Sunday – Easter 4

Collect

Almighty God, whose Son Jesus Christ is the resurrection and the life: raise us, who trust in him, from the death of sin to the life of righteousness, that we may seek those things which are above, where he reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

Amen

Prayer after communion

Merciful Father,
you gave your Son Jesus Christ to be the good shepherd, and in his love for us to lay down his life and rise again: keep us always under his protection,and give us grace to follow in his steps; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen

Readings

Acts

In Joppa there was a disciple named Tabitha (which, when translated, is Dorcas), who was always doing good and helping the poor. About that time she became sick and died, and her body was washed and placed in an upstairs room. Lydda was near Joppa; so when the disciples heard that Peter was in Lydda, they sent two men to him and urged him, “Please come at once!” Peter went with them, and when he arrived he was taken upstairs to the room. All the widows stood around him, crying and showing him the robes and other clothing that Dorcas had made while she was still with them. Peter sent them all out of the room; then he got down on his knees and prayed. Turning towards the dead woman, he said, “Tabitha, get up.” She opened her eyes, and seeing Peter she sat up. He took her by the hand and helped her to her feet. Then he called the believers and the widows and presented her to them alive. This became known all over Joppa, and many people believed in the Lord. Peter stayed in Joppa for some time with a tanner named Simon.

Acts 9.36–43

Psalm

1    The Lord is my shepherd; •

   therefore can I lack nothing.

2    He makes me lie down in green pastures •

   and leads me beside still waters.

3    He shall refresh my soul •

   and guide me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.

4    Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,

      I will fear no evil; •

   for you are with me;

      your rod and your staff, they comfort me.

5    You spread a table before me

      in the presence of those who trouble me; •

   you have anointed my head with oil

      and my cup shall be full.

6    Surely goodness and loving mercy shall follow me

      all the days of my life, •

   and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

Psalm 23

Epistle

I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no-one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. And they cried out in a loud voice: “Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.”     All the angels were standing round the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures. They fell down on their faces before the throne and worshipped God, saying: “Amen! Praise and glory and wisdom and thanks and honour and power and strength be to our God for ever and ever. Amen!”

Then one of the elders asked me, “These in white robes—who are they, and where did they come from?” I answered, “Sir, you know.” And he said, “These are they who have come out of the great tribulation; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Therefore, “they are before the throne of God and serve him day and night in his temple; and he who sits on the throne will spread his tent over them. Never again will they hunger; never again will they thirst. The sun will not beat upon them, nor any scorching heat. For the Lamb at the centre of the throne will be their shepherd; he will lead them to springs of living water. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”

Revelation 7.9–17

Gospel

The time came for the Feast of Dedication at Jerusalem. It was winter, and Jesus was in the temple area walking in Solomon’s Colonnade. The Jews gathered round him, saying, “How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly.” Jesus answered, “I did tell you, but you do not believe. The miracles I do in my Father’s name speak for me, but you do not believe because you are not my sheep. My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no-one can snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no-one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.“

John 10.22–30

Sermon on Sunday – Easter 4

“How long will you keep us in suspense?” That is the question on everyone’s lips nowadays, isn’t it? We have been asking our politicians this question for over two years, and still there is no answer. But the politicians don’t speak to the big questions which Jesus addresses, do they? They are the little things – it is about a comfortable life that we are usually asking them about. We don’t ask Teresa May whether she is the Messiah, God’s anointed here on earth. We certainly don’t wonder whether David Drew will lead us out of our confusion. Do we ever wonder about the Messiah in these times of doubt and uncertainty?

“How long will you keep us in suspense?” Who is the last person you asked this question? The last person I asked that was my girlfriend when I proposed to her – and I felt at that moment that a new way of life was about to be mine. I really wanted her answer, because all of life hinged on that one answer, or so it seemed.

But my wife is not the Messiah. She did not offer universal salvation with her answer, though it was very much a personal redemption for me.

I am sure you, like me, have an incident which made sense of the whole of life. That is what these moments of clarity do, don’t they? But these little moments are not the epiphany of the saving God. The Messiah does not settle the little things for us, does he (or she)? The Messiah is on the universal stage, from here to the ends of the galaxy. The state of humankind is what is addressed by the Messiah, leading each one of us from sin to righteousness. As we have prayed in our Collect. “Raise us, who trust in him, from the death of sin to the life of righteousness, that we may seek those things which are above.”

The one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church has always tried to guide us to those things above, to the spiritual life, that life in which righteousness blossoms and sin is no more. The Church guides us into the life of the flock of Christ. The image of the Shepherd and his sheep in the gospel points us to what we are – followers of that Messiah whose epiphany has enlightened creation, whose resurrection gives hope to all. We follow our shepherd in his path to those higher things, don’t we?

However, there are times when we ask our God like those Jews of the reading, “How long will you keep us in suspense?”

This question is similar to that statement of Thomas, “Unless I touch the wounds of Christ …” We are in suspense awaiting the second coming – or at least we should be in some way – and we wonder “When?” This question is natural for us, because we are oriented toward the future. We are always looking forward in our lives. Either we are looking for a new future, or we are hoping that the golden age of the past will be established again in our future.

“How long will you keep us in suspense?” Everyone wonders about the future and that suspense is where we live. We are on tenterhooks awaiting what is to happen. Just what we do during this time is what defines us. So we return to those things above – we ask ourselves: are we pursuing the things that make for righteousness? I think everyone would admit righteousness is well beyond and above our ordinary activity. After all, who pursues the Good through the whole of their life? I know that I have failed. However many times I fail, there are other times when I seek that seemingly impossible goal of the Good, to achieve a righteous act which will bring a glimpse of  the Kingdom of Heaven here on earth. At that point my suspense has been ended – for a moment in the twinkling of an eye when I glimpse.

Contrary to popular opinion and what appears to be the considered verdict of the world, I am sure that it is possible to do what is right. I think this is all related to this notion of being in suspense. So many do not hope, they do not suspend their seeking of the immediate pleasure for the sake of something finer, something grander, something further away than immediate gratification. The philosopher talks about the Good as an end in itself. The Good is its own reward. He tells us that we are to do the Good because it is precisely that – Good. It should take no subordinate position in life.

“How long will you keep us in suspense?” We ask this all the time, don’t we? The Good suspends us in time as we anticipate the future right here and now. We are, as some see it, stuck nowhere, without the pleasures of the world and without the ultimate reward of that Good. This is true suspense, isn’t it? We are never sure that what we have chosen is that ultimate Good. We are always in suspense and it is intolerable for most people. We want certainty. We want the answer right now. This suspense is fine for philosophers and saints, but not for the mass of humanity, those sinners of Adam’s line whom Christ came to save. We want to grasp things here and now, don’t we?

The political suspense in which we hang is a perfect example. We are looking for an immediate return rather than a good for all, or that ultimate Good – well, that is what it looks like to me.

“How long will you keep us in suspense?” Is the suspense we experience anything like the suspense of the Jews who were expecting the Messiah? We are awaiting the coming of the Christ in glory at the end of time, aren’t we? We even confess that in our creeds.

However, the question Paul asks in his letters and many of the branches of christianity pursue is whether we are ready for that second coming, that Parousia of the theologians.

So we have to confront the question about the suspense in which we live. Is it a visceral and present Angst? – something more fundamental to existence than our anxiety about whatever immediate concern you like, for Angst is about those higher things to which the Church universal has always directed us.

So let’s look to those things which cause righteousness and salvation. We need to live in suspense – awaiting that ultimate experience of grace. We need to live in suspense as we work for the Kingdom to come. We need to expect that the Good can be reached and teach those whose bellies control their lives that there is something greater than the pursuit of the earthly. Those higher things call us to greater action and force us to suspend everything while we enact those things that serve for righteousness.

Amen

Second Sunday after Easter

Collect

Almighty Father, who in your great mercy gladdened the disciples with the sight of the risen Lord: give us such knowledge of his presence with us, that we may be strengthened and sustained by his risen life and serve you continually in righteousness and truth; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. 

Amen

Post Communion Prayer

Living God, your Son made himself known to his disciples in the breaking of bread: open the eyes of our faith, that we may see him in all his redeeming work; who is alive and reigns, now and for ever. 

Amen

Readings

Acts

Saul was still breathing out murderous threats against the Lord’s disciples. He went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues in Damascus, so that if he found any there who belonged to the Way, whether men or women, he might take them as prisoners to Jerusalem. As he neared Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” “Who are you, Lord?” Saul asked. “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,” he replied. “Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do.“ 

The men travelling with Saul stood there speechless; they heard the sound but did not see anyone. Saul got up from the ground, but when he opened his eyes he could see nothing. So they led him by the hand into Damascus. For three days he was blind, and did not eat or drink anything. In Damascus there was a disciple named Ananias. The Lord called to him in a vision, “Ananias!" “Yes, Lord,” he answered. The Lord told him, “Go to the house of Judas on Straight Street and ask for a man from Tarsus named Saul, for he is praying. In a vision he has seen a man named Ananias come and place his hands on him to restore his sight.” “Lord,” Ananias answered, “I have heard many reports about this man and all the harm he has done to your saints in Jerusalem. And he has come here with authority from the chief priests to arrest all who call on your name.” But the Lord said to Ananias, “Go! This man is my chosen instrument to carry my name before the Gentiles and their kings and before the people of Israel. I will show him how much he must suffer for my name.” Then Ananias went to the house and entered it. Placing his hands on Saul, he said, “Brother Saul, the Lord—Jesus, who appeared to you on the road as you were coming here— has sent me so that you may see again and be filled with the Holy Spirit.” Immediately, something like scales fell from Saul’s eyes, and he could see again. He got up and was baptised, and after taking some food, he regained his strength. 

Saul spent several days with the disciples in Damascus. At once he began to preach in the synagogues that Jesus is the Son of God. 

Acts 9.1–20

Psalm

1    I will exalt you, O Lord,
because you have raised me up  
and have not let my foes triumph over me. 

2    O Lord my God, I cried out to you  
and you have healed me. 

3    You brought me up, O Lord, from the dead;  
you restored me to life from among those that go down to the Pit. 

4    Sing to the Lord, you servants of his;
give thanks to his holy name. 

5    For his wrath endures but the twinkling of an eye,
his favour for a lifetime.  
Heaviness may endure for a night,
but joy comes in the morning. 

6    In my prosperity I said,
‘I shall never be moved.  
You, Lord, of your goodness,
have made my hill so strong.’ 

7    Then you hid your face from me  
and I was utterly dismayed. 

8    To you, O Lord, I cried;  
to the Lord I made my supplication: 

9    ‘What profit is there in my blood,
if I go down to the Pit?  
Will the dust praise you or declare your faithfulness? 

