether everyone hears the voice of God, or just Jesus.

Is this a public declaration of God’s purpose and blessing?

Or a private affirmation for Jesus that he is ready for the task he is to undertake?

So what has brought Jesus to this place and this time?   

The place is symbolic, but why has he waited until now?

Surely with a message like the coming of the kingdom, 

It must have been incredibly tempting to proclaim it as soon as possible.

Unlike Jesus, who is presented to us as an adult fully formed,so to say, 

for Peter, we get to see his complete journey from first calling to venerated apostle, 

in every painful and tortuous step and mis-step.  

Throughout the Gospels we see his enthusiasm, 

but also his ability to misunderstand almost everything that Jesus is showing and telling his disciples.  

And yet in our first reading, we now see Peter full of the confidence of the spirit.  

To put this reading into its context, this is at Caesarea, 

Just after the vision of the sheet on the rooftop in Joppa 

and just prior to the conversion of Cornelius and his household.

Cornelius has sent messengers to summon Peter, in response to an angelic vision of his own, 

And now asks Peter what God has commanded him to say.

Then Peter responds with this speech.

It’s a wonderful passage.  

If you re-read it, it is in many ways the first creed.  

If you look at it as we say the Nicene creed later in the service, 

you can see how much of our basic statement of belief it already covers.  

This event is probably within a year of the crucifiction, 

and yet already there had been a transformative shift in how Peter sees Jesus.  

No longer the traditional messiah that Peter thought he was following throughout the Gospels. 

Death on the cross would have been failure for that Messiah.

But that was not the kingdom he was proclaiming.

Already Peter can understand that ‘everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name’.  

And the important word is ‘everyone’. 

At the beginning of this creed, we see that Peter has already absorbed the vision at Joppa. 

This is not just a faith for the lost sheep of Israel.  

‘God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.’

When Peter speaks earlier, at Pentecost,

It is a speech that is full of scriptural quotations,

But here, in front of Gentiles, he doesn’t rely on showing how Jesus fulfills the scriptural prophecies.

Cornelius is referred to as God-fearing, but he is presumably no expert in the Jewish scriptures.

So Peter, in the Holy Spirit, has to explain Jesus in language that everyone can understand.

Pentecost is often referred to as the birth of the church, 

and it is certainly the event that makes the church holy, 

but this declaration by Peter, following his vision, 

and the Holy Spirit descending on those gentiles who hear it,

leading to their baptism by Peter,

marks the beginning of a church which is truly both holy and catholic, a universal church.

And yet, it is always Paul who is thought of as the apostle to the Gentiles, 

Despite this promising start by Peter.

As always, Peter finds it hard to stick to his convictions, 

Especially when opposed by James.

Indeed, if we are to trust Luke and Paul’s accounts, it gets pretty fractious, and Peter engages in some serious wavering and fence sitting.

He’s a bit like a modern Archbishop, trying to keep all parts of the church happy,

No matter how difficult or impossible that may seem.

Peter and Jesus have very different beginnings, and follow very different paths.

And that is the thing with vocation.

They are always different, and unique.

Sometimes we have to wait until the right time in our life, or in other people’s lives,

Like Jesus, who waits until he is in middle age to start his ministry.

Despite his vocation being his entire purpose and nature.

Maybe he was waiting for other people to be in the right place for his message?

Sometimes, it can take a long time to discern a vocation, no matter how obvious it might seem.

Like Peter’s, we can be slow and hesitant, taking wrong turns, or even sliding backwards at times.

Full of good intentions, but sometimes poor decisions.

But coming, like Peter, to amazing revelations.

All our journeys with God have a beginning somewhere, and they are all steps into the dark.

When we start, we never know where we will end up.

But God is always here to guide us, especially when we listen to him.

Amen.

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Healing and wholeness

Eighteenth Sunday of Trinity, 2019. Year C.

Readings: 2 Timothy 2:8-15 & Luke 17:11-19.

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord. 

Amen. 

