Author: ROSAMOND MISKIN

May I speak in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Recently I watched a programme on television about cyber-attacks and the attempts being made to stop them. The attacker finds a way into the computer system of an organisation and then locks out the victim from access to the system.  Having done this, the attacker demands a ransom from the victim in exchange for unlocking the system.  The ransom may run towards thousands of pounds, and the response is often to meet the demand rather than lose the business altogether.  It is a depressing fact that, according to those who are trying to prevent such crime, the number of cyber-attacks is on the rise, and some businesses go under.

What are the factors that contribute to this grim state of affairs?  It may be that the cost-of-living crisis has increased the number of attacks but one factor, surely, is greed.

In today’s Gospel reading there is ‘the parable of the rich fool’ in which Jesus makes clear that life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.  The rich fool is sure that if he has bigger barns with ample goods to store them in, he can ‘relax, eat, drink and be merry’.  Jesus responds by calling him a fool.  He asks who the goods will belong to and there is no value in storing up treasures for yourself if ‘you are not rich towards God’.

The readings that are part of today’s liturgical cycle also express the need to avoid greed.  From the Old Testament comes the Book of Ecclesiastes where we learn that you may feel successful in gathering riches, but you cannot have anything apart from God.  All the effort you make in acquiring riches is just vanity; ‘vanity of vanities! All is vanity’.  In Psalm 49 we are advised not to trust in riches and in his letter to the Colossians St Paul asks them to set their minds on things above and put greed to death.  When we do this, we can put on the new self, according to God’s image.

Why, then, does the cyber-criminal not take this counsel against greed on board which, even if the criminal is not a Christian, is sound advice?  An answer may be found in the inability to sympathize with the suffering they are causing to the victim.  It is all about them and what they hope to gain.  This attitude is also found in the rich fool with his frequent, egotistical ‘I’ and ‘my’.  This runs completely contrary to the call in the Bible to give alms to the needy as part of the Christian life.

This call has not always been adhered to by people across the centuries though there have always been those who reach out to the needy.  In the early 1960s, in response to poverty in Latin America, what is known as ‘Liberation Theology’ was born with the aim to look at socio-economic conditions and focus on concern for the common good rather than the acquisition of private property. As Tom Wright reminds us in his book ‘Simply Christian’ there is a need for Christianity to campaign to reduce global debt and engage in fair trade. Unfortunately, to this day, the call remains unheeded by a measure of corruption in business affairs and by the cyber-criminals who continue increasingly to prey on honest businesspeople.  The call, here, is a seed that has fallen on stony ground.

Is there any way that we can get the seed into fruit-bearing soil that will at least reduce the corruption and theft of others by technological means?  One way forward might be to encourage more face-to-face dialogue in the world.  The cyber-criminal relies on being able, via technology, to attack on remote, in a concealed position and at a distance.  There are many good and helpful aspects to technology but the ability to access other people’s data with bad intent is not one of them. If you are on remote your victim is merely the owner of that which you wish to rob and not a human being whose welfare is of any concern.

When people are face to face there is a sense of community, and one feature of community is sharing.  In today’s Gospel reading Jesus does not, I believe, reject the notion of a divided inheritance.  He leaves that to be settled by the person in the crowd who has raised this question. What he warns against is the greed that may influence that process.

Another possible solution to getting the seed scattered in the right direction would be to try and comprehend what has led the perpetrator into such activity in the first place.  It may be because they have been shortchanged in life and are therefore attracted to robbing others by wrongful means.  Or if they are operating overseas, they may be prompted to rob by a hostility towards the country of the person on home soil. Again, face to face dialogue could help here in reducing hostility and working towards a world whereby there is a fairer distribution of wealth amongst all peoples.

These are possible ways forward and as Christians we are armed with the knowledge that God cannot be robbed of anything and that the greatest treasure awaits us in heaven.

 

AMEN

May I speak in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Nothing, to my mind, demonstrates more clearly than today’s Gospel reading the emphasis Luke puts on the significance Jesus gives to people on the margins of the culture of his time.  The alien, the refugee, the poor, slaves, tax collectors to name but a few and, as we know from today’s Gospel reading, the Samaritans.    The Samaritans, being a mix of already spiritually corrupt Israelites and pagan foreigners, created a religion for themselves that the Jews considered heresy. Yet Luke gives a Samaritan a starring role in his rescuing the man who has fallen into the hands of robbers rather than the priest and the Levite whose very position within the culture prohibits them from offering a helping hand.  As leading examples of the law, they do not wish to be defiled. The Samaritans were stricter than Jews about the commands of the Mosaic law but this did not stop the Good Samaritan who, despite being outside the culture, helps the man who has been robbed, stripped, beaten and left half dead on the roadside.

One effect of this narrative is that in giving an outsider the opportunity to engage in a rescue operation, Luke is revealing what has happened to the law in the life of Jesus.  His life has not been given to us by God to abolish the law but to affirm it as rooted in love alone.

This affirmation is based on love and the mercy that flows from it rather than strict adherence to rules and regulations. It requires that you love God in heart, soul and mind and that you should love your neighbour as yourself.  Being the good neighbour does not depend on your position in society, nor the rules that govern it, but upon love and mercy. In their strict adherence to the law, this was not an affirmation accepted by all the Jews and certainly not accepted by the Jewish leadership of the Sadducees and the Pharisees. From the time of Moses, the entry to the promised land and the establishment of the law on arrival, the law was regarded as essential to the Jewish people, both as a reminder of God’s covenant with his people which had taken them from the wilderness into the land of milk and honey and a protector from persecution.  It was also there to bind their society together. If, as it is given in the Old Testament, you keep God’s commandments and turn to him with heart and soul you will be bountiful.

Why then did the priest and the Levite pass by the man who had been robbed if they had been called upon to love God in heart and soul?  I believe it was because in the adherence to rules and regulations, for them this was a sufficient demonstration of loving God in heart and soul.  To go beyond this point and let love for others beyond their society guide their actions it could mean breaking rules and regulations to heal the sick, respond to the needy and mix with outsiders. This would be a fearful thing to do because the rules and regulations had so much significance for them as a protector of their ways. The problem here is that it can leave a society inward looking rather than embracing all people in the love of God.

Jesus, then, offers us a way of life that looks outward in love and can be found in many ways today.  In the work of charities such as the Salvation Army who are, and I quote: friends to the friendless and home to the homeless’ no-one is to be left out of the picture of care and concern.  This gives the widest possible interpretation to the word ‘neighbour’ that goes beyond those that live near you to include everyone.

The call to love your neighbour as yourself does not necessarily come easy.  There can be quarrels and tensions with your immediate neighbours and today’s world is full of conflicts between neighbouring countries.  Such conflicts are rooted in fear, not love, and result in death and destruction.

If we can get beyond this conflict-filled world we can then build each other up to live better lives rather than drag each other down.  This is what the Good Samaritan does for the man who has been robbed.  He lifts him up and puts him on his animal to take him to an inn to be cared for.  His mercy extends beyond the initial act of bandaging wounds to make sure that the man is well looked after.  Here he is reflecting the mercy of God which is, as the hymn gives it, is ‘wider than the sea’.

To affirm to the utmost the law rooted in love, Jesus was destined, like the man rescued by the Samaritan, to be stripped and beaten but unlike the man, he had to die on the Cross to fulfil the promise of the law which is that we can inherit eternal life.

We have this promise but rather than delay its fruition our best hope in our earthly existence is to love our neighbours as ourselves.  Without this love we will drag each other down into the darkness rather than raise each other up into the eternal love of God.

 

AMEN

May I speak in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

The theme of my sermon today is ‘glory’.  In our earthly life we use the word ‘glorious’ to describe that which we have seen that we think of as uplifting, joyous and magnificent.  It is often used to reflect observations made of the natural world; ‘glorious weather, without a cloud in the sky, full of sunshine’. In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus tells his disciples that the lilies in the field are clothed in a glory that surpasses even the glory of King Solomon.  There is also the glory to be found in beautiful objects, like the stunning Cartier jewellery and watch collection recently exhibited at the Victoria and Albert Museum.

When we come to the battlefield, there can be found military glory.  We talk of a glorious victory over the enemy, made possible by the heroism of the armed forces. It is in this definition of glory that we come a bit closer to what is meant by ‘glory’ in today’s Gospel reading.  A bit closer because by his death on the Cross Jesus has defeated Satan in removing the power of death over us by offering us eternal life.  As we sing in our hymn ‘Abide with me’: ‘where is death’s sting, where grave thy victory?’ I triumph still, if thou abide with me’.

As Jesus returns to his Father at the Crucifixion, this moment is, as Jerome’s Biblical Commentary gives it to us, the ‘hour’ of Jesus’s glorification and this ‘hour’ is the focus of John’s Gospel. To arrive at this moment, there have been cycles of acceptance and rejection until he gets there.  Yet, as we know from today’s Gospel reading, Jesus knows before his Crucifixion that he is glorified and not only that, but he asks his Father to give this glory to his Disciples so that they may be as one as he and the Father are one. Then they will be in the Father and himself.  The Disciples will become completely one so that the world may know that the Father has sent Jesus and that he has loved them as the Father has loved him.

In his Commentary on the Gospel of John, David Pawson describes what he finds in the Gospel as the three petitions of Jesus.  Jesus prays that he will be glorified, that his Apostles be sanctified and that all believers will be unified. A similar pattern of three petitions can be found, as Pawson writes, in the Old Testament in Leviticus chapter 16 when the High Priest prays in the Temple for himself, his fellow priests and the people of God.

This petitioning for unity of God the Father, God the Son and all the world is what makes the distinction between the earthly glory that I referred to earlier and the glory as given in John’s Gospel.  Jesus prays to the Father that others may see his glory but it is best understood as an inner glory of being rather than an external glory.  It is not an individual observation or a particular instance of pleasure, such as a ‘glorious occasion’ but an offering for all to share in the love of God.  It is, as Fergus King’s Guide to John’s Gospel gives it, an offer to all believers to share in the intimacy of the relationship between Jesus and God.  That does not mean that we need not work for unity, because, as Pawson writes, we cannot hide behind the mystical unity; we must deal with the visible quarrelling.  What we have been offered is the Orthodox tradition of ‘theosis’ which means ‘God became man, so that man may become God’.  As Cally Hammond wrote recently in the Church Times, there is no self-aggrandisement of Jesus in his glory but he is the visible embodiment of what we have all been called to, which is to be made divine.  As the Psalmist writes in Psalm 82:6 ‘You are Gods’.

This shared glory we can say is a gift from God as it is salvation by grace not good works.  It involves a washing away of our sins.  In Psalm 51, the Psalmist asks God to create a clean heart in him and put a new and right spirit within him.  In chapter 22 of the Book of Revelation we read that those who wash their robes will have the right to the Tree of Life and enter the heavenly city by the gates.