10    ‘Hear, O Lord, and have mercy upon me;  
O Lord, be my helper.’ 

11    You have turned my mourning into dancing;  
you have put off my sackcloth and girded me with gladness; 

12    Therefore my heart sings to you without ceasing;
O Lord my God, I will give you thanks for ever. 

Psalm 30

Epistle

I looked and heard the voice of many angels, numbering thousands upon thousands, and ten thousand times ten thousand. They encircled the throne and the living creatures and the elders. In a loud voice they sang: “Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honour and glory and praise!” 

Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all that is in them, singing: “To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be praise and honour and glory and power, for ever and ever!” The four living creatures said, “Amen”, and the elders fell down and worshipped.

Revelation 5.11–14 

Gospel 

Jesus appeared again to his disciples, by the Sea of Tiberias. It happened this way: Simon Peter, Thomas (called Didymus), Nathanael from Cana in Galilee, the sons of Zebedee, and two other disciples were together. “I’m going out to fish,” Simon Peter told them, and they said, “We’ll go with you.” So they went out and got into the boat, but that night they caught nothing.

Early in the morning, Jesus stood on the shore, but the disciples did not realise that it was Jesus. He called out to them, “Friends, haven’t you any fish?” “No,” they answered. He said, “Throw your net on the right side of the boat and you will find some.” When they did, they were unable to haul the net in because of the large number of fish. Then the disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, “It is the Lord!” As soon as Simon Peter heard him say, “It is the Lord,” he wrapped his outer garment around him (for he had taken it off) and jumped into the water. The other disciples followed in the boat, towing the net full of fish, for they were not far from shore, about a hundred yards.

When they landed, they saw a fire of burning coals there with fish on it, and some bread. Jesus said to them, “Bring some of the fish you have just caught.” Simon Peter climbed aboard and dragged the net ashore. It was full of large fish, 153, but even with so many the net was not torn. Jesus said to them, “Come and have breakfast.” None of the disciples dared ask him, “Who are you?” They knew it was the Lord. Jesus came, took the bread and gave it to them, and did the same with the fish. This was now the third time Jesus appeared to his disciples after he was raised from the dead.

When they had finished eating, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon son of John, do you truly love me more than these?” “Yes, Lord,” he said, “you know that I love you.” Jesus said, “Feed my lambs.” Again Jesus said, “Simon son of John, do you truly love me?” He answered, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.”

Jesus said, “Take care of my sheep.” The third time he said to him, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” Peter was hurt because Jesus asked him the third time, “Do you love me?” He said, “Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you.” Jesus said, “Feed my sheep. I tell you the truth, when you were younger you dressed yourself and went where you wanted; but when you are old you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go.” Jesus said this to indicate the kind of death by which Peter would glorify God. Then he said to him, “Follow me!"

John 21.1–19 

Sermon on Second Sunday after Easter 

Our sheet containing our readings and psalm includes this introduction to the gospel reading.

Jesus continues to love us even when we think we have lost him. He is always there, waiting for us “on the beach” to reassure us with his presence and to feed us the food of life.

The words, “On the Beach”, brought to mind the novel by Neville Shute. It is a novel which prefigures our present concern about the planet, as it deals with the catastrophic destruction of the world through a nuclear war. At the present, we are concerned with obliteration through our lack of care for the environment – the ecological disaster about which David Attenborough has spoken so eloquently for the last twenty years. The Shute novel shows the destruction of the world through lack of care for each other, an horrific nuclear war which will destroy all life. – However this apocalypse happens, care is at its heart. Love (often characterised as a divine care) is at the heart of all things.

I apologise that I had to resort to Wikipedia as a shortcut to the precis of Shute’s novel because although I had read the novel, it was so long ago, all I remembered was the title and a general impression of apocalyptic doom. So Wikipedia  reminded me of what I should have remembered.

The phrase “on the beach” is a Royal Navy term that means “retired from the Service.” The title also refers to the T S Eliot poem The Hollow Men, which includes the lines:

In this last of meeting places

We grope together

And avoid speech

Gathered on this beach of the tumid river.

Here we have two very different uses of the phrase, “on the beach”. Let’s try to reconcile them as we reflect on the gospel reading.

Jesus is “on the beach” in a very proactive way, isn’t he? This is one of the post Easter-day appearances of Jesus. There he stands by his fire on which he is grilling fish for a meal which he is preparing for his disciples, those fisherman who went back to the old way for a time. The beach on which he invites them to feast is not the place of “the retired” – it is a place whence Jesus will send his disciples back into the world in order to share the love of God, Jesus’ love, for all.

Elliott’s poem suggests something entirely different. More like the beach on which Jesus stood, gathering his disciples to himself yet again. This time with the communion of a shared meal. With that fish which became the symbol of the faith, that “acronym or acrostic in Koine Greek, which translates into English as ‘Jesus Christ, Son of God, [Our] Savior’ (ixthus).”

Shute’s novel was pessimistic, with all the characters taking their own communion of the suicide pill because they felt no hope for themselves or for humanity. The planet was poisoned with atomic fallout – such a quick end, almost as quick an end as some see through the destruction of the atmosphere by human activity. I am making no judgements, I only see a similarity between the current news and Shute’s novel. Wikipedia also provided another insight into the Shute’s novel

Printings of the novel … contain extracts from the poem on the title page, under Shute’s name, including the above quotation and the concluding lines:

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper.

This, according to what I read of the novel, is precisely how lives end in Shute’s vision of that short and bleak future. I wonder whether Shute and Elliott are at one in questioning the vision of the end of the world depicted in Revelations and the other apocalyptic literature of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church. In that literature, the destruction of the world at the hands of the four horsemen, or the avenging angels, is violent and bloody. The faithful look forward to the eschatological reversal in full techicolor, when the poor will inherit the earth, and all the rest of the beatitudes will come to fruition.

So let’s go back to Elliott’s words, which make sense of our reading.

In this last of meeting places

We grope together

And avoid speech

Gathered on this beach of the tumid river.

The beach is where we meet Jesus for the last time in his sharing of sustenance for the life ahead. On that beach we “grope together” unwilling to speak. Much like the disciples when they hid away in the darkened room for fear of others. Gathered together by the water, in Elliott’s poem a “tumid river”, a swollen river. That water flows in contrast to us hollow men as we grope together, for it is bursting,  suggesting it is abounding in life.

So here we are, gathered together on the banks of the symbolic water of our reading where there is sustenance to satisfy all hunger. Jesus offers that fish he has prepared for us, a sign that the water will renew us, that water where the disciples hauled in their bountiful catch after a night of failure.

We are like those disciples, returning to the beach empty, yet instructed by Jesus to “try over there” and  so, despondently, we cast our nets. Lo, and behold, our nets are so full we can barely handle them. There Jesus greets us with a meal to feed a now happy people,  people who had once been about to give up on their enterprise.

I suppose this is Shute’s problem, that he never cast his net the final time. None of his characters were willing to cast out once again. Our contemporary ecological warriors have yet to reach that point, for they are still working with their nets to save the planet.

Jesus invites us to his banquet, it is not a place where “the world ends/Not with a bang but a whimper”. On the contrary, Jesus encourages us to bang away on the drum of hope, that beat which calls all to march to the Kingdom. Whimpering does not have a place on this beach, a beach where there is hope, a beach where there is generosity.

Come to the beach, Jesus says, sit down with me and share this marvellous banquet. On the beach we will want to talk of many things with whoever is there, perhaps even to speak with the walrus, that beach to which we will all find our way eventually. – The poetry of song and hymns reveal images of the beach, the banks of Jordan, looking across the glassy sea and so many more. That tumid water is at the beach, and so is the fish, Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour.

Amen

Third Sunday of Lent

Collect

Almighty God, you show to those who are in error the light of your truth, that they may return to the way of righteousness: grant to all those who are admitted into the fellowship of Christ’s religion, that they may reject those things that are contrary to their profession, and follow all such things as are agreeable to the same; through our Lord Jesus Christ, who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

or

Almighty God, by the prayer and discipline of Lent may we enter into the mystery of Christ’s sufferings, and by following in his Way come to share in his glory; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen

Post Communion

Almighty God, you see that we have no power of ourselves to help ourselves: keep us both outwardly in our bodies, and inwardly in our souls; that we may be defended from all adversities which may happen to the body, and from all evil thoughts which may assault and hurt the soul; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen

Readings

Old Testament

The word of the LORD came to Abram in a vision:  “Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your very great reward.”

But Abram said, “O Sovereign LORD, what can you give me since I remain childless and the one who will inherit my estate is Eliezer of Damascus?” And Abram said, “You have given me no children; so a servant in my household will be my heir.”

Then the word of the LORD came to him: “This man will not be your heir, but a son coming from your own body will be your heir.” He took him outside and said, “Look up at the heavens and count the stars—if indeed you can count them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.”

Abram believed the LORD, and he credited it to him as righteousness. He also said to him, “I am the LORD, who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to take possession of it.”

But Abram said, “O Sovereign LORD, how can I know that I shall gain possession of it?” So the LORD said to him, “Bring me a heifer, a goat and a ram, each three years old, along with a dove and a young pigeon.”

Abram brought all these to him, cut them in two and arranged the halves opposite each other; the birds, however, he did not cut in half. Then birds of prey came down on the carcasses, but Abram drove them away. As the sun was setting, Abram fell into a deep sleep, and a thick and dreadful darkness came over him.

When the sun had set and darkness had fallen, a smoking brazier with a blazing torch appeared and passed between the pieces. On that day the LORD made a covenant with Abram and said, “To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates.“

Genesis 15.1-12,17-18 

Psalm 

1    The Lord is my light and my salvation;
whom then shall I fear?
The Lord is the strength of my life;
of whom then shall I be afraid?

2    When the wicked, even my enemies and my foes,
came upon me to eat up my flesh,
they stumbled and fell.

3    Though a host encamp against me,
my heart shall not be afraid,
and though there rise up war against me,
yet will I put my trust in him.

4    One thing have I asked of the Lord
and that alone I seek;
that I may dwell in the house of the Lord
all the days of my life,

6    For in the day of trouble
he shall hide me in his shelter;
in the secret place of his dwelling shall he hide me
and set me high upon a rock.