I was reading an article the other day, written by someone who was disabled, she didn’t say in what way, although it was obviously something that was apparent, as her experienced showed. 

She was talking about the experience that she had had, of Christians coming up to her out of the blue and wanting to heal her.  Not her asking to be healed or anything like that, but Christians so infused with the Holy Spirit and so keen to pour out that gift on the world, they would come up and ask to lay hands on her and pray for her.  I think the politer ones at least asked beforehand. 

Now from inside a charismatic church this would make perfect sense in many respects.  People are given gifts from the Holy Spirit and there are biblical injunctions that tell them that these gifts should be used to bear witness to the truth of Jesus Christ in the world.  And what is more potent than a spiritual healing?  And as our Gospel reading this morning reminds us, healing people was one of Jesus’ most powerful signs to show that he was the Messiah.  It is symbolic of the coming of the Kingdom of God that Jesus proclaimed that around him there was no more sickness and death. 

And yet, the person who had written this article was profoundly offended by this action.  For her, her disability was part of what made her, her.  Removing it would be to fundamentally alter her – it would compromise her personal identity.  I’m sure her disability was inconvenient to her a lot of the time, but it also helped define her, I am sure both physically in how she looked, but also in her personality.   

Now we can enter a minefield here about personal consent and mental capacity, and I’m not going to do that, you will be relieved, because I in no way feel myself qualified to talk on that subject.   

I think we can probably all agree that there are probably some people who want to be healed of various things, and other people who don’t.  It is a matter of personal choice, and no matter how empowered we might feel, we shouldn’t impose on others if they don’t want to be imposed on. 

Or should we? 

I am reminded at this point by a scene in Monty Python’s Life of Brian, where Brian encounters an ex-leper, played by Michael Palin, who spends five minutes complaining about how Jesus came up to him and healed him, “without so much as a by your leave.  One minute, I’m a leper with a living,” he says, “the next I’m out of work.” 

Like many scenes in the Life of Brian, you could see this as pretty blasphemous, but there is also a few quite pertinent questions in there, and I think faith is something that always benefits from being questioned. 

How should we be bearing witness to our faith?  Are we losing something of our biblical vitality if we start asking people’s permission to pray for them or tell them the good  news?  Are we diluting out faith, conforming to a secular, liberal world?   

Certainly, as the letter to Timothy says, we should not be ashamed of our faith.  If asked we should be ready to proclaim our faith, debate, argue, affirm.  But should we be imposing salvation on others?  Even if we know it is for their ultimate benefit? 

Does Jesus ever heal anyone without their wanting to be healed? 

I think it is pertinent in this situation to look at what healing meant in first century Palestine, or rather what being sick meant.  Many of the people that Jesus heals are people who are afflicted with diseases that make them unclean.  Judaism, like many cultures of the time, had a particular horror of anything that involved blood or skin diseases, possibly because they provided the easiest ways for diseases to spread. 

So these people are not just ill, they are unclean and they are outcasts.  No one will care for them; because to do so would be to make oneself unclean as well.  And this ritual impurity will separate you from God.  So what Jesus is doing when he heals is threefold.   

Firstly he is removing the disease, and the pain and threat of death that that carries with it.  That alone is an amazing gift. 

But secondly he is also restoring them to society, bringing them back into their families and clans.  Now that they are no longer unclean they can re-join society.  That is why Jesus sends the cured lepers in our reading to the priests; so that they can be certified as being clean again. 

And thirdly, he is showing that actually God can approach us, and we can approach God, when we are unclean.  Whereas in the ‘old world’ uncleanliness is contagious – the clean is contaminated by contact with the unclean; in the kingdom of God, cleanliness is contagious – the unclean is purified by contact with the clean. 

But I think it is also important that in many cases, Jesus makes it clear that he is just the enabling force for this process of cleansing and purification.  How often does he say to people – your faith has healed you? 

The act of healing in these cases is an act of free will on the part of those healed.  Once again, God in his omnipotence, who can command anything of his creation, is commanding us to chose.  To chose to be healed.  To chose to give our lives to God. 