What an extraordinary and unique gift this is, to share in the glory of God.  I would say that in today’s very troubled world, awareness of this gift is surely needed more than ever.  It can lighten our darkness in these anxious times and offer a unity of all peoples rather than the conflicts that are ongoing today. We can play our part by prayer and word of mouth in order that the hearts and minds of people be opened to this gift so that they too can bask in the light of God’s glory.

 

AMEN

This Sunday of the Good Shepherd, Ruth Peel will be leading Sunday School. Her father was a shepherd, in two senses of the word. He was both a farmer and a priest. And I am sure what will be being learned downstairs will be more authentic than anything I can say about shepherds.

We hold in our prayers and thoughts, the new Pope, Leo XIV and the many millions across the world he serves, and in difficult days, to take this extraordinary role of world-wide shepherding. The speed and efficiency of the Papal election makes the process around that appointment of the Archbishop of Canterbury look ponderous. May that happen with comparable grace and charity.

For comments on the book and film Conclave, ask me afterwards, they would be too frivolous for a sermon.

On this Sunday after Easter, for centuries, the Church has prayed for vocations as it contemplates Jesus’ words in this morning’s Gospel “²⁷My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: And ²⁸I give unto them eternal life.”

You may know that part of what I do as a day job, is to oversee discernment of vocation for the Diocese in Europe.

It’s an extraordinary privilege, sometimes quite demanding, but extremely interesting. I hope you won’t mind if I do, to explain what I do and how it fits into the broader picture of discernment work in the Church of England.

The Diocese in Europe, first of all, is unlike all other dioceses of the Church of England. It sits outside England, it covers the landmass of continental Europe taking in Mongolia to the furthest East and Morocco to the furthest South. It includes Turkey, but not Syria, Morocco but not Algeria, Greece but not Cyprus. The earliest chaplaincies date from the middle of the 16^th century, when British embassies had, as they still have, chaplains. From these communities were spawned other communities in English colonies, it not being a surprise that where there is sun and good food and often good wine, sherry, madeira or port you are likely to find an English church.

There are nearly 150 chaplaincies worshipping in a range of buildings, some purpose-built, in fine locations in great European capitals, others in borrowed halls in less exalted surroundings. Like any diocese, it has people coming forward exploring vocation, and the job of the Director of Ordinands, my role, is to discern whether this is the right thing or not for each person.

How do we discern vocation? And in Europe what are the issues that are specific to contemplating ordained ministry in a diocese which is a minority Church, sometimes as in Morocco and Turkey, a Church which sits in a majority Muslim setting?

Discernment is both personal and ecclesial, and these two journeys are shared.

One of the keys is for the ordinand to have a spiritual director, that is to say a dispassionate person, alongside them, but not in their life in any other way, listening, feeding back and offering observations.

There are three spiritual states, which we can get used to discerning in ourselves and intimate understanding them informs vocational discernment very particularly. The first is consolation. The second desolation, the third, neutrality or holy indifference.

Consolation is a time of comfort and assurance, of clarity and even insight. There is and can be an element of revelation about it. It may be short-lived it may last a little while, but there is something utter and absolute about it. Desolation is a spiritual state of dryness, of desert, sometimes even of the dereliction of the cross – it is not depression. St John of the Cross characterised it as “the dark night of the soul”.

Indifference or neutrality is not extreme in the way that the other two might be, but it is not an every day sensation of chogging along. It comes in the face of a decision, and needs to be sought. Faced with options it is the sensation of either option being possible and right – it coincides with our Lord’s words in his prayer and before his arrest “thy will be done.”

Tuning in to these spiritual states in discernment takes practice, stillness of heart, mind and soul, and the guidance of others.

For the individual, having sensed a call, the next question should be to what and why?

It is almost every day that I meet someone coming forward mistaking a call to discipleship for a call to ordination. And that is why the to what and why are important.

A Call to ministry needs to be signalled by some sense of irresistible impulsion towards the sacraments, and for reasons which defy adequate words, but something of the sincerity in the incoherence of the answer will often reveal its authenticity.

To what – to the sacraments. Then why?

Trying to help candidates unravel the different causes, the multiple reasons which might have prompted the call is one of the greatest privileges of all.

It is not hearing confession, but bears many similarities with it, as people explore their history, and make sense of how the Christian narrative has taken over and shaped their lives.

The answer to why is as multiple as there are people coming forward, there is no right answer, but again the quest for sincerity in the response is often characterised by the failure of adequate language in the face of the ineffable.

People in our churches in Europe can be there for many reasons, by no means the majority are British. It’s fascinating to see Anglicanism taking root in Europe, even if our aim as a Diocese there is not to proselytise, but to work alongside the host and majority Churches.

The whole Church needs ministers of the Gospel, it needs spiritual shepherds.

In the Bible shepherds begin Luke’s birth narrative. They are a point of connection, in Bethlehem, the City of David, the boy-shepherd who became the Great King David.

Moses before David was a shepherd and before him, Abel, who offered the righteous sacrifice of a lamb.

In John’s Gospel, from which today’s Gospel passage comes, the only shepherd referred to is Jesus, who is not only good, but is the one whose voice the sheep know and respond to uniquely. He calls us all, make no mistake. But his priestly shepherding needs icons in the world, priests and deacons to make manifest his love in word and sacrament.

 

 

Today I would like to pose and endeavour to answer two simple questions. The first is simply, Who was St. Mark?

The second, for us in this Church dedicated to St. Mark, Who is St. Mark?

Our Patronal Festival is the occasion to think about what it means to be Mark’s people

Papias of Hierapolis, writing in the early 2nd century and quoted by Eusebius writing in the early fourth century, says that Mark “wrote down accurately whatever he remembered of the things said and done by the Lord, though not in order,” because he had not been an eyewitness himself but followed Peter.

Clement of Alexandria, also in the 2^nd century also says Mark wrote the Gospel at the request of Christians in Rome, who longed to preserve Peter’s teaching. St Jerome confirms this and adds that Mark’s Gospel was approved by Peter himself.

Mark was foundational in how the Church came to know, remember and transmit the Gospel message of Christ her Lord.

Mark’s Gospel is the shortest. The Gospel begins not with a birth but with a voice crying in the wilderness—and ends not with a grand summary, but with an empty tomb and trembling witnesses.

It’s been described as the Gospel of astonishment, movement, and divine interruption.

In the Acts of the Apostles, we meet a young man named John, also called Mark—a name that reflects his Jewish heritage (John) and his Roman context (Mark). His mother, Mary, owned a house in Jerusalem large enough for Christians to gather—possibly even the place of the Last Supper and the site of the first Christian “church.”

Mark’s first recorded missionary venture was with Paul and Barnabas, his cousin. They set out with great zeal, but something happened—perhaps fear, homesickness, or disillusionment—and Mark returned to Jerusalem prematurely (Acts 13:13).

When Barnabas later suggested taking Mark on a second journey, Paul refused, and the two apostles parted company (Acts 15:36–41).

Yet that is not the end of Mark’s story—it is, in many ways, the beginning.

Later in Paul’s letters, we see signs of reconciliation and restoration. In Colossians and Philemon, Mark is described as a fellow worker. In Paul’s final letter, 2 Timothy, he says, “Get Mark and bring him with you, for he is useful to me for ministry” (2 Tim. 4:11).

So much for who he was – who is this man?

The one who once abandoned the first and world-changing Apostolic mission of St Paul becomes once again a trusted companion.

Whatever brought about that reconciliation is not recorded, but it’s very significant. Apparently die-hard fallings out can be restored.

In a church dedicated to Mark, he is not only a historical figure or just a Gospel writer. He is our Patron, and his name and character shape something of who we are.

Through his Gospel—the first written account of Jesus’ life—he bears witness to the one who is the Son of God, the one who came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many (Mark 10:45). Mark’s Gospel is about decision. There are no birth narratives, no prolonged reflections. We are immediately confronted with Jesus: preaching, healing, casting out demons, and walking the road to the cross. Mark’s Jesus is always moving, always calling, always summoning us to follow him with matching immediacy.

Mark reminds us that Christianity is not a philosophy but a proclamation. It is news—good news. It must be shared. The whole idea of what a Gospel is come from how he wrote this narrative.

He shows us that failure does not disqualify, and that brokenness can become the seed-bed of grace. He left Paul and Barnabas and let them down. But he returned. And God used him.

Our usefulness to God is not measured by an unblemished record, but by persistence of faith and humility to begin again.

You might say he is the patron of those who have walked away—and come back.

Mark’s symbol, in the window, on the glass door and above the outer door in stone, and throughout the church is the winged lion. It’s one of the four creatures in Ezekiel chapter 1, who reappear in the Book of Revelation. Each get attributed by the early Fathers respectively to the four Evangelists.

Lions symbolize courage and royalty—fitting for a Gospel that begins with the roar of John the Baptist in the wilderness, and reveals Christ as the king who triumphs through suffering. The Lion often is depicted, not just as winged, but with his paw on the Gospel – we are people of the book, his book. The Venetians….

So—Who was St. Mark? He was a young man who failed and returned. A disciple of apostles. A missionary, evangelist, Gospel-writer, and martyr. A man shaped by the Word and used by the Spirit. And, quite possibly, the first to ever write down the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

And—Who is St. Mark? For us, he is a companion on the road of discipleship. He is a reminder that the Gospel is worth everything. He is an invitation to speak, to write, to live the good news of Jesus Christ with urgency, truth, and love.

May we, like St. Mark, hear the voice in the wilderness—and echo it. May we turn our past failings into future faithfulness. May we write the Gospel with our lives. And may the winged lion roar—not only from the pages of Scripture, but in the witness of this church, for generations to come. Amen.

 

 

Easter Day 2025 (1700^th Anniversary of Council of Nicaea)

The year is 1550.

For fans of Wolf Hall, we’re ten years on from the death of Thomas Cromwell, and three from Henry VIII.

There’s another season to be made, and here’s my pitch for the screenplay.

I want to explain something of the significance of 1550, connecting it with the Nicene Creed of 325 (the 1700^th anniversary of which we are keeping and have been studying) and Easter Day.

England had its first Brexit in 1534, Henry’s break with Rome.

A project, like many, even contemporary, political manoeuvres -indistinguishable from the instigating protagonist’s personality.

By 1550, Edward VI still a minor, under the influence of Protector Somerset, the Church of England was 16 years distant from Roman influence. In 1549 the first Prayer Book was published. And it was quickly followed in 1550 by a musical work entitled The Book of Common Prayer Noted.

The author was John Merbecke, organist of St George’s Windsor.

Noted means set to music.

Merbecke, by then well established in one of the great choral foundations with Royal patronage, had been trained, like all church musicians of his time, in plain-chant and polyphony. It seems from court records of 1543 he was associated with Protestant radicals, and he narrowly escaped serious sanction.

With the Reformation, and particularly, as it was evolving here, something was changing in how Church Music would ornament worship in England. From the floatiness of plainchant, and the complex intertwining of phrases you find in Latin polyphony, a principle was being established in the work Merbecke as he produced a type of English chant; harmony singing with one note to one word. In terms of how he had been trained this must have felt constraining.