8    Therefore will I offer in his dwelling an oblation
with great gladness;
I will sing and make music to the Lord.

9    Hear my voice, O Lord, when I call;
have mercy upon me and answer me.

10    My heart tells of your word, ‘Seek my face.’
Your face, Lord, will I seek.

16    I believe that I shall see the goodness of the Lord
in the land of the living.

17    Wait for the Lord;
be strong and he shall comfort your heart;
wait patiently for the Lord.

Psalm 27

Epistle

Join with others in following my example, brothers, and take note of those who live according to the pattern we gave you. For, as I have often told you before and now say again even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is on earthly things. But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Saviour from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.

Therefore, my brothers, you whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, that is how you should stand firm in the Lord, dear friends!

Philippians 3.17-4.1

Gospel

Some Pharisees came to Jesus and said to him, “Leave this place and go somewhere else. Herod wants to kill you.” He replied, “Go tell that fox, ‘I will drive out demons and heal people today and tomorrow, and on the third day I will reach my goal.’ In any case, I must keep going today and tomorrow and the next day—for surely no prophet can die outside Jerusalem!

“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing! Look, your house is left to you desolate. I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.’”

Luke 13.31-35

Sermon on Third Sunday of Lent

“The Promised Land” – don’t we, just like Abram, look forward to it? Don’t we expend all our energy to get there?

But just where is “The Promised Land”? What is it? Is it our own home? What about the office I run? How about winning the lottery? Or do you want to transform the dark satanic mills into a green and pleasant land? Just how do you go about reaching “The Promised Land” for yourself?

A few weeks ago, I mentioned Søren Kierkegaard who wanted people to find “The Promised Land” for themselves, but his paradise had nothing to do with possessions or power, his “Promised Land” comprised ‘becoming oneself in an ethical and religious sense’. Don’t we all want to become our authentic selves? But how do we conceive our ownmost self? If we follow the philosopher, we would tread a path on our own like the hermit, or in company, perhaps, like the monks of the golden age of christianity, but never as one amongst the herd, dictated to by the mass of humanity who may not have any idea of a moral life. After all, as faithful christians, don’t we have such a very different idea of what is good?

I do not wish to talk of this thorny philosophical problem of the good, but I want to take a theological turn. I want to think how “The Promised Land” awaits us.

Paul could start us on our way, echoing the questions I began with, for he writes, “Their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is on earthly things.” This is such a trite saying! We all know its veracity – we all know that following the appetites alone will make us self-destruct. The Church universal has been preaching about this for millennia.

The glutton, the harpie, the lustful – they all come to sticky ends, don’t they. They do not enter “The Promised Land” as far as I know. And don’t we all agree with Paul that “Their destiny is destruction”? We hope for a better end than one constricted by fleshly desires, one without the expansive nature of the love of others, but, more significantly, without the infinite vision of the love of God in our lives. We here and now look towards our trinitarian aspiration, the goal of faith, hope and love.

Paul has written that our citizenship is “of heaven” and so the faithful is utterly different to those whose citizenship is “of the earth”. Those whose lives are bounded only by the horizon of self, its earthly expression in the appetites of the flesh, miss so much. Those marks of life in all its fullness are indelibly imprinted on our nature – faith hope and love do not delineate an earthly way of life, as we are reminded every day by many around us. No one lives a life of faith, hope and love amongst our contemporaries outside the universal Church, do they?

Who would you say really forms all his or her actions on faith? We certainly don’t hope all the time, do we? And what about the love we show? I think, normally in the life we ordinarily lead, we often fall short of those three goals. I am sure I have not trusted enough; I certainly do give up hope on occasion; and I do not love without some selfish desire. My christian love, my agape, certainly fails when I think of so many things in this life – for instance, Brexit, knife crime, the rising cost of  living. Amongst those concerns, loving our neighbour is so very hard. Most believe that ethical and religious stance of the philosopher is impossible to take, but more tellingly it is found to be and called “ridiculous”. No one takes the philosopher’s exhortation to a moral, religious life seriously, because all they want is to eat, drink and be merry.

I think it is precisely that ethical goal which Kierkegaard extolled, it is the final end of which the prophets preached, where righteousness flows like the waters and justice like an ever-flowing stream. Heaven is that garden where the rushing waters are the background of all conversation. The promised land is this paradise to which we aspire.

The garden of paradise is not Monty Don’s. Beautiful as it is, it is nothing but flowers and rills. Paradise is where we contemplate amongst the rushing waters, that constant background on which all our deliberations find themselves, justice and righteousness. A background amongst which we find the tree of life, a place which is ever-changing, never static, demanding our concentration. So, even when we find ourselves in paradise, our promised land, I would say, we are still being challenged, but the distraction is not the venal and earthly of Paul’s condemnation, but it is the demanding insistence of goodness.

I would not call that a hard life, not like the future Adam and Eve were given, when the enmity of nature in the form of the serpent would always strike at our heels. No, that life in paradise does not have the distractions we have today, the distractions of Brexit, knife-crime and the rising cost of living. The background noise of Paradise is one of remembering what is good, its rushing sound ever tumbling over us with the love of God humming in our ears, a sound which turns our attention away from ourselves and towards that infinite Other.

We understand Paradise as where we are whole, where we find life in all its fullness. Adam and Eve, like you and I, want to return there, where the water flowed in four directions and fruit was to hand, so near that all our needs were fulfilled and we should spend our time with the prophets gaining insight into justice and righteousness which are to be enacted in the very core of our existence.

Instead, sadly, we conceive our lives like everyone around us, full of toil and dismay, where the letter of the law has fettered us to something, rather than freeing us for God. Our lives here are exactly delineated by political considerations. We are constrained by the herd around us, listening to the bleating of sheep, not hearing the cascade of righteousness or the tumbling of justice over the whole of our lives.

Do those sheep ever have a moment to themselves when they are standing with Kierkegaard on that edge where we must leap for our very selves? Or do they turn away from such decisions?

We read “Some Pharisees came to Jesus and said to him, ‘Leave this place and go somewhere else.’” The worldly see their end as a place, not a fulfilment of life in all its fullness. Jesus retorts that he is going to heal the sick and make the lame dance, that the hungry will be fed and the world’s order be turned on its head. He promises he will reach his goal – and in this context we say that Jesus will find himself in paradise with the thief.

How bitter the path which leads to Paradise! Jesus’ travels to Jerusalem, as he laments because of what her people have done.

“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing! Look, your house is left to you desolate. I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.’”

Paradise is not Jerusalem itself, as Jesus shows. Paradise is the outpouring love of neighbour. That faithful hope is so absurd to so many. Maybe that is why the golden age of any culture is so far distant either in the past or in the future that no one pays it any attention. Everyday concerns oppress us because we lack the focus for the long game, the life of loving one another. There are no concrete rewards to love, are there?

Jesus invites us on to that lonely road which leads through another garden, Gethsemane, before we see the promised land.

I think, there dwell those virtues of faith, hope and love. They find their expression in the promised land, and we only know them when we live life in all its fullness – in Paradise.

Amen

First Sunday after Easter

Collect

Almighty Father, you have given your only Son to die for our sins and to rise again for our justification: grant us so to put away the leaven of malice and wickedness that we may always serve you in pureness of living and truth; through the merits of your Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

or

Risen Christ, for whom no door is locked, no entrance barred: open the doors of our hearts, that we may seek the good of others and walk the joyful road of sacrifice and peace, to the praise of God the Father.

Prayer After Communion 

Lord God our Father, through our Saviour Jesus Christ you have assured your children of eternal life and in baptism have made us one with him: deliver us from the death of sin and raise us to new life in your love, in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Readings 

Acts 

Having brought the apostles, the captain of the temple guard and his officers made them appear before the Sanhedrin to be questioned by the high priest. “We gave you strict orders not to teach in this name,” he said. “Yet you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching and are determined to make us guilty of this man’s blood.”

Peter and the other apostles replied: “We must obey God rather than men! The God of our fathers raised Jesus from the dead—whom you had killed by hanging him on a tree. God exalted him to his own right hand as Prince and Saviour that he might give repentance and forgiveness of sins to Israel. We are witnesses of these things, and so is the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to those who obey him.”

Acts 5.27–32 

Psalm 

14    The Lord is my strength and my song,
and he has become my salvation.

15    Joyful shouts of salvation
sound from the tents of the righteous:

16    ‘The right hand of the Lord does mighty deeds;
the right hand of the Lord raises up;
the right hand of the Lord does mighty deeds.’

17    I shall not die, but live
and declare the works of the Lord.

18    The Lord has punished me sorely,
but he has not given me over to death.

19    Open to me the gates of righteousness,
that I may enter and give thanks to the Lord.

20    This is the gate of the Lord;
the righteous shall enter through it.

21    I will give thanks to you, for you have answered me
and have become my salvation.

22    The stone which the builders rejected
has become the chief cornerstone.

23    This is the Lord’s doing,
and it is marvellous in our eyes.

24    This is the day that the Lord has made;
we will rejoice and be glad in it.

25    Come, O Lord, and save us we pray.
Come, Lord, send us now prosperity.

26    Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord;
we bless you from the house of the Lord.

27    The Lord is God; he has given us light;
link the pilgrims with cords
right to the horns of the altar.

28    You are my God and I will thank you;
you are my God and I will exalt you.

29    O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good;
his mercy endures for ever.

Psalm 118 

Epistle 

John, to the seven churches in the province of Asia:

Grace and peace to you from him who is, and who was, and who is to come, and from the seven spirits before his throne, and from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth.

To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood, and has made us to be a kingdom and priests to serve his God and Father—to him be glory and power for ever and ever! Amen. Look, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him; and all the peoples of the earth will mourn because of him. So shall it be! Amen.

“I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty.”

Revelation 1.4–8 

Gospel 

On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” After he said this, he showed them his hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord.

Again Jesus said, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone his sins, they are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.”

Now Thomas (called Didymus), one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord!” But he said to them, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe it.”

A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.” Thomas said to him, “My Lord and my God!” Then Jesus told him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

Jesus did many other miraculous signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

John 20.19–31

Sermon on First Sunday after Easter

Today is what is called “Low Sunday” – Why? Why do we call it that? It is the first Sunday in the larger season of Easter, the first Sunday after the Feast of the Resurrection. So why do we call it “low”? Surely we should still be flying “high” after our exertions of last weekend!

Or – are we deflated precisely because of the festivities of last weekend? All the liturgical activity of Holy Week and Easter? Are we exhausted because of our Lenten fast? Do we need to recover from the excesses of the feast we have just had?

Or – does nothing live up to the excitement and expectations aroused by Holy Week and Easter? Are we “low” because nothing in this life matches what we ultimately want?

Or is there a more prosaic reason? Perhaps because this is the weekend that priests have often taken as one of their “away days” and disappeared to some quiet cove to recover from the rigours of the last seven weeks. There may also be another reason – the congregations are very small – so perhaps we should amend the appellation to “Low Attendance Sunday”? These are not very profound reasons for this name, though.