And what else can we do if we chose to live our lives as if we are in the Kingdom of God? 

Let us return to the second thing that Jesus does when he heals.  He returns people to society.  He reincludes them. 

We can do this too.  

Under the prescriptions of his day, Jesus had to physically heal people in order for other people to accept them. 

We live under the Law as embodied in Jesus Christ, so we don’t need to regard people who are ill as spiritually unclean.   

We don’t need to say that those who are physically imperfect are therefore unholy.  Instead we can see beyond that to the original truth from the bible, that we are all created in God’s image and are all equally loved and valued by God. 

We are all given the gift of the Holy Spirit as well, and that gift manifests itself in many different ways.  You don’t need to be able to heal or speak in tongues to be a true Christian.  Being able to endure or to listen well is just as great a gift of the Holy Spirit as well. 

And a gift we can all exercise is to heal people, not by relieving their physical or mental symptoms, but by emulating Jesus, by including them back into society.  Making them feel welcome and part of a community. 

Coming back to our original story, our way to heal those who are disabled or infirm or mentally ill needs to be a gospel message of inclusion into our community.  I’m not saying that physical healing isn’t important, but bringing people back into society is a form of spiritual healing and that is just as important, and something that we all can have a gift for.   

That is how we can model the Kingdom of God here in Northwood.   

That is how we can be like Christ. 

Amen. 

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Faith and works

Eight Sunday of Trinity, 2019. Year C.

Reading: Luke 12:13-21

On the face of it, this is a pretty straightforward exchange between Jesus and someone in the crowd.  The unnamed person in the crowd appeals to Jesus as a rabbi – the law is pretty straightforward and all he wants is a ruling in accordance with the law.

Jesus’ response is interesting on several levels though.

First is his response question – yet another example of Jesus answering a question with another question.

‘Who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?’

This seems like a strange response.

The answer, we know in the light of John’s later revelation, is God.  Jesus has indeed been appointed to be our judge. 

It is interesting that here he seems to be refusing that role.

Unlike some of his other interactions though, where people do recognise Jesus as the messiah, this questioner doesn’t respond in that manner, or possibly isn’t even given the chance to.

Unlike some of his questioners, who are at least heading in the right direction – like the rich young man who wants to know how to get into the kingdom of heaven, and is unable to because there are earthly things that he holds too dear – Jesus discerns that this person isn’t even interested in living his life in the right way.  ‘Beware! Don’t be greedy…’ He says.

For ancient societies like Israel, especially predominantly agrarian ones, and that was most of them, wealth was land, and land was wealth.  And in order to use the land efficiently, it would stay in the common ownership of the family unit.  So, not a ‘nuclear’ family like we are used to, but an extended family, 4 or even 5 generations living under the same roof.  And this was a very sensible idea.  Because this would give you the capacity to cope with the vicissitudes of fortune – one working adult hurting themselves wouldn’t mean starvation for their dependents.  This was your safety net; your social security.

The Pentateuch is full of laws designed to uphold this extended family unit, reaching up to the law of Jubilee – the sabbath year of sabbath years, when every 50 years, debts were forgiven, slaves were released and land was returned to its original owners.  Every generation, there was a chance to begin afresh, no matter how things had gone for the previous generations.

And yet this questioner is seeking to break up this system.  He is asking Jesus to rule on splitting his inheritance with his brother.  He no longer wants to be part of this extended family unit – Like the Prodigal Son, he wants to strike out on his own.

Now it’s possible that he had had a major falling out with his brother – brothers can be pretty insufferable at times, certainly in my experience.  And I’m hopeful that when the Kingdom of Heaven fully arrives, then they won’t be insufferable, or at least not nearly so much.

But in the meantime, this is what we have to put up with in God’s world.  God made us to live in community, not alone.  In community with God certainly, but also in community with each other, and often we see God most clearly when we see him in each other.

This is why Jesus responds with the parable of the rich man who pulls down his barns in order to build larger ones to store all his abundance.