Some would say this move would pioneer “a native song”, which would have a direct impact not just on Church music thereafter, but a secular song tradition, of madrigals and the work of Dowland and then Purcell.

Forgive this obscure musicological rabbit hole. I will get to the Easter bunny I promise you, he is somewhere down here. Let’s burrow a bit further.

Merbecke didn’t just change the musical weather in 1550. Sir John Hawkins, friend of Dr Johnson’s, and musical historian wrote in 1776 that Merkecke was “a man to whom Church Music has greater obligations than the world is sensible of…”

In other words, we owe this man a great deal.

Let me try to tell you what I think he does, in a just a few notes, that we shall sing together after this; and how this connects with Easter Day and the 1700^th anniversary of the Great Council of Nicaea, we are celebrating.

Personally, I find in Merbecke’s notation something which affects me physiologically each week.

I am no musicologist or musician. But each of us responds to music in particular ways. Certain tunes, move us even to tears, they touch the non-verbal parts of our brain, and tell stories in a matter of notes.

Merbecke’s setting of the Creed’s simple words and the third day he rose again [play the notes from the creed]

….I would suggest…is an extraordinary piece of innovative writing in 1550.

I am grateful to our own cappelmeister for giving me the technical vocabulary to explain:

A rising scale of four notes underpins the words ‘And the third day’, (the word ’third’ actually occurring on the third note of the scale).  As most of the notes in the setting move in steps or small intervals the sudden upward leap spanning four full notes to arrive on a high note for the word ‘rose’ is effective ‘word-painting’ and contrasts sharply with the more predictable scale-patterns to either side.

 

See if it does something to you, when we sing those words in a moment and scale those notes. That rising of our voices helps our hearts and minds to respond to and participate in the Good news that Christ is risen from the dead.

St Luke is our word-painter in today’s Gospel.

His are vivid colours. His Gospel is interesting because he offers a particular place to women. He is interested in people who are disadvantaged in different ways, and in the first century, the witness of women was legally disregarded.

Luke is determined that as the first witnesses of the resurrection, whether that evidence was admissible legally or not, far from being an idle tale what the women tell, does not just change the musical weather – it up-ends the world.

The tomb is empty and Christ is risen.

And it came to pass, as they were much perplexed thereabout, behold, two men stood by them in shining garments: And as they were afraid, and bowed down their faces to the earth, the Angels said unto them, Why seek ye the living among the dead? He is not here, but is risen: remember how he spake unto you when he was yet in Galilee, Saying, The Son of man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the third day rise again. And they remembered his words.

It is memory of those words – understanding of what was promised – that causes the women’s hearts AND OURS to soar; and the voice to sing and to span the rising scale of four notes and

know that Christ is risen from the dead. Alleluia Christ is Risen.

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in Thy sight oh Lord our strength and our Redeemer! Amen.

Dear Friends in Christ,
The whole Church in the East and West, regardless of denomination, is today placing the cross before our eyes. The cross which is the instrument of Christ’s saving and meritorious Passion, the throne of his glorification and the altar of his atoning sacrifice. The cross in which the believer receives victory and which passes before us as a banner, showing the way to triumph.

But allow me to present to you today a completely different perspective of what this cross means for us and what other mystery lies behind it.
The cross of Christ is the sign of the fulfillment of time. For there are two pieces of wood. A horizontal piece representing our earthly time, divided into past, present and future, and a vertical piece representing God’s eternal present. Yes, my friends, in the cross of Christ, intangible time has been fulfilled and it represents for us that something has been completely changed, because the tension between the visible and invisible worlds has been reconciled.

Why is the fulfilment of time important? Here on earth we are really only aware of one kind of timeline; the past. We know the past, with all its joys, gratitude and trials. The future exists merely in our imagination and plans, which are both hopeful and a little frightening. And there is this intangible thing we call the present. Inconceivable and incomprehensible, because as soon as I say the word present, it becomes the past, and even before I say the word, I’m not even at the end of the word, the beginning is already in the past at that moment. But in the divine sphere this intangible present is present forever. Hence the possibility of the eternal happiness we hope for can be described in the eternal present. It is not the understanding of the present that gives happiness, but the quality of our future eternal present.

I have explained this so much because it is inherent in today and in Christ’s passion that suffering is not only an earthly reality, but Christ’s descent into hell results in a depth of suffering. The Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar is not afraid to say what others had not dared to say before, that Christ was damned for human. This is necessary in order that the whole created world, all things visible and invisible, may share in redemption. Thus Christ’s descent means that he became part of every possible human situation by experiencing it. But hell cannot reign over him, so he is about to leave it. How could it reign over him, because he is the firstborn among the dead, as Paul refers in the first chapter of the letter tot he Colossians.

Human’s state beyond the earth is determined by his acceptance of Christ in the final moment, by whether he or she says yes to Christ at the judgment. For our life, whether consciously or unconsciously, is always a journey towards God. And at the moment of death we come very close to him, and in death, free from all earthly bondage, the soul can say yes to Christ or reject him in the full freedom of will and mind. After our decision, there are two possibilities.
This is the state of heaven, when the soul is completely one with God. It does not become God but it becomes inseparable from God. For this we are redeemed. This is the mystery of the Cross, the harmony of the united spheres. And the union of the soul with God.

The state of hell is the option two, which we don’t like to talk about and I know it is a hideous subject, is the negative making of the final decision, that is, that God is pushed away from the soul and Christ is seen as constantly moving away. Nothing can stand without the presence of God. So yes, in the eternal present, God is present in hell, but as an entity that is always preparing to leave it because it has no power over Him.

We have in our hands the free will to decide in favour of God, in favour of union with him even at the moment of personal encounter with Christ. That is why our hope and the hope of all people is for salvation, because we know from Scripture and from tradition that the state of hell exists, but we hope that it is empty.
My friends in Christ! Today is the day of the hopefull fulfillment of time. May we make our personal decision for Christ each day so that our salvation may also become a personal experience and awareness. Let us pray for those who have not received the gift of faith, that, if not at any other time, they may say yes to Christ at the latest, and so that the whole created world may be united with God in the eternal present. Cross you are our only hope and fulfillment. Amen.

Friends,

I’m here today at William’s request to do 2 things. The first is to speak about the Jewish festival of Passover- and this is the eve of day three of 7, running sunset to sunset- and the second is to allay some myths and point out some similarities between Judaism and Christianity, as they evolved.

So let’s start with the latter, but I promise you a taste of Passover at the end of the service as a sweetener for all this.

First, myth 1.

Christianity is the successor to Judaism. and therefore Judaism is what is described in the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament for Christians) and rabbinic Judaism up to the end of the first century CE, Common Era, which you’d call AD.

The truth is that both religions developed and changed and were, at various stages, heavily influenced by each other. Examples of that include my synagogue, the West London Synagogue in Marble Arch, which prides itself on its magnificent organ, definitely borrowed from Christianity, and its decorum, similarly. Meanwhile, and relevant to this evening, since the end of WW2, Christians have become more and more interested in their Jewish toots and many, especially evangelical Christians, have begun to hold their own Passover Seder, learning from Jewish friends.

But that is based on Myth 2,

that the Last Supper was a Passover Seder. That is, of course, highly unlikely, and these are some of the reasons:

First, the Last Supper took place in 33 CE, before the destruction of the Second Temple, by the Roman emperor Titus and his troops, in 70 to 71. You can see that victory on Titus’  Arch in Rome. Until that point, there was unlikely to be anything even remotely comparable to the Seder, as Passover and the other so called pilgrim festivals, Shavuot (Pentecost) and Sukkot (Tabernacles) would have been marked by a journey to the Temple in Jerusalem and the rituals carried out there, including a sacrifice of the Paschal lamb. The Seder is probably much later as we know it. The first written record of it we have is 9th century, the Seder Rav Amram, and is a much shorter version than what exists now.

The second reason the Last Supper is unlikely to be a Seder, apart from the practice not existing at the time, is that the Romans would almost certainly not have carried out the death penalty on a Jewish holiday. Festival days, the Jewish calendar in general, go sundown to sundown. If the Last Supper had been a Seder, the first night of the Festival of Passover, Pesach, then the next day would have been a festival and no work or normal activities such as courts or sentencing or the death penalty would have been carried out.

But that is not to say there are no connections between our two faiths at this time. Let me start with the obvious one. We have what is called a Seder plate on the table for Seder. It has on it various symbols which we use, eat or discuss for the  Passover Seder. Amongst these is a roasted egg. Easter has Easter eggs. In orthodox Christianity’s  traditions, the eggs are often painted or decorated. The egg is a shared symbol, probably predating both religions, a symbol of fertility in the spring. And, if you don’t believe me, there’s another symbolic food on the Seder plate, parsley or other spring herbs. During the course of the Seder, we dip this parsley into salt water and eat it, early on in the ritual. And the reason given is that the salt water is a symbol of the tears shed by the Israelites when they were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt. But the origin is clearly celebrating early spring growth, and the dipping is probably an early version of salad, herbs dressed in either salt water or vinegar.

Then there are more complicated parallels, and there’s one that is particularly significant for our purposes. On the Seder table, we have a ceremonial pile of three pieces of matzah. They are said to represent the three Patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, or the three tellings of the Exodus story contained in the Haggadah, the order of service. Early on in the proceedings, the middle of the 3 is broken into two parts, and one of those is either hidden by the leader of the Seder for the children to find, or, more commonly, the children plot to filch it and hide it and it is then ransomed by them and returned to the leader in exchange for some kind of reward. On one level this is a way of keeping the children amused during lengthy and probably boring to them proceedings. On another, that piece of matzah, unleavened bread, which is hidden,  is called the Afikoman. Now, everyone agrees that that word is Greek. But is it epikomios, entertainment, some form of dessert, which is often given as the explanation? Or is it, as the scholar David Daube thought, afikomenos, the one who comes, in other words symbolic of the coming of the Messiah? And in the Seder, once the afikoman is ransomed, it is broken into small pieces and everyone has a bit, and you can’t eat anything else afterwards. Is this symbolic of eating the Messiah? Does it fit with the Eucharist? Is this a really close link, if rarely acknowledged in Jewish communities, between our two faiths?

To further complicate things, there are various sections of the Haggadah where there are four parts to a story. There are four questions to be asked by the youngest person present. On one level, that’s to keep the children interested. But on another, the fourth question makes no sense. Were there originally 3 questions? Then there are four sons- in our egalitarian days now referred to as four children. The wise, the wicked, the simple, and the one who doesn’t know how to ask. Each of them comes from a rabbinic saying. The simple one says: What is this? And you tell them the story. The wicked one says: What does all this mean to YOU. To you, but not to him, and because he excludes himself from the community you tell the story as it is for US, but not for him. Had he been there, he would not have been saved. And then comes the wise one. He asks for an explanation, and the text goes on to say that you tell him EVERYTHING, and then the text is unclear. It’s either Hebrew, in which case it’s probably not telling him about the Afikoman, or, more likely , it’s Aramaic, een, definitely,  in which case it means something like: You shall CERTAINLY tell him everything, including about the Afikoman. Now, if the wise son is involved in what is exceptionally secret, theAfikoman, it could well be a messianic ritual, restricted to some particular ‘wise’ group, and may shed some light on the origins of the Eucharist …….