Perhaps we should look to the readings we have been given for today to find an explanation for the very odd name for this Sunday. We learn that the disciples were all hiding away in their dark corner of the world, behind locked doors and fearfully cowering. They must have been terrified. They are feeling so very low after all that happened during that final week. Before all the appearances of Jesus, they skulked away hoping no one will come near them.

Are they embarrassed because of their hopes, their hopes which are now dashed by that horrible death Jesus underwent at the hands of Romans and Jews? Are they ashamed because they believed a man who spoke so eloquently of the Kingdom of God and now are bereft of his teaching – but, more importantly, they are lost without him? Are they mourning the death of such a dear, saintly man, that prophetic man, the man they reckoned the Messiah? Now are they low and depressed because all that happened in that last week has resulted in nothing?

Maybe it is all of this in some sort of combination within each one of us. The departure of the priests after their exertions of Holy Week, like the departure of the disciples to that darkened room, signify human weakness doesn’t it? We all feel deflated after Holy Week. We all need a rest, and so everyone – priests and their congregations – has taken time off. What could be more natural?

However, I don’t think this is natural behaviour for the faithful in any way. We have to be energised – after all, we are life in all its fullness. – Why, then, should we ever experience a “Low Sunday”?

You might say that nowadays we are enjoined by all around us to “feel the moment” to experience our emotions to the highest degree. To let go of all our inhibitions and let fly. I think this is an inheritance from the hippies, that generation of people just before mine, those people who turned on, tuned in and dropped out of the workaday world where there is only drudgery, hoping that the love they freely shared would be the one thing in their lives – apart from the drugs which only enhanced that engaged attitude. And my generation is not millennial, either, that generation which wants everything that they want – right now! Both of those generations live in a single moment of self-absorption.

But is that really what christianity – or any religion – is all about? Don’t we religious people calm everything down so that the peace of God which passes all understanding moves from one person to the next? We don’t go from the highs of festivals to the lows of this “Low Sunday”, do we? No, we are enthused to such a degree that there is no difference between Easter and any other ordinary (or holy) day during the year – every day is a day that the Lord has made – just for us. We treat them all the same, I hope. Every day is one of infinite splendour in which we live and move and have our being. How could any day be otherwise when we have the hope of ultimate salvation before us? How can anyone who has that hope be other than calm and open to everything – full of the joy of Easter and anticipating a Kingdom beyond all price?

That experience of living to the fullest does not raise us up so high that we have to crash to earth again. No, that lived experience is the fullness of the present, the presence of God, I would say. We are grounded in life in all its fullness. How can we have anything but an extraordinary attitude to all creation?

The faithful have been enjoined to “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.” by Jesus in response to Thomas’ being of two minds. That is the meaning of Doubting Thomas, that all possibilities are of equal weight but we are burdened by them. Is that why we are here on Low Sunday? We like Thomas have our doubts about everything, don’t we? That is the reason, I think, Thomas is such an important figure linguistically for us. Everyone knows of this Thomas, don’t they? We, in fact, see ourselves as Thomas, don’t we? After all, we all have our doubts.

But Thomas is given this opportunity to put himself in Jesus’ place, isn’t he? With those words, Jesus is inviting us to an intimacy we can share with no other, “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side.” Jesus is asking Thomas to take his place – whatever that is – and live the fullest of lives. That intimacy with Jesus, to put his hands in Jesus’ hands and in his side is not anything anyone would ordinarily do, is it? We do not embrace the dead ordinarily. But, imagine being invited to embrace the executed body of a man convicted of the most heinous of religious crimes! Imagine being asked to an intimacy of that sort. Would we be bold to say, as Thomas said to him, “My Lord and my God!”

Probably not. Maybe that is why we call this Sunday, “Low Sunday” – because we do not have the courage of our faith, because we are in two minds all the time. We must remember Thomas for all the right reasons. He is the cornerstone of our faith, we “who have not seen and yet have believed.” If, in spite of all of his grave doubts, he is able to greet the Christ with that expostulation of faith, “My Lord and my God!” and evangelise the ends of the earth. Why shouldn’t we be just as faithful as well?

Amen

Passion Sunday

Collect

Most merciful God, who by the death and resurrection of your Son Jesus Christ delivered and saved the world: grant that by faith in him who suffered on the cross we may triumph in the power of his victory; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

Amen

Readings

Old Testament

This is what the LORD says –
he who made a way through the sea, a path through the mighty waters, who drew out the chariots and horses, the army and reinforcements together, and they lay there, never to rise again, extinguished, snuffed out like a wick: “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland. The wild animals honour me, the jackals and the owls, because I provide water in the desert and streams in the wasteland, to give drink to my people, my chosen, the people I formed for myself that they may proclaim my praise.“

Isaiah 43.16–21

Psalm

1    When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion,
then were we like those who dream.

2    Then was our mouth filled with laughter
and our tongue with songs of joy.

3    Then said they among the nations,
‘The Lord has done great things for them.’

4    The Lord has indeed done great things for us,
and therefore we rejoiced.

5    Restore again our fortunes, O Lord,
as the river beds of the desert.

6    Those who sow in tears
shall reap with songs of joy.

7    Those who go out weeping, bearing the seed,
will come back with shouts of joy,
bearing their sheaves with them.

Psalm 126

Epistle

If others think they have reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for legalistic righteousness, faultless.

But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ – the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.

Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining towards what is ahead, I press on towards the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenwards in Christ Jesus.

Philippians 3.4b–14

Gospel

Six days before the Passover, Jesus arrived at Bethany, where Lazarus lived, whom Jesus had raised from the dead. Here a dinner was given in Jesus’ honour. Martha served, while Lazarus was among those reclining at the table with him. Then Mary took about a pint of pure nard, an expensive perfume; she poured it on Jesus’ feet and wiped his feet with her hair. And the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.

But one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, who was later to betray him, objected, “Why wasn’t this perfume sold and the money given to the poor? It was worth a year’s wages.” He did not say this because he cared about the poor but because he was a thief; as keeper of the money bag, he used to help himself to what was put into it.

“Leave her alone,” Jesus replied. “[It was intended] that she should save this perfume for the day of my burial. You will always have the poor among you, but you will not always have me.“

John 12.1–8

Sermon on Passion Sunday

The short commentary we have been given about the Epistle reads: ‘Paul has been captured by Jesus. The things that stood him in good stead in the past are now valueless. “Christ Jesus has made me his own.”’ I wonder if we can say the same for ourselves.

But I have a lot of questions – What does it mean that Paul has been captured by Jesus? Has he been whisked away by one of those cults which secrete their members in a remote location, never to be seen by family or friends in the world? Or –

Is this a general orientation to the figure of Jesus? Perhaps as at that time an assent to the deities of the nation, that pinch of incense devoted to the image of the divine emperor? Is it this devotion? Is this adoration? Is this obsession? Or is it brainwashing?

Our brief commentary says this capturing is a fact in Paul’s life, apparently “Christ Jesus has made me his own.” However, in our passage, in our translation, Paul never says this. Rather our translation reads,

I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.

He reiterates that he approaches Christ –

I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.

Much like Wesley in his hymn, Amazing Grace, Paul feels like he has been recovered from the wreckage of life so that he can live in all its fullness. There is no capturing in this, is there? It is always an approaching towards Jesus, never a possession as such. It is a laying claim to Paul, but I don’t think this has anything to do with any sort of possession of the person. Even the story of the Damascus Road does not describe an overwhelming of Paul so that he is subsumed by Christ, rather it is a calling out of himself. “Saul, why do you persecute me?” Is this the interrogation of a controlling deity? Does this God deny the individual for the sake of His own caprice?

I don’t think so.

Something has changed dramatically in Paul’s life. Instead of the Law being a guarantee of salvation, a way leading one through righteousness action, instead of the Law promising a full life, Paul no longer sees himself a Pharisee devoted to the jots and tittles of the Law, but he is on a royal road, a way that leads to a full life, one in which love fills everything – where the Spirit blows were it wills. This is a radically new life, not a possessed one, nor is life now restricted by a formal legalism.

In Isaiah we hear “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing!” This is what Paul is telling us about.  And Paul concurs with Isaiah’s words, “I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.” Paul used to consider himself perfectly adapted to life within the tribe.

Circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for legalistic righteousness, faultless.

Paul had been a man who had bound up his life in the Torah. He was a Pharisee among the Pharisees. He had lived a perfectly faultless life in terms of Jewish legalism. He had a zeal which persecuted those who were different to him and his tribe.

In other words, Paul considered himself a model Jew by even the strictest of the orthodox, the Pharisees. What could possibly take him away from such a standing in his community? What would make Paul turn his back on everything he had known? Why did he abandon his past?

These are the usual questions we ask at any conversion, aren’t they? These are the evidence our evangelical brothers and sisters demand of anyone struck by the Spirit, aren’t they? How can I be a true believer if I still am interested in the model railways I used to play with as a child? I wonder, do we ever really turn our back on our lives so completely that they are to be “counted as loss” when “compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ”? Why would I consider my past as “rubbish”?

This is conversion of the most radical kind, conversion which is the stuff of legend, the stuff of the origin of our faith. The past is just that – done and dusted. However, we do carry it with us, even if we could consider it “rubbish”. Such detritus points us forward. Just like Paul, I am going on to something of “surpassing greatness”. What is the Law when compared with the knowledge of Christ, a saviour who has given his body and blood for my very own salvation? The letter of the Law, Paul says, is nothing.

Elsewhere Paul speaks about the Law yielding death. The Law does not give life, does it? Paul also speaks of the letter and the spirit of the Law, something our own legal system should consider (but that is another discussion). The Law entangles a person in what we would call red tape. Others would call it causuistry, legalistic scholasticism. The medieval period called it arguing about how many angels could stand on the head of a pin.

Paul, however, cuts through all that constricting entanglement. He has seen a freedom in the Spirit, that which has given him life in all its fullness, life which was purchased through the death of Jesus, whom Paul proclaims as the saviour of the world.

All those things he had – those things which ritually guaranteed righteousness – he now considers all that ritual perfection as rubbish. Why? Now he has an inner life so very different from the external legalism of his past. Now he is looking forward to a future, that new country.

I honestly don’t think Paul did change that much. I think he did change radically, but I don’t think he lost his devotion to the Law, but the revolution was that his Law of jots and tittles became a Law of love – the Law of faith which freed him for the service of others, a Law which disentangled him from the shackles that the past too often clamps around the human being. Paul prescribes a new spirit to the Law, because his Law does not grasp and control, rather the Law which Paul now knows is one which frees for the future, a Law which we should fulfill.