On one level, Jesus’ audience may have thought that the rich man deserved it – Proverbs tells them that the good will prosper, and the wicked will suffer.  So those that prosper are obviously blessed.

But Jesus tells them this is not so.  God calls this man a fool, because he is storing up earthly goods against a future that doesn’t exist for him.  People prosper who are not good – Israel’s theology and understanding of God have moved on and become deeper, and they understand now that it is not just about rewards in this life, but also rendering an account of oneself to God after that as well.

So this man isn’t thinking about his eternal soul – he is only thinking about this life and a future that doesn’t exist for him.  Specifically for him.

And this is the critical thing about this I think – the rich man is storing up goods for himself – not for his community.  Like the man who is asking the question, he is thinking only of himself – not of God, and certainly not of others, the community around him, the members of his family and his tribe.

And this is a surprisingly easy trap to fall into.  Obviously it is easy on a superficial level, with worldly goods.  I’m sure many of us have an abundance of ‘stuff’, material goods that we may or may not need for the future – stuff that will be worthless to us if an account were to be demanded of us this very day. 

But at the same time, we know this.  At the level of material possessions, we know that our wealth will be of little account when we stand before God.  What we have done with our wealth will be what counts.

Many people here are very generous with their money and time towards the church, and towards each other.  

We hear and understand the first level of Jesus’ parable.

But should we be looking deeper than that?

And yet at the same time, how many of us are procrastinating spiritually?  How many of us are echoing Saint Augustine of Hippo’s famous adolescent appeal – ‘God make me good, but not just yet’. 

I’m not suggesting anyone here is quite living the life of the young St Augustine, but often God is looking for more from us that we are necessarily giving. 

God is always asking for a deeper commitment, the sort of commitment that you think is heading in one direction, but can actually lead you somewhere completely different.

Might we be like the rich man? Storing up our gifts for ourselves? 

When in the 16th Century, Martin Luther read his Bible with fresh eyes, what stood out for him was Paul’s emphasis on salvation through faith.  Luther was quite an unusual character and very much a product of his time, and his theology was very much driven by his personality and how he saw those times.

There is no doubt that the abuses and excesses that he saw in the Roman church at the time were in need of correction.  And he draws our attention to some very challenging passages in Paul’s letter to the Romans, that chimed with his own feelings of complete failure in any attempt to follow the rules.  Like Paul in Romans, he found the Law to be a death trap.

And the product of this, his insistence on salvation by faith in Jesus, is undoubtedly theologically and spiritually liberating.

And yet, but turning so decisively against works as a means of salvation, there has been a risk that we have jettisoned too much in the other direction, thrown out the baby with the bathwater.

It is all too easy, and it is a trap that many protestant churches have fallen into, to see salvation not only as the be-all and end-all, but also as a purely personal thing – a matter between us as individuals, and God.  We are saved individually by our own faith, and by our faith alone. 

Like the rich man, our souls can produce abundant salvation, so much so that we have no place to store it all.  We are right with God; we are saved by our own faith in Jesus.  Surely this is what is critical – our justification before God.

And yet like the rich man, maybe we too are fools if we think like this; as individuals concerned only about our own salvation.

For what Jesus demands of us is faith, that is true, but the word that the New Testament writers use has many more meanings than the simple English word faith has.  The word that is used, pistis, is more normally used of the relationship between ruler and ruled.

It occurs in the Book of Maccabees in the Apocrypha in this sense, where the Jewish rulers are required to have pistis in their Greek overlords.  Pistis here is faith, allegiance, trust.  But importantly, it is something that is not just a way of thinking – it is something that you live out in your life – you are required to demonstrate your pistis, your faith and allegiance in your actions as well.  If your overlord was attacked, it wasn’t enough to believe in him in your heart – you had to raise your troops and march out in support of him.

So maybe when Jesus says to people that their faith has saved them, it is not just their belief, but also their action that has been motivated by that faith that has saved them.  They have believed and acted. 