So were there originally 3 questions, and three sons? And three pieces of matzah but one broken to make them four? And were those changed into 4 in mediaeval Europe, as an anti trinitarian move? It would seem far fetched, except for the fact that there is a stage in the Seder order where the door is opened and we used to recite : Pour out your wrath on the nations who knew you not…..”…. Based on Psalm  79, probably written in despair at the destruction of the first Tenple. This section first appears in the 11th century Machzor Vitry, a French version. Probably just at the time of the first Crusade in 1095.. The crusades were terrible for European Jews living in France and Germany and all along the Rhine. They were killed and persecuted, and some of that is linked to the idea that one should kill the infidel here in Europe first, before proceeding to the Holy Land. But it was partly more specific, and linked to the Blood Libel. That, bizarrely, appears to have started in England. There’s William of Norwich in 1144, and little St Hugh of Lincoln in 1255. The antisemitic canard goes that Jews needed the blood of a Christian child for the baking of matzah for Passover. A child disappears. Hue and cry ensues. And the child is thought to have been stolen by the Jews…..

So whilst opening the door is ostensibly to welcome the prophet Elijah, precursor to the coming of the Messiah, and  is a welcoming symbol- let all who are hungry come and eat- it may originally have been instituted to show those outside that nothing nefarious is going on here, and is probably strongly linked to the appalling custom of beating the Jews during Easter week, particularly on Good Friday, when much was made of the ‘perfidious Jews’ in the liturgy. Often attacks on Jews in mediaeval Europe were led by the clergy, although the official church position was to protect the Jews and to require them to stay inside on Good Friday. This continued on and off and was only finally completely stopped after World War II, when the Roman Catholic church in particular realised how much some of these mediaeval attitudes had contributed to the Holocaust. But even just last year, in Spain, the people of Leon defended their ritual of ‘matar Judios’ killing the Jews, saying it was not antisemitic. Hard to justify given the name!

So what do we know about the expression in Leon, and indeed other Spanish cities…..? It refers these days to a form of lemonade which is red wine, lemonade, and sugar. People ask each other how many Jews they have killed, meaning how many lemonades they have drunk. I find that quite disturbing. The history is unclear, but probably dates back to attacks on the Jews in Holy Week, the view being that the Jews were guilty of the killing of Jesus, deicide, plus getting rid of them was a way of stopping having to repay the debts owed to Jewish moneylenders. Jews were not allowed other professions in mediaeval Christian Spain, and they were finally expelled from Spain in 1492….

So the history here is a mixture. Much is very disturbing and indeed sad. Yet underneath there are important links between us, as the origin of the Easter festival is the ‘sacrifice’ of the Paschal lamb, as in the original sacrifice in Temple times. We share eggs in common and spring celebrations, maybe a legacy of much earlier fertility festivals. And if David Daube is correct, there must have been early table fellowships amongst Jewish scholars, the sort of arrangement we know about from the Essenes and some Pharisaic traditions, where there was some Jewish custom of ‘eating’ a symbol of the Messiah.

But now many Jews have modernised their Seder. The Haggadah is in any case an anthology rather than a straightforward liturgy. So people are relaxed about adding things in. One common practice in progressive Judaism is to add an orange to the Seder plate. Why an orange, you may ask? To which the answer is why not? The ritual is attributed to Susannah Heschel, a professor at Dartmouth College, who included it to symbolise the inclusion of women and gay people in modern Jewish ritual. Urban myth has another story- that a man at a lecture by Heschel said a woman belongs on the bimah (the pulpit) like an orange on the Seder plate. And so an orange was put on the Seder plate!

At various Seders, we look to read something about those who are still captive, still held as slaves. Sometimes,  we look at the experiences of people escaping poverty and oppression, asylum seekers and refugees. This year, we will certainly be thinking about those still held hostage by Hamas in Gaza, but we’ll also be thinking, I hope, about the terrible suffering of civilians, women and children, in Gaza. We may well be thinking of Syrian Christians and Druze, ever fearful of their new government. And of people held captive the world over, on this festival of freedom.

Easter symbolises a form of spiritual redemption and freedom. Pesach, Passover, is more concerned with this world, these hungry people, those who are suffering. In our modern and liberal  Haggadah-, and people have been editing and compiling the Haggadah since at least the ninth century- we remember the suffering of those in Nazi concentration and extermination camps, AND those in the gulag. And we record the sufferings of all human beings at the hands of others. The story celebrates the journey of the Israelites from slavery to freedom, but the message is about the duty to help others gain that freedom, and to use that freedom for good.

The Seder ends with a series of songs, many of the Green grow the rushes O variety. They are mostly in Hebrew, but one, chad gadya, is in Aramaic , the language Jesus would have spoken, the lingua franca of much of the middle and Near East for hundreds of years. They recite the list of symbols, three patriarchs, four matriarchs, five books in the Torah, the five Books of Moses, Genesis to Deuteronomy, six orders of the Mishnah, the first collection of rabbinic laws dating to around 200 CE, and so on. And then we end with a great cry, Next year in Jerusalem, le- Shanah ha-ba’ah birushalaim. We add, in our liberal Haggadah, next year in a world redeemed!

Is that the literal Jerusalem, dating back to mediaeval scholars who journeyed from Moorish Spain to Jerusalem? A lengthy and often hazardous journey. We hear it in Judah Halevi’s poem, My heart is in the east…. Late twelfth century.

Or is it, was it, the celestial Jerusalem, the messianic age, and once again reminiscent of Christianity, and the spiritual liberation of Easter?

I do not know. But I want to leave you with one thought. Despite the difficulties Jewish communities experienced in Europe at this season over many centuries, there is much in common here, even if we don’t always see it or understand it. Far more binds us together than separates us, and in that spirit, as Easter approaches, let us celebrate together what physical freedom means, and what spiritual freedom means, and share the concept of freedom from want and freedom from hunger and oppression. Let all who are hungry come and eat…..

May this be God’s will, and let us say Amen….

And now a reward for listening to all that. I couldn’t bring everything. But here’s a Seder plate, and here’s parsley and salt water, matzah, and charoset.

I’ve explained the parsley and salt water…. Symbolising the tears shed by the Israelites as slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt.

The matzah is unleavened bread, and, in my view, disgusting. And distinctly indigestible. It is eaten to commemorate the fact that the Israelites did not have enough time when fleeing Egypt for their dough to rise. It’s baked without yeast, and, to make absolutely sure it doesn’t rise, it’s baked, ground up again, and baked again, traditionally for 18 minutes to symbolise the Hebrew letters chet and yod, spelling chai, life, and adding up to 18.

And then there’s charoset, which my husband has made specially for you. In our version, it’s apples, nuts, sherry and lemon, a kind of apple pie filling crossed with mincemeat. Indian Jews make it with dates, as do Iraqi Jews. Everyone has their own slightly different recipe, passed down the generations. It is supposed to symbolise the mortar used by the Israelites building the storehouses for Pharaoh, but in fact it does 2 other things. First, it takes away the sharp taste of the raw horseradish that we eat, maror, to symbolise the bitter suffering of the Israelite slaves in Egypt. And, second, there may be a complicated tradition which we don’t quite understand, of combining matzah, manor- horseradish-,and charoset- back to 3s again. To symbolise quite WHAT we don’t know. But we are told it’s the first sandwich. This is what Hillel, one of the greatest first century teachers, used to do.

Please come and try.

May I speak in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

The theme of my sermon today is compassion. Compassion is very much a feature of Luke’s Gospel and is particularly evident in today’s Gospel reading.

I would say that compassion is pity, inclining one to be helpful or merciful.

In today’s Gospel reading we are given in the words of Jesus two viewpoints that generate compassion. The first is not to suppose that you are less of a sinner than a wrongdoer is.  The Galileans, whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices are, Jesus says, not worse sinners than all other Galileans.  Nor are the eighteen people, who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them, worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem.  Jesus warns his Disciples that they need also to repent, or they too will perish. The second viewpoint is not to rush to condemn but to have enough patience to allow for the wrongdoer to have a second chance.  By means of a parable, the Parable of the Barren Fig Tree, Jesus calls upon a gardener to avoid cutting down a barren fig tree until a year has passed and he has given it fresh soil which will give it another chance to flourish.  Only if that fails can it then be cut down.

The question I ask myself is how does this call to repent square with the unconditional love of God for us all.  I believe that ultimately there are no limits to God’s love for us but in the short term we are required to be aware of our sinful state and repent of our shortcomings to God.

This requirement to repent, as today’s Gospel reading makes clear, is asked of us all or we will perish.  We know that there is a ‘wideness in God’s mercy that is wider than the sea’ but particularly in this time of Lent we call upon God to ‘forgive us miserable sinners’. We do this because we wish to communicate to God our recognition that we are sinful and need his mercy as we do not wish to fall away from him and we are mindful as Christians of the pattern in the Bible of wrongdoing and punishment.

We find this pattern at the very beginning of the Old Testament.  When Adam and Eve fall, having disobeyed God’s will, the outcome is their being ‘cursed among animals, enmity and the pain of childbirth.  This first sin had a massive negative impact on them and their descendants and today we too suffer much of what they were condemned to suffer.  Again, in Genesis, the corruption and violence on earth prompted God to destroy a multitude of peoples in a flood.  Only one man and his family and animals are saved. God’s covenant of everlasting love is kept in place in his saving of Noah.  Noah was a righteous man who ‘walked with God’ and was saved in an Ark, together with his family and animals, but all else are destroyed and the flood waters cover the earth.

The call to repentance and warning of what will happen to the unrepentant runs on into the New Testament and even Luke whose Gospel is full of compassion to all, the lost and the sinner, cannot leave out the word ‘repent’.  In Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, he warns them not to fall away from God as they may be struck down.  They must repent or perish.

The compassion of God, then, that we find throughout the Bible, is there on the understanding that his mercy will depend upon repentance. What I believe demonstrates the unconditional love of God is the death of Jesus on the Cross.  As people have failed to heed the countless warnings to repent, God puts his only Son on the Cross to save us all.  My thinking here is that as Jesus fell under the weight of the Cross on his final journey to be crucified, this marks a rectification of the fall of Adam and Eve and his death and resurrection allow us to be saved even though there has not been universal repentance.  Even so, until the kingdom comes, as promised by the death on the Cross, we need to continue to seek God’s mercy and forgiveness. We need to do so because although we have the bigger picture of eternal salvation until the kingdom comes we are caught up in earthly situations that involve crime and punishment, misguided actions and disputes all of which may take us away from God rather than, as Noah did, staying with God.