Amen 

Sunday Before Lent

Collect

Almighty Father, whose Son was revealed in majesty before he suffered death upon the cross: give us grace to perceive his glory, that we may be strengthened to suffer with him and be changed into his likeness, from glory to glory; who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

or

Holy God, you know the disorder of our sinful lives: set straight our crooked hearts, and bend our wills to love your goodness and your glory in Jesus Christ our Lord.

Post Communion

Holy God, we see your glory in the face of Jesus Christ: may we who are partakers at his table reflect his life in word and deed, that all the world may know his power to change and save. This we ask through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Readings

Old Testament

When Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the two tablets of the Testimony in his hands, he was not aware that his face was radiant because he had spoken with the LORD. When Aaron and all the Israelites saw Moses, his face was radiant, and they were afraid to come near him. But Moses called to them; so Aaron and all the leaders of the community came back to him, and he spoke to them. Afterwards all the Israelites came near him, and he gave them all the commands the LORD had given him on Mount Sinai. When Moses finished speaking to them, he put a veil over his face. But whenever he entered the LORD’S presence to speak with him, he removed the veil until he came out. And when he came out and told the Israelites what he had been commanded, they saw that his face was radiant. Then Moses would put the veil back over his face until he went in to speak with the LORD.

Exodus 34.29-35

Psalm

1    The Lord is king: let the peoples tremble;
he is enthroned upon the cherubim: let the earth shake.

2    The Lord is great in Zion
and high above all peoples.

3    Let them praise your name, which is great and awesome;
the Lord our God is holy.

4    Mighty king, who loves justice,
you have established equity;
you have executed justice and righteousness in Jacob.

5    Exalt the Lord our God;
bow down before his footstool, for he is holy.

6    Moses and Aaron among his priests
and Samuel among those who call upon his name,
they called upon the Lord and he answered them.

7    He spoke to them out of the pillar of cloud;
they kept his testimonies and the law that he gave them.

8    You answered them, O Lord our God;
you were a God who forgave them
and pardoned them for their offences.

9    Exalt the Lord our God
and worship him upon his holy hill,
for the Lord our God is holy.

Psalm

Epistle

Since we have such a hope, we are very bold. We are not like Moses, who would put a veil over his face to keep the Israelites from gazing at it while the radiance was fading away. But their minds were made dull, for to this day the same veil remains when the old covenant is read. It has not been removed, because only in Christ is it taken away. Even to this day when Moses is read, a veil covers their hearts. But whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.

Therefore, since through God’s mercy we have this ministry, we do not lose heart. Rather, we have renounced secret and shameful ways; we do not use deception, nor do we distort the word of God. On the contrary, by setting forth the truth plainly we commend ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God.

2 Corinthians 3.12-4.2

Gospel

Now about eight days after these sayings Jesus took with him Peter and John and James, and went up on the mountain to pray. And while he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white. Suddenly they saw two men, Moses and Elijah, talking to him. They appeared in glory and were speaking of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. Now Peter and his companions were weighed down with sleep; but since they had stayed awake, they saw his glory and the two men who stood with him. Just as they were leaving him, Peter said to Jesus, ‘Master, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah’—not knowing what he said. While he was saying this, a cloud came and overshadowed them; and they were terrified as they entered the cloud. Then from the cloud came a voice that said, ‘This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!’ When the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone. And they kept silent and in those days told no one any of the things they had seen.

On the next day, when they had come down from the mountain, a great crowd met him. Just then a man from the crowd shouted, ‘Teacher, I beg you to look at my son; he is my only child. Suddenly a spirit seizes him, and all at once he shrieks. It throws him into convulsions until he foams at the mouth; it mauls him and will scarcely leave him. I begged your disciples to cast it out, but they could not.’ Jesus answered, ‘You faithless and perverse generation, how much longer must I be with you and bear with you? Bring your son here.’ While he was coming, the demon dashed him to the ground in convulsions. But Jesus rebuked the unclean spirit, healed the boy, and gave him back to his father. And all were astounded at the greatness of God.

Luke 9:28-43

Sermon on the Sunday Before Lent

Jesus answered, ‘You faithless and perverse generation, how much longer must I be with you and bear with you?’

To whom did Jesus address these words? The man whose boy was afflicted had spoken to Jesus, complaining about the powerlessness of his disciples, but is Jesus berating him? Or, more distressingly, is Jesus complaining to and about his impotent disciples? Does Jesus really condemn the innocent man who sought a miracle for his child? Or does Jesus castigate his own disciples?

How faithless or faithful every generation is, has been a theme in our readings for the last few weeks. It is a theme throughout the OT. Naturally it comes into the NT as a theme in all the miracle stories, as well as being the background theme in all the gospels and in Paul’s letters.

I wonder whether there is some sort of  correlation between the ancient Hebrews who were with Moses and the contemporaries of Jesus. Were so many hardhearted or faithfully perverse? Were their minds so dim that they could not understand the commandments the prophets preached in their own times? What about our own generation?

However, I wonder, is Paul’s interpretation of the events around Moses right? And if it is misleading, has the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church been off course for such a long time?

The Exodus reading tells us that Moses put the veil over his face because his face shone with a light unknown, a brilliance the people of God had not seen before. Paul accepts that Moses did use the veil when he departed from the presence of God. But I think, in this case, he interprets the veil to have a different significance than the literal given in the text.

Instead of shielding the people of Israel from something so very different to the normal course of events – in that world where people’s faces don’t shine with a divine light – Paul suggests that Moses veiled his face because the light was fading from his visage, and then interprets the veil as a simile to the state of mind abroad in Israel, that they were ignorant of God’s wisdom, just as the people surrounding Paul were obtuse, that God was fading in Israel.

I think Paul’s is a dangerous interpretation overall, though it is true there is a hardheadedness among Jesus’ Jewish contemporaries, even among the disciples. I think that is why Jesus rounded upon everyone at times – he even turns on us here today, if we take the biblical readings as our own, written for and to us.

Jesus had the same experience as Moses, didn’t he? He talked with God on the mountaintop and in quiet places. Our gospel reading tells us that he was dazzling white on the mountaintop. The messengers of God were with him on the summit – Moses and Elijah were his companions on that holy place. It was another light unknown, a  light seen by these befuddled fisherman who had just been cowering in their boat when the storm raged.

On the mountain, the cloud descended. Chaos and darkness reigned in the hearts of those favoured disciples on the mountain-top with Jesus. I would like to say, a veil over the scene was drawn with that cloud. There was a very strange darkness, they had no light to see their way.

I wonder whether any of you have been on a mountain when the mists rolled down, when you could only see where to place your feet. I can tell you, this is a most frightening event, one that even experienced climbers fear. The fog descends like a thick blanket on the mountain and everything is hushed, everything is hidden. No one is sure about anything in that white darkness. Fear grasps the soul and nothing is comprehended.

This cloud descending is just like that veil which was drawn over Moses’ face. Both stories are about fear in the face of divine light – the light which emanated from the faces of the great prophets like Moses and Elijah, and now Jesus becomes one of that number.

We know that we are transformed at times, don’t we? When we are in the first flush of love, it does change us. We see the world in a new light, and everyone around us does notice a new person in front of them. This is a very simple example, and a transient one. The change, however,  is not permanent, is it? The young love fades to a comfortable love, and sometimes even into a stale love. Yes, our human love can fail. There are too many examples of that. Divorce seems to prove that. We do know that human love can pass away, even though in the first flush, it seems nothing can assail it. That love can just become everyday and no longer dazzling.

But imagine someone whose love never fades, someone who is passionate throughout all of life. Don’t we all put a veil over that person because we are ashamed at our own lukewarm love?

Such a changed person is Moses and Jesus is the wholly transformed person, for he is completely human and completely divine. We address him as “My Lord and my God!” This is something wholly other to human experience. No wonder the ancient Jews had to be protected from the divine radiance with the veil! No wonder the clouds came down on the disciples. We always veil the sacred in our lives, sometimes making it invisible.

Paul is right in that something has happened on each of the mountaintops. However, I don’t think the event warrants a condemnation of humanity. We are too often benighted, and we need to see the light for what it is.

Who today can view God and not be transformed? Can your face remain dull and lifeless after you have been in the presence of the divine? Moses and Jesus were utterly transformed, weren’t they? Moses face glowed with a divine glow, Jesus became dazzling bright. Aren’t we changed when we show ourselves to be followers of Jesus, that we are utterly different from the mass of humanity because we love one another, we become neighbours all, on the street and on the globe, every person you meet on your way in the world.

We do not appear like the mass of humanity, because our lives shine so very differently, so let us not put a veil over them.

Amen

Second Sunday before Lent

Collect

Almighty God, you have created the heavens and the earth and made us in your own image:
teach us to discern your hand in all your works and your likeness in all your children;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who with you and the Holy Spirit reigns supreme over all things, now and for ever.

Amen

Prayer after communion

God our creator, by your gift the tree of life was set at the heart of the earthly paradise, and the bread of life at the heart of your Church: may we who have been nourished at your table on earth be transformed by the glory of the Saviour’s cross and enjoy the delights of eternity; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen

Readings 

Old Testament

When the LORD God made the earth and the heavens – and no shrub of the field had yet appeared on the earth and no plant of the field had yet sprung up, for the LORD God had not sent rain on the earth and there was no man to work the ground, but streams came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground – the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. Now the LORD God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. And the LORD God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground – trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. And the LORD God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.” The LORD God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.” Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the air and all the beasts of the field. But for Adam no suitable helper was found. So the LORD God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and closed up the place with flesh. Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man. The man said, “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman’, for she was taken out of man.” For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh. The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.

Genesis 2.4b-9,15-25

Psalm

1    Praise is due to you, O God, in Zion;
to you that answer prayer shall vows be paid.

2    To you shall all flesh come to confess their sins;
when our misdeeds prevail against us,
you will purge them away.

3    Happy are they whom you choose
and draw to your courts to dwell there.
We shall be satisfied with the blessings of your house, even of your holy temple.

4    With wonders you will answer us in your righteousness, O God of our salvation,
O hope of all the ends of the earth
and of the farthest seas.

5    In your strength you set fast the mountains
and are girded about with might.

6    You still the raging of the seas,
the roaring of their waves
and the clamour of the peoples.

7    Those who dwell at the ends of the earth
tremble at your marvels;
the gates of the morning and evening sing your praise.