This is not salvation by works – it is not calculating how many years in purgatory each prayer will save us, but it is seeing that belief and action cannot be divided when we truly have allegiance to Christ.  We too must gather our forces and march out in support of our Lord.

Dietrich Bonhoffer, the German Lutheran theologian murdered by the Nazis in 1945, talked in one of his most famous books of ‘cheap grace’.  ‘infinite and boundless grace without price; grace without cost!’  He felt that people were asserting their faith privately, assured of their own salvation, while not challenging the spirit of the times they were living in.  He was convinced that religion could not be a purely personal thing – to be a Christian, you had to take a position on the social and political questions of the day.  For him, your faith, your allegiance to Christ compelled it. 

It is one of the key tenets of the modern world that religion is a private and personal affair, that should not interfere with public affairs, but Bonhoffer saw clearly that it is not possible to truly have faith in Christ and ignore the world around us.

Jesus’ questioner is trying to live for his own satisfaction and on his own terms, rather than as part of a family or community.  He is not confronting the issues and dealing with them, but trying to solve them by dividing the family – not building relationships, but breaking them.  And when we break our relationships with other people, we are breaking our relationships with God as well.

Unlike Jesus’ questioner, and unlike the rich man, true faith in Christ means acknowledging him as King and showing our allegiance to him in our actions, playing our part in his Kingdom – a kingdom of all the world, not just one small corner of it. Amen

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Bread from Heaven

Thirteenth Sunday of Trinity, 2018. Year B.