In today’s world, with all its troubles, the call for God’s mercy does need to be a strong one.  We are in a rather hard-edged world filled with uncertainty about the future but in this time of Lent, we can, and I quote from a Commentary on Luke: ‘open our eyes and look at the world around us and our place within it with a renewed generosity of heart’.  Add to this an encouragement this Commentary provide from a verse of the hymn ‘There’s a wideness in his mercy’ which reads:

‘For the love of God is broader

than the measures of man’s mind,

and the heart of the Eternal

is most wonderfully kind’.

So let us take heart at this time and move forward, no matter what obstacles are there to be overcome, in the sure knowledge of the unconditional love of God for us all.

 

AMEN

 

 

May I speak in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
Good morning. I greet you today with a cheerful welcome and two
extracts from today’s reading and gospel.
From Jeremiah:
I the LORD search the heart, I try the reins, even to give every man
according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings.
From Luke
And the whole multitude sought to touch him: for there went virtue out
of him and healed them all.

There you have it, people of St. Mark’s, in two short verses, one from
the Old Testament and one from the New, how the arrival of the
upside-down kingdom of Jesus Christ changed forever our
relationship with God, ourselves, and each other.

Jeremiah’s Lord Almighty oversees his people and tests them to
know them. (Job is an extreme example). Luke’s incarnate Lord
attracts multitudes longing to touch him. Jeremiah’s Lord judges
first, then bestows grace or waste based on his findings. Yet never
are matters purely bleak–for his people Israel the future holds
fulfilment of his covenant with its restoration and triumph even as
tribulation, war, and exile fill its chronicles. Luke’s Lord radiates to
all people his healing power first and deferring his necessary
judgment until later. From the moment we come to him in faith and
repentance, seeking his forgiveness of sin, he keeps us as his own.
This is a big message to deliver, one so revolutionary it did then and
may now reorder the world, and certainly transform the lives of those
who hear him. This is the message Jesus voices in the sermon on the
plain, the full ‘who, what, when, where and why’ of moving to a Godcentred
life.

Recall that Luke’s stated intention is to record “those things that may
most surely be believed”, gathering reports from eyewitnesses and
ministers of the word,and interviewing key characters and their
successors. He tells us that at the outset of Jesus’ ministry, in a short
number of weeks since his baptism and parlay with Satan in the
wilderness, he begins to gather followers, turns water into wine at
Cana, preaches his first sermon with dramatic effect in Nazareth,
performs miracles of healing wheresoever he goes, even on the
Sabbath. The gospel writer sets out certain remarkable events within a
cosmic cascade leading from Bethlehem to Calvary, the empty tomb,
and institution of the Kingdom on earth.

In scripture, the plain or level place often symbolises a place of
judgment, disgrace, privation and death, although two of the prophets,
Isaiah and Ezekiel, add the hopeful belief that God can bring life from
death even in such hopeless places. Geographically, we meet today
on a plain in lower Galilee, most likely on a level between the
geological landmark called the Horns of Hattin, an extinct volcano with
two peaks…and spiritually, within the spiral of our life of shared
worship, on the Sunday of Septuagesima.

Historian Andrew Hughes in his definitive Medieval Manuscripts for
Mass and Office explains its Latin name: “Septuagesima Sunday is so
called because it falls within seventy days but more than sixty days
before Easter”. More fun with liturgical numbers is available: today is
the ninth Sunday before Easter and the third before Ash Wednesday; it
is also the day one may officially launch if not observe the first day of
a forty-day Lenten fast (that would start tomorrow) if the practice of
excluding such penitence on Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays is
factored in. This stretches the observance over a 70-ish day period.
There is a rationale as Hughes notes: “for as the Jews were obliged to
do penance seventy years, that they might thereby merit to return into
the promised land, so Christians sought to regain the grace of God by
fasting for seventy days.” Observe the intrusion of judgment over
grace by the liturgical fathers at the end of this comment. As we read
in Jesus’ sermon for today, grace is the new given although the process
of realising it is freely on offer requires its own process of selfexamination,
repentance, and intention.

At St Mark’s we include the venerable Roman rite of the three Gesima
Sundays in our liturgical year as our meeting place on the plain, a pause
to hear again the Word of God and give thanks for his mercy and our
salvation, a time to pack our Lenten knapsacks with the faith essentials
needed for the journey through Holy Week. They are, as are the
Sundays of Lent, “little Easters”, times of respite, joy, and gratitude.
For we have seen the fulfilment of God’s promises to us and of the light
of our salvation in an infant. Like Zechariah. Like Simeon. We have
been raised up by God’s answer to prayer and presence in our life. Like
Elizabeth and Virgin Mary. We have marvelled as those from afar
acknowledged Israel’s anointed king. Like the Wise Ones from the
East. We have rejoiced in the presence of the living triune God as his
son is baptised in Jordan’s rivers. Like John the Baptist. We have
celebrated the wedding feast of the divine bridegroom and his beloved
church on earth with miraculous wine freely given. Like Mother Mary
and Jesus of Nazareth, Son of God and Son of Man.

Now Jesus, after spending a night in solitary prayer with his Father,
commissions 12 apostles from amongst his many disciples. Note the
leaders-in-training of his inner circle match in number the tribes of
Israel formed by the old covenant, literally constituting a new nation at
the outset of his mission. Down the mountain slopes they come to the
plain, on a level, in the middle of the foundational stage of kingdom
mission, the saviour and Christ of God amidst a heaving multitude from
near and far, no longer a strictly local crowd but Jews of Jerusalem,
Judah and Galilee together with Gentiles. They pursue the next big
thing – the words, the healing, the contact with someone and something
significant perhaps wonderful, and – dare I say it–number 1 on recent
electoral placards from around the globe –a CHANGE?

Fortunately, the person they and we expect to deliver said change is
fully divine as well as fully human, the only being in time qualified as
the embodiment of radical, righteous change. He is not the go-to chap
for you if you are satisfied by current circumstances. He is the one you
want meet on the level and learn of a new life on offer from one who
both knows you AND still loves you.

The gospel portion today is the first section of the sermon, 6 verses
that set out 4 blessings followed by 4 woes in the tradition of
prophetic oracles as a revelation from God. Each blessing has a
correlative woe. Poverty is paired with richness. Hunger with
fullness. Tears with sorrow. Being outcast with being in favour. So
far, so logical. Their content, though, is more metaphysical, leading
with “Blessed be ye poor: for yours is the kingdom of God”. This
returns us to my opening comments, when I suggest the arrival of the
upside-down kingdom of Jesus Christ changes forever our
relationship with God, ourselves, and each other, a message
expressed within the sermon on the plain.

We do not need a great height to see our true nature. We need our
Lord Jesus Christ amongst us to remind us we are blessed and loved,
precious and known in God’s sight. We may be full of sin and
shortcomings that make us unholy in God’s righteous eyes, yet his
divine plan calls for the sacrifice by his Son and the ever-present
grace of the Holy Spirit, an unfathomable living God to deliver his
will to our fallen world for our salvation.

This sermon is a list of rules…for we need forgiving. Not
condemnation…for we need healing. We are blessed not because we
are special or fortunate or happy. We are blessed because he are his.
However, salvation is not a state of being but a way of life.

I have been humbled by reading the reflections of Elias Chacour, a
Palestinian Christian:
“Knowing Aramaic, the language of Jesus, has greatly enriched my
understanding of Jesus’ teachings. Because the Bible as we know it is
a translation of a translation, we sometimes get a wrong impression.
For example, we are used to hearing the Beatitudes expressed
passively: “Blessed” is the translation of the word MAKARIOI, used
in the Greek New Testament. However, when I look further back to
Jesus’ Aramaic, I find that the original word was ASHRAY, from the
verb YASHAR. ASHRAY does not have this passive quality to it at
all. Instead, it means “to set yourself on the right way for the right goal;
to turn around, repent; to become straight or righteous.”

To me this reflects Jesus’ words and teachings much more accurately.
I can hear him saying, “Get your hands dirty to build a human society
for human beings; otherwise, others will torture and murder the poor,
the voiceless, and the powerless.”

Christianity is not passive but active, creative and energetic, the only
antidote to anxiety and despair.

Why else would Jesus close the scriptures before verse 2 of Isaiah 61:2
was completed as he preached what T. L. Wright dubs “the Nazareth
Manifesto”? “To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord” was where
he ended his reading when the phrase ends …”and the day of vengeance
of our God”. Then the verse concludes with cold comfort for mourners!
Why? Because that is not the end for us. Jesus read Isaiah’s call to
“preach good tidings to the meek” as he studied Torah… heard his
mother’s joyful words in the womb “He hath filled the hungry with
good things; and the rich he hath sent empty away”; dozed to a lullaby
by angelic hosts praising God on high and blessing earth with peace
and good will.

We are blessed through him and by him for the glory of God.
This is the metaphysical state of blessing – to understand that despite
outward appearances, unfavourable or indeed, favourable, for God does
not wish misfortune upon his children nor does he engineer it – you are
saved. Thank God you do not have to settle for the things of the world,
that wealth and gratification, pleasure and popularity, power and
exclusive reliance on human capability results only in sin and death.
But every child of God is invited to his receive his spiritual healing, to
live day to day as part of his body on earth. A citizen of the Kingdom
now. And a permanent resident of the Kingdom to come. AMEN.

May I speak in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

If we look at the passages in Mark’s Gospel that precede today’s Gospel reading, we can see that there were many questions that were being put to Jesus by the chief priests, the scribes and the elders as he walked in the Temple in Jerusalem.  They were doing all they could to bring him down by means of questioning.  Questions that aimed to undermine his authority and were fired at him, one after the other.  They do not comprehend his answers and do not wish to be talked against but they are frightened of how the crowd might respond and so walk away.

In his ‘Expository Thoughts on the Gospel of Mark’, John Ryle writes that these questions are valuable to us because in reading the answers that Jesus gives, we learn something of Jesus himself.  We learn that he is the cornerstone that the builders rejected.  We are also given a glimpse of God’s ways.  Earthly rules must be adhered to as well as giving to God what belongs to him.  Regarding questions on the Resurrection, Jesus answers that as the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, God is the God not of the dead but of the living.

All this, though, baffles and fails to please the priests, scribes and elders.  Fails to please them all bar one. One scribe believes that Jesus has given good answers.  However, to satisfy himself further he feels prompted to ask the great question: ‘which commandment is the first of all?’  We know from today’s Gospel reading that the resounding answer Jesus gives is to love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength.  That is the Great Commandment. He follows this up with the second commandment to love your neighbour as yourself.  The scribe understands this well as he appreciates that love is more important than burnt offerings and sacrifices to God.