8    You visit the earth and water it;
you make it very plenteous.

9    The river of God is full of water;
you prepare grain for your people,
for so you provide for the earth.

10    You drench the furrows and smooth out the ridges;
you soften the ground with showers and bless its increase.

11    You crown the year with your goodness,
and your paths overflow with plenty.

12    May the pastures of the wilderness flow with goodness
and the hills be girded with joy.

13    May the meadows be clothed with flocks of sheep
and the valleys stand so thick with corn
that they shall laugh and sing.

Psalm 65

Epistle

I looked, and there before me was a door standing open in heaven. And the voice I had first heard speaking to me like a trumpet said, “Come up here, and I will show you what must take place after this.” At once I was in the Spirit, and there before me was a throne in heaven with someone sitting on it. And the one who sat there had the appearance of jasper and carnelian. A rainbow, resembling an emerald, encircled the throne. Surrounding the throne were twenty-four other thrones, and seated on them were twenty-four elders. They were dressed in white and had crowns of gold on their heads. From the throne came flashes of lightning, rumblings and peals of thunder. Before the throne, seven lamps were blazing. These are the seven spirits of God. Also before the throne there was what looked like a sea of glass, clear as crystal. In the centre, around the throne, were four living creatures, and they were covered with eyes, in front and behind. The first living creature was like a lion, the second was like an ox, the third had a face like a man, the fourth was like a flying eagle. Each of the four living creatures had six wings and was covered with eyes all around, even under his wings. Day and night they never stop saying: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was, and is, and is to come.” Whenever the living creatures give glory, honour and thanks to him who sits on the throne and who lives for ever and ever, the twenty-four elders fall down before him who sits on the throne, and worship him who lives for ever and ever. They lay their crowns before the throne and say: “You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and  honour and power, for you created all things, and by your will they were created and have their being.”

Revelation 4

Gospel

Jesus said to his disciples, “Let’s go over to the other side of the lake.” So they got into a boat and set out. As they sailed, he fell asleep. A squall came down on the lake, so that the boat was being swamped, and they were in great danger. The disciples went and woke him, saying, “Master, Master, we’re going to drown!” He got up and rebuked the wind and the raging waters; the storm subsided, and all was calm. “Where is your faith?” he asked his disciples. In fear and amazement they asked one another, “Who is this? He commands even the winds and the water, and they obey him.”

Luke 8.22-25

Sermon on the Second Sunday before Lent

In our Collect we pray, “teach us to discern your hand in all your works and your likeness in all your children”. Why? Why do we need this reminder that we ought to see God everywhere? After all, ‘Day and night they never stop saying: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was, and is, and is to come.”’ Along with all these angels and archangels and the whole company of heaven, we ourselves will acclaim the thrice holy Lord later as we approach our sacrament.

In a meeting about computing last week, we were addressed by someone who works with people who have forgotten so much of who they are, as they have forgotten to discern what is round about them, they suffer from isolation, depression and sometimes jump into suicide to end it all.

Too many have not been empathetic to those who have suffered in this way. They thunder, “Snap out of it,” or something else equally hurtful and turn away from the problem which has just been recognised. You might even say Jesus was just as bad when he was woken from his sleep to find his disciples distraught with the storm raging around their small boat. “Master, Master, we’re going to drown!” they cried in their fear and trembling at the force of nature railing against them. He turned to his disciples after rebuking the wind to a gentle breeze and the raging sea to a millpond, with these words, “Where is your faith?”

“Where is your faith?” What does Jesus mean by that? Why does he ask that? If you had been scared witless, what would you make of Jesus asking you that question? I suppose we should begin this story again and place ourselves in it, but this time with our own real experience of life.

We often fear as if our ship is sinking, don’t we? We are lost in the midst of bills and calls on our time, or the demands of our work, or those of family and friends arrayed around us. We often cry out so loud that we lose our voices and we remain silenced in cocoons of our own isolation and depression. We can be absolutely confused and at the point of despair. We are on the edge of the abyss which glares directly into our souls with its utter blackness. Winston Churchill’s “black dog” viciously growls and circles us. Standing in terror before that void, we cannot call out because we have been silenced in the world we inhabit. No longer do we sing out with others, “Holy, holy, holy…” This, I think, is the picture of where we stand in the pitch blackness of our worlds. We feel isolated, don’t we? We complain that no one listens, that no one understands. We withdraw ourselves from that uncomprehending world and things get impossibly darker. And – in the midst of these raging storms of life, we are supposed to have faith! How? How can I be faithful in the midst of the vortex of emptiness around me?

Yet the words of Jesus still accuse “Where is your faith?” What can I answer? This question attacks everyone at the brink of the abyss, just as they did the philosopher Kierkegaard when he stood looking at the blackness surrounding him. He considered

the literary, philosophical, and ecclesiastical establishments of his day [were] misrepresenting the highest task of human existence — namely, becoming oneself in an ethical and religious sense — as something so easy that it could seem already accomplished even when it had not even been undertaken. …[T]he heart of his work lay in the infinite requirement and strenuous difficulty of religious existence in general.

It could be said two hundred years after him we feel betrayed by everything around us. In this country many are confronted by a system which misrepresents what life is all about. In the online world, for instance, life is supposed to be so easy and yet there are so many disillusioned because that life does not deliver itself in all its fullness even though they are pursuing the promised haven electronically. They teeter on the edge of  the pit of cyberspace where hope just disappears into a mass of zeros and ones.

Those words Jesus asked the terrified disciples, “Where is your faith?” should confront us all still. Faith, however, is imponderable – there is no one experience which encapsulates it. Everyone’s conscience should be pricked so that light should shine, it may the brightness of the sun or only be the tiny LED from a miniature fairy light, but in the darkness of our present despair it should shine like a beacon. When we open our eyes to see, that light will guide.

When that light shines, the darkness has been cleaved apart. We then can see what is before us, that perceived pit is paved over. The light opens up what life really is – hope and charity. This enlightenment is unexpected when it comes, especially in our dark despair, when we are isolated and alone, buried in complications. That light guides us away from the confusion of the everyday, and we do see that life is not the lottery win or the any one thing, but life is the world we create through meaning and engagement. The storm passes at that moment. ‘In fear and amazement [the disciples in the boat and we ourselves] ask one another, “Who is this? He commands even the winds and the water, and they obey him.”’

Everything has been turned upside down yet again. Life may not make any sense, but we can see our way through the tapestry of the life we are weaving. How did the winds and water which swirled around us to overcome us now dissipate?

I think we would all accept that when we begin to see things clearly we would say the miraculous has come, or when we can battle with equanimity against the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune to end them, when that blackness has become multi-coloured because of the light. At that moment we have the discernment for which we prayed in our Collect to see what is important, what the fullness of life really is. When Jesus asked that question, I think he wanted to wake up the disciples as to where they were and what really constituted their world.

I think Jesus wanted the disciples to see where they were, that they had each other’s strength to struggle through the storm. He may have rebuked the storm, but those fishermen should have realised they had each other to get through the winds and waves. Perhaps not surprisingly, that was the conclusion of that speaker on Wednesday night – the community is all around, if only we would look and see, as hard as that might be. We here are saved with one another in the body and blood of the lamb of God, the gift we must perceive and receive.

Amen 

Third Sunday before Lent

Collect

Almighty God, who alone can bring order to the unruly wills and passions of sinful humanity: give your people grace so to love what you command and to desire what you promise, that, among the many changes of this world, our hearts may surely there be fixed where true joys are to be found; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

or

Eternal God, whose Son went among the crowds and brought healing with his touch: help us to show his love, in your Church as we gather together, and by our lives as they are transformed into the image of Christ our Lord.

Post Communion

Merciful Father, who gave Jesus Christ to be for us the bread of life, that those who come to him should never hunger: draw us to the Lord in faith and love, that we may eat and drink with him at his table in the kingdom, where he is alive and reigns, now and for ever.

Readings

Old Testament

Thus says the Lord:

Cursed are those who trust in mere mortals

   and make mere flesh their strength,

   whose hearts turn away from the Lord.

They shall be like a shrub in the desert,

   and shall not see when relief comes.

They shall live in the parched places of the wilderness,

   in an uninhabited salt land.

Blessed are those who trust in the Lord,

   whose trust is the Lord.

They shall be like a tree planted by water,

   sending out its roots by the stream.

It shall not fear when heat comes,

   and its leaves shall stay green;

in the year of drought it is not anxious,

   and it does not cease to bear fruit.

The heart is devious above all else;

   it is perverse—

   who can understand it?

I the Lord test the mind

   and search the heart,

to give to all according to their ways,

   according to the fruit of their doings.

Jeremiah 17:5–10

Psalm

1  Blessed are they who have not walked

      in the counsel of the wicked, •

   nor lingered in the way of sinners,

      nor sat in the assembly of the scornful.

2  Their delight is in the law of the Lord •

   and they meditate on his law day and night.

3  Like a tree planted by streams of water

      bearing fruit in due season, with leaves that do not wither, •

   whatever they do, it shall prosper.

4  As for the wicked, it is not so with them; •

   they are like chaff which the wind blows away.

5  Therefore the wicked shall not be able to stand in the judgement, •

   nor the sinner in the congregation of the righteous.

6  For the Lord knows the way of the righteous, •

   but the way of the wicked shall perish.

Psalm 1

Epistle

Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified of God that he raised Christ—whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised. If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have died in Christ have perished. If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.

But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died.

1 Corinthians 15:12–20

Gospel

He came down with them and stood on a level place, with a great crowd of his disciples and a great multitude of people from all Judea, Jerusalem, and the coast of Tyre and Sidon. They had come to hear him and to be healed of their diseases; and those who were troubled with unclean spirits were cured. And all in the crowd were trying to touch him, for power came out from him and healed all of them.

Then he looked up at his disciples and said:

‘Blessed are you who are poor,

   for yours is the kingdom of God.

‘Blessed are you who are hungry now,

   for you will be filled.

‘Blessed are you who weep now,

   for you will laugh.

 ‘Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice on that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven; for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets.

‘But woe to you who are rich,

   for you have received your consolation.

‘Woe to you who are full now,

   for you will be hungry.

‘Woe to you who are laughing now,

   for you will mourn and weep.

 ‘Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets.

Luke 6:17–26

Sermon on Third Sunday before Lent

The Gospel and the OT lesson can teach us about a technique for studying the Bible. It is called “Form Criticism”, a discipline that emerged from the literary study of the Bible. Scholars noticed that there were structural similarities between different passages. A specific form of words was used over and over again. We have two such passages here. In Jeremiah we read about the Lord cursing “those who trust in mere mortals” and blessing “those who trust in the Lord”. What a contrast between the two. The cursed are likened to “a shrub in the desert” which will never see relief of any sort, rising from land which has salt sown in it – earth incapable of sustaining life. The blessed will be like “a tree planted by a river” whose roots move to drink its sweet water.