Reading: John 6:51-58

The Bible talks about bread a lot. It’s a very potent image. In those times bread was truly the staple of life.
For most people it was probably three-quarters of their diet, supplemented by seasonal vegetables or pulses, and enlivened by the odd bit of fish or, on festive occasions, some meat.
So when Jesus talks about bread, he is using a metaphor that they can completely relate to. For them, far more than for us, bread is life.
For me, bread is a comfort food – stable, traditional. I’m just old enough that it raises the image of a delivery boy struggling up a cobbled hill to the sound of Dvorak’s New World Symphony.
For his audience, Jesus reminds them of the key event in their history – the exodus from Egypt. When they were wandering in the wilderness, God gave them manna to eat – bread from heaven.
Manna is what God gave them in the wilderness, before they came to the promised land, during the forty years that they spent purifying themselves and becoming worthy to cross the River Jordan.
Just as their forefathers were given bread by God in the wilderness before they reached the promised land, now, again He is giving them bread from heaven in the person of Jesus, because once again they are in the wilderness searching for the promised land, as are we.
We too are still in the wilderness, still on our way to the promised land, being purified before we can enter the Kingdom of Heaven.
In one respect, we have crossed the river Jordan, at our baptism, and we are part of the Kingdom, but the Kingdom as Jesus described it is still yet to come.
In the Gospels we get a glimpse of that Kingdom in the person of Jesus.
Wherever he goes, the Kingdom surrounds him. Wherever he is, the sick are healed, the marginalised are included, the unworthy are made worthy, and the dead come back to life.
We are given a glimpse of that kingdom in the Gospels, but rather than embracing it, we turn against it.
Jesus dies on the cross, and it seems like the kingdom is no more.
We are still in the wilderness, searching for the promised land.
But our prayers are answered. Jesus rises from the tomb, and the glimpse of the kingdom is restored.
It surrounds the disciples too now, and it becomes the role of the church, and all of us, to be that glimpse of the kingdom.
We are still in the wilderness, but we have the bread from Heaven, Jesus, that enables us to survive through the wilderness to reach the promised land.
So we gather here, week after week, as the Church, to partake of that bread from Heaven, in word and sacrament. This week, especially, serves to remind us what an incredible gift the eucharist is. Sometimes you have to lose something to truly value it.
John is notably different in his account of Jesus from the other three Gospels in many ways, and especially in his description of the Last Supper.
John places Jesus’ command to eat and drink his flesh and blood to this passage, and gives it a different, yet complimentary, theological spin.
In the synoptic accounts of the Last Supper, Jesus tells them ‘do this in remembrance of me’.
The eucharist is there to remind us of Christ’s sacrifice for us upon the cross.
John moves the description of the eucharist from the closed, personal space of Jesus with his trusted disciples to here, in front of a great and querulous crowd.
And John emphasises Jesus describing this as the route to eternal life.
Here, the bread that God gave them in the wilderness is a metaphor for the Law, given to them by God at Mount Sinai.
But Jesus is saying that the Law will not save them. They can only be saved and given eternal life by Jesus, the true bread from Heaven.
And when Jesus tells them this, he is challenging them both directly and indirectly.
It might have taken his listeners a while to work out that when he talks about the bread they were given in the wilderness, he is also talking about the Law, but the language he uses is directly challenging them.
In Jewish dietary law, blood is strictly forbidden. Asking people to drink blood is offending their deepest taboos. Not for them black pudding and rare steak. In Leviticus God makes it quite clear that blood is life, and that all life belongs to God.
Even if they take his words metaphorically, the idea of eating your God’s flesh and drinking his blood would have been redolent to them of the idolatrous Greek and Egyptian mystery cults that were so popular at the time.
This is not Jesus asking them to accept him as part of the evolution of Jewish history and religious experience.
This is Jesus asking them to make a radical break with their past and think anew on what living the way that God wants really means.
Even his disciples find it hard to understand and accept what he is saying here.
Oftentimes Jesus will answer a question with another question, getting the questioner to thing themselves about what God is asking of them, rather than just feeding them a stock answer.
Here he gives an answer, but even that just creates more questions, because the answer isn’t what they are expecting.
It is notable that Jesus very rarely lays down general laws.
When confronted with situations where a moral or ethical judgement is called for, Jesus does exactly that; he judges.
He weighs up the situation in the light of the people and events involved, and then applies the justice and love of God to decide what resolution is best for the people involved.
Not necessarily what is best for them in the short term, or individually, but what is best for everyone in the long term, so that they can all live the sort of lives that God wants them to lead.
The Law is made for man, not man for the Law. God gave them the Law in the desert as a staff to help them, not a chain to bind them.
They are coming out of generations of slavery in Egypt, where their decisions were all made for them. At the bottom of society, they would have seen rules as a way for the powerful to abuse and exploit the weak.
The response to this is not anarchy though, and, the Law is given to them by a loving God as a guidance, to help them rediscover their freedom in a responsible manner.
It is not perfect, because they are not perfect – it is tailored for them and their needs.
Where they have then gone wrong is to idolise the Law, to raise it up on a pedestal and make it their sole guidance.
God tries to help them see the error of their ways – he sends prophets to show them that God is not about rules and checkboxes, but is instead about love and justice.
And finally he sends his Son, Jesus, the living law, the bread from Heaven that will bring eternal life.
And Jesus tells us that the Law cannot be something external to us – a set of rules written down in a book somewhere that we mark ourselves against day by day.
The true Law, the Living Law that gives us eternal life, needs to be internal to us.
We understand this law by consuming the Logos, the Word of God made flesh, by taking that Word and bringing it into ourselves.
When we bring it into ourselves, we need to look at every decision we make, every action we take, and ask ourselves whether we are following the Law, the Living Law, not just a bunch of rules.
If we do this thing, are we fulfilling God’s purpose in the world when we do it?
Are we expressing God’s love for all the world?
Are we loving our neighbour as ourselves?
Keeping to a set of rules is easy, because the rules are all written down, and hard, because there are so many of them, and they often fly in the face of our sense of natural justice.
Keeping to the Living Law is hard, because we have to think for ourselves, be constantly be thinking deeply about how we act and the impact it has on ourselves, on others and on God, but also easy, because deep down, we know that following the Living Law is our true desire, and our true wish, because ultimately it will bring us closer to God.
This then is the bread from Heaven that Jesus offers us when we let him into us.
Amen