Does this mean therefore that offerings and sacrifices laid down in the Old Testament are ruled out by the New Testament?  According to Jerome’s Biblical Commentary it is not quite clear from the Great Commandment whether this meant a rejection of certain rituals that were part of Jewish law.  We might take a cue here from Matthew’s Gospel. Matthew writes that Jesus added the words:

‘on these commandments hang all the law and the prophets’. As Jerome’s Commentary puts it: ‘the laws flow from the love of God and Jesus sees the law as a unified whole’.  This unity can be found in the Old Testament, in Deuteronomy, where there is a call to the Israelites to obey God’s ten commandments and this is followed by the Great Commandment to love God with heart, soul and might. According to the author of Psalm 119, you are ‘happy if you obey God’s law’.

I would conclude from this that while nothing matters more than love, this does not mean that we ignore our earthly duties that flow from it.  As St Paul wrote in his letter to the Romans, we are justified by faith, but we are to be subject to governing authorities because the authorities have been instituted by God.

To love God with your heart, soul, mind and strength does not necessarily mean that you are not going to suffer. We know from history that there have been martyrs who have been prepared to die for their faith in a horrible way, showing utter loyalty to God.  The Great Commandment requires loyalty in bad times as well as good.  As David Pawson writes in his Commentary on the Gospel of John, Jesus is himself loyal to his Disciples.  He does not write them off even though after three years they have still not learnt. To bring this loyalty into today’s world, Pawson refers to the marriage vow.  It is not ‘when I feel like it’ but ‘I will’.

Our journey, then, to the Kingdom of God is not without some rough terrain.  We may sometimes feel that he is far from us when we are in pain and despair but if we adhere to the Great Commandment and the second commandment, even when times are hard, then we have the assurance that Jesus gives to the scribe that we, too, are not far from the Kingdom of God.  As Tom Wright expresses it in his book ‘Simply Christian’, God’s love for the world calls for an answering love from us’.

It is not always easy to answer the call.  There are hostilities, distractions and rejections that block our path to the Kingdom of God.  There are sorrows and losses, disappointments and anxieties.  These are the product of fear and it is fear that sends the unbelieving scribes, priest and elders away from Jesus. So we need to try not to let fear rule our hearts but be ruled by the unconditional love of God who loved us so much that he gave his only Son Jesus to die on the Cross for us.

One person who understood what that unconditional love meant was the Minister and activist, Martin Luther King, who was assassinated in Memphis in 1968.  According to the reflection on his philosophy by Alexandra Drakeford, he spoke of this love as the love of God working in the minds of men.  Drakeford writes that what made him so extraordinary and committed to love was his ability to humble his mind and open his heart to God’s standard of love. This, despite the hatred he received. So, she writes, we need also to humble ourselves before God and to humble ourselves because of his glory not because of our feelings.  We need to embrace the humility before God that Dr King did and love one another the way God loves us.

 

AMEN

Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows:  yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities. For 2,000 years Christians have seen in those words, and in that whole passage of the Hebrew prophecy of Isaiah, the redeeming work for humanity of Jesus Christ, who said of himself – as we heard in the Gospel – the Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many.

The appropriation by the Church of Hebrew texts such as that of our first reading today, and the Christian interpretation given to them, often draws criticism.  Clearly, written hundreds of years before his birth as it was, this passage from Isaiah was not intentionally about Jesus of Nazareth. It dates from a period in which the Israelites were beginning finally to return to Jerusalem after a period of exile and captivity. So the first hearers of this prophecy might have seen themselves as having been ‘cut off out of the land of the living’ and ‘stricken’. And yet this lofty poem – one of four ‘servant songs’ in Isaiah – refuses any conclusive identification of just who its so-called ‘righteous servant’ really is. Yet for Christians, this ‘servant song’ fits beautifully with the saving life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Very quickly the early church recognised this ‘servant’ as Jesus, who in his Passion was ‘despised and rejected by men’, silent before his accusers and condemned unjustly to death.

So in the light of this mature Christian understanding of Christ as the Servant King, we may wonder just how the sons of Zebedee – James and John – could get it so wrong? How could they ask Jesus to grant them ‘whatsoever they’ should ‘desire’, and when asked by him what they would have him do, to blurt out Grant unto us that we may sit, one on thy right hand, and the other on thy left hand, in thy glory? It’s easy for us to see these two brothers as naïve and self-centred, and even to enjoy a frisson of spiritual superiority, convinced that we would never seek after anything so crass! But a consideration of the circumstances that all the disciples were in at this time might moderate our judgement. Firstly, at this point in the Gospel, Jesus’ ministry was in the ascent, with his charismatic teaching, his dramatic healings and exorcisms. The disciples were already basking in his reflected glory, and it must have seemed that his success and popularity could only increase without limit. Intoxicated by this meteoric rise they were all deaf to Jesus’ quiet repeated insistence that eventually he would be arrested and killed before rising again. Ironically, in the verses immediately before this scene in Mark, Jesus has again been telling of the things that would happen to him, before these brothers makes their request. The reaction of the other ten to their request – of competitive outrage – is not much more commendable; indeed, in the previous chapter, Jesus has had to intervene when all the disciples have been arguing with each other as to which of them was ‘the greatest’.

There’s also the possibility that Jesus himself might be seen to have triggered such a presumptuous desire in James and John to sit on his right and left hand. In certain episodes of the Gospel these two were selected out of the larger group by him, along with Simon Peter, to be privy to key moments – one of these being the experience of the Transfiguration recounted, again, in the previous chapter of Mark, when at the top of a high mountain Jesus’ ‘raiment became shining’ before them, and ‘exceeding white’.

Maybe Jesus recognised in Peter, James and John a particular appetite and zeal for the divine truth and reality he wished to share with them – things that they could not, however, process all at once. In jostling for position as all the disciples did – despite living in the presence, and learning at the feet of Jesus himself, they were playing the world’s game and revealing a human streak known to us all. Jesus alludes to this powerfully in his lesson to them at the end. When he says ‘Ye know that they which are accounted to rule over the Gentiles [literally, those who ‘seem’ to rule…] exercise lordship over them’ he’s  setting up the starkest contrast between worldly ways and the values of his kingdom: But so shall it not be among you: but whosoever will be great among you, shall be your minister: ⁴⁴And whosoever of you will be the chiefest, shall be servant  of all.

 The early Church father John Chrysostom remarks that in the way he couches his question to these brothers – can ye drink of the cup that I drink of? and be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with? – Jesus is appealing to their natural desire to be one with him. When they answer ‘we can’ he promises them that they will in fact do both. James was indeed to be one of the earliest Christian martyrs.

In the light of Jesus’ teaching we will not want to ask of him what James and John did, but to pray that we may be one with him. To that end, the prayer of St Richard of Chichester might be appropriate: ‘Thanks be to thee, my Lord Jesus Christ, for all the benefits thou hast given me, for all the pains and insults thou hast borne for me. O most merciful redeemer, friend and brother, may I know thee more clearly, love thee more dearly, and follow thee more nearly, day by day’.   Amen.

 

 

 

May I speak in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

In 1832, Thomas Arnold, educator and historian, wrote the following words:

‘the church as it now stands, no human power can save’.  In 2009, this pessimistic view was echoed by the then Bishop of Winchester, Michael Scott-Joynt, when he expressed doubt about the Church of England in the future.  Doubt owing to a whole list of concerns such as Disestablishment, the secularisation of political and public life and financial pressures, to name but a few.

Concerns such as these are still with us today and raise the question of whether the church can survive in the future.

I will attempt to respond to this question and begin my attempt by looking at today’s Gospel reading.  The Church of England seeks to have a Christian presence in every community but this reading from John’s Gospel does not give much significance to place of worship as a focal point for this presence.  Although it is set in the Temple at the time of its re-dedication, as Fergus King writes in his Guide to John’s Gospel, ‘Jesus is there as a sign of the presence of God superior to the Temple’.  Nor does Jesus refer to the Temple at any time. This, in spite of the fact that he is walking in the portico of Solomon the Temple builder.  The Jews cannot comprehend this, as for them if Jesus is the Messiah then surely, as Tom Wright expresses it in his book ‘Simply Christian’, this must mean that he will take the lead in rebuilding, cleansing and restoring the Temple.  What they are looking for is a Messiah who will free them from their enemies who have assaulted the Temple and re-establish the monarchy of David and Solomon.  What they fail to comprehend is that Jesus is not with them for such purposes but to save us from our sins.  He is there as the Good Shepherd of the sheep and as they have not believed in him they do not belong to his sheep.  They will not, therefore, be offered eternal life.

It appears then, from this Gospel text, that however many times the physical place of worship is broken down and built up again, as was the case with the Temple, this does not signify in the end as we are the sheep in God’s fold and no one can snatch us away from God.  As we find in the first letter of Peter, we are ‘living stones built in a spiritual house’ and Jesus is the stone that was rejected but is now the head of the corner.

You could conclude from these readings that we should not be overly concerned about the demise of places of worship as we have the promise of salvation and eternal life that is not dependent upon the buildings in which we praise God.

This may be so, but if we are talking about survival of the Church of England, I believe that until heaven and earth pass away and the kingdom comes, there is much value in the retention of our church buildings as places where in our worship we affirm this promise of the kingdom to come and give thanks to God for all he provides for us.  Where we participate in our Communion in the giving and receiving of the Body and Blood of Christ, given to us to save us from our sins.

Beyond that worship, there is so much that the church does to help those both within and without its walls.  On this Dedication Festival Day, when we celebrate the dedication of our church 67 years ago, I take this opportunity to affirm what we, and no doubt many other churches throughout the land, do to help create a better world.  We are there for the sick and the needy, we are there as the listening ear for concerns, we are there for each other in good times and bad and we are there for baptisms, weddings and funerals.  We are here in outreach to the community and in lending money for projects overseas.  We are there as a focal point for those who live alone and may not have any family to turn to. We are also there as a venue for performers to rehearse and perform their works.

My conclusion from this list of attributes is that to encourage the survival of the Church of England in the 21^st century and beyond we need to focus more on these attributes and celebrate them and not allow them to be diminished by talk of any split in the Anglican Communion or secular values.  We need to stand firm in faith in what is now a more secular world and uphold the value of the parish system in all its good works and ensure that this system is financed sufficiently in the years ahead.  We need also to encourage children and young people to be part of this Christian community.

We can also remind ourselves, on this our Dedication Day, of the words in our church porch which read: ‘This is none other than the House of God’.

So happy birthday St Mark’s and may you flourish in the years ahead.

 

AMEN

 

 

 

 

 

May I speak in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

In today’s Gospel reading we learn that the Jews are disputing amongst themselves that which Jesus has told them about who he is.  In the verses that lead into today’s reading, Jesus has revealed himself to them as one sent by God and whoever believes in him will have eternal life.  He is the bread of life and the bread that he will give for the life of the world is his flesh.  He tells them that if they do not eat his flesh and drink his blood they will not be granted eternal life.