In the gospel Jesus blesses the poor, the hungry, those who weep and the hated with the promise of the kingdom of God, fullness and joy. In contrast to this he can only bemoan the fate of the rich, the fed, the laughing and the flattered, because he sees them being already consoled with riches in this present world, but hungry in the future, mournful and led astray by false words.

These blessings and curses are the reversal of fortune that all hope for in their despondency, when aid is with-held from those who deserve the duty of care, when the law of God should be fulfilled. We can see this in our own times, can’t we? When the poor, the faithful and those who hunger after righteousness are forsaken for what can be seen as trivial pursuits when we look at them in the light of heavenly things, and I don’t mean the kingdom to come, but the divine of love entering a person’s life.

This reversal is not an expression of what they called “the politics of envy” when the political parties were so very different in vision, when the poor were so very poor and the rich had distanced themselves from everyone else. The reversal must come about when the rich are no longer charitable, when pockets are deliberately made too deep for any of the short arms to reach down to the bottom of them.

The reversal will come, when God’s will for all humanity is accomplished, when there is that perfect peace for which we pray in the words of the BCP in particular – when there is the abiding care of charity shared abroad – when Martin Luther King’s dream has been realised, that all will understand themselves as brothers and sisters whatever their appearance. The reversal of all things we accept today will come – there is no doubt about that. I think we should actively work toward it to speed its coming. That law of love Jesus enjoined on all of humanity is the the alpha and omega of the eschatological reversal. Loving one another is a stark overturning of the world’s order, isn’t it? How many of our contemporaries try to love the people they know, let alone some samaritan.

I the Lord test the mind

   and search the heart,

to give to all according to their ways,

   according to the fruit of their doings.

How many of us are confident about the intentions of our mind and heart in the light of God’s judgement? But let’s not worry about that ultimate judgement of humanity. Let me think closer to my ownmost possibility. I am fearful when the “fruit of my doings” is declared in public. When the secret things of my life are revealed in the light of God’s day, on that day when there is no place to hide.

Sorry, I have strayed from my didactic purpose. I wanted to see how the analysis of our language can help us understand religious discourse, as at this time, blessings and curses are to the forefront.

These blessings and curses show us how the world’s order is upset. The rich, whom we ordinarily extol, are to become poor, as poor as the person now derided as poor by the so-called “rich”. The poor are without the cash to lavish on holidays and parties – you know, the sort of aspirations the winners of quiz shows reveal, as they covet the prize money before answering their final questions to grasp that money.

Their replies to “What will you do with all that money?” reveal an awful lot, don’t you think? – I think we could do an analysis of this form of questioning to illuminate the hopes of our own generation. How many of us would answer, “I would like to give this money to my neighbour who has lost his job,” or “I would like to pay off a school loan for that fellow down the road?” Doesn’t the world expect us to be misers and only put our money in our mattresses “for another time”? Or, if not misers, the world expects us to be profligate and spend, spend, spend.  I know I am guilty of being a miser, for every penny I earn now must be put aside for my “retirement”, never mind some frivolity, some frippery of extravagance. I am expected to be the miser by all around me in order to keep my family well.

Examining the forms into which I express my hopes and fears reveals a great deal of my inmost thoughts, for ultimately everything spills out no matter how tight we think we keep the lid on things. This is true of thoughts as it is of emotions. The psychiatrists of whatever school they belong to, have always acknowledged the hidden to be revealed in some way – tragically it comes through in psychotic behaviour, sadly through neuroses, comically through slips of the tongue.

But revealed the hidden always will be, whether through self-revelation or through the efforts of an investigative police officer or a journalist. Even the academics get in on the act in their research about the great and good.

Blessings and curses are just one such form of expression with which reveals so much about ourselves. The scholars have opened our eyes to what we really want deep in our hearts, hidden sometimes even from ourselves.

The questions arise in light of our readings today, “Whom do we curse?” and “Whom do we bless?” These interrogatives must be at the forefront of our minds. To whom did you last blurt out a blessing? Whom did you last curse under your breath? We do it all the time, don’t we? We get so upset and rail against everything, just like Job in his despair. However, Job did not curse God, he could only bless God for all the good he had received, even though he could curse the very day of his birth. Even though such dark times clouded his world, at the core of his being was a blessing of Almighty God, even if he felt God had abandoned him. My exhortation is that we should examine the forms of our language to see just what they reveal our ownmost possibility really is.

Amen

Candlemass

Collect

Almighty and ever-living God, clothed in majesty, whose beloved Son was this day presented in the Temple, in substance of our flesh: grant that we may be presented to you with pure and clean hearts, by your Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

Amen.

Prayer After Communion

Lord, you fulfilled the hope of Simeon and Anna, who lived to welcome the Messiah: may we, who have received these gifts beyond words, prepare to meet Christ Jesus when he comes to bring us to eternal life; for he is alive and reigns, now and for ever.

Amen

Readings

Old Testament

See, I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me. Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple; the messenger of the covenant, whom you desire, will come,” says the Lord Almighty. But who can endure the day of his coming? Who can stand when he appears? For he will be like a refiner’s fire or a launderer’s soap. He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver; he will purify the Levites and refine them like gold and silver. Then the LORD will have men who will bring offerings in righteousness, and the offerings of Judah and Jerusalem will be acceptable to the LORD, as in days gone by, as in former years. “So I will come near to you for judgement. I will be quick to testify against sorcerers, adulterers and perjurers, against those who defraud labourers of their wages, who oppress the widows and the fatherless, and deprive aliens of justice, but do not fear me,” says the LORD Almighty.

Malachi 3.1–5

Psalm

1    The earth is the Lord’s and all that fills it,
the compass of the world and all who dwell therein.

2    For he has founded it upon the seas
and set it firm upon the rivers of the deep.

3    Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord,
or who can rise up in his holy place?’

4    Those who have clean hands and a pure heart,
who have not lifted up their soul to an idol,
nor sworn an oath to a lie;

5    They shall receive a blessing from the Lord,
a just reward from the God of their salvation.

6    Such is the company of those who seek him,
of those who seek your face, O God of Jacob.

7    Lift up your heads, O gates;
be lifted up, you everlasting doors;
and the King of glory shall come in.

8    ‘Who is the King of glory?’
‘The Lord, strong and mighty,
the Lord who is mighty in battle.’

9    Lift up your heads, O gates;
be lifted up, you everlasting doors;
and the King of glory shall come in.

10    ‘Who is this King of glory?’
‘The Lord of hosts,
he is the King of glory.’

Psalm 24

Epistle

Since the children brought to glory by God have flesh and blood, Jesus too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death – that is, the devil – and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death. For surely it is not angels he helps, but Abraham’s descendants. For this reason he had to be made like his brothers in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people. Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.

Hebrews 2.14–18

Gospel

When the time of their purification according to the Law of Moses had been completed, Joseph and Mary took Jesus to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord (as it is written in the Law of the Lord, “Every firstborn male is to be consecrated to the Lord”), and to offer a sacrifice in keeping with what is said in the Law of the Lord: “a pair of doves or two young pigeons”. Now there was a man in Jerusalem called Simeon, who was righteous and devout. He was waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was upon him. It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not die before he had seen the Lord’s Christ. Moved by the Spirit, he went into the temple courts. When the parents brought in the child Jesus to do for him what the custom of the Law required, Simeon took him in his arms and praised God, saying: “Sovereign Lord, as you have promised,  you now dismiss your servant in peace. For my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the sight of all people, a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel.” The child’s father and mother marvelled at what was said about him. Then Simeon blessed them and said to Mary, his mother: “This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against, so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your own soul too.” There was also a prophetess, Anna, the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was very old; she had lived with her husband seven years after her marriage, and then was a widow until she was eighty-four. She never left the temple but worshipped night and day, fasting and praying. Coming up to them at that very moment, she gave thanks to God and spoke about the child to all who were looking forward to the redemption of Jerusalem. When Joseph and Mary had done everything required by the Law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee to their own town of Nazareth. And the child grew and became strong; he was filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was upon him.

Luke 2.22–40

Sermon on Candlemass

The opening bidding of the Collect describes this festival of the Church, “[God’s] beloved Son was this day presented in the Temple.” We recall this event in our liturgical recounting of the life of Christ. We lighten up the world with the living flames of candles as well as our very selves. We have come to Church today in the hope that, as our Collect says, “we may be presented to [God] with pure and clean hearts.” In other words, we want to show ourselves to the world as worthy people.

So, what is the presentation in the Temple all about? We don’t have anything like this in our time, do we? Modernity is not tied to temples or religion, is it? So how can we understand this bible story? – I think we need to go back for a history lesson to see what we can make of it.

According to the “the Law of Moses”, women who had had a child were to hold themselves in isolation for a period of time because they were considered unclean, that is, ritually unclean, because of the blood of childbirth. After that period of separation, they were to go to the Temple to make an offering of a pair of doves or two young pigeons. Ritual purity, as we know, was one of the points of conflict in Jesus’ ministry. Jesus had a distinct difference of opinion with the scribes, pharisees and sadducees. Although I am sure he agreed with them that purity was of prime importance, they had to disagree about how this purity was achieved. After all, “the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.”

Mary and Joseph in today’s gospel reading undertake this presentation and ritual purification. They take Jesus up to the Temple to present Jesus, their firstborn, as an offering consecrated to the Lord. I have to ask – don’t we all do this when we have our first child? Don’t we feel the exultation of this birth? Don’t we want to give thanks in the most potent terms available to us? We feel this very real impulse, just as the ancient Hebrews must have done those millennia past, because the urge to joy is so overpowering in every breast at the birth of a child.

We are so full of happiness that we want to share our child with the world. Isn’t that what the presentation in the Temple is all about? In old-fashioned language, don’t we want to consecrate our firstborn as holy to God, because we feel God’s embrace with this birth? I would like to say that we want to acknowledge this blessing of life before the whole world, before everything that means anything to us. I suppose even we would undertake this ritual presentation in the Temple at Jerusalem especially when we have this motivation of exultant joy.

With a new-born child, don’t we feel so very different? We are protective, observant, loving, even full of pride – I think most parents would say that their children “grow and become strong;” that they are “filled with wisdom,” and some would perhaps like to say that “the grace of God was upon them.” All of this in the very same way Mary and Joseph evaluated Jesus’ life with them. These children are growing straight and true in the way their parents would expect, perhaps invisible in the teenage years, but ever in their dreams. The parents’ children will  always be better than they themselves are. It is no wonder that parents would present their children to the Lord in epochs past, and certainly parents today would show them off to the world, just as Mary and Joseph presented Jesus in the Temple so long ago.