In the opening sentence of today’s Gospel reading, Jesus continues to provide his hearers with what it means to share in his body and blood. It means that he will abide in them and they in him.  As given in John chapter 15, as a branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can they unless they abide in him.  If they do not abide in him then they may, as Jerome said in the fourth century, be condemned to what he described as ‘the huge winepress of hell’.  Jesus contrasts the bread of life with the manna eaten by the ancestors of the Jews who then died. Contrast because the bread he talks of is of spiritual significance.  Bread itself is earthly but when Jesus offers it as his flesh it acquires a spiritual dimension.  It is then both earthly and heavenly.

Here we see that the spirit and the earth both feature in John’s Gospel, in contrast to the more down-to-earth narratives given to us by Matthew, Mark and Luke.  The spirit, though, is given pride of place over the earthly.  As Jesus says in today’s reading: ‘It is the spirit that gives life; the flesh is useless’.  We find this also asserted by Paul in his letter to the Ephesians.  He writes that the struggle we have is not against enemies of blood and flesh but against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.  We must put on ‘the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God’.

The Word is very much at the heart of John’s Gospel.  His Gospel opens with the Word becoming flesh.  As he writes: ‘In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God’. ‘In the beginning’ gives God to us as the Creator and what came into being was life that was the light of all people.  A light that the darkness could not overcome.  The Word became flesh in Jesus as the Son of God and it is that flesh that Jesus is offering in today’s Gospel reading.

It is an offering that his disciples are finding difficult to understand.  In their non-comprehension they are finding what he says offensive.  Jesus foreknows that some of them would not believe him and that Judas will betray him.  As several of his disciples turn away from him, only Simon Peter makes a clear declaration of Jesus as ‘the Holy One of God’.  He knows that Jesus has ‘the Words of Eternal Life’.

In the walking away of the disciples we have a continuation of the disbelief of the Jews who could not accept Jesus, the son of Joseph, as one who has come down from heaven.  The disciples also find the Words of Eternal Life too much to take on board and to fully comprehend.  It is perhaps easier for us today to comprehend because we know what the disciples did not then know, that this discourse is a prelude to the Last Supper, the Crucifixion and the Resurrection.  It is only when we get to John chapter 16 that we know the disciples have finally grasped who Jesus is as he has spoken to them plainly, ‘not in any figure of speech’.  He says that he has come from the Father and come into the world and will leave the world and go to the Father.

What John’s Gospel reveals to me is the power of words.  If what someone says is misunderstood it can have negative consequences.  If words that speak to the truth are understood then the consequences can be hugely beneficial.  The benefit to humanity of believing the Words of Eternal Life are monumental.  Salvation, eternal life and union with God.  On the negative side, words may not break your bones but they can be used by a person to destroy another by ridicule, mockery and insult.  What protects those who believe in God is the knowledge that they have the ability in faith to do what St Paul advises us to do, which is to put on the whole armour of God so that we can stand firm in the face of evil.

We also have the knowledge given to us by John’s Gospel that Jesus is the True Vine, the Bread of Life and the light of the world.  With that in mind, if Jesus is for us, who can be against us?

 

AMEN

 

 

 

 

 

When I read through today’s Gospel reading to prepare for my sermon today, the word that came to mind was ‘compassion’.  That word leapt out at me as I read how Jesus invites his disciples to come away and rest after all they have done and taught.  He is mindful of their human need to pause in their labours and shows a sensitivity to their needs.  When the crowd gather on the shore around Jesus and his disciples he has compassion for them, likening them to sheep without a shepherd.  This episode is leading towards Jesus feeding the multitude with loaves and fishes, aware that they must be hungry as it had grown late.  Today’s Gospel reading concludes with Jesus responding to the cry of the people to heal their sick by healing all those who touched the fringe of his cloak.  This demonstrates the compassion of the people themselves for the sick.

The imagery used to show compassion in action is that of the shepherd and the sheep, which we can find in the Old Testament as well as the New. We know from the Old Testament that compassion is indeed a command from God on high.  In the Book of Jeremiah, chapter 23, there is a warning from God: “woe to those who have scattered my sheep.  I will bring them into the fold and raise up shepherds to look after them”.

What compassion does is that it reduces the fear of those that receive it. We can find an example of this in Psalm 23.  The Psalmist knows that the Lord is his shepherd who leads him to rest and restore his soul.  Knowing God is with him he fears no evil, even when in the darkest valley.

This compassion, described by J. C. Ryle in his Commentary on Mark as the ‘tender consideration’ of Jesus given to his disciples, though using the earthly description of shepherd and sheep, is spiritual.  The Psalmist reminds us that if we are spiritually aware of God as our Good Shepherd then we have nothing to fear.  It means trusting in the knowledge of the love of God and his son Jesus and the activity of the Holy Spirit.  Ryle reminds us that this love of God for us includes love for the chief of sinners.  He writes that:

‘It is a poor theology which teaches that Christ cares for none except believers’. Jesus pities them and cares for their souls and is willing to save them, inviting them to believe and be saved.

What, though, about us today?  Are we fully aware of God as our Good Shepherd and are we compassionate in having empathy for the concerns of others?  Do we have a constant desire to heal the sick and feed the hungry?

I believe that we do our best but none of us is perfect.  I, for one, am not always in the giving vain.  Sometimes I am too preoccupied with daily tasks to give to the poor crouched on the street calling for money.  We do what we can when we can but I believe that there is one aspect of our modern world that can dim the light bulb of compassion within us.

This aspect is technology.  In a world that is governed to an ever increasing extent by digital communication, this can threaten the riches to be found in face to face communication that calls upon us to share our thoughts and concerns directly and to understand one another beyond a superficial level.

If we have a level of understanding and sympathy that goes deeper than this superficial one then we can help each other better when times are hard and value our relationships in such a way that technology cannot readily provide.  Technology can help us to keep up to date with each other when we are far apart and share concerns and maybe provide some answers.  It can be a very useful tool in providing information on a whole range of subjects, academic, legal, medical and so on.  Technology in space may help identify areas of our world that need attention and it can be very useful in finding somewhere on the map, but for the journey of our lives I believe that we must be a bit wary of it. Wary of it withdrawing us from a full sense of our humanity in all its complexities by the constant staring at screens rather than being with each other in reality.  In the place of compassion comes fake news, comments and sound bites and instant judgement upon one another that can be endlessly critical, instead of what St Paul asks us to do, which is to build each other up in the body of Christ.  That requires us to be tolerant and forgiving, as Christ forgave us.  As he calls out upon the Cross: ‘Forgive them Lord, for they know not what they do’.

So for our sakes, and the sake of new generations to come who are reared in the computer age, we need somehow to retain as much as possible direct communication with each other, not just by means of virtual reality. I am particularly mindful of this at a time when so many people are suffering from mental health troubles.  Reality means coming face to face with the thorny knots of life and engaging with them.  That way the knots have a better chance of being undone than I think virtual reality can cope with.

To engage with reality is to keep the lightbulb of compassion undimmed and we have a better chance of living in a world governed by hope and understanding rather than fear and condemnation of each other.  That is surely the world God wants for us.

 

AMEN

 

AMEN

The theme of my sermon today is what is meant by being set apart.

In today’s Gospel reading we learn that by the Sea of Galilee Jesus

invites his disciples to leave the crowd behind and go with him into a boat.

The disciples are being set apart from the multitude.  In this instance to

be set apart meant to undergo a test of faith.

 

While Jesus is asleep in the stern of the boat a great gale arises and the waves

beat into the boat, swamping it.  Convinced that they are perishing, the

disciples wake him up with the words: ‘Teacher, do you not care that we

are perishing?’  Jesus wakes up and rebukes the wind and pacifies the sea.

He then rebukes the disciples, saying that their fear means that they still have

no faith.  They have failed the test.

 

This accusation by Jesus stands in stark contrast to his own behaviour in the

boat. As Jerome’s Biblical Commentary expresses it, the ability of Jesus to

sleep in a storm shows complete confidence in God.  It is not clear what the

motive was for getting into the boat and crossing the sea but in leaving the

crowd behind the disciples were put on a journey of faith.  Although they

are fishermen they fear drowning, so they do not pass the test of faith but

remain in awe and uncertainty as to who Jesus is.  They say to one another:

‘Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?’

 

If we look at the Old Testament, in Psalm 107 we find a similar pattern of events.

The psalmist writes that some people went down to the sea in ships

to do business ‘on the mighty waters’ but cried out to the Lord when ‘he

lifted up the waves of the sea’ and their courage failed them.  God stills

the storm and the psalmist calls upon the people to give thanks to God for his steadfast love.

 

So to be set apart can be seen as a test of faith.  For an explanation of why

we may undergo a test of faith we can consider the writing of John Ryle

in his expository thoughts on the Gospel of Mark.  He writes that: ‘Service

to Christ does not exempt us from storms.  We cannot expect a smooth

journey to heaven.  Ultimate salvation, yes, but Jesus never promised that

we shall have no affliction’.  Ryle also reminds us that with Jesus in the

boat with us, nothing is impossible.  When you commit your soul to

Jesus he will carry you through every danger.

 

Moving on through the centuries, we can find another example of affliction

in the dangerous crossing over the water in the heroism of the Allied forces who,

in June 1944 journeyed across the Channel to liberate Western Europe from Nazi

Germany. The crossing was delayed by one day from 5^th to 6^th June owing to bad

weather and heavy seas but upon that day, 6^th June, known as D-Day, the fear and

tension of the soldiers must have been considerable. The liberation from Nazi

Germany did happen, but after considerable loss of life of both the forces and

civilians. Here is great affliction but ultimate triumph of good over evil which is a

reminder of Jesus carrying us through danger.

 

To be set apart, then, can mean loss of life.  As we know from the Old

Testament, when Abraham showed faith in God in offering to sacrifice

his son Isaac, the angel of the Lord appears to him and says that as he

has feared God there is no need to sacrifice his son.  Yet over the

centuries and into this present day there has been the sacrifice in wars

when the few have died to save the many.  Then there is the sacrifice

of those individuals who have stood out against corrupt regimes and

have suffered and lost their lives in the process.  Jesus himself died

on the Cross to open the door for us to ultimate salvation.

 

These heroes are remembered in our worship and prayers.  In the

hymn ‘Eternal Father, strong to save’ we call upon God to protect

those in peril on the sea.  It is a call for spiritual direction to calm the

natural emotion of fear.

 

All this suffering confirms the sentence provided by Tom Wright in his

book ‘Simply Christian’ that religion is not ‘a small safe department of

everyday life’.

 

There are also those who choose to be set apart to seek closer

union with God and to pray for others. Here it can mean letting go

of material goods and wealth and some of the pleasures of life.

Some to retreat for a while, others to enter the monastery or convent.