However, in modern times, there are no temples or rituals to mark any special times or places during the course of our very mundane  lives – everything is flat: there are no peaks or troughs in time and space. Everything is secular, without any sort of other dimension. There is no spiritual acknowledged in our everyday life. I think we have lost the qualities of sacred and profane in out lives. But, the question I have to ask is this: do we really feel that lack of quality of life, when it comes to our new-born children? That classic picture of the ever-so-happy Daddy distributing cigars to everyone who bumps into him – even the nurses on the ward where mother lies recovering from her labour – that image should give us pause for thought, because we understand just what he is feeling, the exultation of life in all its fullness, and he is driven to share that joy with everyone he meets.

What if we could capture that same exultation of joy in our everyday lives? Don’t we actually try to do that in the liturgy of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church? I would suggest that we are doing this today, as we remember the presentation of Jesus in the Temple and in fact present ourselves – as we have prayed in our Collect – with pure and clean hearts. It is not just to this gathered congregation, but we are bid to “Go in the peace of Christ”, aren’t we? That final command means to me that we are proposing to go out into the world with a good conscience to participate in life in all its fullness. We are attempting to capture the event of Christ being presented in the Temple through the rite of the Church, and more feebly through these words I am sharing with you.

The ancients used to try to relive the event through myths, symbols and rituals. Today we do so through active recollection of the past, reciting the story and discussing it – well me thinking aloud and you listening to my chattering from the pulpit. However, as I write my thoughts down, I am actually reliving everything I will speak about with you – the joy of birth, the mystery of life, the grace of salvation, all of these things are relived in my preparation to speak with you. I am at that moment closer to the ancients than I am the secular world of the everyday where there is no sacred and all stands in the flat desert of modernity.

In my preparation, I live out a cyclical temporality, where the past becomes real to me. It is an experience that I think everyone can have.

What if our lives are renewed by liturgical repetition of these sacred stories in the life of Christ? Recounting these stories could actually make sense of life, the universe and everything, don’t you think? I would say that the Church’s liturgical repetition of the saving history makes sense of life. When we gather to present Jesus in the temple, we are presenting ourselves to God as we meet to pray for the needs of the world as well as ourselves. We are met to hear again the scriptures. Ultimately, we are resolved to reconcile ourselves with one another. Our prayers, in fact, might guide everyone, even those outside church, to pursue the paths of divine purity, because Jesus is here with us.

Amen

Third Sunday after Epiphany

Collect

Almighty God, whose Son revealed in signs and miracles the wonder of your saving presence: renew your people with your heavenly grace, and in all our weakness sustain us by your mighty power; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

Prayer after communion

Almighty Father, whose Son our Saviour Jesus Christ is the light of the world: may your people, illumined by your word and sacraments, shine with the radiance of his glory, that he may be known, worshipped, and obeyed to the ends of the earth; for he is alive and reigns, now and for ever.

Readings

Old Testament

All the Israelite people assembled as one man in the square before the Water Gate. They told Ezra the scribe to bring out the Book of the Law of Moses, which the LORD had commanded for Israel. So on the first day of the seventh month, Ezra the priest brought the Law before the assembly, which was made up of men and women and all who were able to understand. He read it aloud from daybreak till noon as he faced the square before the Water Gate in the presence of the men, women and others who could understand. And all the people listened attentively to the Book of the Law. Ezra opened the book. All the people could see him because he was standing above them; and as he opened it, the people all stood up. Ezra praised the LORD, the great God; and all the people lifted their hands and responded, “Amen! Amen!” Then they bowed down and worshipped the LORD with their faces to the ground.

The Levites also read from the Book of the Law of God, making it clear and giving the meaning so that the people could understand what was being read. Then Nehemiah the governor, Ezra the priest and scribe, and the Levites who were instructing the people said to them all, “This day is sacred to the LORD your God. Do not mourn or weep.” For all the people had been weeping as they listened to the words of the Law. Nehemiah said, “Go and enjoy choice food and sweet drinks, and send some to those who have nothing prepared. This day is sacred to our Lord. Do not grieve, for the joy of the LORD is your strength.“

Nehemiah 8.1-3,5-6,8-10

Psalm

1    The heavens are telling the glory of God and the firmament proclaims his handiwork.

2    One day pours out its song to another and one night unfolds knowledge to another.

3    They have neither speech nor language and their voices are not heard,

4    Yet their sound has gone out into all lands and their words to the ends of the world.

5    In them has he set a tabernacle for the sun, that comes forth as a bridegroom out of his chamber and rejoices as a champion to run his course.

6    It goes forth from the end of the heavens and runs to the very end again, and there is nothing hidden from its heat.

Psalm 19

Epistle

The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; and though all its parts are many, they form one body. So it is with Christ. For we were all baptised by one Spirit into one body—whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink.

Now the body is not made up of one part but of many. If the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? But in fact God has arranged the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. If they were all one part, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, but one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, “I don’t need you!” And the head cannot say to the feet, “I don’t need you!” On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and the parts that we think are less honourable we treat with special honour. And the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty, while our presentable parts need no special treatment. But God has combined the members of the body and has given greater honour to the parts that lacked it, so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honoured, every part rejoices with it. Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it. And in the church God has appointed first of all apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then workers of miracles, also those having gifts of healing, those able to help others, those with gifts of administration, and those speaking in different kinds of tongues. Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? Do all have gifts of healing? Do all speak in tongues? Do all interpret? But eagerly desire the greater gifts.

1 Corinthians 12.12-31

Gospel

Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news about him spread through the whole countryside. He taught in their synagogues, and everyone praised him. He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. And he stood up to read. The scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written: “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.” Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him, and he began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”

Luke 4.14-21

Sermon on Third Sunday after Epiphany

Our Collect confirms that we are still in the season of Epiphany, in the more general season of Christmass. It is a glorious time in the liturgical year, even if the weather is poor, and we are a bit cold and wet when we go out to visit or off to work. Even inside the house, it is dark and the lights have to come on early. In spite of all this, the church is still in gold reflecting the glory of heaven upon us.

In the past few weeks our God has been revealed in the incarnation, in the visit of wise men, in Jesus’ baptism, and in the miracle at Cana. Today our God reveals himself with Words – “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” After all, who but God is able “to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.” Who else would dare declare “freedom for prisoners”? Who would pronounce “sight for the blind” is available? Who would want to “release the oppressed”? Certainly not our politicians or the bullies in our midst. In my experience, only the prophets who have been touched by the Spirit of God have been so bold to proclaim such a message of hope to the world.

All of these proclamations are not anything that we would declare in our ordinary lives, are they? I would never declare that the blind could see. Would you? What about proclaiming freedom and release to all the people struggling under the restraints of this world? I would never be able to declare a prisoner free, even though I might wish it with all my heart. Perhaps the Spirit moves in me to make me speak those words of hope to the fettered of the world, because I have heard them for myself.

I hope that I could “proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour,” the year of Jubilee when all debt is cancelled and everyone starts out with a clean slate, when no sins would be attributed to any person. – I truly want to be the person to declare such a state of grace for the world, but who would listen to me as I utter such words?

The event our reading describes is the very real epiphany of God in time. In our hearing, the scripture has been fulfilled. – That is the important thing – in our hearing. What does that mean? I don’t think it means that it is a tannoy announcement like at the bus station, it is not gossip, it is not chatter. When that sort of gibberish-like speech enters our ears, we don’t really hear it, do we? It doesn’t even go in one ear. That sort of prattle means nothing. We ignore it because we are not engaged by it, it means nothing to us at all, because it is just background noise.

But in our hearing means that a completely different type of language has come into our auditory universe, the speech-act has become symbolic in the most profound sense. Our world has been transformed with what even we do call an “epiphany”. Meaning has entered our world in a primordial way, hasn’t it?

In our hearing suggests that we understand our language in a different way. I think it means that we are engaged with a meaning which enlightens our so far limited world.

We have always heard of miracles, like the miracle at Cana when water became wine in last week’s gospel. I would like to ask you, isn’t hearing a miracle of the same sort? Don’t we all know that? When “we get it” – whether it be that problem in mathematics, that abstruse linguistic configuration, the perception puzzle in the glossy magazine, even the healing of the sick in the gospel – when we get it, everything changes. We can never look at that thing in the same way ever again because it is no longer a conundrum. The light bulb has gone off in our head and there is no darkness left there any more. All is revealed and we are open to a universe in which there is significance and meaning. In the most profound instances, it is when symbols connect with their transcendent meaning. The deaf do hear, the blind to see, the water tastes like wine, and life is experienced in all its fullness. – I think this happened when Jesus read the scriptures to those people naturally gathered in that synagogue and pronounced, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” Nothing was the same for anyone in that congregation – nor in this one – ever again. The words of Jesus were seen as clear and full, no longer were they merely pious hope, but lives are transformed by hearing those words.

Why? Why did Jesus say this? We all know that the miracles of the scripture, healing the sick, freeing the enslaved, letting the blind see – all of these miracles were absolutely real when they heard the words finally.

How does this work? In our ordinary experience, when we don’t hear, we don’t understand the miraculous. What happens when we do hear? Doesn’t the symbolic become present? Doesn’t the divine appear in our very ordinary world and so transform it. This has happened since time immemorial, but it happens for us, when we hear Jesus speak to us. This is Epiphany, isn’t it? When Jesus speaks, we hear, and that hearing makes everything different, the world has a sacred dimension because the divine impacts on our lives. We hear the meaning of everything around us. Nothing escapes that transforming light.

When do we hear? When is that moment of perception realised in our lives? Each of us knows when that has happened. I wonder – do we ever hear our neighbours? That neighbour is next to you – it can be your husband or wife, your parents, your siblings, the person who lives next door – why, it could even be someone who lives on the other side of this universal global village! When we listen and hear that neighbour, don’t things change? We are connected with that person most profoundly, and it becomes loving our neighbour.

When we hear the other, does our world contract? Do we remain the island we think we are in our fear? No, there is an expansion of our world, we live on continents of openness, not contracting and constricting isles. When we hear, our world connects with another’s and we become engaged with a far greater world. We are no longer isolated when we hear

I would like to say that hearing is how we begin to fulfill the commandments Jesus set out for all who would follow his way in the world. Loving our neighbour begins by listening and when we truly love, the world is transformed. How can we hear and not understand the other person? I would like to think that this openness of hearing is the open heart of christian αγαπη

Amen