 

For whatever reason a setting apart occurs we do know that the Kingdom

of God is ultimately about unity.  Thus we seek reconciliation of conflicts

in our earthly life to try to work towards this unity.  We strive to put an

end to every aspect of life that may divide us such as racism or prejudice

of any kind.  At present, with the ongoing wars in Ukraine and Israel

and all the prejudices that lurk beneath our outward behaviour, this does seem

an uphill task but if we remind ourselves, as in today’s Gospel reading, that Jesus

is in the boat with us, calling upon us to be strong in faith, then if we

respond to this call, all will be well.

 

The biblical story opens with God speaking order into chaos, creating the heavens and the earth. But what is meant by “heavens” and “earth”?

In Hebrew, the word “heavens” literally means “the skies.” In modern English, we usually use the word “earth” to refer to the whole planet or globe, but the Hebrew root word, ehrets, means “land.”

So the heavens and the earth are most basically the skies and the land.

Throughout the Bible, the biblical authors use “the skies” or “the heavens” to refer to the place where God lives—God’s space. And they use “land” or “the earth” to refer to the place where people live—humanity’s space.

The key here is that both spaces were included in the natural, created world. So why do we say that God is “up there” when he is also right here?

When ancient Hebrew writers talk about geographic locations and spatial relationships in the physical world, they often use these physical descriptions to represent a higher reality. For example, death and emptiness are down or under in Sheol. And because God is transcendent, or above all, his space is described metaphorically as being above, or up, or in the heavens.

The most important thing to see here is that God is not ultimately creating a supernatural place where he lives separated from humans. God’s vision for Heaven and Earth—God’s space and humanity’s space—is that both would be fully integrated as one. God’s space and our space are to overlap, “on Earth as it is in Heaven”

All of creation is God’s temple. And in the middle of this cosmic dwelling, God creates another temple—the garden.

We learn in Genesis that the garden of Eden’s entrance faced east, and we learn from Ezekiel that it was located on a mountain Ezek 28: 14,16.

Where is the garden located? It’s up on a mountain. Eden is presented as the cosmic mountain garden temple!

As God’s royal priests, Adam and Eve were, metaphorically, going up or ascending this cosmic mountain temple in order to be in God’s presence. They were not floating up into the sky or necessarily even mountain climbing, but this is how the author literarily emphasized God’s transcendence.

At the top of the mountain, united fully with God and integrated with his will, Adam and Eve receive God’s creative word and his good life. And as God’s representatives, they were tasked to go down from Eden and extend God’s word and life to the whole creation.

Notice that their ascension does not remove them from physical creation, nor does their “going down” to the rest of the world remove them from God’s divine realm. Could we say they are ascending and descending at the same time, living in the way and will of God here on Earth as it is in Heaven? And if so, how would this shape our understanding of Jesus’ ascension?

IN Exodus 24 Moses ascends with the elders of Israel into the cloud of divine glory to meet with God. In this place where the author describes God as sitting on a shimmering, “blue as the sky,” clear, stone floor we see human and divine in a mysterious togetherness with God’s space and humanity’s space integrated as one.

Then God invites Moses to proceed further, to go up even more to the place where he will give him life-giving words for the people below. Moses’ priestly ascension is a recreation of the Eden ideal: humanity resting within God’s presence on a cosmic mountain temple.

We find another priestly example in the book of Leviticus, which explores the way God enables Israel, through the priests, to come up to fully live in his presence. At the center of Leviticus Lev 16-17 ), we read about the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur). On this day, the high priest would make a special, annual sacrifice to cover the sins of Israel’s entire community, which, most importantly, also made a way for people to live in God’s presence. Notice the progression: first, a significant sacrifice; second, an ascension.

Interestingly, the Day of Atonement is the only day of the year when the high priest would symbolically ascend to meet with God.

So we see the first humans, Adam and Eve, and Moses, and the priests all engaging in this kind of ascending up into the presence of God. What about the average person of Israel?

Not long after becoming king, David goes up into the high hills at the centre of Israel’s tribes and establishes a capital city, Jerusalem, otherwise known as Zion or the City of David 2 Sam 6. Here the temple will be constructed and modelled after the Garden of Eden I Kings 8: 29-

So the temple is a symbolic model, pointing to the new Heaven and Earth, a place permeated with God’s presence where humanity would once again live in communion with his way of life and his will for all creation

Every time the Israelites travel to Jerusalem for the festivals, or when they are going to sacrifice in the temple or worship, the biblical authors always write that the people are going “up” (or ascending) to Jerusalem Ps 122 et al.

When we get to the New Testament, we read that Jesus travels up to Jerusalem where he is put on trial Mark 10: 33. After being condemned to death, Jesus goes up to Golgotha where he is lifted up onto a cross John 3:14

And three days later, Jesus is raised up from the dead Luke 24: 7. The biblical authors are saying something with all of this up language.

When we get to the book of Acts, Luke describes a scene where Jesus is “lifted up” and “a cloud receive[s] him.” Acts 1:

Luke is not giving his readers video camera footage of what happened that day. Instead, he is purposefully using geographic and spatial-relationship language of going up to convey transcendent meaning.

Luke evokes the same imagery as the enthronement of the Son of Man from Daniel 7: 13-14 and the exaltation of the suffering servant in Isaiah 52 so that his readers link the underlying ideas: Jesus’ crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension are all part of his enthronement up in the heavenly temple.

The resurrected Jesus is truly a physical human being with scars from his crucifixion, see and he is the firstborn of a new creation, living after resurrection. We are invited to live in his way, and he promises that we too will remain physical human beings like him while fully participating in the divine

Having ascended up as he did, and as we will, Jesus now exists permanently in both God’s space and humanity’s space at once. Adam and Eve experienced this kind of overlapping togetherness with God only in part. But Jesus experiences it fully because he chose to follow God’s will from beginning to end. And his uniting of Heaven and Earth in himself is now complete, or as he said, “It is finished”

Jesus is the new humanity that we are invited and called to become.

Followers of Jesus are now “in Christ” II Cor 5:  and are given the choice of whether or not they will ascend with him.

But as we have seen, this almost certainly does not mean floating off into space one day when we die. Instead it means joining our human lives into God’s divine work of spreading his word and life here on Earth. It is about declaring that “your will, not my will” be done on Earth (humanity’s space) as it is in Heaven (God’s space).

All authority in Heaven and Earth belongs to Jesus, and he has sent out his followers to announce that his indestructible, good life is available now, in the present.

We are invited to ascend into this way of living.

In our very being, as the royal priesthood I Peter 2: 9, as temples filled with the Holy Spirit I Cor 3: 16 followers of Jesus become the place in the world where Heaven and Earth overlap, and this brings true blessing to every neighbour around us.

And as we grow and share our lives with others, continuing to love in ways that unite more and more of Heaven and Earth Eph 2: 19 we can trust that God will be raising us up into the new creation, the new Heaven and Earth. He is beginning to heal us and make us whole right now, and he promises to fully complete that work as we join him, choosing to ascend with Christ into fully integrated Heaven and Earth for all time which is what the world looks like in the Garden of Eden as the creation story begins. Recognizing this helps us better understand not only the Garden and temple, but also what it means to say that Jesus “ascended.”

 

‘The whole earth is full of his glory’ the seraphims chorus to each other in that celestial vision we heard first today from the prophecy of Isaiah. We’re so familiar with the text of the Sanctus that passage inspired, and which features in every Eucharist service, that we easily overlook the sheer immanence of the divine that it asserts. People sometimes talk of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity as an unnecessary conundrum – a kind of hole that the Church has dug itself into, which it could and should free itself from. But the understanding of God as Trinity – Three Persons in One God – was the result of centuries of the Church’s lived experience, and was found as the only way somehow to express the fullness of Christian revelation and life. It serves as an antidote to our human tendency to form God in our own image, rather than to humbly accept that we are made in God’s. It also expresses, I believe, the concept of a loving God who accompanies us and equips us for life in an ever-changing world.

Nicodemus may appear to us to make heavy weather of what Jesus has to say to him in today’s Gospel, but we need to remember that though he finds himself drawn to him, Nicodemus is struggling with the radical change that Jesus posed to all his settled beliefs as to the right order of things – to all he had so far held sacred. His perception is of a Divine Law almost literally (as in the Book of Exodus) carved in stone, yet here is Jesus outlining to him a dynamic relationship with God involving new birth in which, to enter his Kingdom, the believer is born of water and the Spirit; Jesus’ image for that spirit is far from ‘set in stone’, as he likens it to the wind  which ‘blows where it listeth, and thou… canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth’. Yes, Nicodemus, a ‘ruler of the Jews’, knew that the ancient prophet Ezekiel had spoken of God putting ‘a new heart and a new spirit’ – his own spirit – within his people, but that was prophecy. Jesus effectively, but unsettlingly, now announces its fulfilment.

Later in John’s Gospel, Jesus unsettles his disciples with change in a similar way, in the passage that formed the Gospel for last Sunday’s Feast of Pentecost – when he says to them ‘It is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away, the Comforter [the Holy Spirit] will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send him unto you.’ He continues ‘I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now’. Writing about that passage, the priest and theologian Cally Hammond remarks, ‘earthly existence is nothing but change’, and she states ‘Christ’s work was truly finished on the cross, as he himself confirmed. But salvation is the Holy Trinity’s business, not Christ’s alone’. Accordingly Jesus goes on to promise that this Comforter ‘will lead them into all truth’ and ‘show [them] things to come’. Only a Godhead who is itself a loving community of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, living in mutual, reciprocal attentiveness – as so beautifully depicted in the 15^th century icon by Andrej Reblev which adorns the title page of this morning’s Order of Service – can meet our spiritual needs in these troubled times.

‘Holy, holy, holy, is the LORD of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory.’ Reciprocally, we sang in our first hymn, ‘All thy works shall praise thy name in earth, and sky, and sea’. In the vision of Isaiah, experiencing the eternal worship of this Holy God in heaven first of all causes the prophet to feel unclean and unworthy, and then – after he’s purged from his sin – to want to go out and to serve him: ‘I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then said I, Here am I; send me.’ In the verses that follow in Isaiah, the prophet is commissioned by God to a grave responsibility: ‘Go, tell this people, Hear ye indeed, but understand not; and see ye indeed, but perceive not’. Jesus was to quote this to his disciples to describe how his own teaching often met with deaf ears. When the prophet asks the Lord how long this would continue the bleak answer comes, ‘Until the cities be wasted without inhabitant, and the houses without man, and the land be utterly desolate’. There’s surely a close correspondence between that replacing of true reverence for God as creator with idolatry of various gods in our own image that I alluded to, and the damage we have collectively done to creation as, instead of caring for the earth we have abused and pillaged its goods. Humanity has been deaf and blind to its rightful place within God’s creation, rather than apart from it, and many world religious leaders are identifying the root of our global warming crisis, as well as the greed and hatred behind the current concentration of world conflicts, as primarily a spiritual one. If we as Christians recognize the God of Love as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, may we also know ourselves to be commissioned to walk gently upon his earth as custodians of its riches, and agents of his love and peace.